football rambles

July The pre-season got off to a start with a mouthwatering Derby between King's Lynn and Wisbech at the Walks. The bumper crowd probably couldn't believe it when Wisbech ran out 4-1 winners. I was a bit worried about how they were going to do, being in the same league as Ely. I needn't have worried though, they finished near the top, but have now cleared off to the United Counties in the hope of having an easier chance of promotion. King's Lynn in the regular season got into the groove though and won their second promotion in a row. The lowlight was probably the 3 Ely friendlies in July that I went to and didn't offer great hope for the season ahead - losing 2 and drawing 1. August August got off to a great start with Villa again having a friendly at Peterborough that the Villa won comfortably 2-0. In the FA Cup Ely absolutely smashed Rothwell Corinthians beating them 7-1 with a surprise Richard Gammon hat-trick being the highlight. I also saw my first women

First of all it was a mixed season for Villa, which with time and money at a premium I only managed to get to twice. The team seemed to turn a corner when beating Liverpool at Anfield then fell apart over Christmas after that game with Chelsea. Then some brilliant performances towards the end of the season saw them stay up and the future looking bright at last, if Lambert keeps hold of the good players, gets the dead wood off the books and signs a goal scoring midfielder and a couple of solid defenders. Ironically the two games I got to at Villa Park were against teams from East Anglia. First up was a league match against Norwich, which Villa drew and would have probably won if Joe Bennett hadn't got sent off. Secondly was an FA Cup match against Ipswich, at a time when Villa were short on confidence. Villa made heavy work to win 2-1 with Darren Bent, who will hopefully be going scoring first and Andi Weimann, who will hopefully be staying getting the second. The other Villa game w

During the season I went to 44 games and saw a massive 160 goals, thanks to some big wins and momentous games. I usually like to produce a league table, but with so many games involving Ely City it seems to be a bit counterproductive to do so this season, so here are some other figures: Most goals in a game = 10 17/11/12 Hatfield Town 3 Ely City 7 Biggest home win 30/3/13 King's Lynn Town 7 Mickleover Sports 3 Biggest away win 4/5/13 Ely City Reserves 0 Fulbourn Institute 6 Despite the whopping number of games, I wasn't exactly groundhopping. With Sean playing on Saturday mornings, it has been a bit harder to get to different grounds. In fact all 44 of the games were seen in just 9 grounds 1 The Unwin Ground, Ely (30 games) 2 The Walks, King's Lynn (4 games) 3 London Road, Peterborough (2 games) 4 The Abbey stadium, Cambridge (2 games) 5 Villa Park, Birmingham (2 games) 6 Gosling Sports Ground, Welwyn Garden City (1 game) 7 Recreation Way, Mildenhall (1 g

I'm off work this week and as there no longer seems to be any football life left in the season I'll get on with the end of season review shortly. I'll have to start off a new notebook next season as the one I've had since 1995 seems to be falling apart. I also need to wrestle it off Sean who seems to be quite attached to it to see the games that he has been to too.

I'm a bit behind with this, but the weekend before the one just gone Sean's team, Ely Crusaders took part in the Iselham Football Tournament. It was a bit of a long day, especially following on from a day of IELTS on the Saturday, but at least the weather was nice. There were again 2 Crusaders' teams playing with old and new players being mixed up. Both teams got off to a shaky start, which wasn't surprising as they weren't used to playing with each other. I think Sean's team seemed to be a bit better off with fewer new players. Fortunately, by the end of the tournament both teams seemed to have improved and got a bit more used to each other. It wasn't competitive, but I think with the players who had played all season together in one team they would have done really well. Sean's team at least rounded off the day by beating Littleport Rangers 3-2, which wasn't bad as they had drawn 4-4 at home with them in the league and lost 5-3.

Last Monday was a bank holiday and what better way to spend a glorious sunny day than at a football stadium. Sean was playing for Ely Crusaders Blue in the Cambridge United Under 8's tournament. They won 2 and lost 2 and he got 3 goals, which isn't bad for a defender. Here is the cover of the programme: Here's the page with Sean's matches covered: And here he is in action:

It's over a week since last Saturday, when I went to see Ely Reserves take on Fulbourn Institute. That's quite a long time to catch up, but to be honest it wasn't great and then last Sunday I went to Yarmouth and on bank holiday Monday I was at a tournament at Cambridge United. I didn't go to a game yesterday, well if you don't include Littleport Rangers v Ely Crusaders in the under 8's league, but I watched Villa v Chelsea and Wigan beat Man City on the TV. Anyway, back to that pointless game last Saturday. The weather was nice, the beer was nice, the football from Ely wasn't. Ian Walters who has been playing for and doing well for the first team was present as was Taz, who came on as sub. The rest may as well not have turned up. In fact if they had been playing in a kick around on the park they may well have been told to do one by the other players. They started off well enough, but Fulbnourn were clearly a stronger team and should have been awarded a

If the jukebox below doesn't work the songs can be found here:http://grooveshark.com/playlist/April+2013/86095488 April 2013 by jim_bomb on Grooveshark 1 Рубль – Время водка Rubl were a new find for me this month. A band fronted by Leningrad's Sergei Shurov making rude but witty songs about drinking that have got them banned from performing in several places in Moscow. To give you a flavour this one is called Vodka Time. 2 Wax Tailor – Where My Heart's At A bit of French trip hop that has helped me keep my sanity at work recently 3 Ляпис Трубецкой – В платье белом A band from Belarus who were popular, and who I saw live in Moscow when I lived there. This band really helped me to learn Russian. This is one of their songs from that time with quite simple lyrics. This one translates as In A White Dress. 4 Orbital - Stringy Acid I got back into these techno pioneers from back in the day when they release their latest album, Wonky, last year. The single with the