What a week

The regular reader (hey, you're looking good today) may have noticed that I have an interest in the exploits of Lincolnshire's premier football club. Last season an 18 year obsession with austerity, and downright incompetence off the pitch (and on it to be fair) ended with a second relegation from the Football League in 11 years. The old major shareholder sold up and new brooms swept in, and started to clear up the mess.

Most folk did not expect an immediate return to the FL, and the consensus seemed to be that finishing in the playoffs would be success of a kind. That was achieved the other week, and last Monday saw what the National League calls the Playoff Eliminator. The NL's playoff structure is more complicated than the FL's, but it is fairer to teams that narrowly miss out on automatic promotion. And in the NL's case, there is only one automatic promotion place.

Here's how the season finished (top 8 places only shown - table swiped from the BBC).

The Eliminators saw 5th placed Notts play 6th placed Grimsby (Eliminator A), and 4th placed Halifax play 7th placed Chesterfield (Eliminator B), in one-off matches with the higher placed team having home advantage. Got that? Hmm. Good. Then for the semi-finals, 2nd placed Wrexham played the winner of Eliminator A, and 3rd placed Solihull play the winner of Eliminator B. Again, the higher two teams had home advantage in one-off games. So notionally Grimsby and Chesterfield had the hardest routes to the final, and yep, you guessed it, Wrexham and Solihull had the easiest. All fair.

The Notts game was regarded as something of a free hit. My one hope was that the Town team would just give a good account of themselves on the telly. The home team took the lead, slightly against the run of play, but we can be generous. The Achilles heel of the Grimsby squad was not having a 20 goal striker. County alone had 3 players with more goals than our top striker. But the whole Grimsby squad were immense on the night. They were the better team. Importantly, they played with the head as well as the heart. Nothing rash or rushed. And they fought and fought to equalise, long into the game. 90 minutes came and went with still no equaliser. Five minutes of stoppage time passed. Any of us watching could be forgiven for giving up hope. Personally I felt quite calm throughout, once it was clear our team were giving a good account of themselves. Embarrassment avoided. We can move on. Forget football for the Summer. We'll be back stronger next season. 

In the 96th minute County gave away a free kick on the edge of their penalty box. The Grimsby goalkeeper Max Crocombe (Shout out to New Zealand) went up into the County area. The free kick was taken, and during the ensuing scramble, the ball bumbled off Crocombe's leg into the path of Gavan Holohan who banged the ball in.

Two keepers in the box

Good business for the quiet South London pub we were in. An extra half hour for half a dozen Northern exiles to slake their thirst. That 30 minutes slipped by and penalties loomed. People began to worry if there were any Germans in the County team. No fear. After 29 minutes of Extra Time the tie was settled. I'm not certain which part of Mani Dieseruvwe's anatomy** knocked the ball into the net, but the record shows a win for the Mariners. In a post match interview the man himself blurted out on TV, 'I've just fucking thrown myself at it'.

** Postscript: Repeated, and I do mean repeated, viewings of the goal on the official BT Sport video failed to reveal the answer. It looked like a hand could have been involved, but the position of the camera from left rear of the striker didn't give a clear view. I later came across a video on YouTube from the point of view of the Notts fans on the right in line with the goal line, or slightly behind it. It looked to me like the ball did hit a hand - but it was the defender's. The defender's left arm was outstretched blocking the path of Dieseruvwe. The momentum of the player moving forward carried the arm with it and the ball with it. Relief!

What happens when you throw just yourself into something. Sometimes.

What a team. What spirit.

NEVER SAY DIE!

On to North Wales*. Welsh Wales. I'll leave off the sheep bothering cliches, if you say nothing about fishy smells. On to Wrexham, or as the media call them "Ryan Reynolds' Wrexham". Said Hollywood actor being part-owner alongside the other one. Rob McElhenney? No me, neither. It's got to be Wrexham's year, after 14 or 15 years outside the FL. Having once failed to get promoted with a staggering 98 points, no one would begrudge them promotion. A proper football club. And with the extra £££ rolling in (TikTok shirt sponsorship, Netflix series, etc) they have the money to attract players from League One. Being even more the underdog that in the Notts game, it was an even freer hit(?!) for Town. You know where this is going don't you.

