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| Hull City's Polish wingman Kamil Grosicki about to fire in an outswinging corner at yesterday's match with Mansfield Town. |
Some of you out there in The Mysterious Land of Blog, may recall that I am a lifelong Hull City supporter. It's like being a drug addict. No matter what happens, I keep coming back to them. They are my team - The Tigers. When I first started supporting them the world was in black and white.
Yesterday, City were playing at Field Mill, Mansfield - forty five minutes away from our luxury abode. It was a pre-season friendly match. Field Mill is allegedly the oldest professional football ground in the world. but the oldest ground of all is at Sandygate in Sheffield, home of Hallam F.C. since 1860.
Anyway, Clint took me to Mansfield. I arrived deliberately early in order to undertake a walk in the southern suburbs of the town. The rain that I thought had passed changed its mind and came back to soak me. I passed some palatial homes that would not look out of place in Beverly Hills. That's not how most British people would picture Mansfield. It's often portrayed as a deprived Brexit backwater.
I reached Field Mill twenty minutes before kick-off. Feeling hungry, I bought a steak pie with mushy peas and squirted some mint sauce over that delicious culinary combo. I sat on a bench at the rear of the visitors' stand to munch my lunch before finding my seat inside the stadium.
The players came out and the meaningless match was soon underway. It was a kind of workout for both teams - getting themselves up to match sharpness ahead of the new season. Both teams played with commitment and the end score was 2-2 though the referee failed to award The Tigers a clear penalty when Jarrod Bowen was hacked down in the penalty area just before halftime. That ref definitely needs to visit Specsavers (a chain of high street opticians in Great Britain).
Up The Tigers!
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| Hull city defender Reece Burke receives treatment for a knee injury |
I doubt it was a "meaningless" match...not if it was played to prepare the players for the season ahead.
ReplyDeleteI wonder who Clint chatted up while you were at the game....
It was meaningless in the sense that there were no points at stake. Clint was talking to a battered Toyota called Nancy. He usually goes for black cars but Nancy was white.
DeleteSandygate is also the name of a part of Wath-upon-Dearne near Barnsley, where Steve was born. I didn't know it was also the name of part of Sheffield.
ReplyDeleteSee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandygate_(stadium)
DeleteUsed to like going to see Hull City in the Boothferry Park days when they had their own railway platform and you could go on the train.
ReplyDeleteI remember those times well Sir Tasker.
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