Historic Boxing Day Football Match Resurrected- ALMOST!!

The tradition of the villagers of East Down and neighbouring village West Down playing a football match on Boxing Day had suffered several years’ hiatus in spite of running for at least 30 year This was until Martyn Kemp, a former regular player from the East Down team, approached The Pyne Arms to help get the tradition back up and running (pardon the pun!).

It was all set- West Down’s Captain/Manager had even made the goal posts himself, but the icy conditions meant that the commercial field in West Down could not be used, and the West Down team were forced to concede the match for this year.
Our intrepid team from East Down was not going to be deterred though- although we suspect that Chef’s homemade curry afterwards back at The Pyne Arms, was spurring them on to still get out there and play! They still wanted to play- even if it was against each other!!

Very kindly coming to the rescue and offering us an alternative pitch to play on, were Tim, Nick and David of Ford Farm: http://www.ksfencing.co.uk who let us use their field, which had hosted the match one of our players had last played on about 27 years previously.

Several could not make it due to dangerous road conditions, but there were enough of our team for a good hour’s play with 2 teams, and our youngest player was 8 years old- a true grit future team-mate in the making there!
Many thanks to everyone- and we have photographic evidence on our brave teammates: Martyn, Luke, David, Ollie, Joe, James, David, James, Ryan & Will

Posted - 26th January 2011