Peterborough Rangers - Queens Park

Peterborough Rangers FC
Queens Park
Daimler Avenue
Yaxley
Peterborough
PE7 3AU

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Ground: 112
Date: Saturday 5th June 2021
Farcet United 1-4 Ramsey Town
Peterborough Junior Cup Semi-Final
Attendance: 55

Peterborough Rangers - History

Peterborough Rangers were founded in 2021 and competed in Division 5 of the Peterborough & District League for the 2021/22 season, winning the title after winning all but one of their league matches. This saw the club promoted to Division 3 for the 2022/23 season after league restructuring. They also won the Hunts FA Lower Junior Cup with a 3-1 win over Brampton Reserves.

My Visit

In recent weeks, I had become aware that local football had returned and would be running into mid-June before the start of the new season in late July/early August. Farcet had been playing games in the village for a few weeks now, but until recently the weather had been poor and I hadn't really felt like going to watch any football as a result. However, it had been consistently sunny for the last week or so and, having seen this fixture on Full-Time, I decided the time was right to get to my first football match of any kind since November.

On Friday, after a week of mid-20s temperatures, it had dropped to just below 20 celsius and rained a little bit, but there were no real worries about the game possibly being postponed. Instead, I was somewhat relieved to see the temperature fall as I knew this match would be on a pitch lacking any sort of cover. Yesterday morning, the sun was back out and temperatures were back narrowly above 20 celsius, but not too hot as to be an offputting prospect.

After having lunch, I left the house at around 1:25pm so as to give myself time to stop at the Co-op first and pick up a few snacks, some for the match itself and some for the next couple of days. After that was done, I arrived at the Queens Park site with ten minutes to spare before kick-off, taking a couple of photos before walking to the furthest pitch where the match was set to take place.

With it having been absolutely ages since my last football match, and a couple months longer since I last updated this blog, I felt somewhat out of practice regarding my usual matchday routine, so I spent parts of the first half updating social media and the Futbology app as usual. The only part of the routine I immediately slipped back into normal habits with was my writing of notes for the match report, though I know I can do more on that front once I get properly back into the swing of things early next season.

Naturally, being out of practice meant I didn't do any of my usual pre-match research beyond confirming that this match was taking place at all. That being said, I have since had a look while writing this entry to see that Ramsey were top of Division 2 when the season was curtailed with nine wins and one defeat, while Farcet were in 6th with five wins and four defeats from nine games.

Here's my match report from a convincing victory for Ramsey to send themselves through to the final in two weeks:

Ramsey took the lead two minutes into this tie, a long throw from the right wing headed in by Pete Waters at the near post. That lead was doubled on the half-hour when Charlie Hawkins curled a ball beyond the Farcet defence to Myles Roberts, who beat the keeper to it then smashed the ball into the empty net. On the stroke of half-time, Ramsey should have gone three up when a Farcet defender passed across the edge of the box to Roberts, only for the keeper to recover and stop both him and a second attacker from poking the ball into the net.

The second half started with a concerted spell of Ramsey pressure which saw numerous good chances spurned. However, they finally got their third on 54 minutes when Hawkins got a shot away inside the box and beat the keeper. Two minutes later, Ramsey had a penalty after a defensive scramble to clear in the Farcet box; Hawkins stepped up and placed his effort into the bottom left corner.

Just after the hour mark, Farcet pulled one back after 7 did well to get a cross in from the right wing, the ball being knocked on to 9 to turn and volley into the net from the centre of the box. Despite still having a three-goal advantage at this stage, Ramsey seemed to waver after this goal and that gave Farcet a chance to pepper the Ramsey goal with shots, but to no avail as they were let down by wayward shooting.

This was an enjoyable match for me after so long of only watching football on the TV, with both sides going for it and (mostly) just getting on with it without much of the gamesmanship seen in higher level football. Ultimately, though Farcet tried their hardest to get themselves back into the game, it never felt to me like they would as they struggled to break through the Ramsey backline and were largely wasteful in front of goal when opportunities did present themselves.

Even with a substantial amount of stoppage time at the end of the second half, the match finished by around 3:45pm, so I was able to get back in the house by 4pm and unwind for the rest of the afternoon.

Now that I've been to a football match again, I'm starting to think about future groundhopping prospects after investing very little time into that for ages. While I am still keeping a wary eye on changes in the pandemic situation, I have drawn up a list of grounds I want to visit in the next season or two, including all the new ones in Yaxley's division for next season (regardless of how likely I think it is that I'll be able to get to them) and a few local options at Step 7 and below; while I do prefer watching football in grounds with cover, I am no longer vehemently against watching football on basic pitches like this. It's still not my preference or first choice, but when opportunities for it arise I don't intend to flatly refuse anymore.

This list is by no means exhaustive - in fact, I'll be looking to add more to it as soon as possible - but I think it makes for a good starting point. Also, as you can see, I do intend to visit Ramsey in two weeks for the cup final, as I have heard that their ground does have some cover (or, at the very least, that it had cover in the past). I can't guarantee that I'll be able to make it, but I'll certainly give it a try to get one last ground in for the 2020/21 season. And then it'll hopefully onto an exciting new restart to my groundhopping for the 2021/22 season after so much disruption in the last 12+ months.

The Ground

Queens Park is a multi-pitch facility, with multiple youth pitches closest to the changing room structure and two adult pitches at the far end of the site.

Peterborough Rangers play their home games here, but Farcet United and FC Hampton were both playing here for some of their home games in this late season cup competition (hence why I originally tagged this entry with FC Hampton). The facility has also been used by other local sides in the past, including Riverside FC.

Photos