football rambles

Well, I got out of examining today, the family are away and what could be more perfect but a day out at the football? However, despite being in London for the last few days where the weather was fine I came back to a soaked East Anglia and most of the local stuff if it isn't off already will be by kick off time.

Last night Ely took on Wroxham in what could only be called by the media as a good old fashioned game of football. The game was played in the freezing cold on a pitch that has seen better days, especially after a few days of torrential rain and was big on commitment and the more physical side of the game. I wasn't sure whether to applaud the referee for letting the game flow or be a bit appauled for him only giving out two yellow cards and a straight red. The only thing that the game lacked was a few goals. In fact there weren't any goals, but it was an entertaining enough affair and Ely would probably have settled for a 0-0 draw before the game started. As I suggested before there were a lot of hard tackles going in during the game, some which were fair, but would have probably been penalised at a higher level and some which were definitely outside the laws of football. One criticism that could be levelled towards Wroxham is that they gave away a lot of freekicks that put thei

It's been a quietcouple of weeks on the live football front, although there has been plenty of it on the TV. Last Saturday I was working and yesterday there wasn't much locally on and most of the matches got hit by the torrential rain. So it was good news when I heard that Ely have got a rearranged match against Wroxham on Tuesday. It's going to be a tricky game for the Robins against one of the in form sides of the Eastern Counties League. Wroxham are currently in second place in the League and have been consistently in the top 6 for the last 20 years. Last year they also reached the FA Vase final where they lost to to Whitley Bay. Wroxham were formed in 1892 by a Mr.G.E Preston who was the ex-captain of the Norfolk team. Their original colours were pink and black, so the current players are probably glad that at some point in the past they changed their colours to blue and white. They did however also gain the nickname 'The Yachtsmen' pretty early on in their hist

Yesterday Ely took on CRC in a fixture that Ely hardly ever get anything from. However, Cambridge United parted with their manager Martin Ling and this had ramifications for CRC, so it was probably the best chance Ely had of registering a result against an even younger than usual CRC side. The weather was warm for the time of year but the wind speed, which had seen the market in the city being abandoned meant that the game was always going to be played under difficult circumstances. Ely were playing against the wind in the first half, however CRC never really looked like capitalising on their advantage, despite Ely keeper Lee Pacey doing his best to help them out by booting the ball in the wind under every opportunity. CRC could also have perhaps considered themselves lucky not to have been down to 10 men when a late, late tackle on Ebanks-Blake was punished only by a yellow card. It was arguable if he was the last man, but the lateness of the tackle would have been dealt with more ser