Today I'm going back 29 years to 1993 and a pre-season Friendly (or "Annual Showcase") fixture between the Republic of Ireland's Ballinasloe Town and English Football League side Walsall played at Ballinasloe's The Curragh Grounds. I recall that the Curragh Grounds weren't up to much and were enclosed, at least in part, by a chain link wire fence through which it would have been possible to watch the entire match without paying for admission. As it happened, there were no hordes of freeloaders and nor indeed were there any hordes at all. The attendance wasn't recorded but would have been little more than a couple of hundred folks including yours truly. The programme is surely a rarity as well as being a little beauty. The picture of ball and goal as apparently drawn by a five year old is wonderfully amateurish!
Attentive readers of my blog will know that I don't tend to "do" pre-season Friendlies. I find that the regular season in long enough and I need to have a few weeks break from football in order to be champing at the bit for another ten months of football joy. Friendlies are regularly ruined by nonsenses such as rolling substitutions, entire team line-ups being changed at half time and mismatches in fitness depending on when a club decided to commence its pre-season training. Some Friendlies however are, even for me, irresistible and this was one such match.
Despite being in County Galway (just), Ballinasloe Town's senior side play in the Roscommon & District Football League Premier Division. As was the case for quite a few summers around that time, I was staying with my ex and the in-laws in the town of Castlerea in County Roscommon for a couple of weeks summer holiday break and was hungry for a bit of live soccer. Ballinasloe was less than an hours drive away and so I found myself at the Curragh Grounds well in time for the unusual kick-off time of 6:30PM. I think that the Curragh must be a somewhat obscure football ground as I remain the only person on the Futbology app who has ever visited the place.
Walsall's previous season had ended in disappointing fashion with a defeat against Crewe Alexandra in the Third Division (Fourth tier) Play-Off Semi-Final. That was the season in which York City had finished fourth in the same division and had then been promoted through the Play-Offs by beating Walsall's conquerors Crewe Alexandra at the old Wembley. Now, here were Walsall, just a couple of months down the line, readying themselves to "go again" in season 1993/94. The new season would prove to be another disappointing one for Walsall who finished in 10th place in the Third Division, four points short of the Play-Off places. Who knows, perhaps their pre-season tour to Ireland was partly to blame? The Saddlers only just edged their semi-professional opponents by 2-1 and perhaps that was a sign of things to come?
CRB Match No. F15
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