Glossop fly the flag in the Vase

An insider's view from Richard Bailey of Glossop North End

When the season’s first fixture in the FA Vase comes around fans and players alike begin dreaming of reaching the final at Wembley come May.

For us non-leaguers, the competition brings with it the only realistic chance of playing on the same hallowed turf as the players we only get to see on the television.

But when our Vase campaign kicked off on 6th September in front of over 200 faithful home supporters, Wembley seemed just a distant dream.

After putting Sporting Khalsa to the sword that day in the first qualifying round with a 5-0 win, victories over Calverton Miners Welfare, New Mills, Biddulph Victoria and Winterton Rangers followed to set up a fourth round home tie against Stewarts & Lloyds in mid-January.

According to some we were out of the competition as soon as the draw was made, there was no point in playing the game at all. Our supposedly superior opponents were taking their regional league by storm, and if they won their games in hand, they could find themselves 12 points clear at the top of the table.

As for the players, well we didn’t let such thoughts enter our head. We knew the strength of the North West Counties League in comparison to its regional rivals nationwide, a fact backed up when AFC Fylde (then Kirkham and Wesham) won the competition in 2008 as a Step Six side.

And anyway our management duo of Steve Young and Terry Hinks had watched our opponents the previous week, and declared that if we were at our best we would go though to the next round. That was good enough for us.

The week before the game the build up was huge. Perhaps most importantly the whole town was given the opportunity to join in and play their part.

The trophy, which visits a different town each round, came to Surrey Street on the Tuesday before the game. Three of the lads were on hand to have their pictures taken with the Vase (strangely more like a cup), but were on strict instructions not to place so much as a finger on the trophy.

The players then paraded the Vase around some local schools before the real action could begin on Saturday.

393 fans packed into the ground to see the clash, with our opponents from Scunthorpe vastly outnumbered. Those who had made the trip could have been forgiven for thinking they were in for a long day when after a minute David Hodges gave us the lead.

Hodgy is a bit of a fans favourite and plays wide on the left. We give him a bit of stick because he lives in London and seems to carefully select the games he comes back for, but you can’t argue with 13 goals in 19 games.

It was surprising how comfortable the game actually was with the visitors rarely threatening our goal.

But we failed to turn our commanding possession into goals, and the longer the game stayed at 1-0 the more uneasy you became.

With every passing chance we wasted you began to sense the pressure rising, and Stewarts & Lloyds equalised after some sloppy defending on our part.

After a ten minute second half spell where we were under the cosh, the game resumed to the normality of us creating chances and then missing them.

It got to the stage where I was mentally preparing myself for a mid-week trip to Scunthorpe and trying to arrange the time off work as another chance went begging, it surely wasn’t going to be our day. I then began to worry if we would get the number of chances we had created today in the return leg.

All my worries were put to bed when in injury time Hodgy (not renowned for his aerial ability) leapt above everyone to head home the winner from a corner two minutes into stoppage time.

As the referee blew the full-time whistle, moments later there was a mixture of relief and joy as supporters were still coming to terms with what happened. It was if we had won the final itself when a large number of kids performed a mini pitch invasion.

The result was made all the more significant when we heard the news later in the week that holders Fylde had been knocked out after being taken to a replay by Needham Market, thus making us the only NWCFL side in the competition.

The draw for the fifth round handed us a tough trip to Bitton (a small village in between Bristol and Bath) and the rumours started about the fact that they are runaway leaders in their league.

The game was expected to go ahead on Saturday 7th February and we had even booked a hotel for Friday night to help us in our preparation, but the weather put paid to all of that.

After waiting tantalisingly for a week the game finally came around. We travelled down on the Friday night and stayed over in the same hotel we had booked the week before.

There we took advantage of the swimming pool and jacuzzi while some of the more hardcore lads went to the gym. By chance we ended up sharing the same hotel as Southampton, who were due to play Bristol City the following day.

Although we were professional in our preparation we couldn’t compete with the Saints lads who were expected to be in bed by 9pm.

In the morning we held a team meeting and had our pre-match meal before all piling into the back of the minibus to head to the ground. We chugged out of the car-park just as Southampton pulled away in their plush spacious 50-seat coach.

As we got to the ground we were met by two coach loads of Hillmen, something which gave us a massive boost. Our supporters actually outnumbered the home fans by two to one and came with flags, scarves and rattles galore.

Something which quickly brought us down to earth was the state of the pitch. Now Surrey Street has never been described as Wembley (although it came close at the beginning of this season) but the one which we were due to play on was more like the Copacabana beach.

In the 90 minutes which followed there was no Brazilian flair but plenty of grit and determination. After our 17-year-old keeper Ash Gotham made a double save from an early penalty you just sensed it would be our day.

Another goal from Hodgy (on his 23rd birthday) put us on our way a minute before half-time and when Dave Morris added a second mid-way through the second-half we were home and dry.

Just to see Morrow that far forward was a shock to the system, but to watch open mouthed as he fired an unstoppable shot into the roof of the net had me speechless as he wheeled away to celebrate his first goal of the season, with the jubilant throng of supporters behind the goal.

A 2-0 scoreline seems comfortable but believe me there were a few scares, and goalmouth scrambles seemed to occur every 10 minutes, but when the whistle sounded we knew we had marched into the quarter finals.

We have since discovered that we will play Marske United, who are from Teesside I am led to believe. The game will no doubt be a tough one despite the fact that they are a Step Six side, they have blitzed their way to the last eight.

One thing is for certain - both sets of players will never get a better chance to play at Wembley ever again.

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