TT No.41: Andy Gallon - Fri 12th September 2008; The New Saints v Caernarfon Town; Welsh Premier League; Res: 6-0; Att: 227; Admission: £7.50; Programme: £2 (24pp); FGIF Match Rating: *** 

But, hey, let's try to be positive. The primitive former Oswestry ground, a country mile out of town, has been utterly transformed by Harris's apparently limitless pile of cash. It used to be a dump. Car park full of pot holes, tumbledown stand, life expired athletics track round a bumpy pitch. Just horrible. Now, in another nod to wearisome marketing gobbledygook, it is The Venue at Park Hall. But I just get the feeling that football here has become an afterthought. Beneath a spin-and-no-substance sheen, the place appears to be all about functions, wining and dining, fitness, leisure and pleasure. In short, making money. A signpost for our times, then. Is the Credit Crunch a latterday plague of locusts? Tellingly, the sole turnstile is tucked away out of sight, down a lane, at the bottom of a grassy bank, as if small-time football were something of which to be ashamed. And, of course, The New Saints do not play on grass any more. They have a state-of-the-art plastic pitch, allowing seven-day use by the community. Parent and kiddie heaven. But is it really football? Or merely a sanitised, diluted, bastardised version of the blood and guts 'proper' game? European matches, apparently the be all and end all for Welsh Premier League high-flyers such as The New Saints, Rhyl and Llanelli, are not permitted here at present. But they will once 1,000 extra seats are installed later in the season and when, some time after that, the number of seats rises above 2,000 Euro ties beyond the first qualifying round could be staged at the ground. 

Equally tellingly, there is now no cover for the ordinary spectator at Park Hall. If you seek the one small area of shelter by venturing on to the viewing balcony, as I did when (inevitably) rain began to fall, you are summarily ejected by jobsworth stewards who appear to have graduated from the Colin Montgomerie Academy of Public Relations. A couple of home fans lamented the pitifully low attendance - but then acknowledged nobody, in 2008, is going to stand (or, worse, sit) in rain for 90 minutes to watch this standard of football. And don't get me started on the rip-off programme. A dual issue for the last game against Prestatyn Town, a self-proclaimed 'bumper edition'. All 24 pages of it. That's £2 to you, sir.

Let's put the soapbox to one side and admit, on a golden evening of pre-downpour fading late summer sun, The Venue at Park Hall is a pleasant spot to be. The rural approach, down a road lined with mature trees, past fields of grazing livestock, prompts thoughts of a stately home up ahead. This is not, after all, a flight of fancy because there stood here one of the finest Tudor mansions in England. Until fire destroyed it on Boxing Day, 1918. The orderly car park is now metalled, with bays marked out. The main building, glassy and glossy, sleek and slick, provides an impressive front door on the world. It looks the business. Inside, the main bar, stripped of personality, feels like an IKEA showroom and serves the sort of dishes where everything comes with chips. But I fear I'm in the minority. Lots of people like this sort of stuff. You can pump a bit of iron, try out the ten pin bowling alley and discover the world's dullest sport or see what pilates can do for your equilibrium.

For football, from the main entrance, keep turning right, and you come through the turnstiles in the south-west corner. The ground, cosy and intimate in a way its predecessor never was, has the air of something which has been fashioned from a clearing in the woods. A sylvan dell. Teddy bears must come here to picnic. Trees, some with their leaves starting to acquire autumn tints, fringe all but the south side, where the functional main block fills most of the touchline. Its blank wall of red brick forms a rather deadening backdrop to the vivacity of the football. On an apron of tarmac, an arrangement of temporary seats is cut in half by a sloping ramp leading to the dressing rooms. The viewing balcony, giving quick access to the bar if you dare run the gauntlet of the heavy mob, is directly above. The dugouts, a familiar perspex design, are opposite each 18-yard line on this side. Tarmac hardstanding runs round the rest of the ground, which is separated from the trees by a tall mesh fence in dark green plastic, a pleasing echo of the foliage. Something similar surrounds the pitch, a 3G model. It plays well enough but seems to reduce the element of physical contact already lacking in the modern game. Just not quite right, somehow. The floodlights are corner masts, with 12 lamps on each.

It's obvious from the opening moments why The New Saints (can I still call them TNS?) are up at the top of the Welsh Premier League and Caernarfon Town down near the bottom. The hosts look confident, polished and, well, professional. As perhaps, being full-timers, they should. The slightly awed visitors clearly approach the contest with hope rather than expectation. Judging by the shouts of the players, Our Scousers are taking on Your Scousers. Someone remarks there are just a couple of Welshmen involved. That cannot be good.

Two are required to execute a decent Tango so, for the neutral, it's Strictly Limited Entertainment. There's always a chance of a decent game while Caernarfon do their plodding best to keep The New Saints out. More by luck than design, it appears. Once the deadlock is broken, that's pretty much that. Scott Ruscoe strokes in a low direct free-kick in the 41st minute after the defensive wall makes the mistake of jumping as one. A dance move, maybe? Alfie Carter, so lonely on the left side of the penalty area he might have been considering a go at speed dating, cracks in the second on the stroke of half-time. The only question remaining is how many? Michael Wilde capitalises on a Daniel Brooks slip to snooker kiss past Michael Jago for 3-0 in the 55th minute and two minutes later the same player rounds off a fabulous first-time passing movement with a deft finish from eight yards. Wilde is denied a hat-trick in the 62nd minute by the crossbar, which gets in the way of his fizzing volley. Number five arrives within three minutes. Carter does all the spadework hard against the touchline and Ruscoe fires in crisply from an acute angle. "We want six," chants the soprano section of the junior school choir behind the west end goal, and Barry Hogan obliges in the 74th minute. He exchanges passes with Jamie Wood to remove two defenders from the equation and thumps a beauty on the run into the top corner from the edge of the box. Caernarfon contribute isolated half-chances but the Canaries haven't the wit or skill to convert any of them. So many games here must be just like this.

Mike Harris, never backward at coming forward, claimed recently in a BBC Radio Shropshire interview that The New Saints had become stronger than near-neighbours Wrexham. Eh? People care about Wrexham, who can count on a hard core of 4,000 fans at The Racecourse even when their football is unspeakably poor. Which it has been for a long time. No-one gives a monkeys about The New Saints. Their Harris-propped professional team is capable of trimming all but the best of the rest in a largely part-time league, and still people won't come to watch. Is there a poetic justice here? 

edited & contributed on 21/09/08