football rambles

Yesterday Ely City took on Deeping Rangers in their second pre-season friendly. Ely were missing several regulars and as well as blooding several new players they also called on a few members of the reserves to swell the ranks, so apart from Chris Sterecki, Adam Murray (who instead of Centre-half was playing up front), Lee Pacey and Ben Lawrence there weren't many familiar faces in the team. One other face who might become familiar is Paul Clayton, who in the report of the previous game was known as Norwich bloke. For once though the sun was shining, although unlike half the insect life in East Anglia the fans hadn't exactly swarmed to the Unwin. Ely started off as badly as they did on Tuesday against Huntingdon when on 3 minutes the visitors were ahead from a curling header. Unlike on Tuesday Ely couldn't respond straight away, although Adam Murray should have put the Robins on level terms on 6 minutes when he was fed a pass by Clayton. This seemed to spur Ely on and li...

After the Huntingdon game next up for Ely in pre-season is another club from their sister league United Counties and it is another relatively new club who have their roots in Sunday football. This time the Unwin Ground welcomes Deeping Rangers from Market Deeping in Lincolnshire. Rangers began life in the Peterborough Sunday league in 1964, but moved to one of the city's Saturday leagues 2 years later. They moved to their present ground, Outgang Road in 1985 after missing out on promotion due to inadequate facilities. After a few more years in the Peterborough League they won promotion to the United Counties in 1999. This side included a couple of players who went on to bigger things, Malcolm Christie who played for Middlesbrough and Derby and Ben Wright, who as well as playing in the league for Lincoln represented Viking Stavanger in the UEFA Cup. Rangers almost pulled off a second promotion in a row in their first season in the United Counties, but they eventually finished t...

Ely continued their pre-season preparations today against Deeping Rangers of the United Counties League. Ely continued to play well, but were again unable to get a win in a friendly match. Let's just hope their luck starts to change when it matters. Last season Deeping finished in a similar position in the UCL to Ely in the ECL. So, it should at least on paper have been an evenly challenged affair. However, Deeping are more used to finishing higher in their league and have spent a bit of cash over the summer. Ely have stuck with what they had last year with the addition of Kenny Smith and Austen Diaper, who is making a big step up from Long Stanton, there were also several Ely players missing today due to one reason or another. That said the teams were evenly matched. There were few chances in the first half an hour with both keepers having saves to make, but neither of them being overly worried. Rangers took the lead though on 32 minutes after a comedy of errors in the Ely defence...