Naming names

I remember a comedy sketch by Alastair McGowan where he impersonated the BBC's Huw Edwards reading a news bulletin, "Griff Rhys Jones has been arrested, at my instigation, for not being sufficiently Welsh". You can sometimes be reminded of this playing a side from North Wales, on the pitch many accents are from Liverpool and Cheshire. A friendly in our area may be more convenient for many visiting players than a home game. Having said that, in the last census 41% of the population of Flintshire identified themselves as English, so plenty of the locals probably come from here too.

I had thought Mold Alexandra's name was derived from Queen Alexandra, the wife of Edward VII, whose name was used for a number of clubs and public houses in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The Queen remained popular after her death in 1925: I am sure I remember my mother, who was not born until 1942, referring to "Queen Alex". However, the history page on the club's website is silent on the point, and Wikipedia (unsourced) tells us that the name came when someone at the inaugural meeting in 1929 picked up a copy of the Alexandra Hymn Book. I cannot see any reference to such a book online, the closest being Alexander's Gospel Hymn Book, an American publication from 1928, which was unlikely to have found its way into a Welsh church or chapel.

We were seeing more names for the first time, those of the players, as this was the first of the pre season games for which there was a team sheet on display, even if one visiting player was the traditional A. Trialist. I could therefore start learning names.

Jay Roberts

Alan Garner

Team sheets at these games are put together quite hastily, so names may not match those I have gathered from those following my photos on Twitter. A John Donnelly was listed, but I think his name might be Josh. Either way, he scored our only goal of the game, from a penalty.

J. Donnelly

We had some rain during the week, and the pitch was looking much healthier for it. We had a top up during the game that had me adopting the large format photographer pose, with the rain cover over my head, for a few minutes.

Phil Bannister in the rain

As for the game, there is definitely still some work to be done. We were missing a couple of players we would normally rely on in defence, so the visitors scored three in reply to our one.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.

Final score: Prescot Cables 1 (Donnelly pen) Mold Alexandra 3