there will be goals

There’s nothing wrong with a hard-fought, backs-to-the-wall, 1-0 win, of course; and I’ve seen many a knife-edge nil-nil job that’s kept me engaged and entertained for the duration. Football - proper football - is about more than just goals. Isn’t it? 

That said, I’m sure that we’ll all take a 5-5 end to end goal-fest once in a while, and here it was, on the back pitch of a rugby club just off the main road to Halifax.

The game I’m meant to be at, over at Eccleshill United, has been rained off, but a quick scour of the local fixtures reveals that “the Rammers”, aka Northowram AFC, are at home to Sowerby “Bridge” Bridge in the Halifax and District League. And, like an actual football fan, as I may once have been but recently have not, I cast an eye over the table before venturing down. (Side note: the FA’s website for local football is rubbish.) 

Northowram: Played 4, Lost 4

Sowerby Bridge: Played 4, Won 4

There’s only one way this game can go.

Except that here isn’t, is there, because as per the mantra anything can happen in football, today it does. 

I might be geekily flasked up - the weather’s turning, lads - but a handful of Halifax stalwarts who are made of sterner stuff make steady progress through a crate of Budweiser and pint cans of Kronenbourg. And why not.

I doubt that anybody reading this other than, potentially, the scorers themselves, would appreciate a forensic rundown of each of the ten goals that the sizeable gathering witnesses (one of the more depressing aspects to Big Football being, of course, the endless be-suited drone of the how and the why); and besides, I miss at least one due to being on coffee-pouring duty.

But there are long-range goals and keeper-getting-megged goals, and there’s a double sin-bin and have two spectators been sent away? And there’s touchline controversy and there’s a rogue dog on the pitch. And how yellow is that kit? And there’s no pies but there are ten goals.

Sowerby Bridge, well-drilled and efficient, may see this as a point dropped. Northowram, spirited, a point they perhaps weren’t expecting.

Me, gripped, engrossed - might just be getting back into this.

Northowram 5
Sowerby Bridge 5

Here's why I'm having a season watching non-league football

I'm on the Twitter