Dunkirk 3-1 Tiverdale

It’s safe to say that the 2012/13 season won’t be a vintage one for non league football in Nottinghamshire. Eastwood Town; who for so long have been by far the strongest of the traditional non league sides in the county, have been rooted to the bottom of the Evo stick premier division(step 3) all season following their comprehensive relegation from the BSN last time around. You would have to be a brave man not to beat on them achieving (if that’s the right word) a second relegation on the trot this time around. A league below we find Hucknall Town(step 4) anchored to the bottom of the Evo stick division one south. Life is never dull at Watnall Road; the club is on it’s third management team of the season amidst a backdrop of boardroom chaos. The club have been forced into signing a group of step 7 players with a recent result being a 13-0 defeat at Loughborough Dynamo when only 8 players turned out for the club; again relegation is looking the most likely outcome. It’s a far cry from the summer when we visited with the Imps in pre season and everything looked bright for the club. Rainworth and Carlton also play their football in this league however neither is really setting the world alight this season. Down to Step 5 in the Northern Counties East league, and we find Arnold Town in the bottom third of the table and on their second manager of the campaign. Champions Retford United are also having a much tougher time of it this time around being in a midtable position. I haven’t seen much of Retford this season so I can’t comment on what’s going right/wrong but looking at the local press player turnover does seem a tad on the high side.

Into step six and the EMCL, and we find 4 of the 5 Nottinghamshire sides in the bottom half of the table. On the plus side though in this division Basford United are continuing their rise up the pyramid and currently sit top of the league. Down at step 7 it’s a mixed bag as we have Newark and AFC Mansfield top of the CML South and North respectively, with Harworth in the mix in the North as well. However, to balance it out both divisions also have Nottinghamshire sides at the bottom with Blidworth propping up the south division and Welbeck the North. One of the sides doing reasonably well this season is Dunkirk of the Midland Football Alliance (step 5) before today’s round of matches they sat in 6th position in the league. I decided to do a game in Nottingham today and then attend the Nottingham Panthers v Coventry Blaze match in the evening. It never a hard decision to visit Dunkirk. It’s easy to reach via bus from the City centre, there is a decent little clubhouse at the ground, and the standard of the football in this division is generally quite decent from what I have seen. The train into Nottingham was full with a good number of Forest fans who were all looking forward to their FA Cup match at home to league one Oldham. Forest had dropped the ticket prices down to £12 and most fans seemed very confident of victory (chortle chortle). As I had some time on my hands before I needed to head out to Dunkirk I nipped into Walkabout in the town centre and caught some of the Brighton v Newcastle FA Cup game on the big screen. I have been laid low with a virus since Wednesday and didn’t really feel like drinking, so a mere coke was the order of the day for me. Any Newcastle fans watching would have needed something a little stronger though I fancy. If you are planning to visit Dunkirk FC (and you should be if you haven’t been) then you need the 48 dark blue bus for Clifton and alight at Clifton Bridge North. The follow the subway down, turn left then when you come to the roundabout take the exit than says Lenton Lane (also got signs for the golf course). Follow this round past Greenwood Meadows FC and a posh looking restaurant and you will find the ground.

Given the amount of rain that we have had recently the players were warming up on the pitch outside the ground. The clubhouse is outside the ground so I piled in there for a decent cup of tea (£1) and caught the final few stages of the Newcastle game. The clubhouse was doing a decent trade with the Tiverdale committee and a handful of fans in there along with a couple of non league wags. The star item in the clubhouse is current Lincoln City midfielder Jake Sheridan’s Notts County shirt which is framed. Jake came through the famous youth system at Dunkirk many moons ago along with Wes Morgan of Nottingham Forest. Given Forest’s result today in the FA cup they may be back to Dunkirk ASAP to see if there is any more talent there that they can snap up. The entrance fee to today’s encounter was a mere £5 with a fantastic programme costing £1. Although the programme may not be full of pretty pictures, fancy graphics of crappy quizzes it does have more stuff to read in that than you can shake a bag of ferrets at. It has league tables, results and round ups from step 3 right down to the Notts’ senior league plus a large amount on the visitors and of course the home side. There is also a decent section on the Nottinghamshire senior cup, the biggest prize in semi professional football in Nottinghamshire.

As you would expect given the large amount of rain that we have had recently the pitch was quite heavy. This of course made passing football a little tricky but both sides did try to keep it on the deck as much as possible. It was however quite a physical game and early on there was a lengthy stoppage while the Dunkirk centre half received some treatment. I was stood to the left hand side of the Dunkirk dugout and it was interesting listening to their views on the game. It was refreshing to see coaches coach and encourage their players instead of just bawling and shouting at the officials all game.

On 31 minutes the games first controversial moment happened as Tiverdale were reduced to ten men, after Adam Hill was sent from the field of play for kicking out at a home player. The player didn’t seem to complain too much as he trudged off but I must admit that I didn’t see the incident as clearly as I would have liked to. This did lead to lots of niggley fouls from both sides but there were two challenges from Tiverdale players that in my humble view could have been straight reds. The Dunkirk management team seemed of the view that those challenges were worse than the sending off incident. On 41 minutes Dunkirk took the lead. A long range shot was sent in, only for the Tiverdale keeper to spill the ball into the path of Kieran Wells who buried the ball from close range. Dunkirk’s joy though was short lived though. From the kick off Tiverdale put a smart passing move together which ended in a tame shot from Mathew Jukes which somehow squirmed under the homeside goal keeper. Both goals were keeping errors and it would have been interesting to have had Felice’s view on them as he made plenty of goofs like these in his career and would have known what they did wrong. Today however he was ground hopping at Rainworth Miners Welfare. No game for Barry Oxby however as he was working followed by chilling out at home listening to a bit of Billy Ray Cyrus. He likes a bit if Bill Ray does Barry.

 HT 1-1
 It was getting a tad chilly so I retreated to the clubhouse for the halftime break. The Imps were losing 1-0 at HT. Glad we didn’t go to Ebbsfleet then. The clubhouse was quite full , however the sound of complaining Birmingham accents was the prominent noise that one could hear; and it’s not a nice sound believe me. Second half and Dunkirk really got hold of the game by the scruff of the neck and made their extra man count. They re-took the lead on 57 minutes when a long range shot took a wicked deflection to totally wrong foot the Tiverdale keeper. For much of the second half I was amused by the constant complaining and moaning by a Tiverdale director who only seemed to be able to spot the mistakes of the officials and missed the mistakes/fouls of his own side. It was a bit of a poor show on his part I felt and if the biggest thing that you can moan about is the number of the home dugout staff that are standing then you maybe need to readdress your priorities. Dunkirk added a third deep into stoppage time to seal three very deserved points. All’s well that ends well. Even Lincoln scrambled a point with the last kick of the game. In the evening we watched the title chasing Nottingham Panthers grind out a tight 1-0 home win over the Coventry Blaze. All in all I have had worse day’s sports wise. Now if I could just shake of this sodding cold everything would be looking up.