Gainsborough – Gainsborough Trinity vs Scunthorpe United

Firstly and primarily, I’m not a football writer, so anyone vaguely interested in knowing what happened in this match would be far better going to look at https://www.scunthorpe-united.co.uk/news/2024/july/report-gainsborough-trinity-3-5-iron/. I thought I’d meander along to the game now that I’ve become quite into this football thing again since the Euros and there was a decent turnout for the game. It cost £12.50 entry including the programme and I managed to resist the very tempting snack bar options during the match.

My first challenge was not to get hit by any flying balls during the practice before the game. Fortunately, I was successful in that mission, but a couple of other people who were less observant (or, more precisely, weren’t focused entirely on avoiding that scenario) managed to get gently struck by a flying football.

I was able to work out that Scunthorpe were playing in claret and blue, with Gainsborough playing in pink for reasons that I didn’t entirely understand. Perhaps with this depth of football writing, I should actually consider a career as a sports journalist.

I’m not a sports photographer, not indeed a photographer of any kind, but here’s the nearest I was getting to an action shot.

This is because it all gets a bit blurry when there is actually action.

Anyway, I thought that the whole arrangement was suitably entertaining. The stewards and staff were all friendly and engaging, politely telling off the errant children who decided to stand on things they shouldn’t. I managed to stand up for two hours without falling over, but I could have gone and got a seat had I wanted to. The ground has a capacity of 4,340 of which around 500 are seated. A long time ago, back in 1912, Gainsborough were in the Second Division of the football league which was quite an achievement given the relatively small size of the town. I’m sure that fans back then hoped for a swift return after they finished last in the league with just 23 points and 4 wins, but it wasn’t to be.

I can’t comment much on the football, although the standard of some players was high and they seemed to work the ball well without just booting it around the field. The teams were relatively young and both teams seemed to play most of their squads with plenty of substitutions, a good way I assume of working out who should be in the starting line-up come the start of the season. At least there were no shortage of goals, with Scunthorpe winning 5-3, although there were a couple of injuries. The referee gave up the match at what seemed to be 89 minutes, but it transpired that there was an injury and that seems a most pragmatic decision. The post-match report mentioned the that the injury that saw the match come to an end required stitches, but wasn’t as bad as it had looked at the time. It’s all a bit dangerous this sport thing……