football rambles

On Saturday Ely lost again, this time to Whitton United. If you can't say anything nice, you shouldn't say anything and I would prefer to forget about this game.

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...

Ely's atrocious run of late continued on Saturday as they made it only one point from the last 15. They lost 3-0 to a strong Whitton United team, but the result doesn't really tell the full story. Ely went 1-0 down when Duane Wright put them ahead on 28 minutes, but Ely particularly in second half seemed to have most of the chances, but never looked like actually putting them away. It looked for most of the second half that Ely would get an equaliser, but on 83 minutes Ronald Wright made it 2-0 when the goalkeeper fluffed the ball to allow him to get a pretty straight forward tap in. Duane Wright got his second on 98 minutes! There were a lot of stoppages including an injury to the Whitton goalkeeper in what was an entertaining, but bad tempered game. At least Villa managed to cheer me up by beating the Gooners away.

On Saturday Ely should play host to Whitton United. Whitton United's official birthday is 1926, although there is evidence of a club existing before the start of the 20th Century. In 1927 they made it to the miinor cup final of the Suffolk and Ipswich league, where they lost to Bungay. In their early days they played their football in fields behind a couple of pubs and at one time they shared a field with a few cows, who were moved for the football. They finally settled at King George V Playing fields where they play up until the presnt day, although there are plans to move to a more modern facility. A lot of their history from this period has been lost in time and the next record of major note was a game infront of 8000 at Ipswich's Portman Road in the Suffolk Cup Final in 1948. Unfortunately, they went on to lose 2-0 to Lowestoft Town. They went on to win the cup 2 years on the trot in 1959 and 60 by beating Bungay and Long Melford. Up until the late 1980s the club played in...