Trafford 3 GNE 1

Trafford has existed as a Metropolitan Borough since the Local Government Act of 1972. Keen readers of these short narratives will recall that this particular piece of local government nonsense has been quoted before (cf. GNE Away – Droylsden from last season) and not with any great joy.

Trafford today, extending as far south as leafy Hale Barns in Cheshire bears little resemblance to the area which was once dominated by the Bridgewater Canal, which brought coal from Worsley to nourish the early Industrial Revolution, and the Manchester Ship Canal which made Manchester into a significant inland port. Your ageing scribe could go on a bit here about canals and recall tales of skating (without skates of course) on frozen canals – before the advent of global warming (man made of course) – and using the lock at Stalybridge as a long jump practice area (with a 30 foot drop if you didn’t quite make it) in the era when many small boys wanted to emulate the feats of Lyn Davies who won an Olympic gold in the long jump in Tokyo in 1964. However, the usual distractions of fags, booze and girls came along and all pretensions to a sporting life disappeared forever.

Today, Trafford means different things to different people. If we must, we perhaps have to consider the Trafford Centre which seems to act as some sort of shrine to mammon. I have been there – but only once - so feel qualified to comment. With ever longer opening hours, every legal means possible seems to be in use to part the working man from his money. Having said that, the old fashioned non-PC group within our community might wish to re-phrase that last bit a make reference to the role of the female of the species (in cahoots with the Trafford Centre) in parting the working man from his money. Your ageing scribe is, potentially, skating on thin ice here – back to the canals!! – given recent revelations relating to Sky TV football presenters. However, fearing man nor beast, your ageing scribe invokes probably the most famous cop-out line ever devised “you may say that, I couldn’t possibly comment”. Recommended reading “House of Cards” by Michael Dobbs – absolutely brilliant and a superb TV adaptation some years ago starring Ian Richardson. In these days of constant repeats on TV, why was this one never repeated?

For some people, Trafford will evoke memories of Trafford Park and, in particular, Trafford Park Gates. At its peak (just after the Second World War) Trafford Park employed something like 75,000 people in factories owned by Kelloggs, Westinghouse, Brooke Bond and so many more. My lasting memory was of streams of people coming out of Trafford Park Gates after a days work and heading straight for the pubs – of which there were many. One I do recall served only Mild or Whisky and requests for “a pint of lager” were met with looks which suggested that you might as well have come from another planet and you were certainly not welcome in there. Yet again, sadly, creeping senility marches ever forward and the name of this particular establishment has slipped my memory – aah well, never mind.

On the sporting front, the name Trafford will be associated in the minds of many with Old Trafford. Here the sound of leather on willow could just about be heard over the rattle of the Manchester to Altrincham train passing through the nearby station. Your ageing scribe well remembers the first ever County Championship cricket match at Old Trafford. Hang on, I’ve just read that last sentence again and even though I am getting on a bit the first County Championship match at Old Trafford was well before my time. What I meant to say was my first ever County Championship cricket match. This was sometime in the early 1960s and Lancashire were playing Sussex on a fairly cold, fairly grey, fairly typical early season day at Old Trafford. Lancashire won the toss and elected to bowl and with Brian Statham and Ken Higgs bowling in tandem for most of the morning, Sussex were restricted to 55 – 2 at lunch – heavy going! During the lunch interval the rain started to fall and that was it – end of the action for the day. And from that inauspicious beginning has developed a strong following for our national summer sport which endures to this day – brilliant win in the Ashes down under by the way but, really, don’t worry about the One Day International Series; that is simply “not cricket”.

There may well be another sporting venue called Old Trafford? Maybe one which holds close to 80,000 people and has been known to host the odd England international football match. But, then again, I could be mistaken – I often am.

So, off we go to Shawe View, the home of Trafford FC, for this Manchester Premier Cup Quarter Final and the “prize” at stake for the winners this evening is an away match at Droylsden in the Semi Finals of this competition.

Tales of doom and gloom concerning the potential for traffic problems dominate the early thoughts for this match. It seems that the team which play in the “Theatre of Dreams” are at home tonight to a team from the English Midlands in something called the Barclays Premier League. However, no traffic problems encountered as the journey from Glossop takes less than one hour. A very tidy ground is this one and, as the powerful floodlights come on the playing surface is revealed to be in excellent condition. The sound of nearby church bells drift over the scene. The peal is quite low and slow and sends shivers down the spine of the waiting few. A portent of doom perhaps – we will see. Supporters arrive in dribs and drabs, having paid £7 entrance and 50 pence for a programme which makes the one at Formby last season look like a contender for Programme of the Year – very poor, to be immediately accosted by the man selling “Golden Goal” tickets. He does a fine job and his approach could well be used as a primer for individuals intent on a career selling double glazing or used cars.

The GNE faithful number around 25 on this cold midweek night which is pretty good given that the official attendance for this match was later given as 68. A three flag day. The match kicks off in front of the sparse crowd and the lack of atmosphere lends a certain funereal feel to the match. After 45 minutes its half time and the scores are level at 1-1. As the second half starts conversations recall the minibus to Padiham last Saturday and some of the “antics”. Very funny and even the more sober members of the group struggle to remember every incident – come on Chopper!

At the end of the match the home side register a 3-1 victory and to them the challenge of fitting in an away match at Droylsden on a Monday night in the next round into the already crowded fixture schedule. And then the real action starts. A team of helpers appear from seemingly nowhere and start to dismantle the goals. We may cast our minds back to a similar occurrence at Abbey Hey last season and reflect on the military precision involved. Sad to say that in this case it would seem that the helpers at Trafford have not had the level of training and experience as those at Abbey Hey and if there was a competition for “goalpost removal after the match” then a clear victory would go to Abbey Hey. Appearances can be deceptive can’t they? What we took to be an “anti-vandalism” measure at Abbey Hey does not really seem to be appropriate in this leafy South Manchester suburb but there you go.

And, as ever, we can find perhaps interesting differences between football played at different levels. The crowd at Trafford tonight of 68 contrasts rather vividly with the crowd of 75,256 who were being entertained at a ground less than four miles away. Equally, those wondering quite why we failed to attract Fernando Torres to play in blue at fortress Surrey Street would need to be aware that we, unfortunately, left just one word out of our “bid document”. Always one to try to challenge my loyal readers I could ask you to think what that word was. However, time is short so I will reveal that the missing word was “million”. Well, never mind, perhaps we’ll get it right next time…