I missed my second Saturday game in a row due to the architect’s brother getting married. But every cloud has a silver lining. I’m sat with my bro-in-law, at the reception. Life has been cruel to him, not only is he a copper, but he also supports D**by County. How unfair is that? He’s looking a bit sheepish. I’ve had the best part of three bottles of red and we’re having are normal row about the police. I’m taking the p**s out of our beloved Metropolitan Police and their bungled attempts to catch Brazilian illegal immigrant Jean Charles de Mendes. Pc Plod suddenly mentions he worked in the notorious Meadows for four years. I have a cunning plan: “Another bottle of red, officer?”
It’s Bonfire Night, 7pm, and we park in the Portland Leisure Centre. We head down Arkwright Walk. The new Meadows have been described as an architectural disaster; town hall planners of that era should be named and shamed. It’s a series of rat-runs, alleys, snickets and cul-de-sacs. The paths are narrow; I feel hemmed in. The houses are crammed together without thought or feeling. They may not fill the skyline like the tower blocks of the sixties, but they are ugly and characterless. It’s an impossible place to police. To our right is St Saviour’s Church built in 1863; it’s an outstanding creation of beauty surrounded by ugliness.
We sweep left past a closed circuit television camera into the Bridgeway Centre. Here lays a shrine to 17 year old gun victim Nathan Williams, cruelly taken away from his family and friends with a single gunshot wound in broad daylight. It brought a shell-shocked community together in grief. A year on from this senseless killing, pinned to a post, at the scene of his death, are cards, flowers, poems and messages from those he left behind. I am moved. We walk past Poets Corner under a dimly lit subway and peel off the main drag down a narrow pathway.
After a few moments we are in the old Meadows, the streets are alive with children playing and fireworks being launched at garden parties. The houses are three storeys high just like the Albert Finney movies filmed in Radford in the sixties. There is a spirit and soul to this community. Whatever negativity life throws at them they dismiss, and soldier on together.
When I scouted at Notts County’s centre of excellence I was obsessed with the inner-city. I often watched Meadow Colts, and landed a boy for The Pies at 15. He’s an apprentice at Field Mill now, and I watch his progress with interest. Liverpool winger Jermaine Pennant is Meadows born and bred. He lost his mother to cancer at a young age and is the oldest of four children. Football gave him an outlet. He escaped the ghetto. He couldn’t even read or write.
Greenwood FC and Meadows Albion FC amalgamated twenty years ago. Radford first started playing in 1964 under the name of Manlove and Alliots, a local engineering firm. In 1977 Radford became the first amateur league side to wear advertising on their shirts. Both teams play in the Central Midlands Football League. I enjoyed the friendship, warmth and camaraderie of the Radford people on my visit last season.
I pick up the taxman at just after 7pm and we are parked up at the ground in less than fifteen minutes. It’s £3 admission and a £1 for the programme. I have a chat with Greenwood’s secretary Dennis Wakelin. I’d phoned him up the night before and told him I would introduce myself: “You won’t miss me” he replied: “I’m the fat bloke.” I’m saddened to here that the Under 19 side has been disbanded due to cost-cutting. Surely there should be some sort of funding to keep these young lads off the street and give them a life experience. Greenwood Meadows have had to spend £10,000 of club funds on fencing around the perimeter of the ground in the close-season. The whispers are that they have aspirations to play at a higher level next season. They currently lie second from bottom of the league, but they impressed me at Radford last season.
The taxman gets the teas in at the snack bar; he’s as white as a sheet, he’s seen a sign behind the bar it says “No Loaded Firearms Allowed in the Clubhouse.” Apparently they have a Country and Western night on Saturdays.
The game kicks-off, there’s a waft of cigarette smoke in the air from the nearby Imperial Tobacco factory. There are early chances at both ends in an open encounter. But it’s Radford keeper Scott Flinders who misjudges the bounce of a through ball; Greenwood’s Donachie rolls the ball into an empty net. Radford strive for an equaliser, but on the half hour Donachie makes it 2-0 to the home side, pouncing on an aimless ball and finishing smartly.
Radford are in shock, they clearly fancy their chances but Meadows never let them settle or get into a rhythm. Speedy right winger Daniel Miller latches onto a long ball, and once again keeper Flinders is caught out of position, 3-0. Greenwood Meadows are still celebrating when Radford’s John Manders seizes on some hesitation in the home defence to reduce the deficit.
There are some guys from the FA here tonight, they are poncing about the joint and are suited and booted. I swear I actually caught one of them watching the game for one moment. They won’t go in the bar, no chance, not with that sign up behind the bar.
At the break we have a stroll around the ground and meet an inner city legend: Maurice Samuels. Maurice is a social worker in St Anns and is trying, through sport, to bring the communities of the Meadows, St Anns and Radford together. He has formed a football club called Unity FC. They have played youth teams at Forest and Blackburn and have acquitted themselves well. Blackburn Rovers have signed a 17 year old from Nottingham on a one year contract. Samuels mentors these boys and gives them hope not hate, love and not war. I know Mo well, we used to work together.
