The Lamb Ground – Home of Tamworth F.C.
Today I applauded Boston United off of a football pitch for the last time in what could be quite a while, due to proudly starting a scouting adventure with the biggest non-league club in Nottinghamshire (since Mansfield got promoted) – Carlton Town. Before I continue, I don’t think I need to make this clear at all, but I will anyway: Following ‘The Pilgrims’ this season has been an absolute joy whether we’ve won, lost or drawn. The club has some special fans that make away days absolutely top drawer, and I hope the numbers they take home and away return to a figure that the club and team truly deserve. Also, a special mention to Boston’s chief scout Richard Boryszczuk who set aside parts of his evenings to help me fine-tune my reports and give me tips. Your help was invaluable!
In terms of the actual day, Tamworth is very close to me in Stafford, so the trip was one of the easier I’ll personally ever have to make. As you can probably imagine, the train was absolutely jammed with the masses of countrywide Boston and Tamworth fans travelling to the game. It took me 20 minutes to get to Tamworth station, where I would find myself waiting a further 15 minutes or so for Josh and Tom to arrive. We met, we shook hands and we began our shambles of a journey towards the ground. Josh’s eloquent and indeed elegant hand-drawn map would lead us on our merry way. To be fair, it didn’t lead us a million miles away from our intended destination and we are now beneficiaries of knowing where the Royal Mail sorting offices in Tamworth are based. Google Maps didn’t do much to help our travels either, stating that we were half-an-hour away from the ground, when actually we were only about 5 minutes away. We still tried to access the ground via some poor sod’s front drive though.
Our away end for the day.
We arrived at the ground and headed for the turnstiles, looking fine and dandy thanks to some very strong winds. Fellow Pilgrims had gathered around this area for a short while before deciding to move out of the way and into the ground, so not to anger any coach drivers (it appeared the hoards of Boston fans elected to travel by coach rather than train). Before we’d entered, Josh and I had planned to attempt getting in for student prices, only to be foiled by a steward who claimed: “We don’t sell student discounted tickets”. Yeah, alright mate…
So we got into the ground with student tickets, despite me not being a student and the club not selling student tickets. Immediately, it was evident that we had been supplied with a bus shelter for an away end, but this was an improvement on Brackley and Southport, so we shan’t dwell on that too much. The important thing was that we had a roof and several sections within the away end for us to house ourselves for the upcoming ninety minutes. There was a little time before the game to check out the food stall in the near corner of the ground. The prices? Absolutely horrendous. £3.50 for a cheese burger? I’ve paid less at Forest! £2 for a bottle of Fanta and the cap removed? Give me a break. As for the 7-page programme, well, the less we say about that, the better. The old woman selling them may well have been a witch too, I’m purely speculating on that though. After we’d gotten over these gargantuan problems, we all decided to perch ourselves directly behind the goal – an incredibly wise idea, because we were so desperate to have our view restricted by the crossbar, we do love that.
To be honest, the restricted view didn’t matter too much, as the first half was a dour affair, littered with long balls from both sides. Tamworth appeared happy to defend deep and clear the ball as far as they could, it was shocking as a spectacle and Boston allowed themselves to get dragged into the game plan of the opposition. It was particularly clear to me that firing long through-balls to Ricky Miller in the channels was how United wanted to play but Tamworth’s defence were quite impressive, it has to be said. All four of the back-line were tall, strong and very quick, so leaving Miller up front almost on his own at times was ineffectual. Marc Newsham seemed to be playing in the hole behind him. The problem with this being that Boston didn’t execute their system in a way that took advantage of a man in that position, so Newsham regrettably, went missing for long periods. Liam Marrs missed perhaps the best opportunity of the game for Boston towards the end of the first half, slashing Miller’s low ball in from the left over the bar from about six yards. Marc Newsham also went very close moments later, challenging in the six-yard box and poking the ball towards goal, only for Cameron Belford to claw it away.
The second half was much the same, sadly. Boston are usually very much a second half team, so I had hoped for improvement. However, it wasn’t forthcoming and on 64 minutes, Tamworth took the lead through Andy Todd. He was invited onto the Pilgrims’ back line and duly delivered the first blow, although only just slotting underneath young Sam Vince. Despite this, the Boston faithful didn’t stop singing and were very quick to console Vince on the unfortunate nature of the goal from his perspective. Throwing Spencer Weir-Daley on in the 72nd minute did little to improve proceedings, in fact, 7 minutes later the hosts doubled their lead through Justin Richards’ cool finish from the edge of the box. Vince in the visitors’ goal was visibly frustrated at conceding the second and I must admit, I really felt for him. While we hadn’t done enough to win ourselves the game, in my opinion neither had Tamworth; the defence had let the young ‘keeper down on two separate occasions. Despite being two goals down, I still granted myself permission to have a little laugh at the fact the West Midlanders brought Kaiyne Woolery on. A truly dire player, I’d completed a report on Stafford Rangers about a month previous to this game and Woolery was one of the very worst on the pitch. Believe me, Stafford are a very, very poor side and Woolery fitted in perfectly for them.
It took until the second goal for the home fans to make any kind of noise at all. Even then, I don’t think any of us could make out a word they were singing. It has to be said too, that while we did make a right racket in the away end, there were only about 30 of us at most that made any real effort towards an atmosphere, so it’s hard to say whether or not they heard much of what we sang either. I can only hope that over the coming months, we swell our vocal support to an even greater volume. I firmly believe that right now, there isn’t a better bunch of away fans in the Skrill North in terms of both numbers and vocal support, and if that continues to grow we’ll be a force.
If I don’t get to another game this season, best of luck and get behind the team no matter what.
Special mention to Josh, who didn’t have to pay for my entry today, but offered to help me out due to my lack of funds and the fact today was my last game for a while. Much appreciated!
Under The Floodlights 