Cack-Handed Away Guide XV: HYDE FC.

Cack-Handed Away Guide XV: HYDE FC.

c/o Hyde FC
Manchester City FC
Etihad Stadium
SportCity
Manchester
M11 3FF

Nickname

The Tigers

But we call them

Jekyll

Billy basics

Manager: Gary Lowe

Founded: 2010

2010/11: 19th, Conference North

Highest position: 2010/11: 19th, Conference North

Average attendance 2010/11: 351

Who are Jekyll?

Hyde FC was invented in 2010 when Manchester City FC announced an exciting and simply un-turn-down-able three-year sponsorship opportunity. This move invented Hyde FC. There is no other team on record representing the villagers of Hyde and their esoteric but charming ways. But if there was, they would have been liquidated by now, and they certainly would not have been called Hyde United FC. No-one calls their team United, and no-one names their stadium after the Arabic word for "United."

In return for the deal, Hyde FC have received £250,000 straight from Manchester City. The ground has been revamped and is now fit for reserve, under-21 and academic matches for Manchester City. Oh, and for Hyde FC themselves. Hyde FC enjoy a special relationship with Manchester City. Hyde FC will continue to enjoy crumbs from the Manchester City table and the City in the Community scheme. The people of Hyde are delighted.

Under the watchful eye of Manchester City, Roberto Mancini, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Khaldoon Al Mubarak and the rest of the Abu Dhabi United Group, Hyde FC first kicked off in time for the 2010/11 season. Under the watchful eye of Manchester City, Roberto Mancini, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Khaldoon Al Mubarak and the rest of the Abu Dhabi United Group, Hyde FC finished their first season in a very credible 19th place. Under the watchful eye of Manchester City, Roberto Mancini, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Khaldoon Al Mubarak and the rest of the Abu Dhabi United Group, Hyde FC plan to galvanise this success in the forthcoming seasons.

The ground

Sources 1 2 3

 Ewen Fields (now Etihad Fields) was built for £1,100 in 1885. Manchester City FC will always be at the forefront of good footballing deals. However, since Hyde didn't exist until 2010 their record attendance is currently 606. That's a lot of bucket collectors. Etihad Fields is made up of five stands including the Scrattin' Shed and the Tinker's Passage End. Aside from Manchester City's Etihad Stadium, on match days Hyde's stadium is the 2nd most empty venue in Greater Manchester.

The town

Two names for you: Myra Hindley and Dr Harold Shipman.

Trains take 15 minutes from Manchester Piccadilly.

Recommend us some Man City-approved watering holes plz.

Will we need to segregate?

Nay.

OFFICIAL SITE

CATCH A TIGER BY THE TOE
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Cack-Handed Away Guide X: GLOUCESTER CITY AFC.

Cack-Handed Away Guide X: GLOUCESTER CITY AFC.

Gloucester City AFC

Arriva House

Meadow Park

Sudmeadow Road

Hempsted

Gloucester

GL2 5HS

Nickname

The Tigers

But we call them

Glaaaaaarstar

Billy basics

Managers: David Mehew, Adie Harris

Founded: 1883

2010/11: 14th, Conf North

2009/10: 18th, Conf North

2008/09: 3rd, Southern Premier League

Highest position: 2010/11: 14th, Conf North

Average attendance 2010/11: 346

Who are Glaaaaaarstar?

 Despite being formed in 1883, it took six years for Gloucester to bother with going competitive. Like so many others, they got into the rhythm of joining all sorts of regional leagues until joining the Southern League in 1939. It then took the Gloucestrians a wait 'til after World War Two to see where things would take them. The stand-out factoid from their early years was in 1937/38, when striker Reg Weaver netted 67 goals in all competitions, making Ross Hannah look like a Jägerbomb-fuelled Nigel Jemson.

Post-war, Glaaaaaarstar quickly surfaced in the proper, big-boy rounds of the FA Cup, beating Tottenham Hotspur 2–1 in 1952 in front of 10,000 or so. Promotion to the Southern Premier came in 1969 and again in 1982, and again in 1989. The following season, they held Cardiff City to a Second Round replay in the FA Cup and began to aim for the Conference National. It came within a whisker in 1991 when SPL promotion rivals Farnborough scored a winner in their game against Atherstone to pip Glaaaaaarstar and their travelling hordes at Bromsgrove, the fans already invading the pitch in some vain joy. Further cup frolics came in 1997 as Dagenham & Redbridge beat them in the FA Trophy's semi-finals, a distraction to losing out on promotion to the Conference again to rivals Cheltenham Town.

It will be here that I crack on with what has afflicted Glaaaaaarster more than anything: its blasted location. In July 2007 the River Severn burst its banks once again, flooding their Meadow Park ground once and for all. The Tigers had previously been waterlogged numerous times, Meadow Park being their ninth ground. FC United can't even get one built. The Severn's floods almost wiped the club off the map on numerous occasions due to countless brief exiles and unpaid players walking out. Convinced they'll never be done over again, the current rainforest at Meadow Park plans to be rebuilt into some flood-proof barracks, and the worrying term "community stadium" has been coyly thrown in there—early promises of a soulless San Generico-type ground, perhaps?

