Things to do in Goole in the fog

As I travelled to Prescot Cables' game at Goole AFC, the weather varied across the country. It had frozen in Liverpool, but the Met Office App suggested it had not in Yorkshire. I therefore set out into fog, then encountered fine views in the Hope Valley, until another wall of fog in the Edale area. It was clear when I got off the train at Sheffield, leaving in the seat behind me a Nantwich Town supporter with a nasty cough. I am not sure why he was staying on, as Nantwich were playing at Shaw Lane.

My main tourism in Sheffield was indoors, in the Graves Art Gallery, trying my varifocals for the first time in a gallery (it takes precision neck work to look at the pictures at the right angle). The fog reappeared after Doncaster, along with news from the M62 that the coach had broken down, and we were expected to kick off at 3.30. This turned out to be optimistic, and, had I known, I would have set up office in the Costa opposite the station.

I went to the ground, to find we were not now expected to start until 4pm. Speaking to Bram Johnstone's father, I liked the look of the soup he had procured from the tea bar, so I went for some, to find it had run out, but there was some excellent vegetable pasta. The replacement coach brought the team at 3.40, and they proceeded straight to warm up, followed a couple of minutes later by Phil Priestly carrying a mug of tea - the tea being no surprise, the goalkeeper needs to be warm before going out, but I am not sure how he managed to lay hands on the chinaware.

Phil Priestly

It looked unlikely to freeze, but we were concerned about the fog, which, fortunately, did not get thick enough to halt play.

James McCulloch

The Victoria Pleasure Ground has a running track, so on the stand side the match officials and the coaches in the technical areas are far enough away to block quite a large angle of view. After a few minutes, I went round the Curva Ferrovia (I am not sure it is called that, but they are welcome to the name) to face the stand.

The view from the railway end

This side had the advantage of less people in the way, apart from the ball boys and girls, who were small enough to see over, but had the disadvantage of the long jump pit taking me further away from the pitch. Lighting was good when play came near enough.

Valter Fernandes

I went back to the stand side for what I thought was the last couple of minutes, and was as far as I could be from our goal when the hosts scored, and the announcement told me we had played 36 minutes. We have had issues with falling apart when we went down, but seem to have put that behind us, with Lloyd Dean restoring parity three minutes before time.

Lloyd Dean

The second half started as the train I had planned to catch was departing. The lighting was effectively that of an evening game, and the fog meant there was not a lot of point capturing anything that was not happening in the quarter of the pitch in front of me.

Rob Doran put us in the lead after a few minutes.

Rob Doran

We had opportunities to extend the lead, but could not find the net. Unusually, we finished having made no substitutions. Whilst there is a temptation to bring on a fresh legs later in the game, it carries a risk whilst the players get used to the change, so I can see the sense, if the team are defending a one goal lead and there is no obvious player tiring or injured, of keeping the balance as it is.

On the way home, the online travel tools came into their own, with my train from Goole being late, I could see my connection at Doncaster was also late, saving an hour on the journey. National Rail could, however, make their station plans (for the location of the platforms) easier to find on mobiles, and they have not yet developed a tool to see the density of dawdling Yorkshirepersons in the subway.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here.

Final score: Goole AFC 1 Prescot Cables 2 (Dean, Doran)