Bedford 32 Doncaster 29

Bedford Blues 32 Doncaster Knights 29 (4th May 2024)

Surprisingly good weather and an unexpected lack of decent football alternatives had me looking at checking out Bedford’s Goldington Road ground for my afternoon’s sport fix, with another foray into rugby below the top tier.

Bedford Blues might be in the Championship, but the town of Bedford is definitely in the Premiership when it comes to traffic jams. I had planned to have a little look round the town, but delays limited that to an unusual 360 degree circuit of a pretty little market square, before being able to head off in the direction of the car park I’d picked out.

After a little stop in a pub nearby, it was just a short walk to Bedford’s home, and there’s something special about a town centre ground. Many clubs, in all sports, have sold their traditional old town centre grounds for modern rebuilds on the outskirts, and it’s easy to understand why, but a ground isn’t just about the rectangle of land it sits in. It’s about the surrounding area, and being walkable from the centre makes the ground an intrinsic part of the town. It gives the place soul. When it comes to the matchday experience, no amount of face-painting, family fun, and music over the PA at an edge of town ground will replace that.

Walking into the ground, there’s something endearing about a rugby crowd on an afternoon like this. Don’t get me wrong – I love a good football atmosphere, but the relaxed feeling here, with no hint of tension among the fans, makes for a really pleasant vibe. It’s a nice place to be.

The fact that it’s taken as read that the fans won’t be stupid means people wanting a beer before (or during) the game aren’t forced to sit behind a screen, a stay in a breeze-block bunker underneath the stands, and that definitely helps. It was announced that there are no fewer than seven public bars around Goldington Road, all with a view of the pitch, along with the suites and hospitality areas, which give the ground a sense of enclosure.

The only genuine stand is an old-style stand for about 1500 people, delightfully old-fashioned, but still offering a decent view, and surprisingly light and airy. There are a few crush barriers dotted about, but the rest of the ground is mainly just two of three wide steps of terrace. Completely adequate for the crowd that nudged just of 3000 on this day, but I’m not sure what sort of view latecomers would get with a 5000 full house. The least developed side of the ground is backed by a line of mature trees, which give a pleasing backdrop, adding to the relaxed nature of the place.

Bedford have reached the top flight twice, in the earlier years of professionalism, and are consistently one of the better championship clubs, but I wonder if the are content to just stay that way. There probably is just about the room to rebuild on the same site to give the club a ground holding 10,000 or so, if they had the money and inclination, but weighing that up against what they would lose in the charm of the current experience, just for the right to lose money in front of bigger crowds, would it be worthwhile?

Maybe it’s a pity that there’s not more attention given to club rugby below the Premiership, as it has a lot to offer, and personally I’d rather see this part of the game grow, rather than see clubs overstretch themselves shooting for the moon in a bid to join the big boys at the top table.

I certainly picked the right game to go to for a bit of RFU Championship action. Talk in the programme notes was about how rare away wins were in this fixture, and fate certainly didn’t like being tempted like that in the first half with visitors, Doncaster Knights, leading 24-10 at HT. Bedford had lead briefly in the half, and done well to level at 10-10 with a man in the sin-bin, but Doncaster just seemed to have an extra bit of composure in key areas, and took full advantage.

Another early second half try for Doncaster, pushing the lead out to 29-10, had things looking bleak for the hosts. It took until the hour for Bedford to pull one back, but the conversion was missed, leaving them 15-29 down with 20 minutes left.

It was still a lot to ask to get back, but momentum had shifted, and it was now Bedford playing on the front foot. The intensity increased, and the number of handling errors decreased, and it was now Bedford looking the effective team, while Doncaster looked to be playing within themselves, not wanting to take risks, to eat up the clock. I don’t know if that really was their plan, but the initiative was fully handed to Bedford.

In the 67^th minute Bedford bundled over the line to reduce the gap to 22-29, and spark an intense push to level. Doncaster were holding firm though, even pushing into the Bedford half. With a minute left, it was looking like it was just going to go down as a ‘brave effort’, but a surge forward changed things. Just a few metres from the line, and a high challenge from Doncaster saw them reduced to 14 for the remainder of the game. With the crowd roaring on, one final effort, with time in the red, saw the ball forced over, under the posts, with the conversion levelling it up at 29-29.

That would have been enough for most, but due to a ruling my limited rugby knowledge doesn’t allow me to know, the game restarted despite time being up. Bedford won the ball back, and piled forward. The 14 of Doncaster were desperate against the 15 of Bedford, looking to force the turnover that would end the game. It didn’t come. Instead the ball was passed back to Louis Grimoldby, and looking to have the only calm head in the ground, he slotted a drop goal through the posts for the most dramatic of winners.

My next two rugby games will be the Premiership Final, and the European Champions Cup Final, but they’ll have to go some to beat the drama of today’s game. Rather fewer spectators will have the luxury of being able to walk home, too.

Diss 1 Conard 1

Diss Town 1 Cornard United 1 (20th April 2024)

A short report on this game with a distinct end-of-season feel to it, with late spring sunshine, deceptively laced with late winter winds, marking this trip to a corner of the country usually less travelled.

