It's a fine sunny day for the official start of the football league season. I have come to the Kings Norton ground of Pilkington XXX, where Cadbury Athletic have entered in to a 3 year ground share deal after leaving their previous residency at Alvechurch FC.
They are hosting the phoenix, supporter owned club of Hinckley AFC from Leicestershire, formed in 2014 after the demise of Hinckley United. While speaking to one of the Hinckley supporters, I find out that their club will be looking for their own ground (they currently share at Heather St.Johns FC) as Leicester Road FC who own the former Hinckley Utd ground will not be vacating it in the near future. It's a ridiculous situation but it will be interesting to see the competition between both the Hinckley clubs this season after Leicester Road's promotion to Div 1.
By the time the teams take to the field, I can see that there is a fair sized crowd for this level, with at least half the contingent from Hinckley who have brought along a number of colourful flags and banners with them.
Cadbury are in the company colours of purple and white while Hinckley are in red and blue.
For the first 10 minutes, it's Hinckley who are doing all the attacking with their speedy forwards, Javia Roberts (seen above) and Marco Adaggio causing the home team lots of problems. It's good to see Mr.Adaggio again, as he had a spell at my home club of Worcester City a few years ago when I moved back to the city. He was one of the best players at the time, scoring some vital goals in what was a struggling team and he would always give 100%.
The Cadbury No.9, Stuart Butcher then drags a shot wide in a break away attack.
After 38 minutes, Hinckley's Nathan Walker goes close to breaking the deadlock with a chipped shot over keeper Shaun Hayes, only to see it hit the bar and out of play.
Hinckley are having a good spell of pressure at the end of this half, with their No.11 Luke Edwards having a shot from the left go just wide and then in injury time, a similar shot by Edwards (shown above) is parried by the keeper only for the ball to loop up obligingly and Adaggio leaps up to nod it home from close in.
A deserved lead for the visitors at half time but Cadbury Athletic are sure to come back strongly I think.
Edwards though is carrying on where he left off before the interval as he sees 2 of his shots go close in the early stages of the second half.
Cadbury Athletic begin to exert more pressure as the game progresses. Their diminutive No.11, Josh Harris-James, clatters in to a Hinckley player with his elbow raised and is lucky to get away with a booking, although to be fair it's been a pretty clean game. His team mate, No.10 Dean Lea gets involved by making a comment when some of the Hinckley players are crowding round and things get heated for a few seconds before settling down (as shown below).
With the increasing pressure for an equaliser by the home team, Hinckley keeper, Jack Hartopp manages to tip over a dangerous in-swinging corner and soon after makes a great save from close in to deny Cadbury's Ryan Spink a certain goal.
That's the closest Cadbury get to scoring and it's the visitors who are victorious today. On this showing I think Hinckley will feature in the top 6 this season and Cadbury Athletic will be in the top half of the table.
Match attendance: 158
Match entrance fee: £4
Match programme: £1.50
Match entertainment: 6.5/10
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