TT No.67: Mike Latham - Saturday 28 February 2015: Welsh National League (Wrexham Area) Division One:        Garden Village Youth 1-5 CPD Llanuwchllyn; Attendance: 10 (h/c); No admission or programme. 

 

 

Matchday images (13) https://picasaweb.google.com/footballgroundsinfocus/GardenVillageFC

 

The Wrexham Area League always provides a challenge to groundhoppers who look to complete a league. No sooner had I thought that I had completed this most interesting and diverse league than I discovered my celebratory champagne should have just been a cup of steaming Bovril. There was still work to be done.

 

Garden Village Youth I had visited, enjoyed and ‘ticked’ some seasons ago, a late-season midweek game at the Wauns in Bradley against, as I recall, impressive visitors in Borras Park Albion.

 

But these days Garden Village have relocated and now play their home games in Rhostyllen, a small former mining village south-west of Wrexham, lying next to the A483 and with the huge grassed-over slag heap to the south a monument to the area’s industrial past. Many visitors to the area are here to visit the eighteenth-century house and parkland at Erddig, now owned by the National Trust.

 

Close to Rhostyllen is Bersham where the last working coal mine in the Denbighshire coalfield closed just over 28 years ago. Many of the properties in the area are former mine-workers’ houses, built during the boom years of the 19th century. The most striking building is the local village hall, built in the 1920s from where the teams change before walking to the adjoining football field.

 

It’s here at Rhostyllen that Garden Village Youth have made home and on a chilly but dry day it was reassuring to see both teams out warming-up as I arrived with half-an-hour before kick-off. There had been plenty of rain in the preceding week but the pitch was perfectly playable and I was able to throw a ball for my dog Finty on the adjoining recreation ground as we waited for kick-off. Fortunately the recent road closures that have blighted my usual Saturday routines had abated for us to visit Gent’s Pie Shop in Standish en route, providing essential sustenance for us both.

I’ve been on many worse grounds at this level of Welsh football- level four. The pitch is railed-off and has a small cover and dug-outs alongside the road on the way into the village. Behind the goal at the end nearest to the A483 is a banking which helps give an enclosed feel. But there are no facilities as such, no tea bar or social club, certainly no programme or raffle and most of the spectators seem closely linked to the team and stay close to the home dug-out throughout the game.

 

I’ve seen Llanuwchllyn a few times in recent seasons and they always strike me a well-organised side with some good players, several of whom who look as if they have played further up the pyramid in the past. When I visited their ground two years or so ago a local explained they had several former Bala Town youths and reserves products in their line-up and maybe this is still the case. Either way they looked the better side from the off and went on to record a convincing victory.

 

A handful of spectators gathered around the ground and occasionally a car would stop behind the goal and its occupants watch a few minutes of the action. I’ve spent more exciting afternoons, seen better football games and been to better grounds but I was quite happy to watch a decent match in a stress-free environment and to once again ‘tick’ the Wrexham Area League.

 

contributed on 28/02/15