The welcome at the club was cheerful enough to give my mate a free badge and the winning 1^st prize raffle ticket, pocketing him £20, while the bar and tea bar prices were low enough to mean that I got a beer, burger and chips for £25 less than I paid for the same in a pub in Zurich last weekend. The game would feature one more goal than the game I saw that Saturday too, although the teams today would not be walking onto the pitch through an inflatable grasshopper, as they did on that day.

I had hoped the teams would come out to The Specials’ Ghost Town, just for the first line, although I suspect any humour in the joke would have worn thin in the 43 years since the song came out. There was, as there so often is at football grounds, music from the 80s played over the PA. It’s not a complaint, as I find nearly everything in the charts these days terrible, but it does make be think that if people in the PA booths of the grounds I started visiting in the 80s had done the same, I’d have been stood on terracing listening to The Glenn Miller Band and Vera Lynn.

With visiting Conard’s games averaging 4.97 goals per game, a high scoring game was hoped for, but maybe with Diss’ season over, and Conard perhaps conserving themselves for the play-offs, there wasn’t quite the intensity that their could have been. Shots, when they did come, could often be euphemistically described as ‘ambitious’, and the spectre of seeing another 0-0 was hanging over the game before half-time.

Diss started the second half kicking towards the low covered end, in which some of their supporters in the 102 crowd had gathered – including some enthusiastic youngsters who apparently caused a complaint from the club’s neighbours for their enthusiasm. This half was more open, perhaps due to squad players getting a run out. A couple if the Diss subs were among the youngest-looking I’d seen in men’s game, but seemed to do OK.

Conard took a lead they might have just deserved just after an hour, with a shot that bounced over the line after hitting the underside of the crossbar. The rebound was headed in, but the linesman flagged that it has already crossed the line.

Conard should have made the game safe later, when an attack saw the ball taken round the goalkeeper, but the effort the squeeze the ball between post and defender running back to cover saw it hit the base of the post and away.

As often happens, such misses get punished, and Diss got back into the game with a late penalty that the Conard keeper got a firm hand to, but couldn’t keep out.

Both teams looked keen to win, with one of the best changes going to one of the Diss youngsters. Alas, he may have seen the glory, but could also only see the ball go high and wide as he failed to control the chance.

Honours even on the last day isn’t too bad a thing. Pride for Diss after a decent season, and Conard can look towards the play-offs, where the four teams involved have hit 438 goals between them this season. I suspect there intensity might just be a little higher for those.

Young Boys 4 Luzern 2

BSC Young Boys 4 FC Luzern 2 (14th April 2024)

After two disappointing matches, my hopes were pinned on my my last one, in Bern, being rather better, and it most certainly didn’t let me down. After paying a train fare from Zurich that had me wondering if I was purchasing some kind of season ticket rather than a day return, I had several hours to explore this fine UNESCO listed city, before taking the tram up to the stadium.

As every giggling schoolboy knows, Young Boys play in the Wankdorf Stadium, venue of the 1954 World Cup Final. A fairly large but basic ground, it was impressively rebuilt for Euro 2008, even if it didn’t manage to host more than three group games for that tournament.

That World Cup Final era was also around the start of what used to be regarded as the golden era of Young Boy’s history, winning four league titles in a row from 1957-1960, but they’d then have a drought of just one more in the 1980s until winning again in 2018.

The rebuilt Wankdorf seems to have captured the imagination of the Bernese public, although having a good team no doubt helps too, and crowds are now at unprecedented levels for the club. Looking on course for their sixth title in seven seasons, crowds are now around the 29000 mark, and this game would be listed as a 31500 sell-out, even if there were still clearly some empty seats on the day.

Having visited two struggling clubs in the days before, the difference in visiting a club on the up was stark. There was a buzz and a vibrancy about the place, from a crowd excited about the prospect of the match ahead, rather than just turning up out of loyalty and habit. Supporting a club through the darker times can sometimes feel like looking through a window at a party to which you weren’t invited, but pop along to a game like this, even if nominally as a neutral, and it’s hard not to be taken in by the positivity of it all.

Things may be different in future times, but when the sun is shining, the stands are full, and the team are playing well, this felt like a great ground. It looked good, the view was good, and I got to see six goals. What’s not to like? OK, they could probably have opened a few more turnstiles, but this would be a day when all complaints would be minor. In other times I may have baulked at the price of a fetching Young Boys scarf, but I was used to Switzerland by now, and fully understood why FIFA & UEFA, both based in Switzerland, consider their tournament ticket prices to be completely reasonable.

A great game started with an early goal, with mid-table Luzern surprising table-topping Young Boys with a shot stroked inside the far post after just three minutes. For quite a while they looked the better team, and probably looked more likely to get a second before Young Boys got their first.

There were no grumbles from the home fans though, and their patience was rewarded after 27 minutes, when a cross was firmly headed in to level it up. Just six minutes later though, Luzern were back in front, when a shot from outside the box flew past the home keeper, giving him no chance.

