Guiseley 0 Marine 3 (Northern Premier League, Saturday 13th August 2022)
It's a bit of a running joke with me and my mate that on the occasions we attempt to go to a non league game, there is a good chance we won't actually make it if there's a decent pub nearby. I s'pose it doesn't help that non-league football and pubs pretty much go hand in hand - our local, the Great Northern, is about five minutes' walk from Thackley's ground and more than once last season we ended up meeting there for a pre-match pint before going on to watching the Dennyboys play only for us to end up staying in the pub because it was tanking it down outside or someone we hadn't seen for ages turned up or...well, you kind of get the picture.
I thought that by changing our destination to Guiseley that I'd manage to avert this. I was wrong. We somehow picked an absolutely scorching hot day to go to Nethermoor and after a pre-match pint at the Potting Shed pub nearby, set off for the ground. We got about halfway across the car park of the Station pub over the road, realised that there was no way we were standing in the open air in these conditions for two hours especially as both of us tend to burn to a crisp after five minutes of midsummer sun (my mate’s a redhead and I’m a middle aged goth, go figure) so we decided to call this one off and headed for the coolness of the pub.
It's a shame and I fully intend to make a proper trip back to Guiseley some time later in the autumn. Not least because in my teenage years, it was the nearest ground to where I grew up in Otley and on the occasions when Pools were playing at the other end of the country and a trip to Bramall Lane wasn't on the cards, I frequently ended up there. At the time, Guiseley were having one of their intermittent successful spells and were challenging for promotion from the Northern Premier League to the Conference (this was in the days before the Conference North).
Nethermoor’s a tidy compact little ground under the shadow of the nearby Chevin hill and me and my dad spent many an afternoon there in the mid-'90s. That Guiseley team was an enjoyable one to watch playing fast-paced attacking football. Indeed, two of them would go on to play in the football league - Lutel James, a tricky winger who would frequently leave opposition fullbacks floundering in his wake with his runs downfield would go on to play for Bury under Neil Warnock in the late '90s and was subsequently a part of the Accrington Stanley side that enjoyed that meteoric rise up to the league in the early noughties. He even represented St Kitts and Nevis at international level.
However, it's the other player that you might have heard of - Geoff Horsfield. A proper old school English centre forward, Horsfield was a big burly striker who was also deceptively skillful for his size. Picked up by the Lions after failing to make the grade at Scarborough, he and his strike partner Bob Colville, a thirtysomething Yorkshire non-league veteran, were borderline unplayable that season with the strike partnership yielding close to forty goals, twenty plus of which came from Horsfield. Soon afterwards, Horsfield would be snapped up by local Conference neighbours Halifax and bang in 30 goals as the Shaymen romped home with the Conference title. He would continue his goalscoring exploits in League Two and after netting seven in his first ten games, newly minted Fulham would spend £350,000 on his services. Horsfield would be a key part of the Cottagers' rise up to the Championship under Kevin Keegan before going on to taste Premiership football with Birmingham and West Brom.
Guiseley would end up finishing the first season I saw them in 3rd place in the NPL, even surviving the loss of manager Ray McHale to Scarborough (then still a league side) with hulking centre half and captain Steve Richards taking over as player-manager after his departure. The season saw a three way battle for the title between the Lions, Leek Town and Marine, the latter of whom just happened to be the Lions' opponents today hence my interest in attending the game. Ironically, the whole thing turned out to be a moot point as both Guiseley and Marine's grounds failed to meet the Conference standards hence Leek, who finished 2nd, were promoted by default.
It's safe to say that Guiseley and Marine's relevant paths have diverged a bit since those days - that season was pretty much as good as it got for Marine who missed the boat when it came to joining the Conference North a decade or so later and would spend most of the next two decades floundering around the Northern Premier League. However, a good Cup run in the Covid season a couple of years ago saw the group reach Round 3 and get the plum tie of Spurs at home. It's the sort of tie that in the old days would have seen the club play the fixture at a local lower league ground (probably Tranmere in Marine's case) and draw in the extra supporters for the big day. However, with supporters not allowed in the ground, BBC viewers were treated to the somewhat surreal sight of Kane, Son et al plying their trade on Marine's tiny astroturf pitch. Spurs would win the tie comfortably in the end but the television money had helped Marine return to the NPL Premier after being stuck in Division 1 West for the previous few years.
Guiseley, on the other hand, had achieved the near unthinkable and, after relegation in the early noughties, had bounced back impressively culminating in the club reaching the National League for the first time in its history in 2015. They would then go on to confound everybody by staying there for three years, avoiding relegation on the last day in 2016 and 2017 (with larger neighbours Halifax and York being the respective fall guys for the Lions' great escapes) before finally succumbing to the drop in 2018 (though the buggers would still beat Pools at Nethermoor that season).
Unfortunately since then, the club had been on a downward spiral culminating in another relegation in the season just gone. The Lions had been hovering around the drop zone all season but a terrible run-in saw Telford and Farsley Celtic overhaul them in the last few games to send them back down to the NPL with even the return of Steve Kittrick, the manager who'd got them promoted a few years before, failing to fire the team to safety. I remember checking the results on the last day of the campaign - with ten minutes to go, Guiseley were 1-0 up against Alfreton and looked to be heading for safety at Farsley's expense only for two injury time goals to sink them and send them down.
As it turned out, we didn't miss much by staying in the pub - Guiseley's hopes of a flying start to the season were comprehensively derailed as Marine won 3-0. By all accounts it was a much closer game than the scoreline suggests - Marine took the lead in the first 20 minutes, Guiseley spent much of the next hour or so pressing hard for an equaliser only to be hit with two late suckerpunches. Sitting in the Hawkhill Tavern, at least we were gifted some light relief by watching Brentford dismantle Man Utd 4-0. There's always someone worse off than yourself etc. Hopefully when I make it back to Nethermoor in the coming weeks, the performance'll be a bit better.
I'm away in Norfolk for the next couple of weeks but should hopefully be back in business with a trip to Thackley at the start of September...if we ever make it out of the Northern that is...
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