football rambles

Ely booked themselves a place in the Semi finals of the Cambridgeshire Invitation Cup and lined up an away tie with Cambridge City after beating Soham Town Rangers on Tuesday night. The weather was at last mild after 3 weeks without a competitive game and what seemed like an eternity of poor weather beforehand. The Robins looked dead and buried after just 17 minutes after going behind to a goals from Simpson and Richards on 10 and 17 minutes. The sides had seemed fairly evenly matched up until then, but some diabolical defending from Ely let Soham get a couple of early goals. Ely got back into the game just before half time when Brady Stone scored from one of Ben Lawrence's long throws. Lawrence who usually gets some decent long throws into the box was further aided by the fact that there was a lot of space around the pitch at Soham and he always looked a danger from this position. Just after half time Ely looked hungry to get back in the game and on 50 minutes Dave Smith pulled t...

February has been a fairly sparse month with hardly any home fixtures and even the home fixtures all beig called off Ely won yesterday, but I was at work, so the only game so far tis month has been Soham Town Rangers V Ely City in the Cambridgeshire Cup. More of that in a moment.

A couple of weeks ago the demise of Whitton United was announced and their record was eradicated from the Eastern Counties League. It seems a little strange though as their reserves are playing and not doing too badly in the Reserves League, this seemed a bit starnge, so I decided to do a little bit of research. After all it was only on November 15th that Whitton beat Ely 3-0 at the Unwin ground and in the 1960s they were one of the most successful teams in Suffolk. It would appear that their promotion when they nicked 3rd place on the last day of the season last season to get into the Premier league was a step too far for the club. The club were struggling in the Premier and were below Ely when they announced their decision to throw in the towel. The board had already left the club and the cost of bringing the ground up to scratch was estimated at £20,000 (it's a little bit worrying that Ely also have until the end of the season to bring their ground up to scratch too). At the sam...

On Thursday I went to the match between Cambridge United and Oxford United in the Conference. The game was on Setanta and the Press were sponsoring the game, so I managed to get cheap tickets for the South Stand rather than the Newmarket Road End where I usually go when visiting the Abbey. It was a little strange sitting with people who are more interested in drinking coffee than watching football and at the other extreme we also had a run in with the Dutch groundhoppers, who actually seemed quite cool for groundhoppers and were visiting the game after being at Blackburn v Bolton the previous night. The Brazilian drummers gave the whole evening quite a csmopolitan feel, but the football and the weather was about as far as you could get from the Maracana. Oxford who had won their previous five matches started quickly and Adam Murray's goal on 9 minutes for the visitors was his 3rd shot on target. The Us tried to respond, but weren't using the width of the pitch unlike their oppo...

On Tuesday night Ely finally got past Great Shelford in the Cambridgeshire invitation cup to set up a tie against Soham away. If you haven't been following it the hole story started in October when Ely beat Shelford 1-0, but the result didn't stand because the floodlights failed on 87 minutes. The game was subsequently postponed twice because of bad weather. The match was finally replayed on 9th December and Ely anhilated Shelford 5-1, this time though Ely won with an allegedly unregistered player. The rules weren't clear, so the match was replayed yet again. On Tuesday night we finally, finally got a result, but it was a long time coming. For most of the match Ely pressurised the Shelford defence and Shelford, as they had for most of the time in the previous matches, didn't look like scoring. It was afterall a team that had struggled past the reserves on Saturday. However, Shelford hung on for extra time, which was the last thing we wanted with the freezing weather. Fo...

Boldmere St.Michael's come from Sutton Coldfield and their badge shows that they are very proud of the fact. The club started off in 1883 as a junior team that combined football with bible classes. At the moment they play in the Midlands Football Alliance, which is step 5 on the pyramid. If we look at the badge and go from left to right and top to bottom we can see the following: In the top left corner is the tudor rose and this illustrates that King Henry VIII made Sutton Coldfield a royal town in 1528. The bear and staff signifies the Earls of Warwick, as Sutton was in Warwickshire before counties were messed with in the 1970s (and beyond). The deer on the bottom left also signify the influence of Henry VIII in 1528, as apart from granting a royal charter to the town he also gave the deer park, which is now Sutton Park to the town. The sword in the bottom right corner is a bit more of an enigma, but it's believed that it's there to signify that in the eigteenth century ar...

Ely brought their losing streak to an end last week with a 1-0 away win at Walsham Le Willows, however they couldn't improve again this week and like in the last game with CRC they played well, but couldn't get a result. Ely started off brightly enough and the game was fairly open until the 28th minute when Badcock in the Ely goal seemed to catch the ball from a Wroxham cross and then throw it in to the back of his net. It wasyet another embarrassing mistake that saw the Robins go a goal behing. Wroxham then went on to extend their lead with a superb volley at the end of the first half. Again luck wasn't with Ely, there could be no arguements with the goal which was really well taken, but the ball bounced fotuitously for the Yachtsmen to extend their lead. The second half started with Ely conceding a penalty after the ball was handled in the box - 3-0 to Wroxham. It didn't look like the Robins would get back in to the game, but with the return of Nick Impey, who started...