* strictly speaking, on to the same South London pub again for our little band

Let's set out the facts. Look at that league table. 11 points, and a goal difference 23 better than Grimsby. One win apiece in the regular season. Ah, but Wrexham have never won a playoff game. That might not be true, I haven't actually checked. But it's good enough as a 'Football Fact'. Football Fact Number 2 is that since buying a share of the club, Mr McElhenney has not attended a game that Wrexham have won. It's probably not a big sample size, but again it's a Football Fact. Mr McElhenney should probably stay away. For Wrexham's sake.

You beauty!

Imperious!

You knew the result from the preceding paragraph. But just look at the timing. Again!

What a team. What spirit.

NEVER SAY DAI!

You watch em go £@€% it up against Solihull in the final.

Goetz on Austerlitz

Is this book any good? Naval and Military Press have it on sale for £3.99. Not my main period but I love a bargain.

I see you

Placing flowers on the grave on an anti-Semitic fascist.

http://archive.government.ru/eng/docs/4226/photolents.html

Now tell us who the real Nazis are?

The odd thing is this is on an official Russian government website. How stupid must they be.

Change of pace

After the exertions and excitement of the Prague re-fight, I’ve changed direction having caught a glimpse of the following amongst the pile of books my brother-in-law handed to me last year.

So far it’s proving to be an excellent read. I like Moorehead’s writing style and he presents a very rounded view of events and decision-making in the Italian campaign. This is particularly surprising to me because the book was first published in 1945.

Nice.

Author: Rob McIlveen. Publisher: the Mariners Trust

Meanwhile, on Saturday the above arrived in the post. It might just put the Moorehead on the backburner. I’ve had a few quick flicks through it, and it’s one of those books that I both want to dive in and devour, but also savour slowly. For those of us born within sight of Dock Tower and above the age of five fifty years ago, the subject matter is the story of an unforgettable season and cast of characters. A season that folk my age and older will never stop banging on about. Without wishing to sound too artsy-fartsy, turning the pages is a very Proustian experience. 1971-72 was the first season I started going to watch football matches. I briefly dreamed last September/October that 50 years on the championship winning feat would be repeated.

One thing that stands out, as of wider footballing interest. The teamsheets show numbers 1-12, only. Just 1 substitute. No squad numbers either. If you were picked to play at left back, you wore the number 3. If you weren’t picked for a game you didn’t have a number. The match I went to on Sunday had players with shirt numbers in the 30s and 40s. Each team got to play 3 substitutes picked from 5 players ‘on the bench’.

Of a more self-indulgent nature, I offer up the following. In a pre-season friendly game Grimsby best Japan 7-2. Japan have come on a long way since then 😄. 

Something I don’t remember from that time is this:

Not long after the Japan game I was persuaded to go along to watch a match. My uncles and grandad had been trying to encourage me to go with them. I was a strange kid though. Very shy. All those strangers in an enclosed space. In the end it was my eldest sister who persuaded me.

I was hooked. Talk about exciting. It was love at first sight really. And a lifelong love. Yes it wasn’t the First Division (today's ‘Premier League). No Georgie Best or Geoff Hurst. But I quickly got a sense that this was ours. It was better than following United, or Spurs or Leeds.

