365 Sporting Days

Having watched a couple of hours of cricket at the County Ground I headed back to my car and set off for White Hart Lane to watch London Skolars play – and this is a bit of a mouthful – The University of Gloucestershire All Golds!

Next to Essex Cricket Skolars are the closest to home for me – The New River Stadium is about 45 minutes from the centre of Chelmsford.  That means I’ll be having a few more mornings at the cricket, afternoons at the rugby league.

Fitting food in can be a problem at times at the weekend – but I’m trying not to make cake or chocolate my lunch on match day, so stopped off at Sainsbury’s on the A406 on my way.  (I did of course also buy chocolate!)

A space in the road was found – I am of a mind that I won’t pay to park if I can do so for free!

It’s always a pleasure to go to Skolars, the crowd is shall we say, a select bunch?  It means I know a lot of the people who make the effort week in week out.  It almost feels like a home from home.

It was great to bump into recently appointed London Broncos coach Andrew Henderson in the car park, warm and friendly seems to be a must for the men at the helm at the Hive.

He was joined by new signing Jamie Thackray – who made a schoolboy error on the day by wearing flip flops and freezing half the afternoon!  They were there to watch and support some of the dual signed players.

It was great to be watching 2 southern teams playing rugby league – the Skolars in the heart of a strong football land, and the All Golds from a country known for its rugby union.

Both teams had won one, lost one at what is a very early stage of the season.  Skolars in particular are finding their feet after a very difficult pre-season.

The game started with a schoolboy error on the pitch – I am going to try to get that into my blog in future!  Scholars let the kick off go straight out putting themselves under immediate pressure.

I can feel myself slipping into  match report mode here and I’m going over to In The Loose next to do that so I’ll tell a brief tale of the game.

Callum Mulkeen benefited from that early error, scoring in the corner for what looked an easy try.  Things didn’t get much better for the home team and All Golds went in at half time leading by 20 to Skolars nil.

I’d been joined by my friend Maria – we’re generally football buddies but haven’t seen each other for ages.  Amazing how with good friends it makes no difference if you don’t see each other for a while.

Scholars fans were dreading more of the same from both Skolars and All Golds in the 2nd half – but Jermaine Coleman had clearly said a few wise words at half time.

They scored twice in the first 10 minutes of the second half giving some hope to the home crowd and in general performed much better across the park.

However All Golds added to their tally with a further 3 try’s the final score was London Skolars 10 All Golds 36.

While I am a Skolars season ticket holder I was pleased to see the All Golds play so well, they played as a cohesive unit and should do well this season.

There were some bright moments in the 2nd half for Skolars as well, although for spells they played like a team who’d had no pre-season preparation.  To a degree that’s the case, certainly with their new coach.

Hopefully as the weeks progress Skolars will find the same sort of awareness of each other the All Golds displayed.

Maria lives locally and I’d queried where the White Hart Lane home of Spurs was??  We took a long route to our next destination via said ground. I used to stand on the terraces – far too many years ago to mention – yet had no real clue where it was!  Now I know!

We went for  drink in a pretty decent pub, then had a really good, really reasonably priced Italian in Tottenham before I dropped Maria home.  It’s always great to mix friends and sport together.

My journey home was a smooth one – the usual 3rd lane – I’m not moving – drivers.

Another great weekend of sport for me – next up an altogether different game – an indoor one!  Watch this space to see what it was!