A FIRST VISIT TO PINXTON FC in 2011- but I'm better now...

Blooming Dandelions In Pinxton

A weathered board, signifying Pinxton’s Welfare Club took my eye and I realised that I should have turned into a partly hidden driveway. There was a large house on the left, presumably the clubhouse itself and as I parked my car, the soccer pitch appeared to be above me, for I could see one corner-flag. A dog-walker informed me that this was indeed Pinxton FC’s ground and that the entrance gate was along an inclined grassy path directly ahead of me, between houses on the right and the pitch on the left.

It was a place of three tiers, bringing tears to my eyes. The pitch sat upon the top tier, the changing-rooms sat on the tier below and then there was a bowling-green, oddly, on the third and lowest tier. I felt like a hooligan at a stamp-collectors’ convention: totally out of place. I bought a cup of tea, steaming from a yellow mug, which looked like it had recently been excavated but the accompanying Caramel bar seemed tasty enough. I spoke to an elderly chap, who was wearing a white sweatshirt over a white polo-shirt, sporting a slightly mangled right ear. This was non-league football, after all. It turned out that he professed no knowledge of football at all. He was there to play his first bowls match of the summer season. And of course, after weeks of near drought conditions, it had rained on bowls day…

Footballers congregated there too and ‘lad-talk’ abounded; in-jokes, hair-jibes and profane language, especially the ‘f’ word, echoed around the refreshment hatch, as newly arrived bowlers talked about the state of greens. One Pinxton coach was rather scathing about his players, after two of his arriving players actually spoke pleasantly to the match officials, mumbling that they were the only two with ‘half a brain’. I checked the ‘gate’ again but there was nobody there, so I returned to the bowling-green area and another elderly chap directed me to the toilets. I heard a spectator order a cup of tea inside another relic of a cup but he also asked about the match programmes, which he had spotted at the back of the refreshments room. I was alerted and I realised that the chap with the pile of programmes was the fellow who had directed me to the toilets and was actually one of the gatemen. I was assured that he was on the way to open up. The woman who gave me this information was probably the club’s secretary, I mused and she promised to let me see the team-sheets later. So I compensated by purchasing a raffle-ticket. It’s what I do… And there were park-benches dotted about the playing-area. Rural, that.

Football life was stirring at last, as the bowlers splashed white against bowling green. The gateman took an age to cross the pitch to unlock the entrance gates, although I could have loitered on the grassy path and watched the game free of charge. I was completely bemused by the long stalks of dandelions covering the pitch… Nobody had mown the grass… Second-placed Blidworth would be gunning for promotion against third-placed Pinxton on a country meadow for a playing surface. Hmm… The bowling green had been shorn, so why not the soccer pitch? Not great.

I chatted to a distant relative of ex-Sheffield Wednesday and Middlesborough striker John Hickton and took photos of, er, dandelions. Blidworth’s officials were rather fraught, due to the absence of their top goalscorer, who should have been there but nobody had been in communication with him. The Pinxton secretary dictated the players’ names to me, the game began and I stood at the back of the grandstand, which wasn’t much higher than the dugouts and covered two rows of seats, numbered confusingly. I noticed that seat 39 was next to seat 51. Maybe instead of a raffle, spectators should have been charged an extra pound and given a ticket with a seat number scrawled upon it, so that the first to find his or her seat would win a prize. Confusing? It was…

Blidworth were better than Pinxton during the first-half but the hosts managed half-time parity, at 2-2. Then Blidworth’s right-winger was kicked at as he sat on the ground with the ball trapped between his feet but he sprang up like a demented meerkat and kicked at an opponent, before launching into a fist-fight, as if he was scrapping on a trampoline. His bobbing head reappeared regularly in the typical, half-brained non-league melee and I was reminded of cartoon fights, in which figures rise, punching, every few seconds. He then disappeared, dismissed, over the top tier, to the middle tier below, followed by the antagonist from Pinxton. The uncle of the sent-off Pinxton player had been vociferous throughout the half but he now became frantic and demented after the maul and raced along the touchline behind the rail to remonstrate with the referee, for he reckoned that the Blidworth centre-forward had run ‘Fifty yards to throw a punch, ref…’ The official hadn’t seen that in the playground punch-up but the fan seethed anyway and marched across the pitch in a sulk after the whistle was blown for the break.

The Pinxton number 10, the tanned, moustachioed, stubble-chinned Brady, was a wily veteran, constantly nattering at players, officials and coaches, gaining advantage. He was no mug, however, although he looked like he should have been holding a beer on a Spanish beach, rather than trying to play football in the long grass. The second period was more even, although Blidworth maybe created the better chances to score. At one point, close to the end, two players crashed into the linesman, right in front of me and catapulted him from the touchline; he had looked young and dapper in his suit before the match but now he was bent double over the surrounding wall with an audible loss of wind gasping from his pursed lips. The referee was sympathetic though, asking if the flag was OK. He added, ‘Not bothered about you, as long as the flag is all right…’ A few supporters sniggered, embarrassed.

Haslam, Blidworth’s rakish forward, nabbed the significant winning goal for his team in the final minute of the game and celebrated by removing his shirt as he raced to the centre of the dandelion patch, revealing a gaunt, skeletal ribcage. Lovely. I went home for tea. It’s what I do…