In amongst the book’s match-by-match accounts (every league and cup game) are pen portraits of the players and staff. Here’s a snippet of the one on the late, great Matt Tees. My first football hero. He’ll be familiar to older Charlton and Luton fans. Lawrie McMenemy, Town manager at the time, had this to say about his first encounter with Matt:

“When I walked into the dressing room, I thought a sea fret had drifted off the beach, and then it cleared slowly – to reveal Matt Tees sat in the far corner, extinguishing his pipe!!” (Quoted in https://football.sportingmemories.net/memory/2881-lawrie-mcmenemy-matt-tees/?addcomment )

Of slight build, and not particularly tall, Matt wasn’t the typical brick-outhouse British centre forward. But he knocked in 29 goals that season. It seemed many of them were headers, and Matt had the ability to leap in the air and hang there until the ball reached him. Sadly in later life he suffered from dementia. You may have seen him in a documentary presented by Alan Shearer a few years ago, about the link between heading footballs and dementia. 

One final delightful touch in the book is a photograph of every Matchday programme from that season. Home and away. 

Workington AFC: remember them? One of two clubs in that season’s 4th Division from what became Cumbria. The other was Barrow.

Prague Sprung

Finally. Finally I got down to it at 2:30 after being Shanghaied into booking a holiday. I played until around 6pm when I stopped for dinner (still hot enough to eat outside) and then went back 7-ish to finish off. It only needed one more turn to reach a conclusion. Technically the game didn't reach a conclusion but it was only going to go one way after that and it would have been a bit of a slog to  get to a game conclusion.

So four hours in total, which involved a fair amount of rule checking. I realised after a few rounds of combat that I had been doing it wrong, despite having played with these rules a few times before! The error involved me testing both sides reaction to combat, whilst I should have only been testing the 'passive'   (non-phasing) side. Doh! In that four hours I managed 25 turns. So 10 minutes a turn.

I'll let the pictures (plus captions) tell the story.

Turn 5: Ziethen's reserve hussars and Schwerin's columns (foreground) attempt to outflank the Austrians. In the middle distance the Austrian right wing led by von Browne redeploy to seal off the flank. It took three turns to activate Browne's wing, but they had the advantage of interior lines. In the background the Austrian left and reserve shift to the right. 

Turn 8: Schwerin's infantry begin to cross the Rokenitzer Bach in a co-ordinated fashion. The Austrian redeployment looks like it will be complete in a timely fashion.

Turn 9: the new Austrian position is ready.

Turn 12: Schwerin's men slowly advance after shaking themselves into proper lines. In the meantime the Austrian left has already lost a brigade to fortuitously accurate artillery fire. This allowed Bevern to deploy unhindered.

Meanwhile: Ziethen's hussars (L) and Schönach's heavies (R) charge into their opposite numbers. Ziethen is facing off against the redeployed Austrian Reserve under Hadik.

Turn 20: Several turns later, the Austrians have lost some infantry but their cavalry and reserve (mostly lights) hold their own. The infantry battle is slow to get going because the Prussians failed several activations. Combat between the opposing foot lasts several turns without major losses. The Prussian fusileers, who I decided would be classed as Trained but Wavering (i.e. two morale failures rather than 3 would eliminate them).

Close up of the previous picture

Bevern's men have finally broken through Kheul's left infantry, and advance on a battery. This was probably the crisis point of the battle. The Prussian left wing had delayed crossing the Rokenitzer Bach but then advanced to keep the Austrian left wing cavalry and an infantry division pinned, whilst Bevern broke through. The Prussian artillery on the left also did good work keeping the Austrian cavalry at bay.

 

Turn 22: Zithen's boys have taken a hammering. They became the first 'wing' to have to take a wing morale test. They passed it twice before fleeing.

Turn 25: Suddenly it all happened. The dam broke. Schönaich beat off the Austrian heavies and ploughed into the infantry. 3 Austrian brigades broke this turn, each rolling adjusted scores of 3 or less on 2D6. Then von Browne's wing broke on failing its Wing Morale test.

Schönaich and Schwerin have finally crushed von Browne's wing.

View of the Austrian left with the Prussian right wing advancing up the ridge.