Glaaaaaarstar won the SPL play-offs to find themselves at their highest level yet in latitude as well as prestige. The furore of such a southern outfit playing in the North half of step 2 has been much-bitched about, and subsequently forgotten about now the obscenely southern Bishop's Stropford have joined us. The pain of travelling for the rest of us has been lessened slightly by Gloucester's latest exile bringing them slightly up north to Cheltenham Town's place. Personally, Following the Shaymen prefers West Country cider to Home Counties Pimm's, so an away day is an away day, unless it's an away night in the mid-winter with an assignment to hand in the next morning.

The ground

Sources 1 2 3

Sources 1 2 3

So, it's a ground a few of us can remember from the pre-Sat Nav age. Cheltenham's unit will look much more abandoned with 500 or so Gloucestrians and Haligonians dotted about the place, wondering what their younger selves would've thought of this, but there could surely be a way of rehearsing the Town choir after this season's longest trip.

Meadow Park is pictured in part for posterity. The 21-year stay there gave Glaaaaaarstar a fairly brief identity of their own. It will however be a good few years before the Tigers next have something to roar about (a parish periodical-standard pun right there).

The town

Cheltenham was the home of the Tories' choice composer Edward Elgar, a football man himself who once wrote a piece inspired by watching Wolves play: proving somewhat that supporting yer local team has never been very well embraced. All evidence points towards Cheltenham being as southern as fook: horse racing, natural springs, Michelin-star eateries, cultural festivals, a French-named district containing millionaires' townhouses, and being voted as a decent place to live. If we can't afford to assimilate for the day then we may have to be our own tourist attractions.

For the ambitious, cross-country trains meet Cheltenham from Leeds and occasionally Manchester Piccadilly.

Will we need to segregate?

*cough*

OFFICIAL SITE

TIGER ROAR - FANSITE

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Durham City 0 – 2 Halifax Town; 16/10/10.

Durham City 0 – 2 Halifax Town; 16/10/10.

Here's one for you to miss. With the mercury tucked away deep into your thermometer, your team have an away day in the First Qualifying Round of the FA Cup 100 miles away. It's something I won't pass, in part due to my tie to the Shaymen and part because I wanted to meet a friend at the university. Otherwise I'd really have to dig deep for a good reason. It is a Town match, but one you know to be a dull, unglamorous formality in a land far away. I'd have to at least ponder a 200-mile round trip for my favourite bands so it shouldn't make sense that I would go for anything less. My trump card? Well, the Shaymen are more than a favourite band, aren't they.

This was a big one for Durham. Not a crowd-puller, but one with nothing to lose. A team they now know to be far tougher than them, and a slight money-earner for the club due to Halifax Town's radical introduction of away fans to the Evo-Stik league. Their side is still barely a senior one, and the best of the local sixth formers' ability is near warm-up pace to the Shaymen.

My last trip here was early on last year, when this was one of the season's biggest games. Durham were catching up on games and winning most of them. We always had more games played and because of that tasted the first place for a couple of months. A win there would've asserted our place. An average following of 450 came up and got so little atmosphere going that an older fan started blasting "Ole, ole, ole, ole/We are the Town, we are the Town" through a tinny megaphone speaker. We had several chants this time round, which shows how far our morale has come. Walking around New Ferens Park I had memories of trying to balance a plate of chips and programme whilst clapping at the good moves underneath the stand, Danny Meadowcroft doing a season-ending slide into the hoardings at the far side, and that disallowed header that stopped it from going to 2–1 for us. Oh, and one of the Durham strikers straight after the match with a baby in his arms, yelling at our fans that they'll be the champions, and we'll be consigned to the play-offs. An insult at the time, but in finishing eighth we would've been glad of playoffs towards the end of a sadly farcical season.

I dredge up these memories because there was nothing in this match for the memory. An emphatic win with little effort and thankfully no injuries on the tough astroturf, so job done. It's good to have memories of a place that is otherwise the most arid footballing land: a gloomy galvanised stand looking over the dark green plastic with hard standing everywhere else in between a nursery, a massive blue warehouse-like sports complex, and most uninhabitably, a Premier Inn. Said "inn" is attached to the grimmest restaurant ever, a franchised thing with a personality that would bore those who go to stadium:mk full of logs that will never be burnt on a fire. Over the space of 15 minutes, they failed to cut my friend a Victoria sponge before we had to march off to the game. Pathetic beyond words. The waitresses milled around the bar like remedial amoebas, moving pint glasses one metre east, then one metre west again. If those places are to your taste, please smash your head through your monitor immediately and make it your resting place.

