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As a youngster my Dad introduced me to football by taking me to local non-league grounds. There’s a proliferation of them in the area I live now, and even then living in Gorton, I vividly recall going to places like Stalybridge and Ashton United. But the very first ‘live’ game I saw was at Hyde United. A trip to Ewen Fields in autumn 1961 gave me my introduction to the beautiful game. County was in the future, but with the benefit of 60 years passing it’s almost unbelievable that the team I grew to love would be regular visitors to these places over half a century later.

And by the time Hyde appeared on the itinerary I was approaching the end of my working life, and in a fairly senior position in a large Housing Association in Tameside. When the fixtures for 2012/13 were issued I though it would be an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Our work involved lots of stuff in the community and in particular supporting local sport. What better than to sponsor the game?!?! Enquiries were made and the deal set up. And I will give Hyde their due. For a smallish club the hospitality arrangements were excellent, and also gave me the opportunity to take along a couple of colleagues whose normal football interest lay at Eastlands and Old Trafford!

What they could expect to see was somewhat of a mystery to me. Form had been poor with only two wins in the preceding ten league games, plus an exit from the FA Trophy. The optimism that had been felt when Jim Gannon had arrived for the 2nd time 13 months previously had dissipated somewhat. We were far closer to the southern than the northern end of the table, and only 6 days previously Hyde had won at EP beating what was a truly woeful County team that day.

A goalless first half saw a fair few attempts from Hyde and the County following, (which must have been well over 75% of the crowd of 2,540 feared the worst. However, on the hour mark a corner from Tom Collins, who had had a decent game operating down the right, was glanced home by Connor Jennings. It was his 6th strike in 9 games. At that point he was on loan from Scunthorpe – little did we know that he was to return to EP on a permanent basis over 7 years later!

So a win it was, and the short trip back home, (less than 3 miles!), was made in better heart than many that season. However, the warning bells that had been rung by Snape’s outburst at Woking three weeks earlier were to peal loudly. Two weeks later Gannon was fired, and with it the dreadful Fearn / McKnight “Championship Manager” experiment was in full flow. The history books record the impact of it … and seven years later we are only now in the process of fully recovering from it.

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Memories of trips to Ewen Fields

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THE GAMES

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Where the date is in bold click for highlights of the game

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	Date	Venue	Ground	Competition		F	A	Att:
Wed	26/12/12	h	Edgeley Park	Blue Square Bet Premier (Tier 5)	L	0	2	3,963
Tues	01/01/13	a	Ewen Fields	Blue Square Bet Premier (Tier 5)	W	1	0	2,540
Sat	14/02/15	h	Edgeley Park	Vanarama Conference North (Tier 6)	W	2	0	3,041
Tues	14/04/15	a	Ewen Fields	Vanarama Conference North (Tier 6)	D	1	1	704

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