Editorial - May 2009
Welcome once again to the latest edition of North West Side Stories, the last one of the season and apologies for it being a bit later than normal.
One of the reasons for the delay has been due to the “grandstand finish” to season 2008-09. A season that began back on August 9th and ended on Monday May 18th with a reserve game between Glossop North End and Atherton LR that was played at Cheadle Town, with plenty of great football in between.
If you were to plan a final Saturday for the league season, you couldn’t have come up with a better scenario than a shoot out for the Premier Division title between AFC Fylde and New Mills. Not only that, to follow it up with Glossop in the Vase final at Wembley on the Sunday meant that, from a League perspective, it just doesn’t get much better than that for a footballing weekend.
As it turned out, there was the League Challenge Cup Final on the Monday night, and the Reserve Cup Final on the Thursday night as well. I had the privilege of attending all of the games in question, and on top of that I also followed it up on the Wednesday night with the Special General Meeting for all clubs and an appearance on BBC Radio Lancashire on the Friday night as well.
It was a very busy end to the season for me, and is one of the reasons why this final edition of North West Side Stories is much later in being published than might have been expected. Going to all the above events and trying to fit in day to day living and working has meant that writing and editing material for this has been difficult, and it’s probably a couple of articles lighter than I would have liked.
Going back to general league matters, we have to say good luck to AFC Fylde as they move on to pastures new in the Unibond League. Their FA Vase campaign last season was heavily featured in editions of NWSS last season, and in their two seasons in the league I have certainly been fortunate to watch them in some excellent and exciting games.
One of the most memorable was the Vase semi final second leg at Needham Market, when of course Matt Walwyn’s late winner clinched a trip to Wembley, and it was a strange quirk of fate that the draw paired both sides up again this season in the Fourth Round.
Back down there in January, Fylde President David Haythornthwaite reminded me that for the last ten minutes or so of the Vase semi final, I ended up giving him almost a minute by minute countdown of time remaining. And I’ll never forget the anguish of the home crowd and players at full time, and the game this season gave me the chance to discuss that point with some of the Needham Market committee, who confirmed that the rest of their season was affected by the result.
But Fylde have been terrific ambassadors for our league, and it will be interesting to see how the bandwagon rolls on in the Unibond League next season.
The Vase has of course given me the chance to follow another of our sides to Wembley this season, and Glossop certainly did us proud. The semi final shoot out that saw them clinch a place in the final after Kelvin Lugsden’s last gasp equaliser was a fantastic end to a nerve jangling afternoon. And of course, it was a long time contributor to NWSS, Rick Bailey, who struck the winning penalty to spark wild celebrations at Surrey Street.
Out of all the games I’ve been to this season, I think that one has to be the one that stands out for sheer drama, excitement and atmosphere and to finish with an ending like that was amazing. I’ll remember it for a long time.
I did feel sorry for the unfortunate Chalfont St Peter players, who had to troop off the pitch amidst hordes of celebrating Glossop fans, after being so close to a Wembley final. It can’t have been a pleasant experience, and after seeing the reaction of everyone involved with Needham Market last year, I’d have to say that at non-league level, losing in a Vase semi final must be one of the worst experiences a player, official or supporter can experience.
But for those of us involved in some way with non-league football, the number of bad experiences over the course of a season are more than outweighed by the good ones. Once again this season has reinforced yet again for me that I feel incredibly lucky to be involved with our league. Great clubs, great people involved at the clubs, and on the field a standard of football that is thoroughly enjoyable to watch.
What’s more it’s good quality too. We’ve had a team in three out of the last four FA Vase finals, and in the year we missed out Curzon Ashton came desperately close in the semi final. If that isn’t illustration of the quality of football in our league I don’t know what is.
I’d also say it gives us reasonable grounds to say that at our level of football, we must be one of the strongest leagues in the country, and that is something that everyone involved with the league should be proud of. It always means that for my part, I need to be looking at ways of improving the means and methods by which we impart information and news about our league, and generally try and blow our own trumpet as much as possible.
On that general subject, this is very likely to be the last edition of North West Side Stories in its present format. We are looking at revamping the main league website over the summer, and making some other changes to the way in which news is communicated and distributed, and we will be working on that over the summer.
I think the way ahead is to have everything incorporated into one site rather than have two separate ones. I believe the original idea behind NWSS is just as valid now as it was when we started it up three years ago. We still want to publish more in depth interviews with people around the league who have stories to tell, which don’t necessarily fit in with shorter, topical news items that are updated regularly on a news page.
We also want to publish opinion based articles from anyone with an interest in our league, and again that is something that doesn’t really fit in to a news page but is certainly something that people will be interested in reading. The feedback I have had to NWSS has always been good, so if people want to read these sorts of articles we want and need to keep publishing them.
But three years down the line, we have moved into an era where blogs are much more commonplace and we now have the likes of Facebook and Twitter as means of communicating information. We have to move with the times and look at utilising those types of medium a bit more.
Another point that has hit home this month especially is that it’s a bit daft for me to have interviews and features “in the can” so to speak, and end up hanging on to them until I’ve written or sourced other articles to make up a whole issue. If something is written and ready it should be published, and not held back for weeks.
Above all else, there are times that it’s worth changing or revamping the way you do things just to freshen up a bit and I think the time is right to do that. Setting this site up and running with it in the format it has had for the last three years has been a very useful exercise. Lessons have been learned about the type of stories people like reading, so we can take those on board as we move ahead next season.
For now, I’d envisage that this site will disappear at some point although I will certainly look at retaining much of the content from previous issues that is still relevant and hold them in the league website, probably all the interviews and probably some of the stats related articles.
On the subject of the website, now is the time to canvass opinions and think about the way ahead, but if anyone would like to share their thoughts with me about what sort of information you would like to see on the league website that hasn’t always been there before, feel free to e-mail me at ian@nwsidestories.co.uk.
Finally, although Alan Farnworth touches on this in his article, I would also like to reiterate that it has not been a great season health wise for a number of the guys on the League Management Committee, culminating in the terrible accident that Frank Clayton was involved in back in April. We can only hope that he and the other guys continue to make progress and that we will see them back in full circulation next season.
Alan being Alan, he does not mention in his piece that he himself has not enjoyed the best of health in recent months, and I’d like to thank him for his support at various points this season. Even when he was not feeling at his best he still took time out to write pieces for NWSS and the league website, and as ever his contributions were appreciated .
In the meantime, have a good summer, and remember the season starts back again on Saturday August 8th. It’ll come round quick just like it always does.
Ian Templeman
Editor
North West Side Stories
Friday 29th May 2009
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