Today I'm going back nine years to 2012 and a Midland Football Alliance Black Country fixture between Gornal Athletic and Heath Hayes.
At Non-League level, it is often the case for a smaller club's programme that they will adopt a standardised cover which is used for all of their games that season. This can be a little irritating for the collector since it isn't possible to tell the date of the match or indeed the name of the opposition without opening the programme and scouring the contents. That doesn't sound like much of a problem but it's time consuming if you are hunting the programme for a particular away team in a club shop. However, the practice is understandable since it reduces programme production costs for the host club concerned and, as you may have gathered from previous articles, having a programme is preferable to no publication at all. So, if you're going to have the same programme cover for, say, 25 home games in a row, best make it a good one eh? In my opinion that's what Gornal Athletic did with this one. It's eye catching and almost a piece of art. A classic!
Gornal is also a treasure of a ground for a Groundhopper like myself. I'd thoroughly recommend a visit to the Garden Walk Stadium, located in Lower Gornal in the Borough of Dudley in the West Midlands. The ground is near the top of a hill and the entrance is hidden away amongst housing and is tricky to find. You enter at what turns out to be top of the ground which is cut into the hillside and which provides purchase for plenty of steep terracing largely on one side. Seating in the ground apparently includes a number of pink seats which were previously used in the John Ireland stand at Molineux. The team play in yellow and green however (like Norwich City) and are inexplicably nicknamed The Peacocks (did you ever see a yellow and green Peacock?). Opponents Heath Hayes travelled from Cannock, in Staffordshire, a former mining area which explains the winding wheel shown on the club badge.
The game? It finished 2-2 with both teams finding an attractive passing game tricky on a sticky bobbly pitch. The football on offer wasn't especially memorable but the Stadium certainly lingers in the memory. Do give it a visit if you get a chance. You'll be glad you did!
CRB Match No. 1929
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