A gap is torn in the Austrian line between Hadik's Reserve (left middle ground) and the battered Austrian Left Wing. A powerful column of Prussian infantry is ready to advance into the gap, but there will be no pursuit - both sides cavalry are fairly evenly matched and it has been a long day.

Austrian losses: 20 brigades

The Prussian toll: 9 brigades

So in the end a relatively ahistorical result, in that the Austrians suffered many more losses than the Prussians. A more decisive victory, but not one big enough, in my opinion, to lead to the fall of the Bohemian capital. Two other notable differences from history. Schwerin wasn't laid low by a shower of canister balls, and, David-in-Suffolk will be glad to know, von Browne lived to fight another day. Assuming the tuberculosis didn't carry him off.

A few quick observations on why the victory was more decisive than history. The Prussians were able to co-ordinate their attack better than they were able to historically. Maybe the scenario needs tweaking slightly to prevent or discourage this, possibly by leaving longer gaps between the arrival of the successive columns, or setting a limit to the number of game turns. The Prussians were also able to keep some of their artillery in action. The Austrians' guns barely got a shot in. With the rapid redeployment, the Austrian guns got stuck behind the infantry. Moral: leave more gaps for the guns. On the plus side for the Austrians, they did manage to seal off the area west of Sterbohol very well, with horse foot and guns. There was to be no repeat of Ziethen's winning charge into the Austrian heavies' flank.

In terms of numbers and quality of troops, the Prussians had 33 brigades to the Austrians' 30. Traditionally, the Austrians are credited with having more troops than the Prussians. I suspect this might be because assumptions are made about the strength of battalions and squadrons. The Austrian paper strength is higher per unit. I've used Duffy's numbers from his later works. For these he did extensive research in the Austrian archives. My belief is that these are more reliable. The Prussians also have the advantage of more elite infantry, though on the negative side, I rated their Fusileers (30% of the total infantry) as Wavering. They didn't get into action in the game. If the Austrians had broken the front of the Prussian infantry maybe the Fusileers would have collapsed quite quickly and that would have been the end of the Prussian Left Wing, and the second decisive Wing failure.

My key take away from this, is a reinforcement of my original thought that it is difficult to get the scenario right for this battle. It would probably take several play tests to get right. Maybe someone else can build on what I have done, and tweak and refine it. There are also options as to when to start the clock. One final comment: I didn't have enough space for Ziethen's envelopment on the southern side. To get round this I took his column off table and diced for the number of turns before he would reappear where he arrived historically. Ziethen arrived after five turns to find the Austrians had built and effective barrier that eventually did for the Hussar King.

Prague - Table set

Ready for later tonight or tomorrow morning. Well almost ready. I ran out of masking tape to complete the Kaiserstraße!

Prague in the far distance. R.Moldau top rights and the Rokenitzer Bach extending from the near end to the Moldau. The dark brown patches are the large, impassable ponds. Austrians on the ridge, Prussians to the right. The white slips of paper are to remind me which turn the respective Prussian columns arrive.

View from behind the Austrian left.

View from behind the Austrian right. Browne will take personal command of this wing.

Ziethen's reserve Prussian cavalry. All hussars.

From behind the Austrian right with the Prussian hordes in the distance.

The Battle of Prague - the set-up

Today (Sunday) was a relatively inactive day from a wargaming point of view, partly due to resting (which involved watching the last Tom Baker Dr Who series on Forces TV), and partly due to getting dragged into doing household chores. The latter involved pruning the neighbour's overhanging tree and, revoltingly, unblocking a drain. Manually. As in hand down said drain where we had a mini fatberg. Old Fritz never had to do this sort of thing.

After that trauma I got down to some planning. In fact it started on Saturday when I worked out the numbers of brigades of different troop types required for Twilight of the Soldier Kings. Originally I intended not to get bogged down in my accustomed manner, but it seems I can't help myself. I studied various maps on line and in books, and I made my. measurements. 

