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I’m really looking forward to seeing Nathan Caine play as I’ve heard good things about him. I know he’s only with us for a month but if he helps us beat Halesowen on the 29th, we’ll be happy.
Halesowen, our current main rivals for the automatic promotion spot are now level with us after winning their game in hand. This coming Saturday though they are home to Stamford who in my opinion can be the best team in the league on their day. For some unknown reason Stamford lack consistency but I think they will be well up for this match. We need Halesowen to drop points so a draw would be good. If Stamford were to lose they will be 10 points off the top but if they win they will be only 4 points behind Halesowen.
Also this weekend Chasetown play Coleshill. Coleshill need to win to stay in touch with the leading five.
Meanwhile we can’t afford any slip-ups before our clash with Halesowen. In my opinion the current top five will be there come the end of the season. We really need that one automatic promotion spot because anything can happen in the playoffs. Still a long way to go but every result is vital when several closely matched teams are in contention.  


I’m obsessed with Football Web Pages predicted final table and results which changes from week to week. The latest table shows Ilkeston as Champions with just one point more than Halesowen.
They have now changed their Ilkeston v Halesowen prediction from a 2-1 Ilkeston win to a 1-1 draw.
The predicted scores now show Halesowen not losing another match but drawing against Stamford (H), Ilkeston (A), Coleshill (A) and Belper (A). ie  8 points dropped
Ilkeston are predicted to drop 7 points ie.  draw with Halesowen (H), defeat against Chasetown (A), and draw with Bedworth (A).

Of course, predicted results are always expected results and there will always be a few unexpected results. 

Usually towards the end of the season, teams near the bottom try to get away from the relegation area but Histon and Soham may decide to accept their fate because of their excessive travelling in this league.


 

Last edited by Matchman (10/1/2022 10:28 AM)

Another week another cup final for the other team. I think this will be a hard game for us and one of them games where we might get a little frustrated. They will come and park the bus but they will get some periods in the match where they will be the better team. I'm a little surprised we haven't added to the squad this week but there is still time.

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MARK DUFFY'S ARTICLE IN DERBYSHIRE TIMES


Ilkeston Town boss Martin Carruthers excited by title race as Sutton Coldfield come to town

Ilkeston Town boss Martin Carruthers believes the title race in the NPL Midlands is really hotting up as his side prepares to host Sutton Coldfield Town this weekend. The Robins lead the way but only on goal difference after Halesowen Town won their game in hand last weekend, Carruthers’ men left without a match after their fixture at Histon was called off on Saturday lunchtime.The current top two are due to face each other at the NMG in a fortnight, but in the meantime Carruthers is keen to focus on maintaining the Robins’ place at the head of the table. He said: “With us not playing it gave Halesowen the chance to win their game in hand which they did, so it’s kept us on our toes. "All we can do now is win our games against Sutton Coldfield and Soham Town Rangers in the next couple of weeks and see how things are when Halesowen come to us on the 29th. They have some tough games with Stamford and Chasetown to come so it’s important we get wins given some top sides will take points off each other.”

Carruthers felt let down by Saturday’s postponement, with players and staff only 15 minutes from Cambridge before hosts Histon postponed the match due to a waterlogged pitch. He said: “It was unprofessional from them really as they knew all along it was likely to be in doubt but it took until the match ref arrived for it to be called off. "It was too late for us to arrange any training sessions too as the players had to get back on the long trip home. "So we’ll have a couple of good, hard training sessions this week to get ready for the weekend given they’ve ended up having the day off on Saturday.”

Saturday’s visit of Sutton Coldfield could see striker Nathan Caine involved for the first time since his arrival on loan from Mansfield Town.The teenager will give Carruthers a good option up front, with the Robins boss adding: “He’s fit and ready as he’s been training and playing with Mansfield. "We’ll see as to whether he starts or not once we’ve had a look at everyone in training but he’s an exciting addition and a hungry young pro who will give us good competition for places.”   

 

Last edited by Matchman (12/1/2022 1:45 PM)

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At the Sutton Coldfield match there is planned to be a minutes applause following the recent passing of Derek Henshaw, the last surviving Ilkeston player who played in the famous Ilkeston v Rochdale FA Cup game in 1951 where the white ball got stuck in the tree. 

If you like local history then below is well worth a read and includes details of the white ball in the tree incident.


William Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, Ilkeston Town and the white ball in a tree. 
 Words: Don Wright

If destiny decreed that you were to become a football fanatic then fate couldn’t unearth a better time or place for you to grow up than in 1940s industrial Ilkeston (town motto: Labor omnia vincit – work conquers all) with its community of miners, ironworkers and factory hands settled in the Erewash valley bordering the counties of Nottingham and Derby.
Ilkeston had two weekly newspapers both established in the Victorian era: the Pioneer, founded first – as its title suggests – in the Conservative cause, and the Advertiser, easily the most popular, started by a Liberal mayor named William Shakespeare. There were four cinemas. Rugby was unheard of, even at the Grammar School, cricket merely a summer diversion; life revolved around work and football. My love for the round ball was not inherited. Dad had little interest in the game. He was a motor-cycle enthusiast. In the spring of 1940 the headmistress of Bennerley infants school called me out of the classroom. Dad had got his call-up papers and was to report to the Grenadier Guards barracks at Caterham in Surrey. But first, he’d got permission to take mother and me to Skegness for the day. We went on the back of his motorbike. And, in battledress, he kept on riding – carrying despatches with the Guards Armoured Division.
Back home, a ball was my constant companion. I played football in the backyard by myself and on the street with pals. If Harry Altham, a Winchester public school master who later became president of the MCC, was correct then I had all a young boy needed. Instead of the three Rs (reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic), he advocated the three Bs – a ball, a book and bed. So I played, read (avidly, anything and everything) and slept – sometimes sleeping on a makeshift bed made up in the pantry beneath the stairs for protection when the air-raid siren sounded. Nearby Stanton Ironworks and the Ransome and Marles ball-bearing factory at Newark were targets for German bombers on their way back towards the North Sea after raids on Sheffield and the Midlands. Stanton was so big at that time that if it were to be put down in London’s Hyde Park, there would not be enough of the park left over to make a bowling green. The ironworks included a plant, built in co-operation with the Ministry of Supply, that in four years cast 875,000 bombs – a total weight of 175,000 tons – for the RAF.
As well as schools football, I played for Cotmanhay Waverley (formed by a devotee of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels) and Stanton Ironworks Colts in the Ilkeston and District League and, in the Midland Amateur Alliance, for Old Ilkestonians but I enjoyed watching as well as playing the game.
Victory in Europe was celebrated in the UK on 8th May 1945. About a fortnight later, I took myself off to the Manor Ground next to the Rutland Hotel at the bottom of Bath Street to see an Ilkeston and District eleven take on a Nottingham Forest team brought to the town by manager Billy Walker. The match was in aid of the armed forces charity SSAFA (the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and their Families Association). The Ilkeston side won impressively and Walker urged that with the quality of players available, an enthusiastic support and the fine facilities of the ground, a proper town club should be formed.
The Manor Ground had been home to Ilkeston football since 1893. Ilkeston Mechanics, Ilkeston Wanderers, Ilkeston United, Ilkeston Town and Ilkeston FC were all senior clubs that had used the ground but fallen by the wayside. I played there towards the end of the war for Granby Junior School and saw Ilkeston Grammar win the town’s senior schools’ championship, inspiring me to pass the eleven-plus exam. Grammar played in red shirts and blue shorts, colours I desperately wanted to wear. Much later I read that Forest’s 1898 FA Cup winners, who defeated Derby County 3-1 in the final, wore those colours, too. Billy Walker’s challenge was taken up and on Saturday 18th August I was among the spectators watching twenty-eight players taking part in a trial match for a new Ilkeston Town Football Club. The Notts and Derbyshire Senior League was joined and opponents included Forest, Derby and Notts County as well as local sides. The greatest rivalry was with Heanor Athletic (later Heanor Town) just four miles away.
Matches between the two were always played at Christmas, at home on Christmas Day and away on Boxing Day or vice versa. Trolley buses ran between the two towns, especially for these games, but many supporters chose to walk off a hearty Christmas meal, leaving the womenfolk to wash up and gossip. When a snowfall halted the buses, hundreds trudged across Shipley common, past Shipley colliery, up Hardy Barn hill and through Marlpool before turning left at Heanor market place to the ground. It didn’t stop the football. They used to play on snow.
After two seasons, Town joined the Central Alliance and appointed as player-manager Gibson McNaughton, a veteran inside-left who had played for Scottish clubs Clyde, Dundee and Dunfermline Athletic before joining Forest and making 82 appearances, scoring 13 goals, for the Nottingham Reds. Other former Forest players to manage Ilkeston were Jack Hutchinson, John McGovern, Nigel Jemson and Bill Brindley. Steve Chettle was a Town assistant manager.
Ex-Foresters who have played for Ilkeston include inside-right Ken Faulconbridge, right-winger Ken Ledger, centre-half Les Smith, left-half Horace Hackland centre-forward Jackie Ward, scorer of a club record 139 career goals, full-back Dave Baker and inside-forward Dennis Alexander. Several were products of Walker’s wartime youth policy. He had started a colts team as soon as the war began in September, 1939, six months after taking the Forest job. It was an innovative venture and, twelve years later, was recalled in a special tribute by former Arsenal and England star Charles Buchan in the first edition of the world’s first modern-style football magazine Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly (September 1951). Strangely, although many Town players graduated to Football League clubs none found their way to the City Ground. Two of the most outstanding among them joined Derby County. Full-back Geoff Barrowcliffe and centre-forward Ray Straw came from the Granby Park area of Ilkeston and it was on the park as youngsters that they learned their football. Barrowcliffe made more than 500 appearances for the Rams and Straw scored 37 goals in the 1956-57 season, equalling the club record set by England international Jack Bowers.
