Good start to Xmas: Histon 1 Bradford PA 0

There’s no such thing as a free lunch but I seemed to get one today. I was invited to a Xmas lunch hosted by Histon FC and held in a rather nice catering zone in the Cambs FA headquarters at Histon’s ground.

Apart from being a good Xmas event it was also a Xmas meal for Soccsy, a soccer group based on St Andrews Church in Histon. Click here for more info about Soccsy.

There were maybe 10 or 12 members of Soccsy present (including one who was a dead ringer for Bruce Reynolds, Great Train Robber featured on a 2-parter on the BBC this week), many are away at university so this is an opportunity for them to get together, and during lunch we got to watch a video of a recent tour they’d made to Uganda. It wasn’t your average tour, but what tours are, involving games on bone hard pitches in 30 degree heat and against teams which played bare foot.

Lunch itself was standard Xmas fare: mushroom soup, turkey ‘with all the trimmings’ and Xmas pud. Hand on heart it was the best Xmas meal I’ve had so far this year.

After lunch we got to watch the big match: Histon at home to Bradford Park Avenue. Since they reached the Conference play-offs 3 or 4 years ago and then ran into a succession of management and financial problems Histon FC  has slipped a division and does well to survive at a level which is still way above what you’d expect for a village team. Before today’s game it was 16th in the Skrill Conference North with 6 wins and 22 points. Opponents Bradford Park Avenue who used to be a football league team were 4 places higher with 25 points. But Bradford played in an all green strip which was not exactly sexy.

Histon FC is a young team. Captain Remy Clerima (sponsored by the Histon Fryer; since I’m a regular customer I guess I contribute to this)  is only 23 and just about everyone else is younger. This does mean that what they lack in skills and maturity they more than make up for in work ethic and they battled to the end today to secure a deserved one nil victory.

It wasn’t great football but there was honest endeavour. The Bradford back four stood their ground effectively for most of the game and had the edge height-wise over Histon. However the stats will show that Histon had more shots on target and more corners although they did survive a sustained period of attack in the fourth quarter when Bradford hit the post. In recent games Histon have lost or given away winning positions late in the game so it was good to see them hold on until the end today.