Contemporary map with my annotations of the main movements. Key locations circled in black. All places names in Czech, but it is relatively easy to figure out the German names if you have a map like the one below. Schwerin initially advances across the Golf Resort near Doci Počernice and is repulsed near the Fashion Arena Prague Outlet!

Next came a decision on how I would set-up the scenario. The two main options are either:

1. Start with the Prussians having completed their turning movement, and the Austrians having got their makeshift flank position ready; or
2. Start with the two armies eying each other across the Roketnitzer Bach before the turning movement.

1. Effectively sets up a straightforward head-to-head struggle, and loses some of the uncertainty. 2. however requires a much deeper board than I have. I could fit everything in but there wouldn't be enough depth if I decided to do a flanking move as the Prussians did. And a head on assault against the Austrian position would just lead to a slog that owed very little to the real Battle of Prague.

In the end I compromised. I would begin with the turning move partly completed. I would start with the Austrians in their original position and the Prussians entering the board, meeting engagement style as shown in the map below. This should allow both sides a bit of flexibility in their re/deployment and give chance for the command breakdowns that Twilight of the Sun Kings allows.

This map was borrowed from Duffy's 'The Wild Goose and the Eagle'.

I superimposed my scaled-down table size onto a map and adjusted the angle until I could get a good space arrangement. I was half-tempted to cut down on manouvre space on the east by including part of Prague city purely because I have a model of a real Prague building. 

As for the orders of battle, I did my customary thing of looking at all my Duffy books, plus assorted others and internet resources. A bibliography is given below. One of the key resources for working out which types of units were present is Kronoskaf. That was my starting point, and I created a table showing numbers of squadrons and battalions in the various commands. Then I converted this to TOSK brigades using ratios of approximately 4 battalions or 10 squadrons to the brigade. 

On tabulating the troop totals given by various sources, I noticed Duffy gives quite a low headcount for the Austrian cavalry. It is 4,500 lower than the Prussians, yet using the numbers of squadrons in Kronoskaf you arrive at a larger number of brigades. I calculated that the squadron sizes of the Prussians were on average 50% larger than the Austrian heavies, and twice the average Austrian hussar squadron size. So I used a different denominator for the Austrians. The Austrian infantry battalions come out lower too, but not so dramatically lower. However, all accounts refer to a grouping of 22 Austrian grenadier companies, engaged in repelling the initial Prussian infantry attacks. This equated to approximately 4 battalions (conveniently a TOSK brigade unit) so I reckoned that the total number of Austrian infantry needed to be divided by a larger number of battalions, thus reducing the average battle size. I therefore reduced the number of line battalions slightly. The overall number of units works out proportionate to the numbers of men.

	Austrians			Prussians
	Cav	Inf	Arty	Cav	Inf	Arty
Army of Fredrick the Great 1st ed.	12 heavy r 5 hussar r (12,600)	54 b 5 Grenze b (48,500)	59	116 (17,000)	66b (47,000)	82
Army of Fredrick the Great 2nd ed.	12 heavy r 5 hussar r (10,000 excl hussars?)	65 b (45,000) 5 Grenze b (2,000)	59	116 (17,000)	66b (47,000)	82
Kronoskaf	132 sq (but adds up to 124)	56 b (but adds up to 66) 5 Grenze b	61	113	66b (47,000)	82
By Force of Arms	10,400 2,100 Hussars	45,400 2,000 Croats	60	17,000	47,000	210 pieces overall

I then worked out an arrival schedule for the various Prussian columns. Unusually, they arrived in reverse order with the left wing appearing first, then the centre then the right. I broke the centre down into several formations arriving in sequence, since that's the way they appeared to arrive. The actual composition of each formation is roughly based on the Duffy maps. The Austrians were much simpler to organise since they start in the order of battle. Here are the respective army layouts. Numbers/letters refer to the second map above.

