Train ticket £20-90
Tea £1
Bovril £1
Programme £1-50
Entry £5
Total £29-40
Today brought more postponements left right and centre. I had a short list of clubs to visit, and had aimed for either Hanley or Ashton Town. Thanks to my weekly 'Twitter watch' for postponements I discovered that both those games were off, and Silsden was 'ON'!
Silsden must be pretty unique in the NWCFL as its the only club in Yorkshire playing in this league. The town sits between Keighley and Skipton, on the edge of the Pennines and not too far from the Lancashire border. Today I travelled via Leeds, something of a rarity for this league, though it made a nice change from Manchester.
According to Google maps, the Keighley Road ground is 2 miles from Steeton & Silsden. It was actually much closer being barely a 15-minute walk. As I had a spare half an hour, I wandered into Silsden itself, where the streets were lined with stone terraced houses leading up to a steep hill - 7% gradient no less.
I headed back down to the ground, and parted with the standard fiver for entry at a little white hut. The ground was small and neat, bounded by wooden fencing on two sides and the clubhouse on the other. There were two short covered areas - terracing with a space for a wheelchair at the front and a seated area painted white. The view and the relatively small ground reminded me of Stokesley in North Yorkshire.
Today's game was again fast and furious, with both sides determined to take victory. Silsden's 8 had an early shot blocked while at the other end Runcorn contrived to get offside at almost every attack. Runcorn's Curtis Cummins hit over on 21 minutes after a setup from Shanley. Silsden opened the scoring on 29 minutes when Josh McNulty's nearpost header drifted into the net. Silsden's Robert Grimes was a real handful, holding up play and distributing the ball with ease to his teammates. Runcorn still carried a threat, with Cummins scooping over after a swift counter, and Keddie firing just wide after he'd used his shoulder to control the ball.
At half time I heard an amusing comeback when a chap near me didn't have the winning raffle numbers - they're the right numbers but just in the wrong order! Runcorn came out looking absolutely determined to get a goal, with three early chances falling to Cummins and Jack Irlam. Then on 69 minutes Silsden doubled their lead when Damien Kinsey set up a deserved headed goal for Grimes. The rest of the game belonged to Runcorn so its quite incredible to think they came away empty handed. They pulled 1 back when Irlam slid a setup from Shanley to the keepers left. The big chance came when Keddie had a free header after a deep cross from the right. Somehow he managed to put it wide, and that was that. Silsden had worked hard and the real difference between the sides had been the industrious and creative Robert Grimes up front.
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