Football: Emley's nearly men making up for lost time

Lincoln City 2 Emley 2

You can, if you like, call Emley a village team. Inasmuch as they represent a rural community of 1,800 people perched on the moors outside Huddersfield, they are precisely that. But the description is a little misleading.

Emley's 11 on Saturday comprised two firemen, two pipe fitters, two insurance salesmen, one factory shift supervisor, one postman, one cricket coach and two others between jobs. They are not, however, a bunch of local lads for whom football is merely a hobby.

Indeed, there is another side to a good few of them; one that provides a glimpse of the other side of the professional game, the side where reality is not money and success but disappointment and rejection.

One of the firemen, Steve Nicholson, spent four years hoping for a breakthrough with Leeds; Glynn Hurst, the postman, was once a trainee at Tottenham, signed up by Terry Venables, no less; Deiniol Graham, pipe fitter, gave five years to the dream that he would one day lead the line for Manchester United.

None of them made it; not even Graham, one of the original "Fergie's fledglings" and a goalscorer on his United debut. Now 28, he played in only one more game before breaking an arm and slipping to the back of the queue again, waiting for another chance that never came.

They have wound up at Emley, of the UniBond League, because they still want to play and because the manager has good contacts. Ronnie Glavin played for Partick Thistle, Celtic and Scotland before Allan Clarke lured him to Barnsley in 1979. He never went back. Now he runs coaching camps for Nike and looks after Emley in his spare time.

Hurst and Graham both passed through Oakwell, as did Ian Banks, who would have played on Saturday but for a torn calf and might well have made the difference between winning and drawing, as Emley did unluckily after taking the lead with just six minutes on the clock.

Having equalised Terry Fleming's early header for Lincoln when Hurst shot home off a post seconds before half-time, they went ahead through Graham, converting the useful Dean Calcutt's cross after 84 minutes, only for a strict referee to add on every second lost through a sequence of stoppages and allow Fleming to strike again. Unofficial timekeepers clocked the goal at 97 minutes and 45 seconds.

"Considering we were without Banks and Neil Lacey, who are just about our most experienced players, it was a good result," Glavin said, acknowl- edging that Lincoln, top of the Third Division under the idiosyncratic management of John Beck, have gone 18 matches without defeat.

"But to concede a goal after so many minutes of time added on is hard to take. The players thought they were there."

Emley can console themselves at least with the promise of decent takings from the replay, a week on Wednesday. On police advice, it will not be at the Welfare Ground in the village, where crowds do not regularly exceed 300, but at the McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield.

Their ambitions, of course, go beyond that game. In Yorkshire, everyone knows where Emley is because a huge television mast helpfully marks the spot. Soon, perhaps, their whereabouts will be known further afield.

Goals: Fleming (12) 1-0; Hurst (45) 1-1; Graham (84) 1-2; Fleming (90) 2-2.

Lincoln City (5-3-2): Richardson; Thorpe, Barnett, Walling, Austin, Whitney (Alcide, 70); Stones (Bimson, 70), Holmes, Fleming; Gordon, Brown (Stant, 70). Substitutes not used: Vaughan, Robertson.

Emley (4-4-2): Marples; Nicholson, David, Thompson, Jones; Calcutt, Wood, Wilson, Reynolds; Hurst (Tonks, 89), Graham. Substitutes not used: Dennis, Marshall, Hutson, Johnson.

Referee: T Heilbron (Newton Aycliffe).

Bookings: Lincoln: Barnett, Walling. Emley: Calcutt, Graham, Jones.

Man of the match: Calcutt.

Attendance: 3,729.