Frickley Athletic

I went to a place today that has something in common with Totnes: no branch of Costa; no Marks and Spencer; plenty of independent traders. It's also a community which has a distinct political outlook that, rather than being particularly green or liberal, is more closely-associated with traditional working-class labourism borne out of a staple industry. Culturally, however, the two communities may be quite different. It's doubtful whether too many people called Kiri ever made it from South Elmsall to study fine art at Dartington. But, if they did, they would probably have been as bemused as the rest of us over exactly what Dartington meant by fine art. As with so many other things on the Elmhirst estate, fine art could be whatever you wanted it to be.

What's this got to do with football? Well, the town may be South Elmsall but the colliery was Frickley. And the football team is most definitely Frickley Athletic of the Northern Premier League. You may or may not have heard of them. And, even if you have, you may have forgotten that they were once runners-up in what is now the Blue Square Premier. That was in 1986, the year before the league became the Conference and they introduced automatic promotion. That year Frickley finished above the likes of Kidderminster, Cheltenham, Boston, Barnet, Scarborough, Maidstone, Dagenham and Wycombe.

Today Frickley - 19th in the league - were playing second-placed Hednesford at Westfield Lane which overlooks reclaimed Coal Board land on the outskirts of South Elmsall. The town lies in the Doncaster-Barnsley-Wakefield triangle next to the Leeds-London railway line and not too far from the A1. Somehow its smallness, and the adjoining colliery land, gives the football ground a certain edge-of-nowhere feel. I liked it for that and it made me stop and think just how a decent standard of football has been played in this little-known place for several generations. Furthermore there's a certain faded grandeur thanks to the sizeable main stand. And, in true coalfield tradition, there's an adjoining cricket field and bowls club just along the way. By grace of God it's association football. A few miles north it would be rugby league.

Today's game was played on a pitch that had recovered well from the frozen conditions of the last few days - we had horrendous ice and freezing fog across South and West Yorkshire yesterday - and heavy overnight rain. In truth it wasn't always a great game but Frickley matched their better-placed opponents from the West Midlands. Frickley went ahead; Hednesford equalised; even at the break. Then, just as my interest started to wane, Frickley scored again through a cracking individual effort. This awakened me and I found myself willing Frickley to hang on.

They did. It quite made my day.