Moor Lane Tuesday, July 30th, 2024   1st Team Friendly Attendance: 300 (estimated)         Salford City 2-0 Preston North End
2024 /25

Comments :

Convergence visit:- A pleasantly warm evening for train up to Manchester and horribly expensive taxi to the ground. Being pre-season most of the food boxes weren''t open but we managed a truly excellent pie and a pint of something cold. Sat in the main stand in front of the hospitality bars and Nicky Butt and Roy Keane were sat behind us to one side while Paul Scholes was behind to the other Very small crowd and most of them wearing skull caps so unfortunate that Charlie said about how nice it was of a summer''s evening to watch the sun setting and the heavy dew coming out. None of them looked that heavy to me!! The match was surprisingly competitive as a pre-season and mostly enjoyable. Nice cheap Uber back tot eh station and home in no time at all. MY FIRST VISIT 4-August-2018 National League vs Leyton Orient 1-1 Attendance 2,156 First game of the new season and I was quivering with excitement like a schoolboy heading off to his first ever match. And it turned out to be a very good day start to finish. Just over 3 miles walk from Manchester Piccadilly (Manchester really is forrible!!!) but good warm weather. Not a pretty walk by any means but quiet enough. The area around New Bury Road lower end is more like the back-streets of some middle eastern city. A few old housing terraces have been converted into dodgy shops (all the doors and windows blacked out and doors only open a crack) while young men stood around on the narrow pavement talking arabic to each other between trying to hustle you inside for a look-see at their rip-off goods. Then it was up the hill into Broughton where the streets were cluttered with with Jews heading to and from their synagogues and meeting houses. So it was from Cairo to Tel Aviv in less than a mile. At least the area around the stadium is pleasant enough with lots of trees and parkland. The stadium sits in a natural hollow and is very well done - clean and mostly new with a sort of food and drink ''village'' in converted box containers all along the home end. I passed on the curry ''house'' and opted for a truly excellent hot dog with a real sausage and crispy onions (a superb Salford delicacy). Very necessary after the walk as was the pint of (not very nice) Tetley''s. Good exciting game. Salford played well but eventually buckled under relentless Orient pressure, the away team showing their previous league credentials while The Ammies - even given their high number of new ex-league recruits - showed themselves up as new boys at this level. In the end Salford had to be happy with a point. Then is was a long walk back to town (temperature now considerably higher) but me ''storming it'' and managing to catch the train a full hour earlier than the one I''d original scheduled. Home before 5. Great. So a good day and a great start to the new season.