Madiham - another success

Clarets Madiham is now set to become an annual event after a second successful day at the Arbories, and this time it went ahead as scheduled with the weather being kinder with no postponements.

The teams were carefully selected by the panel three days ahead of the game and the selectors clearly came up with the correct line ups as the sides fought out a tough 3-3 draw. A minute's silence was observed before kick off in memory of David Evans (eli), this was the first Clarets Mad game since he passed away last October.

It was a tough game, we had some cheating as inchy dived to win a penalty. He came clean after the game, he was very fortunate not to get himself a yellow card for blatant diving, and another for demanding a red card for the goalkeeper.

With ninety minutes gone, most of us were making our way to the bar when we realised the players were not leaving the pitch. They had decided on a penalty shoot out to determine the winners. Strictly speaking, message board regular Burgerfast had made the decision, and predictably he was the only one to miss as the Blues recorded a 5-3 shoot out win. And then we were all able to go into the bar.

Such was the quality of the two squads that Burnley sent a representative to the game, but Head of Youth Development Vince Overson decided that there was no one ready for the step up. He deliberated long and hard and there were at least five minutes gone before he came to his decision although he did stay until the final whistle. He did though describe one save by goalkeeper jdrobbo as a top save at any level of football.

The real winners on the day were Burnley FC's youth development team with almost £400 raised, taking the Year of the Youth total beyond £16,500.

The teams are pictured below: