The All New Arnold Who

As 'Whoville' finally finds a US Broadband connection we can at last note that Arnold's 4-0 win against Pilkington XXX of the Midland Combination last Saturday takes the Club into the 3rd Round Stage of the FA Vase for the 6th time in our 'Town' history.

Forum reports are very sketchy but team wise forward Mark Parrott (ATN 337) was handed his full debut whilst Academy 'vet' Sam Holden (ATN 365) came on as a sub and scored on his first team debut to complete the scoring at 4-0.

Craig Mitchell's brace at Dunkirk takes his personal tally to a highly impressive 26 goals from just 34 appearances. Wilko chimed in with his 77th Arna goal which have taken a 'little' longer to accrue with Saturday being his 249th appearance for the Club. 

Not much is known about our next opponents, Shropshire based Market Drayton Town. Known as Little Drayton until 2003 they were West Midlands League Champions in 05/06 and gained promotion to the Midland Alliance. Last season the 'Gingerbread Men' finished 3rd in the League and this year are making the running as title contenders........ so with the problems we've had with Midland Alliance opponents in 'recent' years that's perhaps ALL we need to know to tell us this is going to  be a tough game.

This will be Market Drayton's first appearance in the 3rd Round of the Vase. Their compact 'Greenfields Sports Ground' is said to have a small seating enclosure and hard standing.

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taken from the ArnoldWho Forum:-

ARNOLD TOWN 1   WINTERTON RANGERS 1   - the who-view

Based on this evidence I suspect Arna aren’t the first, and probably won’t be the last team to be thankful to meet a Winterton side minus their great goal scoring machine Rob Northern this season.

In a game which never really fully ignited the bulk of the clearer chances fell to and were badly squandered by the Winterton forward line.

Previous on field mis-demeanours left Arnold without Hall, Clarke and Walton whilst a weird desire to get married during the football season had taken Kevin Brookes off elsewhere…………what’s wrong with June for goodness sakes!!!!!

To help man the fort another call had gone out for a Carlton Town defender and David Jephson made his long awaited debut for the Eagles after leaving the club 13 years ago. Meanwhile Dominic Thomas found himself relegated to the bench following the previous game against Bridlington - see the last who-view.

As early as the fifth minute Rangers’ Luke Foulkes saw the ball sitting up invitingly for him in the box only to slice his short range effort well wide. Two minutes later a weak attempted clearance by Jephson allowed Andy Holt a clear run on goal which thankfully fizzled out without troubling Broster.

Arnold showed their first attacking intent after nine minutes when a neat header on from Carruthers saw the ball running nicely for Mitchell who opted to shoot early, high and wide.

The beginning of the game rather typified the rest of the afternoon more or less, chances pretty much 2 to 1 in the visitors favour with no real threat being created at either end.

A poor first half ended with Winterton on top and Jephson limping off after an ill-timed tackle ended up causing him more pain than his opponent.

Thankfully the debut left back was able to continue after the break and began to apply himself much better to his task as the Arnold defence often found themselves with their backs to the wall against the goal shy Champions.

With the Eagles unable to create much against the Division’s number one ranked defence a re-shuffle was made with Freestone coming on for Adams on 65 mins and Wilkins replacing Brewster five minutes later.

After these changes though the game’s best chance to date fell at Broster’s end when Winterton’s Lee Mohammed found himself running clear on goal but somehow managed to drag his shot wide of the left hand post with the goal beckoning.

But then on 77 minutes the stalemate was finally broken when Rangers’ keeper Adam Nicholson made a total lash up when attempting to clear an awkward back pass from the left edge of his area. The ball skewed off high to the right and fell bouncing into the path of Freeo who took it wide of the covering defender before sending over a cool accurate lob which beat all the nearby Winterton players' attempts to rush back and prevent the ball crossing the unguarded goal line.

Arnold’s advantage wasn’t to last long though. Having been so woeful from open play it took a dead ball opportunity conceded on the edge of the area on 83 minutes to give the visitors a share of the spoils.

I’ll let Papa’s superb camera work do the talking on this one………..

Basically a thunderous shot by Foulkes which if anything seemed to speed up upon getting a slight deflection from the defensive wall. Either way Broster certainly had no chance.

As with the first half the game ended with Rangers very much on the offensive and memories of their somewhat fortunate last minute 2-1 win at GR last season started to come flooding back. Thankfully despite the referee finding over 5 mins of added time from lord knows where the new look Maroons managed to hold out this time and thus secure another hard fought point to help the promotion drive.

Arnold line up:- Broster, Thornton, Jephson, Dyce, Hudson, Adams (Freestone 65), Clifford, Meikle, Mitchell, Carruthers (Thomas 79), Brewster (Wilkins 70)

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As the Eagles prepare to meet reigning Champions, Winterton at GMW today news has filtered through of another Carlton Town defender signing NCEL forms for the Maroons.

David Jephson, a 31 one year old left back has been a long standing servant at Carlton for some thirteen years now - the picture left is from Carlton's official web site. It will be interesting to see if David makes his debut for us today as well as looking out for who gets to start up front for Arna alongside Craig Mitchell following Chris Freestone's hat trick for the Reserves in their match at Mickleover in midweek. 

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Just a note to say that the Who-ville staff will be taking a break from the rigours of painting everywhere maroon shortly ....so if updates etc appear to become a little stale over the next couple of weeks or so you'll know that once again the good ol' USA is proving to be one of the least friendly places to be for ad-hoc broadband access......and where Norman's going (pot holing in the Cairn Gorms or somewhere equally obscure) you just can't get a signal for love nor money.

Still by all estimations I expect us to be EV bound by the time we get back fully up and running......as well as still in the Vase amd pushing for promotion......and a win on the premium bonds would be very nice too.....

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Well, no sooner had we managed to say 'white rabbits' in Whoville....Norman has cleared out the Latest News page....but never fear the happenings of October-Fest are still available to view on the 'All New Who Archive Page'.

Norman also promisies that when he gets a minute or three he may sort out some of the older Who Pages to place in the archives - although these will be subjected to a certain level of vetting.... we wouldn't want to be in any danger of upsetting certain people ALL over again now would we....oh dear me no.

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