burslem
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Port Vale 0-0 Northampton Town: A Grim Clash of Clay & Leather
Saturday 4 October 2025, 3pm Vale Park, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent 12:35pm, The Bulls Head. The ale is a beautiful autumnal amber, the talk is loose, and suddenly they’re here — the visitors, the wanderers from Northampton, that town of stitched hides… Continue reading
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Port Vale 0-2 Arsenal: Madri, Titanic and the road to Vale Park
Wednesday 24 September 2025. 5pm and the Bulls Head is humming, a low jazz of clinking pint glasses and belly-laughs, three hours deep in Titanic Ale and the kind of pre-match buzz that fills the soul with joy. St. John’s… Continue reading
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Port Vale 0-2 Arsenal: A Tale Of Salt And Steel
Vale Park, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. 3rd Round, Carabao Cup. Wednesday 24 September, 2025. 8PM kick-off. We were beaten, yes — 2-0 by a far superior Arsenal side. It was like steering a battered trawler into the path of a gleaming frigate… Continue reading
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Port Vale vs Arsenal: Breakfast And A Morning Stroll
Wednesday 24 September 2025, 08:30. The morning began, as mornings ought, with a ceremony of nourishment both modest and magnificent. An omelette, golden and obedient, enfolded within its curving embrace a portion of smoked haddock – firm, fragrant ,and faintly… Continue reading
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Port Vale 2-1 Mansfield Town: The Reprieve
Saturday 20 September 2025, 3pm. Vale Park, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. Ninety-five minutes gone and the world hangs on a whistle, the ref a god with a plastic trinket, Ronan Curtis standing there like a man on the edge of a dream… Continue reading
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Port Vale V Mansfield Town: Stags, Scabs and a Quality Bitter
Saturday 20 September 2025, Vale Park, Stoke-on-Trent Kick off: Three O’Clock. Roll the windows down on the A38, brother, and let the wind whip your face like a miner’s ghost whispering through the hedgerows. You’re heading south, but the past… Continue reading
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Exeter City 0-2 Port Vale: Searching For Satori – Part two
Saturday 13 September 2025, St. James Park, Exeter. There are no epiphanies in the rain. No great awakenings in the grind of a long away day. But sometimes, in the quiet moments after a win – a real, hard-earned win… Continue reading
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Port Vale: Searching For Satori – Part one
Friday 12 September 2025 Digs booked. Full tank of diesel. Five thirty AM, leaving Burslem, saying goodbye to Lemmy and the Angel, Henry Doulton, the streets of Arnold Bennett – all now just ghosts in the rearview, heading towards Exeter,… Continue reading
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Port Vale 2-3 Leyton Orient: We Find Meaning In Our Suffering
Saturday 6 September 2025 Vale Park, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent When it arrived, the kill was swift and surgical. Ninety minutes plus five. A careless surrender on the halfway line, a blur of movement — run, pass, pass, goal. It was not… Continue reading
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Port Vale and The Vertu Trophy: Is This All There Is?
The evening will arrive not with fanfare, but with a kind of soft indifference. A Tuesday, perhaps. Or a Wednesday. The days blur. The floodlights blink themselves awake, casting long shadows across the emptying car parks and the slow shuffle… Continue reading
tales from the paddock 