football rambles

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 ...

Supporting a club who haven't won a trophy for ages and having spent years away following local clubs who don't really have a sniff at a trophy I don't really understand how cups have become 'devalued' to the extent where everybody seems to field weakened teams. The trend seems to have caught on so much that last night Ely City fielded a weakened team against Fulbourn Institute in the Cambs Invitation Cup. The starting line up only included 4 first teamers and two of them were coming back from suspensions (Richard Chadwick and Ben Lawrence), one had been missing for a while (Simon Warren) and the other was left back Kenthoh Gray (there aren't that many left backs around). However, unlike some bigger teams Ely still charged 6 quid to get in last night, which is a bit of a cheek when you consider Villa are charging a tenner for the Burnley match in the League Cup and Burton dropped their prices to a fiver for the Paint cup thingy. When you consider that 6 quid is ...