Leon Is The King of Chaddy

And so on a breezy Boxing Day a visit to the ARK Fleetech stadium on Andrew Street for the North West Counties clash between Chadderton FC and Sandbach United.

Chadderton FC, 'Chaddy', was formed in 1947 as Millbrow FC, then became North Chadderton Amateurs and finally Chadderton in 1957. Initially competing in the Oldham Amateur League, the club then progressed through the Manchester Amateur League and on to the Manchester League in 1963.

A step up to the Lancashire Combination followed and, after finishing runners up in 1982, they became founder members of the North West Counties, created by the merger of the Lancashire Combination and Cheshire County League. Promotion in 1990 was swiftly met with relegation the season after, but the club lasted longer at the higher level after gaining promotion in 1993 - until being forcibly demoted in 1999 due to ground grading issues.

In 2007 Chaddy was taken over by Craig Halliwell and Tony Bhatti of HB Property Group, but within two years ties had been severed; the club becoming a members' club run by the people for the people. The play offs were reached last year, but the team remains best known for two of its ex-players - England international David Platt and Mark Owen from Take That.

Sandbach United was established in 2004 when Sandbach Albion and Sandbach Ramblers joined forces in their quest to improve football facilities in Sandbach. The club badge reflects the union, featuring R and A in its design.

Sandbach Albion, formerly known as Hays Junior FC, was founded in 1994. Sandbach Ramblers Youth Football Club was reformed in 1995 to provide access for schoolboy football for the youth of Sandbach and the surrounding area.

United originally competed in the Staffordshire County Senior League, before moving to the Cheshire League in 2011 where they were promoted to the Premier Division in 2014. The club was accepted into the North West Counties this summer and, whilst initially looking for a season of consolidation, currently lie sixth in the play off places.

And so to Timperley Met, and an (almost) fit for purpose Metrostink service with the tram full of bleary eyed Man United fans, seemingly wanting to discuss George Michael's death..... Past Old Trafford and into the city centre where I walk the Second City Crossing which is littered with beggars.

Then onto the Rochdale line, 'The Line of Violence', at Exchange Square and beyond the National Football Museum the conversations turn to hard drug use. It's a bleak line with abandoned mills on both sides of the track; I alight at Westwood for a walk down the hill, crossing from Oldham back into Manchester, into the teeth of a biting wind.

The Humdinger pub is no humdinger as it is closed and looking for tenants or to be sold, before I reach Fish World and a male jogger in pale pink socks and shocking pink running shoes.... Andrew Street is across the way, and the ARK Fleetech Stadium is hemmed in amidst a warren of terraced house side streets.

Inside immediately to my left is the tea bar with the main bar upstairs. This end and the popular side are tree lined, with the latter providing the only cover (but not from this wind !!) and a middle section with three broad steps for seating and backed by Broadway - the Oldham version !!

The far end is open with a small hillock and waste ground, whilst the near side hosts a very boggy car park - and several spectators do not even venture from the warmth of their vehicles for the entire 90 minutes... The dug outs are on this side too along with a waste receptacle that tells us shoutily 'DO NOT PUT DOG CRAP IN THIS BIN'. On the pitch the goalposts are still being erected....

Chaddy are in all red, United in change white with one blue stripe and their goalkeeper in pink - but I don't think he was the aforementioned jogger ! A pale sun provides no warmth and there really is no respite from the icy wind. 51 goals in Chaddy's 11 home league games so far this season - so a guaranteed goalless draw then ?

Immediately it is obvious that Chaddy are more up for the fight and their front two of Leon Iluobi and James Curley are a handful all afternoon. However they manage to make a complete hash of a two on one, caused by dreadful Sandbach defending, and then have three valid penalty claims rejected.

United seem disjointed and rarely threaten, although Josh Lane pinches the ball from the last man and greedily shoots wide when a pass to unmarked centre forward Danny Bartle would surely have seen him score.

After Sam Gibson shoots just wide for Chaddy, the home side get the goal they deserve on 26 minutes. Wingman Luke Heron beats his man, runs to the dead ball line and crosses for Iluobi to slam home from five yards. Iluobi is then denied by a magnificent last ditch challenge from United captain Bradley Cooper (awaiting his next film role one assumes). At the other end Bartle gets it all wrong with his left foot when a header was the better option, and Chaddy lead one nil at the break.

The second half sees more of the same, Curley shoots straight at the keeper, Chaddy have two goals disallowed - one for a push on the keeper at a corner, the other for a tight offside - and hit the underside of the bar.

Sandbach are frustrated and frustrating to watch, and create only one significant opportunity but Bartle's twenty yard strike is handily parried wide. Still the second goal won't come for the home side but, as we edge into injury time, Gibson beats three men on the left, shoots beyond the keeper - and strikes the post... Iluobi's first half goal proves to be enough :-) 

Rock On - Druids Avoid Becoming Major Twits

And so to The Rock for a Welsh Cup 3rd Round match between Cefn Druids AFC and the visitors from the coast of the Vale of Glamorgan, Llantwit Major FC. It's a cup tie postponed for a week due to international call ups - Cefn Druids contributing three players to last weekend's Home Nations Futsal tournament !!

Cefn Druids, 'The Ancients', is the oldest football club in Wales. In 1872 Plasmadoc FC, founded three years earlier, became Druids (ancient mystic men of Celtic civilisation) when the various colliery and quarry teams around Ruabon and Cefn Mawr were brought together under one banner.

