ENTERPRISE NATIONAL LEAGUE NORTH. SATURDAY, 7th NOVEMBER 2026.
Morecambe lost in the mist at Hednesford.
Before we start, let’s think about things that have happened off the pitch as far as we simple fans of Morecambe football club have been concerned in recent times.
Two weeks ago, we looked at the Shrimps Trust’s dire criticism of the current ownership and their refusal to engage with them or provide answers to long-standing questions asked of the owners and their banned Channel Islands financial adviser Enforcer on our behalf.
But last week, the Panjab Warriors or perhaps their spokesman actually broke at least all of my expectations – by publishing a response directly onto their website. You can read it here:
https://morecambefc.com/news/shrimps-trust-questions-october-2026-1793186769948
We all know that it’s easy to criticise – but in my view at least, a lot of the questions were dodged and others not answered satisfactorily.
(My own interest as to why latter-day Saint Jim Bentley had apparently been written-off by an ownership which had made it widely known there would be a role for him after his sterling efforts to keep us in the National League far too late last season is a case in point.
The Trust asked:
“Is there any update on the proposed role for Jim Bentley that was mentioned at the end of last season?”
This was the reply:
“Since that time, discussions between Jim Bentley and the Club’s directors did not progress as originally envisaged and so a role did not materialise.”
Something about this just doesn’t ring quite true. What was the role as `originally envisaged? Originally envisaged by whom? – Jim or the club? What precisely stopped it happening?)
Putting that to one side, though – nobody can dispute the fact that at least the owners had made at least some attempt – for once – to communicate with the pondlife such as ourselves who actually actively support their club.
They should be given credit for that – shouldn’t they?
Despite harsh words on these pages; maybe they really are trying to learn from past mistakes and attempting to redeem the utter disaster they inflicted on our club last season.
So please forgive me whilst I share with you a genuine Moral Dilemma currently being suffered by Yours Truly.
I could have got the Warriors all wrong.
Maybe I should Cut Them Some Slack…
But there again…
So I decided to hang fire.
I didn’t give our current owners any credit at all at the time for very belatedly but publicly addressing the points the Shrimps Trust had put to them ages ago. I did this even though I thought that not doing so was hardly fair – or objective – given that I had criticised them for not doing things like this many times in the past.
But an instinct – which has always informed me that the Panjab Warriors and everyone associated with them are basically as dodgy as you can get – told me not to.
So – for me at least – it was no surprise to learn last Tuesday that the National League has slapped yet another embargo on our club.
But when I looked for a clear explanation of why this had happened; what it was about this time; how long it might last or even- more importantly – how our Sikh owners intend to deal with this latest crisis; Normal Service was Resumed.
This is the full statement that the owners – or, more likely their so-called Chief Operating Officer – came up with:
“Morecambe Football Club acknowledges the National League’s decision to place it under another player registration embargo and is working hard to have this resolved and removed as soon as possible.
Morecambe Football Club will be making no further comment.”
The Shrimps Trust responded to this typically hardly exactly transparent announcement with the following statement:
“The Shrimps Trust is disappointed to learn that the club has been placed under another embargo – the second this season and third this calendar year. We urge the club to act swiftly in resolving this matter, and to ensure that effective measures are put in place to stop the occurrence of further embargoes. We have contacted the club for an update, and will update members and fans when we can.”
Very good luck with that…
On Friday, 6th November 2026, the club published this further statement:
“Morecambe Football Club is pleased to confirm that the National League removed the player registration embargo earlier this morning.
The embargo was announced three days ago. Its removal means the restriction on registering players has been lifted.”
No explanation of how this had come about or why the embargo was applied initially was even attempted. Clearly, the pondlife don’t need to know technical stuff like that which is probably too sophisticated for our tiny little brains to be able to grasp in the first place…
Anyway – as things off the field had gone pear-shaped yet again – it was another trip into the unknown as far as Morecambe FC and their players were concerned today,
In the nightmare of being lost in a non-league wilderness caused by far too many relegations in recent times, they woke –up this morning to face a relatively short trip to Staffordshire to visit previously totally unknown Keys Park for the first time.
(Since I originally wrote this, Roger Peacock has been kind enough to enlighten me: “”Totally unknown”? Yesterday was the 13th game between us. Fair enough back in our conference days but we have been to Keys Park before.” I stand corrected.)
So what do we know about Hednesford?
It is a town in Staffordshire 121 miles south of Morecambe on the fringe of the West Midlands. It describes itself as `the gateway to Cannock Chase’ on which can be found features such as the German Military Cemetery (where nearly 5000 casualties of the First and Second World Wars who fought for Kaiser Bill or Adolf Hitler but died in Britain as downed airmen, captured U-Boat crews or other classes of Prisoners of War have been interred since 1967) and the coal seam which runs under the Chase itself. Hednesford is yet another former industrial town which the deliberate destruction of the UK coal industry by `Iron Lady’ Margaret Thatcher and the transfer abroad of mills, factories, foundries and a host of other enterprises which once made Britain self-sufficient and provided meaningful and frequently skilled employment for so many people. With the coal mines gone and even the Brickworks which was once owned by a Pit Company (Cannock Chase Colliery Co); the ghosts of a once vibrant working town lives on only in such terms as `The Pitmen’ as the town’s football club is still known.
Hednesford Town came about originally as a merger of two other clubs: Hill Top and the Red & Whites. They were based at the Anglesey Hotel, which still exists on Anglesey Street as a Grade II Listed building as the local Wetherspoon’s under its original name: Hedgeford Lodge. I’m sure a number of us will have visited it today…
Town was a founder-member of the Birmingham & District League in 1889 but only stayed in it for its first season. After that, the club played only friendly matches until it joined the Walsall & District Junior League (which soon dropped the Junior bit) during 1894. They transferred to the Birmingham Combination in 1908 and won it two years later. They regularly came bottom of this before they folded altogether in 1938 but a new version was playing in the Birmingham & District League again just in time for World War Two. During this, they became West Midlands (Regional) League Champions 1940–41 against reduced opposition. They struggled again after the war before finally re-joining the Birmingham Combination. The Pitmen won this in 1951 and then re-joined the Birmingham & District League… zzzzzz…
And so on and so forth backwards and forwards in various regional leagues with not a lot to show for it apart from the occasional local cup success. By 1972, they had joined the Midland League before coming bottom and joining the West Midlands (Regional) League five years later. They won the Premier Division of this in 1978 and – after coming second in 1984, joined the. Southern League Midland Division. They became Champions of this league’s Premier Division in the 1994–95 season and also won its Championship Trophy in the same year. They were FA Trophy Winners in 2004. Their yo-yo existence continued with triumphs and failures until finally, they found themselves in the Northern Premier League West Play-Off Final last season. They beat Congleton Town 2-0 in front of their own supporters in this to end up where they are now.
Among players who have featured for both clubs can be found Adam McGurk and Sean O’Connor. Morecambe and the Pitmen will meet for the first time in Staffordshire on Saturday, 7th November 2026 at 15:00hrs. Hednesford with then travel to the Halo on Saturday, 6th February 2027 at 15:00hrs.
Hednesford are on a fine run of form at the moment: seventh in the National League North and on the back of five victories and a single defeat in their last six league games. At the start of play, Morecambe were a single point and just one place behind them, having won four and drawn one of their last six fixtures. Manager Adam Lakeland had this to say prior to the fixture:
“I don’t just want to be in the Play-Off spots. I want to get to the summit. But it’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon. It’s about staying calm and focusing on the next game which is, you know, a very difficult game against a Hednesford team that have a very healthy budget; ploughing a lot of investment into not just the team but into the infrastructure of the club. It’s going to be a very difficult game but it gives you great confidence as a manager when you know that you’ve got goals in your team. I’m not focused on Play-Offs: I’m not focused on too much really other than trying to beat Hednesford.”
Morecambe’s relative success this season has been built on their solid home displays. On the road, though, they have been generally disappointing. The usual pattern has been to concede two poor goals in rapid succession in the first half and then chase the game – and ultimately lose. One of the reasons for this – according to Adam Lakeland – is that too many National League North clubs play on artificial pitches which gives them an unfair advantage. So what would be the status of the surface at Keys Park today? Marvin Robinson, Hednesford’s Chief Executive, tells us:
““Thanks to the learnings from Everton’s installation, our new pitch takes it a step further, it is now one of the most sophisticated, technically advanced, and sustainable pitches in the world. This opens up exciting possibilities for the future, including our ambition to bring international football, on a regular basis, to Keys Park.”
The project includes several key phases: removing over 5,000 tonnes of the old pitch material, installing a high-tech air and water management system beneath the surface, seeding, and stitching the natural grass to ensure durability and performance.
Unlike traditional pitches, the new system creates an ‘air gap’ beneath the surface, improving drainage, oxygen levels, and root health. In simple terms, it means the pitch can ‘breathe,’ preventing flooding and maintaining peak conditions regardless of the weather.
This marks a significant milestone for the Pitmen, as the club becomes only the second in the world to adopt the revolutionary Circulate System – a pioneering pitch technology designed to control water, air, and temperature beneath the surface, ensuring optimal playing conditions year-round.”
So is it real? Or a hybrid? Your guess is as good as mine…
Anyway, whatever it is, the sun was nowhere to be seen as the players took to the field this afternoon at Hednesford’s very tidy ground in thin, miserable mist.
