Yay for Yate

Hopperational details
Date & Venue	Saturday 9 August 2014 at Lodge Road
Result	Yate Town 1 Cinderford Town 0
Competition	Southern League Division One S & W (Step 4)
Hopping	Ground #539.  I am here because the sum of the last two digits in last night’s Championship game between Blackburn and Cardiff is equal to seven.  Do keep up (or see previous post).
Pre-match preparation
Not much because this is the first league game of the season for both clubs.  Yate finished a few places higher in mid-table last year.  Meanwhile, Yate’s pre-match prep gave me the first sighting of baby goalposts in non-league.
This match in one sentence
Cinderford will feel that they should have got at least a point from the game.
So what?
Nothing to say as yet, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of first-day league tables.
The drama unfolds
Yate’s ground is neat, tidy and cared-for with an excellent clubhouse.  My scene-setter clip is of early Cinderford pressure as Yate looked hesitant in defence.  Yate are in white shirts. Yate’s Liam Knight was the first name of several to end up in the refs book and he’d have been in it a few minutes earlier had I been the ref.  The home side continued to dither at the back and on one occasion, keeper Martin Horsell only just got to a headed backpass in time.  It was about half-an-hour before the away keeper Alex Harris showed some generosity of his own, losing the ball while out of position.  He scrambled back to make a brave block but it looked from the other end like Lewis Haldane should have scored.  Suddenly the game was more even and Harris had to make another block.  Yate’s Andy Lewis made several rampaging runs from centre-back, a rare sight at this level in my experience.  0-0 at half-time Yate took the lead early in the second half and their players were queueing up to score from any rebound as the Cinderford defensive line was breached.  Mitch Tippins was the scorer from defence.  1-0 after 55 mins This of course forced Cinderford to commit further forward and you could sense that an equaliser was on the cards.  I took this pic of one attack, with 15 minutes left, and fortunately the ball hit the bar rather than took my head off.  No way can I move fast enough these days to have got out of the way. The pressure was building and Yate were visibly tiring.  Horsell, the man in blue was busy (he was later voted MoM by supporters) and I took a couple of short clips to give readers the sense of what was going on. Yate held on for a hard-earned win a few minutes before the heavens opened.  Final score 1-0
Ground Pix
Match Pix
Early pressure on Yate
Something You Don’t Get in the Premier League
The first Scooby tree of the season …
Goalkeeper Top Colour Stats
Yate’s blue (pale, but blue nevertheless) overcomes Cinderford’s yellow.  This season, the points table will appear once a month or so.
Soapbox Section – this week: A Levels
Best wishes to all sixth-formers everywhere who will be receiving AS or A2 exam results in this coming Thursday.  Here are a few bullet points drawn from my many years of experience in these things, that might be of use to you (or your parents!).            Ignore any media coverage which suggests your 2014 A levels are easier than mine, vintage 1975.  They are different, chalk and cheese, for sure, but I will not allow anyone to say that they are easier overall and I will shout at the radio and/or TV for you as necessary while you (hopefully) celebrate.            If the results don’t go as well as you wish, wait until the general mass of jumpers and screamers has dissipated and then go back to school and speak to the staff.  There is almost always someone with the experience to be a critical friend around the place on results day.  It’s what we do.  Most years, someone’s life takes an unexpected but ultimately positive twist on results day.            Don’t panic into accepting an alternative offer of a university course that really is not a good match for your skills or interests.            Don’t get sucked into the resits culture unless there is a really good objective reason why you should expect it to be better next time around.  (Getting rid of endless resits is the only bit of Govage that I agreed with.)  Move on, change course.            Make sure you understand how (for the current system at least) your AS level results will carry through to have an impact on your A2 grades next year.  It is rare for people to get better grades at A2 than they did at AS.
What Next?
Watch @GrahamYapp on Twitter for details!  Next weekend is FA Cup weekend and there are games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.