Football

Newport Corinthians v New Inn

Gwent County League

Division 2

Saturday 14th April 2018

Kick Off 15.00 Actual 15.04

Newport Corinthians 1 New Inn 3, attendance 8

10’ 0-1

30’ 0-2 (pen)

32’ 0-3

38’ 1-3

@ Coronation Park

Stephenson Street

Newport

NP19 0RB

No Admission

Programme, free, 12 pages (from original match that was postponed on 24th March).

The Gwent County League is certainly not one of the best leagues for finding out information on fixtures. The league website is rubbish and is very rarely updated and around a quarter of the clubs don’t list any phone numbers to contact them !

Corries twitter didn’t even mention they had a match, but at least New Inn had tweeted that they were indeed scheduled to visit Corries today, although there was no news as to whether the match would actually be on. As it was just seven minutes drive from my early match it was a case of head here first and hope everything was okay.

I arrived to see the home players putting up the nets and erecting the dugouts. I ventured into the clubhouse and enquired about whether there was a programme for today’s match, as although it is a (ridiculous) league rule that all clubs have to issue a programme, not all do. I was told, if there was one, it would be pinned on the noticeboard. Sure enough, there were 4 copies there, but all for different matches. Luckily, one was versus New Inn, which had been produced for the match on 24th March that had been postponed.

The Referee arrived around 14.15 and carried out his pre-match checks, confirming that despite it being a little soft, the pitch was perfectly playable. The only concern now ,was whether the away team would be coming, as there was only one player there so far. At 14.35 another couple arrived and at 14.42 the last stragglers drifted in.

The relatively late arrival certainly didn’t affect the visitors. A blistering first half hour had them well in control. Quite how there were no second half goals is anyone’s guess as both teams went for all out attack. A red card for Corries, late in the game, rounded off a bad day for them.