Unfortunately the bad weather meant a late arrival in Shrewsbury as the train timetable was in chaos. We arrived in time though to have a quick pre-match slurp in some of the town's drinking establishments namely the Vaults, the Three Fishes and the Nags Head.
The afternoons football entertainment was provided by Haughmond FC and Bilston Town as they took on each other in a West Midlands Regional League Premier Division game. The club kindly tweeted earlier in the day that the game was definitely going ahead after the bad weather over the previous few days.
Haughmond play at Shrewsbury Sports Village, which is a couple of miles out of town. A taxi was on hand to take us from the pub to the ground. As the name suggests the ground is part of a sporting complex, which doesn't make it sound too glamorous. Indeed, after hearing tales from other hoppers of "football in a cage" I approached with some trepidation as images of me standing outside of a pitch watching through a wire fence.
However it was nothing like that, well once you had paid your £3 to gain entrance to the cage. There was a seated stand, which luckily today did offer some protection from the strong winds.If you were one of these 'tightwads' who objected to paying the entrance fee (as some people did) then there is a large terrace outside the cage where you can watch for free (as well as sitting inside the club itself). The views though are no different to watching football in the 1970's/80's you could argue.
The club were members of the Shropshire County League as recently as 2011, when the won promotion to the WMRL. They reached the Premier Division in 2014, having finished runners up behind AFC Bridgnorth.
The game finished all square as both teams did their best in the windy conditions.Match details are sketchy as I lost my programme and notes (I am certain there is no correlation between this and the ales consumed) but Bilston did take the lead inside 10 minutes. They seemed content to sit back on the lead and surrender the possession to Haughmond, who in truth did little with it.
The second half was more of the same but defending a 1-0 lead is always a risky strategy as the opposition will always get at least one chance. With 15 minutes remaining Haughmond finally broke through to earn themselves a point. The maybe could have snatched all three, but on balance a fair result.
The booked taxi to take us back into town failed to materialise but luckily as we began the long walk back a bus, which happened to be running late in the traffic, pulled up to ensure we could round off the day in the excellent Salopian, whilst watching Bournemouth pull off a shock win at Stamford Bridge.