Radford drive forward in the second period but the Greenwood Meadows defence are immense; Miles, Miller, Wilson and Morgan fight tooth and nail for every ball. Donachie completes his hat-trick with a well taken header from a free-kick. The rout is completed ten minutes from time with his fourth of the night following a mix-up in the Radford defence. Substitute Bailey scores a late consolation.
Radford manager Julian Garmston is not a happy chappy and has moaned and groaned all night. The referee has felt the wrath of his tongue, unfairly in my opinion. He should look more closely at his team’s performance than that of the man in black, who may have missed a few tackles, but has allowed the game to flow.
Radford number seven Darren Garmston is a fine player, and at 23 can look forward to playing at a far higher level than this. Tonight he is, like his Dad, a frustrated figure.
Tonight has thrown two troubled communities together under one roof. Football is the winner.
Greenwood Meadows 5 Radford FC 2
Attendance: probably more than watched Channel 4’s Property Ladder
Man of the Match: Dave Donachie
Within the Clubhouse of Greenwood Meadows Football Club there is a sign that I can pretty much guarantee that you will not find at any other football ground throughout the county of Nottinghamshire.
The sign displays a unique welcome to all by instructing entrants not to take loaded firearms into the bar area. Given the fact that the historical homelands of this now merged Club are Sneinton and The Meadows, (two inner city area of Nottingham with a rather worrying history of gun crime), one might find this warning a little unsettling. Don’t be. What you will find on Old Lenton Lane is a pleasant & friendly Club, a world away
from the alleged ganglands of inner city Nottingham.
Greenwood Meadows Football Club were formed in 1987 following the amalgamation of Greenwood Rovers and Meadows Albion. Founded in 1957, Greenwood Rovers progressed from the Notts Amateur League to the Notts Alliance, where in 1985/86 they finished runners up in the League and semi finalists in the Cup. Meadows Albion were in the MA Spartan League and won several honours, including the Senior League and League Cup in 1984 and 1985 respectively. However, in order to progress up the footballing pyramid, the decision was taken to merge, and in 1999 Greenwood Meadows left the Notts Alliance to join the Central Midlands League. They finished runners up in the Premier Division in 2000/01, winning promotion to the Supreme Division. In 2008, they joined the inaugural local Step 6 League, the East Midlands Counties League.
A great deal of work has gone into developing the Ground up to Step 6 standards. The ground is located below the raging traffic of the towering Clifton Bridge flyover, slightly nearer to city life than their nearby rivals, Dunkirk and Pelican. However, it is still a fairly picturesque affair, bordered on two sides by an unmarked country lane, which runs down to the nearby golf club, and trees and hedges on the other two 
sides. The Ground is rung entirely by a solid white barrier, and being fully exposed to the elements, can be a tad on the cool side in the winter months.
There are two identical dugouts on the south side of the ground. These are fairly basic rectangular corrugated iron affairs, though there's plenty of room, the framework has been painted thoughtfully in Greenwood green and the interior contain smart red plastic seating. Two matching, though larger, covered stands flank these dugouts, with room available for 100 spectators within each. Unfortunately, level concrete standing limits the view on busy match days, and neither stand offers much wind resistance, as both front and sides are exposed to the weather. This must have proven particularly uncomfortable on the day that Greenwood Meadows took part in the world Record Groundhop in 2004, which involved attending six matches at six different grounds in the space of 24 hours. The endurance-testing marathon took place in gale force winds, attended by 302 brave souls at the Old Lenton Lane leg of the Hop. Given the appalling conditions, I expect that quite a few of those hardy attendees will have retired to the comfort of the Clubhouse, weaponless of course.
Sited on the east side of the Ground, the Clubhouse is quite unusual building. Part hut, part porter cabin, it is seemingly precariously balanced on several brick based stilts, giving the impression that it could keel over at any given time. However, the facilities inside are more than adequate, with social events such as gig nights occasionally catered for. 
Perhaps the most impressive feature of the ground is the four steel floodlights, which tower over each side of the Ground. Installed in 2004, the four huge clusters resting on the comparatively frail posts appear to be almost peering over the pitch for a better view, like extra terrestrials of War of the Worlds fame.
As mentioned previously, the wind invariably gets up in this exposed area on the flood banks of the River Trent. As a result of which you may well catch a whiff of fresh tobacco in the air. This is likely to be from the dominant Horizon tobacco factory on the north side of the ground, home of the world famous John Player brand since 1877. Built in 1972, the factory is to this day the biggest addition to Imperial Tobacco’s operations, costing £14 million and occupying a 45-acre site. An impressive building indeed, almost as much as those floodlights.