Damage in the Box!: RUSHALL OLYMPIC (Dales Lane)

The heavy rain that has been battering the country is every groundhoppers nightmare. Plans have to be re-arranged, frantic phone calls have to be made, websites have to be trawled for news and poor old club secretaries have to be harassed. On Saturday morning I ticked all those boxes!

My original plan went belly up at 7pm on Friday when Monmouth was called off. This was to be the first leg of a “double” with Portishead (which was also off). Next in line was a trip to Worsbrough Bridge Athletic but a phone call at 11am put paid to that idea. It was a case of phoning until I got a definite YES off somebody. This ray of light came about when I phoned Rushall and I was reliably informed their game at home to Lincoln United would be going ahead and the pitch “can take anything that is thrown at it”. With these words echoing in my ears it was to the Midlands I headed.

Rushall is a district of Walsall and Olympic play about 3 miles out of the town. The ground was pretty easy to find as it located just of the main Walsall to Lichfield road. The only inconvenience was the road works on the Walsall ring road, which added a further 20 minutes to my journey. It was whilst stuck in this traffic jam the heavens opened again and it absolutely hammered down. I thought to myself here’s another wasted trip. I pulled over and rang the club again just for re-assurance and again they reiterated that there is no problem with the pitch.

I parked up at the ground with 30 minutes to spare, paid my £6 to get in and another £1.50 for the programme which contained a whopping 80 pages, of which only 13 pages were advertisements. Fantastic value. The first port of call on entrance was to inspect the pitch and amazingly there was not a drop of surface water to be seen, the pitch was in superb condition. What a relief I can tell you!

The sound of the referees whistle to kick the game off was music to my ears, it was game on and it was underway. Well, what can I say about the game? It was absolute dross! It ended goalless and to be honest if both teams carried on playing until next Saturday they wouldn’t have scored. The closest either team came to breaking the deadlock was two chances for Rushall in either half. After 15 minutes Paul Szewczyk should have done better when one on one with the keeper, but it was smothered very easily by the goalie. The second decent chance came with only a few minutes remaining when a long range effort by Richard Beale was well saved by the Lincoln keeper.

Other than that it was mainly pot shots and half chances with neither keeper being really tested, both defences were on top. The only other talking point of the game was when Lincoln’s Tom Mallison was shown a straight red for elbowing Nicky Preston, only 14 minutes after coming as a half time substitute.

Lincoln had been hammered 4-1 by Rushall on the opening day of the season and it think it was their intention not to let it happen again. Rushall were more than happy with the point as it put them top of the league table. However, despite the poor game I was just happy to see a match so I can’t complain too much. I’d have been just as annoyed sitting in the house watching the vidi-printer. Here’s hoping for better next weekend.