By Mark Chadderton

Mud Wrestling Madness

Your trusty editor is always on the look out for roving eagle-eyed reporters to write up match reports with a degree of sarcasm, some disgruntled remarks, and a few bits of snide commentary. However, approximately truthful blow-by-blow accounts from his all too infrequent trips to the NWG are bound to creep in here and there! Here is one of them! This was to be my third match of the season. I had seen the first two home games and was by now desperate to 'catch' some action after my last 3 trips had all resulted in those matches being postponed due to the dreadful Harbury Lane weather! I of course had come bearing gifts - this time in the form of the initial print-run of issue two of this fanzine. This led to my only slight disappointment of another great day which was the "...Mark Chadderton, WW etc is making his first visit to the New Windmill for this match..." announcement that was being broadcast to my fellow worshippers on this holy Saturday from the supporters hut. A supporter has his pride in his own appearance record you know! Me: 3 full appearances, 3 'substitute' appearances. There! The records are straight!

On my trio of weather-ruined trips, I had met with various officials and had toured the scaffolding and building work, shared a beer in the hospitality hut and generally got to know some of the more dedicated heroes behind the scenes. (All this of course whilst watching the grass of the hallowed turf grow a little more!) This time around, it was nice to be introduced to some more friendly faces, faces that I could now put to the names I had become acquainted with. After the previous weeks' 9-2 annihilation of Barnt Green, expectations for this encounter were perhaps a little too high! Would Chelmsley lie down and die for the second slaughtering within 8 NWG days? Maybe the air of saturation scoring about to unfold before our adoring eyes was contributing toward the rather subdued atmosphere - but then maybe it was the pitch that was to blame (again!)? What did we see then? Hang on a minute, instead of dreaming it - those of us thinking we'd actually get ten this week were soon to be sorely disappointed. Mud wrestling was intertwined with soccer skills and this somewhat confused our senses? The pitch did play its part in that it made for flowing football extremely difficult. Chelmsley, despite their lowly league position actually put up some very good resistance and even threatened at one stage to cause a considerable upset. In our excuse column though, I suppose the fact that the management duo chose this match to rest a few of the crowd favourites did contribute to the evenly contested scrap upon the brown and green speckled arena.

The New Windmill may have been a farmer's field in its immediate past; it is just a shame that it was beginning to resemble its previous existence more and more as this game continued! Some of the misplaced passes and wayward kicking (hello Mr Chelmsley keeper!) along with the equally mistimed tackling that ensued could be held up as an excuse for some of the players ploughing into each other on numerous occasions. A type of mud wrestling was then truly on show and there was little to be reaped from some of these 'encounters' between the two sides. Some of the agricultural language, along with the ill-tempered gestures and pettiness on view made many a thought turn to the game of football! Where was it? This wasn't WW, it was more like WWF!

I suppose it was quite fitting really that the Brakes managed to score one of their most inelegant goals of the season. Any season! It was certainly one of the worst goals I've ever seen! They all count though, and any Brakes goal is a thing of beauty forever etched on our memory, like good wine, bound to improve with age within our gleeful gold 'n' black memories! Steve Thompson, with his Mr Tickle-arms launched one of his huge throws into the midst of the Chelmsley box and Jon Burgess claimed the opening goal of the match. Before the ball allegedly went in, there was an almighty scramble of miskicking, ricochets and generally hilarious inept defending before the goal was given. It was at least a billionth of a millimetre over the line? From what angle? From the golden black angle - of course: 1-0.

Half Time. Seconds out - Round Two. Oh well - at least we got a trickle of goals! But what was this, the visitors hadn't read the script, they'd have been thrown out of the real wrestling world for this, but then this was a football match, wasn't it? Academy Keeper Richard Morris, after having a solid looking game thus far, made his one slip up as Chelmsley drew level with a follow up shot from a save by the off-balanced Morris. No this wasn't going to be Barnt Green repeated! Brakes gradually managed to get their passing game together and started to increase the pressure. Some infuriatingly over-elaborate moves from some of our boys was a frustrating sight. We seemed to be wanting to walk the ball into the net! Get the crosses in sharp, shoot on sight and other more direct coaching advice seemed to be lost on us for this match as we got suckered into some rough 'n' tumble by a posturing over-physical Chelmsley team intent on actually fighting for their point. But Brakes can scrap with the best of 'em, and we eventually knuckled down and got on with the game, just in time to finish them off with some decent football.

As the game was worryingly approaching its last quarter, some neat play inevitably ended with a foul on Ian Billington. Inside the box - penalty! Darren Timms duly did his stuff from twelve yards, not before some more silly argy-bargy was enacted on the edge of the box from both sets of players. Once again the Chelmsley No. 5 was involved in its instigation, much to the home players and supporters' annoyance.

Brakes looked a different proposition once the pace of Blake and the skills of Shearsby were brought on for a last-15 run out. The North Bank proved to be an increasingly difficult place to view the action from as the glorious sun set and caused havoc with our viewing. A need for some LFC baseball caps is a must I feel, otherwise the North Bankers are going to end up with arm-ache from continually lifting said arms to enable the hand to shade the eyes. Continual keeper-baiting resulted in this one biting back eventually and so, much to the delight of the North Bank amassed behind him for the second half Brian Agar finished in some style to kill the game at 3-1. A fellow fan beside me had been delighting me all afternoon with his opinion as to the similarity of Baz Shearsby to that of Glenn Hoddle in his heyday. It thus gave me equal pleasure to note the Glenn Hoddle-like push that led to a certain one of our players being able to skew a fierce shot (?) across the box for Agar to crash the ball into the roof of the net. Absolutely brilliant! Another 3 points in the bag, my 3rd game seen and they've all finished 3-1! Windmill Wonderland indeed!

Leamington Richard Morris; Jon Burgess (Kevin Ariss 55m); Guy Rippon; Will Payne; Liam McGovern; Adam Ball; Stuart Hepburn; Darren Timms (Barry Shearsby 75m); Ian Billington; Brian Agar (captain - sub Josh Blake 81m); Steve Thompson