Derbyshire Summer League
Monday 2nd June 2025
Smithfield Uttoxeter 4 Red Lion 2, attendance 30
2’ 0-1
38’ 1-1
57’ 2-1
79’ 2-2
80’ 3-2
83’ 4-2
@ Oldfields Hall Middle School
Stone Road
Uttoxeter
ST14 7PJ
No Admission or Programme.
For the second successive season, this league has come up with a new ground for me to visit. It’s just an open pitch at Oldfields Hall Middle School in Uttoxeter. Parking was available inside the school grounds, with the pitch at the rear of the buildings, with a raised grass bank along the near side offering a decent view.
As is the norm for this league, the pitch was in poor condition. Also, there was the all too frequent late arrival of players. Red Lion only had nine players when we got underway a couple of minutes earlier than scheduled, but it didn’t do them any harm, as they were in front after just two minutes, latching on to a through ball that the ‘keeper failed to clear and going on to roll the ball into the empty net. Fifteen minutes in, a tenth player arrived for the visitors and eight minutes later they were at full strength, as their eleventh and final player turned up. Amazingly, they had kept their lead during this time, but seven minutes before halftime Smithfield drew level, scrambling the ball into after an initial block just inside the area. Red Lion looked to have gone in front again in stoppage time, when a shot hit the underside of the crossbar and clearly crossed the line, but the ‘home’ linesman said it hadn’t, so it wasn’t given.
The second half saw Smithfield hit the crossbar early on, before going 2-1 up just before the hour mark, easily finishing a pull back across the box from close range. A deflected shot from the edge of the box saw Red Lion level it up at 2-2 with eleven minutes left, but trailed again within a minute and another close range effort saw Smithfield round off the scoring to make it 4-2 with seven minutes left.
The journey north was fine once I’d cleared the M25 queue from J11-J17 and the return was totally trouble free, despite three sections of roadworks on the M1 starting to be coned off, which I got through without coming to a standstill.






