(Ground
number 285A and 285B!)
Date of
First Visit: 14th April 2012
Middlewood
Training Ground, Sheffield
(Pitch
‘A’)
Sheffield
Wednesday U18s 1
Newcastle
United U18s 3 (Dan Taylor 2, Ryan McGorrigan)
(Pitch
‘B’)
Sheffield
Wednesday U16s 4
Newcastle
United U16s 4 (scorers unknown!?)
FA
Academy League (North)
Combined
attendance: 99 (estimated!) (9 Toon fans---a tenth of the 'crowd'!---nearly!)
“SHAKEY
RATTLE AND ROLL!”
‘Blondie
Alan’ waz wor driver for this one and the ‘intrepid trio’ set off @ 8:30 bells
for the high noon kick off @ Sheff Weds trainin’ ground near Hillsborough.
(Blondie—Liam and meesel!)
We
arrived @ 10:45 bells’ after followin' the team bus---(which had to make a 'U' turn after missin' the turn off to the groond!) and started lookin’ for a boozer that waz open az there
waz still an hour and a qwaata til kick off time!
Two
lasses were standin’ ootside a bar a couple of hundred yards away and ‘Blondie’
asked them wot time it opened. “It doesn’t
open til twelve”, they replied in thick Yorkshire accents, "but there’s a bar called ‘Shakeys’ which is
an eight minute walk away!”, az they pointed us in the reet direction!
EIGHT
MINUTES did seem a bit of an odd ‘time to give'? az someone would normally say
TEN or FIFTEEN minutes for example, but ‘off we set’ anyway and after a TEN
MINUTE waalk (they got it SO wrang!) we spotted it not far from a tram stop in Hillsborough (the name of
the district az well az the football groond)
After a ‘shake’
or two of the old John Smiths in 'Shakeys' it waz off to the tram stop az we were too lazy
to waalk back to the trainin’ groond and it took aboot three minutes to get
there az it ‘rattled and rolled’ on the uneven road!
 |
| "WE'RE SO! SAD, WE SAVE ANYTHING!" |
"THE WALLY WITH THE BROLLY!"
The
trainin’ ground even had a mobile food van--- and so!---(az yi de!) a bacon sarnie
nosebag waz scoffed by aall!
To the
right of the pitches behind the goal at that end a huge indoor domed aall
weather trainin’ facility dominated the area and aa commented that it looked a
little bit like ‘The Millenium Dome’ in London!
 |
"THE MILLENIUM DOME END!"
(UNDER 18s GAME) |
To the
left of the pitches behind the far goals stood four huge ‘smoke free’ chimneys
and they dominated that end of the
groond
 |
"THE FOUR (SMOKE-FREE) CHIMNEYS END!"
(UNDER 16s GAME) |
Not for
the forst time we had TWO games to watch at the same time, az the Under 16s
were playin’ on the ajoinin’ pitch to the Under 18s game!
The main
game we were here for however was the Under 18s and we positioned worsels near
their touchline, makin’ sure that we could glimpse the action from the Under
16s pitch az well, which waz ‘next door’
'Alex of St George' waz anotha member of 'The NUFC mad-sad groundhoppers club' to torn up and he went in search of some team sheets, but came back empty handed, moanin' that the anly 'sheets' he could find were the ones a gadgie waz puttin' in a washin' machine in the changin' rooms area!
Both Toon teams wore their 'Orangebairns' change strips to avoid clashin' with Sheff Weds blue 'n' white stripes
The
Under 16s game kicked off slightly orlier and after just ower half an hours
play the home side were leadin’ 3-0 of which ‘yours truly’ witnessed two of
them!
The Toon
Under18s meanwhile took the lead in the 27th minute at ‘The Four ('Smoke Free')
Chimneys End’ (wot else!?) with a fine shot from number nine, Dan Taylor.
At this juncture it started p*ssin' doon but we had come prepared with a huge black 'n' white brolly.
Aa tried to put it up, but az a'm not used to operatin' theeze contraptions, we got soakin' wet before we could open the bloody thing up!
Eventually---with some help, we got it opened--but guess wot!?---the rain soon stopped and then aa couldn't get it doon again! (it could anly happen to us!)
The
Under 16s then pulled a goal back (which aa missed coz aa waz watchin’ an Under
18s attackin’ move!) and both sides went in at half time with that scoreline.
The
Under 18s then went 2-0 up with a shot in the 50th minute from Ryan McGorrigan
at ‘The Millenium Dome End’ (it had to be folks!)
Meanwhile!---The
Under 16s pulled another goal back (missed that one az well az aa waz at ‘the
tool shed’!) and then they levelled things on the hour mark. (a Toon U16s goal
aa actually saw az there waz a lull in play on wor pitch!)
A minute
later however Sheffields U16s regained the lead before we hit back yet again to
make it 4-4 soon after with a shot that rattled off the bar (just!—seen it hit
the net!)
On wor
pitch Sheffields U18s pulled one back when Toon goalie Mitchell fumbled the
baall from a powerful shot by their centre forward (me thinx?)
The
Under 16s game finished soon after and so we could now fully focus on The Under
18s and a tap in from Dan Taylor for his 2nd goal in the 82nd
minute made it 3-1 to us and that’s the way it ended!
To sum
up: oot of the twelve goals that were scored in both games ‘The Geordie Times
mad-sad groundhoppers’ saw SEVEN and missed FIVE! (Aalthough ‘Blondie Alan’ and
Liam ‘claimed’ to have seen a couple more than this!)
Fink (the mad-sad groundhopper!)
