{"id":171,"date":"2012-01-22T16:34:27","date_gmt":"2012-01-22T16:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martinblack.com\/?p=171"},"modified":"2012-09-28T15:15:25","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T15:15:25","slug":"in-praise-of-lower-league-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/2012\/01\/in-praise-of-lower-league-football\/","title":{"rendered":"In praise of lower-league football"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_172\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-172\" style=\"width: 133px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/martinblack.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/ely-logo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-172\" title=\"ely logo\" src=\"http:\/\/martinblack.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/ely-logo.jpg\" alt=\"Ely City FC badge\" width=\"133\" height=\"144\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-172\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ely City FC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Yesterday I went with my boy (Harry), his pal (Sid) and Sid&#8217;s grandad (John) to see our local side, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elycityfc.com\/\">Ely City FC<\/a> play Dereham Town in a top-of-the-table clash of the Ridgeons League Premier Division.<\/p>\n<p>There weren&#8217;t any highly paid stars, the attendance was 114 (including a handful from\u00a0Dereham), there&#8217;s no electronic scoreboard, or video playback screen or whatever.<\/p>\n<p>But who needs all that stuff?<\/p>\n<p>Instead we saw a thrilling game (final score 1 &#8211; 1) for only \u00a36 per adult, the kids got in free. \u00a0There&#8217;s a club-house where we could buy some hot chocolate for the boys and a pint each for the adults. \u00a0And it wasn&#8217;t fizzed-up cats piss beer, nope, it was a fine pint of Greene King IPA from across the border in Norfolk. \u00a0It tasted great. And what&#8217;s more we could drink it outside while watching the match.<\/p>\n<p>Who could ask for more? \u00a0Well a win for The Robins would have been good but a draw was acceptable, Ely camped out in the Dereham half for the last 30 minutes but couldn&#8217;t hit the back of the net.<\/p>\n<p>We all had a great time and Harry and Sid want to go again.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I went with my boy (Harry), his pal (Sid) and Sid&#8217;s grandad (John) to see our local side, Ely&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[14,37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}