football rambles

In Wednesday we went to see Burton Albion's under 18 team take on their counterparts from Ilkeston. In the first half Burton played well and took a two goal lead without having that many chances. A draw would have probably have been a fair result, but Ilkeston did one better and got a winner to take the game 3-2 in a hard fought contest at Hillsfield in Rocester. The terrace at Rocester FC. The kids in the main stand at the ground. The Ilkeston defence clear a Burton attack.

Although I spent a year in Rome and was a regular at the Stadio Olimpico during my stay there (following Roma, although I did sneak off to Lazio games when none of my Italian friends were looking) it was a different band of Romans from my past that I paid a visit to on Saturday when I went to see Rocester take on Friar Lane & Epworth. I didn't know what to expect as the last time I watched the team was a few games at the start of the 2008-9 season when their performances were ropey then to say the least. Neither Rocester or their visitors had been on great form and before the game Rocester were 16th and Friar Lane were 20th in a Midland's Alliance of 23 teams. It wasn't that long ago that Rocester were beaten at home by 7-1 by Coalville, so I was a bit dubious about their ability, however as Coalville beat King's Lynn 3-0 in the first leg of the FA Vase semi final on Saturday maybe I should have given Coalville more credit. That said the heaviest home defeat I have ...

Rocester beat Oldbury 4-1 at home and then managed to beat Sutton Town 4-1 away in the FA Vase, so expectations were high for this game. Although the manager, Swaney urged precaution there was a general optimism around the club, which had been missing for a while. The optimism was short lived. Coventry Sphinx, who have been buoyed by closer connections to Coventry City reversed the scores of the previous 2 games by beating Rocester 4-1 in what was quite a bad tempered game. To be honest, the officials did really well in calming things down and injecting humour into the game. Some of the tackles going in looked to have the intent to harm the opposite player and the back chat and appeals of both teams, although mainly from Sphinx players seemed unreasonable. Not surprisingly this fixture led to both clubs being heavily fined last year when fighting broke out among the players, so hats off to the officials for keeping control of things today. That said, they had to be eagle eyed as they w...

I didn't go to a match on Saturday, as getting anywhere from Rocester on public transport is a nightmare at the best of times. The deluge of rain over the week also meant that a number of games were threatened with being postponed, I had decided to try to go to Matlock Town's home game or Belper Town's, so it was probably just as well that I didn't bother, as Matlock's game was off and Belper's ended in a 0-0 draw. On Sunday I went to Oldfields Sports and Social Club in Uttoxeter to see a memorial match for local hero Roger Croft. The game was between Uttoxeter Town Old and New, and Roger's All Stars ( team of ex and current professionals). Captaining Roger's All Stars was his son Gary Croft, who played for England's Under 21s and was at one time transfered to Blackburn from Grimsby for 1.7 million pounds. Other pros and ex-pros included Tony Mowbray, the West Bromwich Albion manager, Graham Fenton who won the League Cup with Aston Villa and now who ...

I expected Rocester to struggle against Oldbury on Tuesday night, as they have really been playing quite badly of late. Matches between the two clubs also have a reputation of being closely fought affairs, although the first meeting between the clubs in 1988 in the West Midlands Regional League ended in a 4-0 defeat at home for Rocester. On Tuesday they got their revenge for this and beat Oldbury 4-1. Oldbury went ahead on 23 minutes when Max Bissell put the visitors ahead and for most of the first half it looked like Rocester would be well beaten. However in the second half we saw a very different Rocester who ran Oldbury ragged and dominated the game. The Romans drew level when Chris Sleath, who signed last week from Gresley Rovers, was fouled in the area and Paul Millward scored from the spot. On 69 minutes Sleath scored to put Rocester in the lead and then it was the turn of Lee Bagley, who had only just come on as a substitute to score on 80 minutes and then again in stoppage time...

I didn't actually make it to the Burton v Kidderminster game today and had to make do with Rocester v Cradley Town in the Midlands Football Alliance. To try and be nice, the programme was  fairly well put together, as usual, and the cider was nice and the chips that the kids had looked fairly good; however the football was fairly dreadful. Cradley had most of the chances in the first half, but had probably 2 of the worst finishers in the history of the MFA, although to be fair the Rocester goalkeeper, Paul Wood, was on pretty good form. Rocester on the other hand probably had one shot on target all match. It came as no surprise then when Cradley opened the scoring early in the second half, however Rocester were thrown a lifeline with about 10 minutes to go when the Cradley keeper handled the ball outside the box and received his marching orders. As they had already used all of their substitutes an outfield player had to take his place. However, despite pushing everyone forward, Roc...

Hillsfield, which at the moment is the home of Rocester Football Club, will soon be developed into an Engineering College for the very locally based JCB. They recently bought the ground and at the moment are charging the club a 'pepper corn rate' to use the ground. However, this also means that the club can be evicted whenever JCB see fit. The company has promised to build another ground for the club, but where it will be and if it will be adequate for football of this level still remains to be seen. Rocester moved to Hillsfield in 1987 after gaining promotion from the Staffordshire Senior League (which is the league in which their reserve team now play) to the West Midlands Regional League. The ground was originally called Riversfield, but was later renamed to Hillsfield after the ex-chairman Don Hill, who oversaw Rocester's most successful period.  The capacity of the ground is allegedly 4,000 and the floodlights and stand originally came from Walsall who sold them after ...

The top picture shows the view of the goal situated infront of the Mill.  The bottom photo shows the goal which is situated just infront of the River Dove. The river apart from dividing Staffordshire from Derbyshire also gave the ground its original name of Riversfield and has also claimed many a match ball that has been blasted off targer

Views from top to bottom:  1. View of the clubhouse and mainstand from outside the ground. 2. Signs outside the ground trying to entice people in. 3. Home dugout with the clubhouse in the background.

One of the key features of the ground is the mill from 1870's that is adjacent to it. Here are some views from the walk to the ground from the village

My first game back in Britain wasn't exactly clash of the titans, but Rocester and Oadby served up an entertaining enough game, which ended in a 2-2 draw.  Dean Smith put the visitors ahead with a cleverly worked move, that they had obviously worked on at the training ground.However, Lee Bagley put the home team level when he was left unmarked on the far post on 15 minutes.  What followed on for most of the game was a battle in the middle of the field with some breakaways and hard tackling in the centre of the pitch. For the most part Rocester looked like the better team, but they couldn't beat the off-side trap. However, on 81 minutes Rory Maxwell capitalised on a defensive error by Oadby, and it looked like The Poachers would be heading back to Leicestershire without any points. All Rocester had to do was keep possession and despite attempts to do this they continued to give free kicks away in the corners and fail to look comfortable on the ball when it was in the middle of t...