It’s Remembrance Sunday tomorrow and the Pitmen took the opportunity to respect this fact prior to kick-off today as several veterans joined the players on the pitch as silence was respected and everyone stood in the ground.
Morecambe played the better football for the first ten minutes or so and the Pitmen were pushed back into their own half for much of this time. But on the first instance in which the hosts ventured into the Shrimps’ half, they scored. Dylan Mottley-Henry is a big, strapping, skilful lad and he was allowed to progress down the Hednesford right far too easily before basically picking his spot and beating Myles Boney with a shot which went under the goalkeeper’s body. Two minutes later – in the sixteenth minute – the same player nicked the ball from Ruben Curley as if he wasn’t there and repeated the trick with a shot that I at least thought the goalkeeper should have saved: he was far too slow to get down.
What did we say earlier? Oh – the usual pattern has been to concede two poor goals in rapid succession in the first half and then chase the game – and ultimately lose. So a depressing pattern was being repeated as far as Morecambe’s away form this season is concerned. After going two goals to the good, the Pitmen dictated the play most of the time. At the back, goalkeeper Will Murdock made a vital save from Isaac Buckley-Ricketts’ header with 23 minutes played. But Hednesford scored another goal far too easily again via Jamie Cook with 37 minutes on the clock as the Shrimps defence got into a tangle once more. A minute before this, Mottley-Henry was denied a hat-trick only by a clearance off the Morecambe goal-line. But Curley then atoned for his earlier weak defending by pulling a goal back from a cross from the left with four minutes scheduled to play in the first half.
Could the visitors pull a losing position out of the bag in the second half? In a word: no.
They fell even further behind within five minutes of the restart. Once again, weak defending on their right flank allowed Cook to make it a brace with another low shot from an acute angle.
At this point, the game was well and truly lost. Morecambe pulled a goal back thanks to a smart finish by Paul Lewis in the 56th minute. But it made no difference: Hednesford simply scored another two more goals: Cook completing his hat-trick in the 68th minute before Jamie Morgan scored with a header in the seventy-eighth minute. It could have been more in all truth: every time the Pitmen attacked, Morecambe looked absolutely wide-open at the back.
This was an utterly abject display by Adam Lakeland’s men this afternoon. As a very impressive Hednesford went up to fifth place in the league table, Morecambe fell back to ninth. When our boss talks about reaching the summit of the National League North, he is in Cloud Cuckoo Land. On this display, not only will they do brilliantly to get anywhere near the Play-Offs; they will do very well not to be relegated again. For what it’s worth, this is what the Manager said afterwards:
“I thought we started and looked really comfortable in honesty. Our shape was causing them a few issues. But then we go and concede a really, really soft first goal and then it kind of unravelled from there, I guess. There’s no excuse in getting beat six-two. Unfortunately, it was just too many errors today and they were incredibly ruthless and capitalised on those errors. So every credit to Hednesford. It’s been a bad end to what has been a really challenging and frustrating week.”
To compound my own personal misery, I find myself writing this tale of woe in a glorified bus shelter at Rugeley Trent Valley railway station in the fog.
This dump is literally in the middle of nowhere – no shops; no pubs; no facilities at the station – not even toilets – and nothing else to distract the weary traveller. The train I should be on to Crewe has been cancelled and I will have waited here for nearly two hours when the next one finally arrives in over an hour from now. The Footballing Gods were angry earlier on. Now it seems that the Railway Gods have joined them. Oh joy…
Hednesford Town: 26 Will Murdock; 2 Jamie Morgan; 6 George Williams (C); 7 Jamie Cooke; 8 Aaron Jarvis (20 David Abimbola 57’); 14 Dylan Mottley-Henry (31 Niall Maher 75’); 16 Liam Kinsella; 19 Lenni Cirino; 21 Jai Curran-Nicholls (24 Sonny Sharples 85’); 27 George Ward; 30 Will Merry (3 Joel Taylor 63’).
Subs Not Used: 1 Sam Hornby; 4 George Langston; 5 Aaron Hayden.
Morecambe: 13 Myles Boney; 2 Cameron Coxe (24 Luca Davis 77’); 4 Liam Hogan (C); 6 Lewis Baines; 10 Matty Daly; 11 Elliot Newby (16 Marcus Neill 53’ ); 14 Isaac Buckley-Ricketts (7 Teddy Collis 9’); 17 Paul Lewis (19 Ronnie Blois 77’); 18 Taelor O’Kane; 20 Jake Cain (26 Lennon Dobson 89’); 22 Ruben Curley.
Subs Not Used: 1 Joe Young; 9 Joe Garner; 33 Kyran Steven Tonge.
Ref: Daniel Baines.
Att: 2,447 (194 from Morecambe.)