Nicky Gray finally got that goal for his confidence, as he weaved from the line of the corner flag to the centre edge of the box to find a good place to leave the ball in the back left, out of the reach of the University Challenge-haired goalkeeper. That came in five minutes, and the second came later on in the second-half, with a hesitant tap-in by a pump-wearing James Dean.

Tomorrow we'll see if we're drawn anywhere interesting in the next round (Prescot Cables?).

 

Durham City 0 – 2 Halifax Town; att. 282
Ground: 3/10
Pitch: 3/10
Programme: N/A
Talent: 8/10 (in the city)
Non-partisan entertainment: 2/10 

Form:
Durham City 0 – 2 Halifax Town
Halifax Town 4 – 0 Harrogate Town
Burscough 0 – 2 Halifax Town
Ashton United 0 – 3 Halifax Town
Halifax Town 4 – 0 Hucknall Town

FC Halifax Town 4 – 0 Lancaster City; Sat 10th April 2010.

FC Halifax Town 4 – 0 Lancaster City; Sat 10th April 2010.

I had to take Night Nurse twice to get to sleep for two nights prior, and here it is—the very pinnacle of FC Halifax Town's existence thus far. Not that it were destined to be such (alternatively, it may have almost confirmed us going up via the playoffs), but most of even the loftiest predictions for Saturday's match managed to gaze above the end result.

What did we know? It was a battle between 2nd (us) and 1st (them), with two points separating it. It doesn't confirm a season, but it goes fairly far in telling us how the Unibond North runaways square up to one another.

So, it was 4–0, we're top now by a fragile point, and we managed to take in 3152 through the turnstiles. It was the highest crowd outside the league (luckily Luton, Oxford, Cambridge and Wimbledon weren't at home to pip it), and the 31st highest crowd in Saturday's pick of English football—all from a team in the eighth tier. That many for below sea level football, all spectators taking their places within two stands, means atmosphere. With me on accordion and another fan on drums that was what we had.

Not forgetting there were 22 people below us kicking a ball around too. The quality of play meant the woodwork fans would need good excuses to pass off watching us again. Many regulars took friends, exiles made the long trip, and some even wandered in out of interest. As a team, Lancaster were average and hadn't got us sussed at all. We, on the other hand, were on fire. All of our moves were given vocal encouragement and some of them were close calls. An early close-range effort was blasted over before Gregory opened it up within a few minutes. In the second half Fearon nearly spilled it into his own net. He took a scorching header towards the end very well, and another effort regretfully hit the bar. So another "We could've had seven or eight" again for many, though this time against a team that has won 13 on the trot; an opposition form you wouldn't want to take home to see your grandma.



On top of the bombarding of the Lancaster defense, three further goals pinned the Dolly Blues down. Payne's header near the end of the first half bounced 'twixt players but couldn't be stopped, then Deano and another from loan man Lee Gregory towards the end. Lancaster were everything I found them to be away at Woodley, which wasn't much at all. But this time Lancaster scuppered a chance of running away with it against their only rivals to the title; an awful move for their management. They played football, but they didn't play it very well. That seems to happen nine times out of ten when a team play football against us. The Lancaster striker Jordan Connerton, who has equalled our James Dean's tally, failed to break through the defense and add to his 38 or so in this season's campaign.

It was a performance that never petered out either end and I have no reason to rate it under 10/10, even were I a non-partisan. For passion, whichever team you backed, you weren't going to find a better venue this Saturday. I won't even mention the baseness of the Grand National . . . Many of the <100 Lancaster fans were still applauding their team several minutes after full-time, and the four goals each tested the crush barriers from my placing near the top of the South Stand. Sadly, it will always heat up a bit, especially in the biggest game we've had for a few years, and a nobber or two tried to pick a fight with the Lancaster fans, but there was nothing at all serious to report. I have to blame those in power for not imposing segregation when it was necessary and made complete sense.



Coming home I found out Shonen Knife are playing at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds in May. Bloody perfect day, and well done for all of those extras lending support. I'm hoping 650 are now in the mind to find the Tameside on AA Route Planner this Monday for Curzon away, which will be a tougher match, nyerm, 1300+ in attendance for Radcliffe home this Thursday, and what, 850+ 'obbling to Ossett on Saturday. The fixtures are clogged, but if this 4–0 of all 4–0s doesn't snuff the apathy of Calderdale citizens and attract a few hundred more, nothing will.

This has been my proudest moment as a Shaymen and I have a feeling people won't come out with ridicule as often when they find out where my allegiance is. Having said that, I'd like to have a slightly calmer match next time! Most of us know that on Wednesday night, over five dying minutes we scored three away to Garforth Town to come out 3–4 victors and I'm becoming a mental wreck.

As per match reports away to Rossy and Garforth during the week, I'm afraid I've been in Scotland. They'll never be, unless on the off-chance someone wants to write them up for me.

Just perfect! Who needs female contact? See you at the Shay.



FC Halifax Town 4 – 0 Lancaster; att. 3512.
Non-partisan rating: 10/10
Top men: all