TT No.2: Andy Gallon - Tuesday 15 July 2008; Wellington Amateurs v AFC Telford United; P-S Friendly; Result: 1-5; Att: 531; Admission: £5; Programme: £2 (34pp); FGIF Match Rating: ***

I've never been so close to home - and yet felt so lost. The words of the AFC Telford United fan next to me after I'd asked if he'd managed to find School Grove without any problems. I had plenty of my own getting there, even with the help of directions from the Wellington Amateurs website. In common with all new towns, Telford has a bewildering, disorienting road system. Every thoroughfare looks the same, there aren't any landmarks and you always seem either to be heading in the wrong direction, doubling back on yourself or getting caught up in tarmac mazes. In the end, having navigated my way to Oakengates town centre, I asked the help of a chap in a car who had stopped to point out that I was about to drive into the teeth of the traffic up a one-way street. I hit the jackpot. Luckily, he went for the 'Ask a Friend' option - and his mate was a taxi driver, fortified by the Telford version of 'The Knowledge'. Inside five minutes, I'd parked within a couple of hundred yards of the Ams' ground. Usually, I treat pre-season friendlies as I would the musical offerings of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's tone-deaf missis. I don't do them. But this one had received plenty of advance publicity, a special souvenir programme was promised and I was spending a few days with a brother who lives in nearby northern Birmingham. After a couple of months without football - and I struggled to get involved with Euro 2008 - the temptation was too strong to resist. I'm glad I made the effort. It proved a pleasant way to spend a beautiful summer evening (no, really, the weather was lovely) and led to me musing that maybe we in England could take a leaf out of the Republic of Ireland eircom League's book and start playing competitively at this time of year. Balmy nights, shirt sleeves. It's nice. This fixture certainly earned the locals' seal of approval. A gate of 531 was a record for School Grove and will set up the Ams perfectly for life in the top division of the West Midlands (Regional) League after winning back-to-back promotions. Another close-season of ground improvements has produced a spick, span enclosure as the club, formed by ex-grammar school pupils in 1950 as Wellington Old Boys, look forward to playing step seven football for the first time in their history. Already, the Shropshire County League, from whence they came, must seem a long way distant. It was a big occasion, in more ways than one, for the Ams because before kick-off an on-pitch handshake between the respective club chairmen launched officially a partnership between the good neighbours.  Through it, there will be some interchange of youth players and a swapping of ideas on training, sponsorship and something the programme described as "working together to support football development bids being made by each club". Answers on a postcard, please. BBC Radio Shropshire added a touch of glamour to the proceedings by broadcasting their regular Tuesday evening sports programme live from a car parked alongside the near touchline. School Grove is located close to the top of a sylvan valley, high above Oakengates town centre. The ground is secreted amid leafy suburbia at the end of a narrow cul-de-sac - an approach you'd tend to associate with cricket or bowls. Access is up a tarmac ramp and through a gap in a line of trees. There is no turnstile - just a couple of lads with a cash bag and handfuls of programmes. The Ams are cashing in a little with their prices for this game but you'd have to be a real curmudgeon to begrudge them this pay day. You now find yourself in the bottom-left - south-eastern, I think - corner of the ground. Loose aggregate forms a small car park, tonight available only to players and officials, and runs round the pitch as semi-hard standing. There are two (hugely oversubscribed) portable loos in this corner. To the right is a small, whitewashed building with a pitched roof. This houses the dressing rooms, hospitality area and a refreshment hatch. A propped cover of corrugated iron, with six supporting poles, is tacked on to the front sheltering a flat stretch of concrete. This is the sole area of cover. Beyond, for this match only I imagine, are a couple of gazebos offering barbecue-style food. Behind this near side are low trees and the bungalows and immaculate gardens of School Grove. The greenery continues round each end, though there is a grey industrial unit, visible through the foliage, behind the left-hand goal. The opposite side, which has newly-built dugouts on the halfway line, has a banking of rough vegetation rising to more bungalows, several of whose occupants take advantage of their splendid view to watch the contest for free. The homeowners' outlook is not only of the lush pitch, which slopes gently downhill towards the dressing rooms, but also of the wooded gorge into whose narrow floor Oakengates is shoehorned. A post and rail fence, smattered with advertising hoardings, surrounds the playing surface. This is just the sort of ground you'd expect to find in a rural county such as Shropshire. Really rather pleasing. There's some slight confusion before kick-off because the clubs are using this game to launch their new away strips. Yes, even at this level! It means the Ams, who play usually in red shirts and red shorts, are decked out in white shirts and black shorts; and the visitors, garbed generally in white shirts and black shorts, have donned red shirts and white shorts. There may have been neutrals in the crowd who went home convinced the Ams had scored a sensational win... From the off, Blue Square North AFC Telford United, who have brought along a full-strength squad, look that bit classier. They keep possession well, stroke the ball around in pretty patterns and have a cutting edge up front the Ams simply cannot match. Terry Fearns, a striker who has scored goals pretty much everywhere he has been - and that's more places than your average gypsy - is introduced as a half-time substitute and wows the Bucks fans with a 12-minute hat-trick. He glances home from eight yards when found unmarked by an Andy Brown cross (57), prods past Martin Dunn in a one-on-one after a delicious Steve Jagielka reverse pass (61) and then, joy of joys, affirms his quality by ending an aimless game of head tennis with a crashing volley into the top corner from the edge of the box (69). Fearns's stunning treble rounds off the scoring because the visitors were 2-1 up at the break. Matty Lewis races on to a Brown flick to beat Dunn from the edge of the box for a coolly-taken 10th-minute opener. Dunn turns a sweet Jagielka drive on to the outside of a post (25) before Brown sees a delicate chip come back off the crossbar (33) and a fierce cross-shot hit the inside of the far upright (36) as Telford dominate. Lewis, who'd used his right foot for the early goal, employs his left to crack in a sublime second (37) before local lad Stewart Parnham, in added time at the end of the first half, smashes a penalty high into the net to give the Ams some reward for their industry. Parnham, dubbed the 'Big Jock in the Box' by the programme pen pictures, has scored more than 50 goals in two seasons since returning to the club. He can, apparently, also play between the sticks. Poacher turned goalkeeper, as it were. He's certainly got the physique for the role. Wellington Amateurs were one of just three programme issuers last season in Division Two of the West Midlands (Regional) League - the others being Stone Old Alleynians and Bentley Youth. Match secretary Dan Braddock edited a 12-page issue for every home game but for this prestigious friendly has pushed the boat out with an excellent 34-pager. Glossy, colourful and with plenty of reading and photographs, it is a first-rate effort. Mind you, having a chairman who runs a printing company must help! As part of the freshly-inked accord between the clubs, this friendly fixture is to become an annual affair. It's great when the bigger fish in any given pond look after the minnows in this way. At least some of the cash accumulating at the top end of the game is given the opportunity to percolate down to the lesser lights. Perhaps Manchester United's spoilt rich kid Cristiano Ronaldo should have dwelt on this sort of thing before sharing his crass "slavery" opinion with the wider world.

contributed 16/07/08