Abandoned after approximately 5 minutes due to serious injury
Saturday 16th December 2023, Kick-off 15.00
Eastern Counties League Division One North
Shoemakers Lane, Swaffham
Admission: £7.00
Programme: £1.00
Attendance: 40 (estimate)
I was extremely indecisive about where to head to today, although several options were whittled away once I slept in longer than usual. In the end, preferring to visit a ground within the National League System, I chose a ground that had long been on my radar but was rather tricky and time consuming to get to for me. As it turned out, it is fair to say I made the wrong choice on this particular day.
To get to Swaffham, I caught the train to Kings Lynn, followed by about a half hour bus journey south eastwards to the attractive town of Swaffham, with the football ground about a ten minute walk away from the Market Place bus stop. Admission is paid for at a kiosk in one corner of the ground, and inside, it is a smart, very well maintained ground with plenty of character and not a identikit stand in sight. Behind the end closest to the entrance there is a small wooden stand covering a flat standing area just inside the entrance, while behind the goal, there is quite a long stand although only containing one and a half rows of seating. Along the length closest to the entrance, there is a wooden structure built into a hedge mostly with a few wooden picnic tables inside.. On the opposite side, an all-seater stand straddles the half way line. Another pleasantly unusual feature of the ground is a water tower behind one end, while the clubhouse, located just outside the football ground itself, has a separate corridor with tables leading towards the tea bar window, which is nicely decorated with a club welcome message, and the slanting roof about has football scarves from many diverse clubs - a nice feature.
This game was between two clubs firmly entrenched in mid table, with Swaffham in 15th place, following seven wins and nine defeats from their 16 league games, while Cornard were in twelfth place, following eight wins and two draws from their 18 league games. When the two teams met in the reverse fixture back in mid August, Cornard won 4-3.
On an overcast but relatively mild afternoon, Cornard started by seeming to make the most of playing down quite a pronounced slope, as they started very much on the front foot. However, with only about five minutes on the clock, a very strong tackle by Swaffham’s Dan Roberts on Ben Morris left the Cornard player in severe pain and motionless, and it very quickly became apparent that Morris had sustained a serious injury, as an ambulance was immediately called for. After consulting with his linesman, the referee showed Roberts a straight red card. It initially sounded like an ambulance was going to take a couple of hours to arrive, but fortunately, one arrived much quicker than that, within about a quarter of an hour. Nevertheless, the decision was made to abandon the game just before the ambulance arrived, at around 3.30, most probably in consideration that many of the players would not be in the right frame of mind to play on. It was later confirmed that Morris, on his debut for Cornard having only signed from Halstead Town the previous day, had suffered a double leg break. And so I then set off on my long journey home, which would not be helped by poor connection times and a cancellation. While disappointed to have gone all that way for just five minutes of football, it seemed to be a bad day for injury related abandonments, most notably Luton Town’s Tom Lockyer collapsing during their game at Bournemouth. Events like these do indeed put into perspective my disappointment at not watching a complete game, and here’s hoping that the Cornard player recovers as quickly as possible.
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