In 1876 the Druids entered the FA Cup - the first Welsh club to do so - and in 1877 contested the very first Welsh Cup game. The club won the Welsh Cup in three consecutive seasons between 1880 and 1882, and have won the competition 8 times in all.

The Ancients joined the first Welsh league in 1890, and in 1920 merged, first with Rhosymedre to be called Rhosymedre Druids, and then with Acrefair United in 1923 to become Druids United. Enthusiasm had waned by the 1980s as the Druids were being outstripped by local rivals Cefn Albion (established in 1967). Another merger in 1992 between these two clubs saw Cefn Druids AFC born, playing at Plaskynaston and adopting the white and black colours of the original Plasmadoc.

The club was rebranded as Flexsys Cefn Druids in 1998 and that season saw them crowned as champions of the Cymru Alliance earning promotion to the League of Wales. Subsequent sponsorship deals saw the club renamed NEWI Cefn Druids, after the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education, and then Elements Cefn Druids before reverting back to Cefn Druids in 2010.

The Ancients dropped down to the Cymru Alliance as the new 12 team Welsh Premier League was born in 2010 and moved from Plaskynaston, showing its age and now a supermarket, to The Rock. In 2012 the club were Welsh Cup runners up, reaching the final for the first time in 108 years, which brought a brief foray into Europa League football.

In 2014 Druids were promoted to the Welsh Premier League but lasted only one season before being relegated. Last season's Cymru Alliance champions Caernarfon Town were deprived of a Welsh Premier League license, as they officially did not exist as a legal entity having failed to file accounts in August 2015. In the ensuing fiasco runners up Cefn were promoted back to the Welsh Premier League.

The Druids recently made headline news when it became known the club had failed to sell a single season ticket, not helped by having to play home games for the first two months of the season at The New Saints' ground whilst their new 3G pitch was laid. Season ticket sales have 'surged' since the announcement....

Llantwit Major FC, 'The Major', was formed in 1962. A selection committee picked the team until the club joined the South Wales Amateur League in 1971. The 1980s saw three league titles and three Corinthian Cup successes but thereafter fortunes were mixed.

The visitors from the Windmill Ground were promoted to the Welsh Football League Division Three, three tiers below Druids, for the start of the 2012/13 season. They currently sit 4th (out of 16), and progress in the Cup has come with victory over Sully Sports and a giantkilling - beating Llandrindod Wells of the Cymru Alliance, two divisions above.

And so on a grey mild December afternoon Christmas shopping creates snaking lines of traffic, woeful driving and, naturally, roadworks.... Onto the M56, past the Stretton Fox, then a softly belching Stanlow before crossing the Welsh border and bypassing the floodlights of the Racecourse at Wrexham.

Left at the Ruabon Wheel and then past a caravan dealers, which appears to have sprung up amidst a forlorn and crumbling church. Right into High Street and then into Rock Road, where the Ancients' home is just beyond Rhosymedre Methodist Church, and where the road is currently blocked by two fire engines.

The Rock is reached either by a footpath up the hill or, further up, the car park off Rock Road. The stadium has literally been hewn out of the rock, with houses perched atop the precipice and looking down onto the pitch. At one end is the car park, club shop and Druids Social Club - this end also hosts, strangely, a Welsh flag with Aston Villa printed on it.....

The popular side supports a refreshment bar and a very tidy main covered all seated stand with the black and white seats patterned to spell out CDFC. At the far end is a solitary steward with his pedal cycle, behind which are fields where an onlooker has precariously perched himself on top of some rocks for a free view. Across the way is the sheer rock face in front of which is a tarmac walkway and brick built dugouts bisected by a two tier open press box/ photographers platform.

After a minute's silence in honour of Chapocoense and Druids' player Adam Eden's father who passed away this week, we are underway with the Ancients in black and white, and the Major in change all red. The Llantwit Major contingent, with a 300 mile round trip, occupy the front row of the main stand for 'their cup final'.

The underdogs are not overawed and shape the better early chances. Robert Jones is just wide from a free kick, and Glyndwr Davies heads the resulting corner over when he should have done better. Druids have plenty of the ball but struggle to create openings; Jordan Harper charges down Jack Lansdown's clearance but the ball runs wide, and Fisnik Hajdari's long range effort sails over.

Half time sees the game goalless and with little indication of a three league gulf between the two sides. Much merriment at the break too that Bala's game at Airbus was postponed shortly before kick off due to a 'hazardous floodlight', and much berating of the referee by Llantwit fans 'because he's from North Wales'.

The second half is far more open as the Druids, no doubt following a half time haranguing, begin more positively and are helped by an early goal. Harper is felled in the area and Mike Pritchard squeezes the penalty inside Lansdown's right hand post. Six minutes later the ball falls to Corey Roper whose shot seems to be going wide until it is deflected by a Llantwit leg inside the near post to make it 2-0 to the Ancients.

The play becomes end to end with the Druids looking the likelier to add to their advantage - Steve Blenkinsop skying over from a parried shot. But there is no further score and, as the rain sheets down, the Major are denied a consolation as sub Luke Cox sees his shot saved by the onrushing Michael Jones in injury time - in truth the first save Jones has had to make….