PRUSSIANS	Command	Enters	C	D	H	G	M	F	A		Enters on turn
Column 1	Ziethen, Reserve	South of U.Pczernitz			8						Dice from turn 4
Column 2	Schönaich	North of U.Poczernitz	4	4							1
Column 3	Schwerin	North of U.Poczernitz				2	4	2			1
						2		6			2
							2	2	2		3
Column 4	Bevern						6		2		6
							2		2		7
							2		2		8
							2				9
Column 5	Manstein	Hlaupetin				2			2		10
Column 5	Penavaire	Hlaupetin	4*	2							11
Total			8	6	8	6	18	10	10	66

* 1 cuirassier brigade is large

AUSTRIANS	Command	Formation	C	D	H	G	M	Gzr	A
A	Luchesi	Right Wing Cavalry	4	2
B	Königsegg	Right Wing Infantry				2	8		2
C	Kheul	Left Wing Infantry 1					8		4
D	Kheul	Left Wing Infantry 2					8		2
E	Esterhazy	Left Wing Cavalry	4	2
F	Hadik	Reserve Cavalry		2	4
G	Macquire	Reserve Infantry					4	2	2
Total			8	6	4	2	28	2	10	60

That's as far as I got. It looks like the actual game will either get delayed until next Sunday Saturday*, or I might manage to squeeze it in one evening if I get to finish work in good time.

* Update: Thanks to a message on the Grimsby Town London Supporters' WhatsApp group, I was reminded it's my Sunday that is accounted for by football not Saturday this coming weekend. Unbelievably it's the last day of the regular season. Already. It only seems a few weeks since the season kicked off in August. The laughingly named "National League" (i.e. England's fifth national division) has its last round of fixtures on Sunday this week.

It's been a hell of a season though. Attendances at Grimsby have actually gone UP by about 2,000 since relegation last season. The incredible thing is with an average attendance over 5,700, which would place them in the upper reaches of League Two and above many clubs in League One, Grimsby's attendances are only 6th highest in the National League. It’s the highest average for the Mariners since they were in the Championship in 2002-3. 'Hollywood's Wrexham' has an average approaching 9,000. Notts County, Stockport, Chesterfield and Southend lie between the two. After the first dozen games, automatic promotion looked distinctly possible. After two dozen games the playoff positions (i.e. 2nd-7th places) looked out of the question. Since then great form has led to us needing just 1 point from the last two games (now and Sunday) to confirm a play off place. In the process we've contrived to lose to part-time teams but beat Stockport who were on a 23 game unbeaten run.

Post-post Script: I'll put you out of your misery. Town won, so playoffs reached. We'll be at Notts County away for the "quarter finals", then if successful it'll be Stockport or Wrexham away. The final will be at the London Stadium on the Jubilee weekend. Bad planning by the National League. But I don't think Grimsby will be there.

One final comment. I found the reference to Lenore (see previous post) in the Wikipedia article. That in turn led me on to something called the Carne-Thompson-Uther index of folk tales. It seems the same stories or themes keep cropping up in many different cultures, so the aforenamed folklorists categorised them all. One of the types is ATU505 the Grateful Dead, which is where the band name comes from.

Bibliography

Title		Publ. date	Author
The Wild Goose and the Eagle: A Life of Marshall von Browne 1705-1757	Warwick	2019	Duffy, Christopher
The Military Life of Frederick the Great	Norwalk, CT	1992	Duffy, Christopher
The Army of Frederick the Great	Warwick	1996	Duffy, Christopher
The Army of Frederick the Great	Newton Abbot	1974	Duffy, Christopher
By Force of Arms	Chicago	2008	Duffy, Christopher
The Seven Years War in Europe, 1756-1763	Harlow	2008	Szabo, Franz
The Wars of Frederick the Great	Harlow	1996	Showalter, Dennis
Frederick the Great	London	2000	Fraser, David
Internet Resources
Kronoskaf: http://www.kronoskaf.com/syw/index.php?title=1757-05-06_-_Battle_of_Prague
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Prague_(1757)