I have a confession to make. Two uncles took me to the first Football League match I saw. We were among a 19,000 crowd at the Baseball Ground in May 1947 when 1946 FA Cup-winners Derby lost one-nil to Arsenal. I took a lasting delight in the drama and spectacle. Centre-forward Ronnie Rooke scored the goal and I added Arsenal, in their red shirts with white sleeves, white shorts and blue and white hooped socks (red, white and blue) to my list of favourite teams with Town and Forest. Oddly, Forest and Notts were also both at home that Saturday. There were 16,000 at the City Ground for the Second Division match against Birmingham City, one of my favourite players ‘Sailor’ Brown scoring for Forest in a 1-1 draw. Across the river, in the Third Division South, Notts beat Brighton 2-0 in front of a crowd of almost 13,000. That was before Lawton mania when crowds of 30,000 to 40,000 were drawn to Meadow Lane. Why is Derby supposedly a football town and Nottingham not?
It was not until years later that I learned my home town, Forest and Arsenal were linked – by a goalkeeper named Fred Beardsley. Born at Ilkeston on Christmas Day 1856, Fred became one of the finest goalkeepers in England despite being just 5ft 7ins in height. What he lacked in inches, he made up for in agility and anticipation. Beardsley was the first of a long line of great Forest goalkeepers, including England internationals Sam Hardy and Peter Shilton. But it was England Under-23 international Peter Grummitt who, probably, was the most like him for razor-sharp reflexes. A key figure in the stories of both Nottingham Forest and Arsenal, Fred was a team-mate of Forest legends Sam Weller Widdowson and Tinsley Lindley before moving to London after being sacked from Chilwell Ordnance Depot for taking time off to play football. He got a job with the Royal Arsenal factory at Dial Square, Woolwich, and was instrumental with three other former Forest players, Morris and Charlie Bates and Bill Parr, in the formation of Royal Arsenal Football Club. It was Fred who agreed to approach his former club for help. Forest responded with a full set of red shirts and a football. In return, they asked that the new club allow Fred to rejoin them for FA Cup-ties.
Beardsley’s last game for Forest was a cup-tie three years after leaving Nottingham. He played a total of fifteen FA Cup-ties for Forest and the committee honoured him with the presentation of an inscribed and ornately engraved silver cigarette case. A miniature painting of the player himself decorated the lid and the inscription recognised his ‘valuable services as the Forest goalkeeper.’Fred was elected vice-chairman when Arsenal became a limited company in 1893 and served for the next two decades. He quit when Arsenal moved north of the Thames to Highbury and joined the committee at Charlton Athletic for a time before deciding to concentrate on his tobacconist’s business. He died, aged 82, in 1939. In 1940 a German bomb flattened his former shop.
In the early 1950s, Ilkeston Town dominated the Central Alliance, winning the championship in four successive seasons with Nottingham Forest ‘A’ and Linby Colliery their closest challengers. Gates in excess of 2,000 were the norm. In April 1953, Sheffield Wednesday visited the Manor Ground for a benefit match and were held to a 2-2 draw before a crowd of 4,000. A fortnight later another 4,000 gate saw Derby prove too strong for the home side. Straw scored a hat-trick against his former club and Jackie Stamps got one in a 4-1 win. Barrowcliffe was also in the Rams’ team. Hackland scored Town’s goal. A skilful, attack-minded half-back, Horace Hackland had been spotted as a teenager with Basford United and Grove Celtic. He was signed by Forest towards the end of the war and, in 1950, Ilkeston beat off competition for his signature from a number of non-league clubs. The clincher in his capture was Town’s willingness to provide the player with a pair of contact lenses, making him one of the few footballers wearing them in those days.
Phil Bibby, Les ‘Snowy’ Smith and Hackland, all former Foresters, formed a formidable half-back line for Town in a remarkable game that became part of Ilkeston folklore that (with apologies to novelist Mark Haddon) could have been titled ‘The Curious Incident of the White Ball in a Tree’. Town had reached the first round proper of the FA Cup for the first time and in November 1951 a crowd of 9,000 came to the Manor Ground to watch the tie against Football League side Rochdale of the Third Division North.“Please consider your neighbour and squeeze up those extra few inches which will make all the difference to the comfort of the crowd,” wrote secretary Bernard Shaw in his programme notes. “If you have a boy and he cannot see properly or is in danger of being crushed, send him to the children’s corner just above the dressing rooms. A police officer will be in charge there and he will be safer.”
It rained heavily for hours before kick-off. My game for Stanton Colts was called off so I managed, with the co-operation of a friendly official, to get in to watch the second half. The rain was now coming down in torrents. Former West Ham United left-winger Eric Betts had given Rochdale an interval lead beating goalkeeper Joe Sharman, who had parried his first shot, from the rebound. Jackie Ward, the other former Red in Town’s side, ploughed through the mud early in the second half but was thwarted by the conditions and couldn’t force the ball past Jimmy Nicholls in the visitors’ goal. Then Betts got a second from the penalty spot. Town pressed strongly with only about seven minutes left and Rochdale’s desperation showed when a defender smashed the ball high into an Elm tree behind the Bath Street goal. The club had provided a white ball because of the gloom but it was the only one they had got and now it was stuck at the top of a tree outside the ground on land adjacent to the Rutland Hotel. Committee member Alf Jackson tried valiantly to climb the tree but failed to retrieve the ball. After a lengthy delay, referee Turner of Halifax was forced to allow play to resume with a standard ball. Rochdale cleared the resulting corner but in the hectic closing minutes a player from each side was sent off.
An FA inquiry was held into allegations by the ref that club officials had not co-operated fully in trying to rescue the white ball. In mitigation, it was pointed out that the ball had been kicked out of the ground by a panicky Rochdale defender. Town were fully exonerated and the white ball episode intrigued the nation after famous broadcaster Richard Dimbleby interviewed secretary Shaw about it when his ‘Down Your Way’ radio programme visited Ilkeston.The Ball in a Tree became Town’s emblem and was worn on their shirts until 1966 when the club replaced white with red as the dominant colour and became known as the Robins. This was the nickname that had been given to Ilkeston United in the past. A new club badge depicting a robin was adopted.
Sadly, the local council decided to redevelop the site of the Manor Ground. The New Manor Ground was opened on 15th August 1992 on a former waste tip off Awsworth Road between the Erewash canal and the river. It has a 3,000 capacity, a landmark Clocktower Stand, clubhouse and floodlights. Town FC, however, went the way of its predecessor being ruled insolvent by the High Court over an unpaid tax bill. A new Ilkeston FC was formed in 2010 and plays in the Northern Premier League. 
 

