Match Report

Ay up, everyone!  It's Hanley Bear here and it's time for another visit to Grizzly's railway workshop and, for the first time in ages, there was a real, live football match on the radio!

Grizzly is working on a new section of track that won't link to the rest, because it will be for displaying some of his BR Southern Region units.  He's making what will look like a railway fly-over to sit them on, and the Midland Region trains for the Stoke layout will run underneath.  Endon was curious to see what he was doing.

Can anyone guess what the big ceramic thing with the metal plate on top in the corner is? It might have been made in Stoke-on-Trent but we don't have them on the railways around here.  (I'll tell you in my next post.)

Grizzly likes to run full-length main-line trains and has some of his favourites from all the different British Railways regions on shelves at the back of the workshop. 

Last week, I showed you the big station canopy he built, based on the one at Stoke.  Here it is again.

And here is the station building Grizzly has been working on, also based on Stoke-on-Trent station, although Grizzly's station had to be away from the canopy as there wasn't room for it right alongside it, so he's been building an awning to link the two instead.

It will look very realistic when there are lots of little people on the platforms and trains running through, and when there is a street scene outside the station with little cars and buses.

When it was nearly three o'clock, we put the radio on for the match.  Stoke City were away to Reading.  Although the village of Sonning where he was found is near Reading, Sonning promised to cheer for Stoke, because he is my pal.

It would have been nice to have one of Mrs Kay's famous oatcakes to eat, like we sometimes did before going to a game at the Bet365 Stadium.  

The small people who live in Grizzly's model world can get oatcakes but, because they didn't have oatcake boats in the 1950s, they have to go to a little shop, which we have called 'Mrs Mundy's Oatcakes' after Mrs Kay!

Soon the match was underway and, after only a few minutes, Reading took the lead.  I went "Booooo!" and Sonning gave me a hug, because I was upset.  Stoke are still close to the bottom of the table and can't afford to lose any games, or we might get relegated to League One.

(For non-UK pals, the English football league calls its top division The Premiership, its second division The Championship and then you have League One and League Two).

By half-time, although we did our best there had been no more goals, so we were still losing.  Polar brought us special bear-sized fruit scones with jam to cheer us up and we tucked it eagerly.

Soon, all the scones had gone and the match had started again.

Mr Tyrese Campbell and Mr James McClean both went close, but we still hadn't scored by the time 90 minutes were up, and then there were only four minutes of injury time.

And then it happened - a goal from Mr Nick Powell!  "Yaaayyy!"  At least we had got a point, but we need lots more points to be safe, so us bears will have our paws and claws crossed for an even better result in our next game.

See you back at Grizzly's railway for Stoke v Middlesborough on 27th June.