Last edited by Matchman (14/1/2022 10:39 AM)

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According to BBC weather;  the fog will lift by 3pm  -  so hopefully we'll be okay

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2646274       

click on the circled 6 at 1500 hours which shows visibility Good  (Prior to then visibility is moderate)



 

Last edited by Matchman (15/1/2022 9:42 AM)

We're off ...   folowing the minutes silence.



 

Last edited by Matchman (15/1/2022 3:05 PM)

Good save by Brown on his goal line. GOAL Ilkeston  Remaye Campbell  0n 14 minutes 
Campbell intercepts a back pass and goes round the keeper and slots into the empty net.       1-0

Brilliant long range effort by Sutton forward who sees Durrant off his line.  Only just off target with Durrant desperately struggling to get back. Otherwise Ilkeston are on top.       1-0     20 mins

Sat 15th January 2022
UPDATE 15:37

Northern Premier League Midland Division
Cambridge City  0  Spalding Utd  0
Carlton Town  1  Wisbech Town  0
Chasetown  1 Coleshill Town 0
Corby Town  0  Yaxley  0
Halesowen Town  2   Stamford  0
Ilkeston Town  1  Sutton Coldfield  1
Loughborough D  1. Bedworth Utd  0
Shepshed D  0  Daventry Town  0
Soham Town Rangers  1  Histon  0
Sporting Khalsa  0  Belper Town 0

Football League
Derby  0 Sheffield Utd 0
Millwall  0 N Forest 0
Mansfield 0 Walsall 0

FA Trophy
Alfreton  1 Halifax 1
Notts Co 1 Eastleigh 1

National League
Barnet 0 Chesterfield 0

Northern Premier League Premier Division
Gainsborough 0 Basford U 0

Close call Sutton hit post and rebound ballooned over 42’ 2-1

HALF TIME
Ilkeston Town 3
Sutton Coldfield Town 1

Penalty to Ilkeston  Hand Ball
GOAL Campbell scores from the spot  4-1 53’

Attendance 667

Good inter play by Caine leads To Reid shot but straight at keeper 4-1

Maguire booked for dissent 70’ 4-1