1-2 at the break, but despite how well Luzern had played, belying their mediocre league table place, I still had a feeling Young Boys would win the game. For a top of the league side, they looked subdued, and almost certainly had a few more gears to go up in terms of performance.

I’m not exactly Nostradamus when it comes to predictions, but in this case I was spot on. Two minutes into the second half, and the ball fell kindly to be poked in to level it up at 2-2. Just two minutes after that, and a break into the left side of the area saw the ball hit hard and low at the near post for the 3-2 lead.

And just three minutes after that, a corner was met at the near post and angled into the far corner to put Young Boys 4-2 ahead. The game completely turned on its head in a crazy seven minute spell.

It could, and probably should, have been more, as Young Boys attacked with confidence, but somehow they couldn’t quite add to their tally. In fairness, despite the shock of the rapid change in the game, Luzern did have their moments too, and if they had nicked one to make it 4-3, it could have been a very interesting finish.

Instead it ended 4-2, and it was smiles all round, except for the blue-clad section in the far corner, who seemed content to make their own amusement anyway, singing away in a battle of volume with the home counterparts. Three more points in the quest for another title for Young Boys, who look every inch worth it on this showing, and a thoroughly enjoyable end to the trip for me too.

Grasshoppers 0 Lugano 1

Grasshopper Club Zürich 0 FC Lugano 1 (13th April 2024)

My second day in Switzerland gave me a full day in Zurich, taking in this attractive city on a gloriously sunny weekend, with a game in the evening to round things off nicely. After a day of exploring, I was able to slowly savour a ridiculously priced burger, chips and a beer (41 CHF, about £36) in a city centre pub, before taking a tram out to the stadium.

Grasshopper is one of those evocative football club names which makes the game more interesting, lightly peppered as they are throughout the football landscape, and since seeing their ground nearly 25 years ago in Simon Inglis’ Football Grounds of Europe book, was a place I fancied visiting.

Back then though, and until 2007, Grasshoppers played at the Hardturm Stadium. With double decker stands curving round three sides in a ‘C’ shape, it had the look of a ground straight out of the (old) English Second Division, but with just enough ‘continental flair’ to make it distinctively different.

Plans were made to redevelop the stadium for Euro 2008, and Grasshoppers decamped across the railways tracks to temporarily share at The Letzigrund Stadium with rivals FC Zurich. Alas the plans fell through, and Grasshoppers are still at the Letzigrund, and even though new stadium plans are still at the ‘glossy brochure’ stage, Hardturm was demolished.

With a little spare time, I took a short trip out to the Hardturm site. It must always be painful to see an old loved ground now a housing estate, or worse still, a supermarket, but when that old home has been replaced by nothing, as is the case at Hardturm, that must be especially hard. Sections of both ends still exist, with overgrown terracing reclaimed by nature, and an incongruous large rear wall at one end, and the ghost of the old ground is still there, but 95% of it is now just a tarmacked area available for hire.

The club site says that appeals against the planning proposal for the new stadium have been rejected, and things should be able to move forward now, but until then it’s hard to look at the open shabby area that was once a club’s stadium and think it all such a sorry waste.

I can’t say I have my finger on the pulse of the Grasshopper Club fans’ opinion, but location aside, being pretty close to Hardturm and easy to reach by public transport, sharing at the Letzigrund can’t be ideal. Not only is it the home of their city rivals, it is also primarily an athletics stadium, and a modern one at that.

In fairness, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I’m not really one for modern architecture on the whole, but on this warm evening, with the sun’s shadows only just starting to lengthen, it did have a certain elegance. With the pitch well below street level, it had a very sleek profile, with the wood on the roof lending a soft touch to the rust-colour corten steel used for many of the doors and fences in the light and airy bowl. Rather than imposing floodlight pylons, the lights are on multiple slender poles forming a ring around the stadium.

As often happens with oval venues, the seating bowl looks steeper in the flesh than it does in photos, and while it’s far from ideal as a football venue, it is one of the better examples out there – but that’s not saying much. It’s easy to imagine the architect having a fine career designing modern libraries and museums, and while I maybe wouldn’t want him designing my team’s next home, should they need one, it’s interesting to see what can be done. There’s no escaping that fact though that while it might be a fine building and athletics stadium, it’s just not a football ground.

What cannot be in doubt though, is that the ‘temporary’ move has been massively damaging to the club. Historically, the most successful club in the country, they have seen their crowds and fortunes fall, just as other clubs have bypassed them after replacing their old grounds with actual new stadiums, rather than a layer of asphalt. Crowds have dipped to an average of under 5500 this season, with the team struggling, and those sort of number are lost in the Letzigrund’s 26,000 capacity. One sector behind the goal was full packed of fans doing their bit, but it a difficult challenge to generate any real atmosphere.

It also doesn’t help that the game I saw, for the second day in a row, was pretty terrible. I was already a bit disappointed that Grasshoppers took the field, through their grasshopper-shaped inflatable tunnel, wearing an all-white kit rather than their traditional blue and white halves. It turned out that this was a special shirt to coincide with the Sächsilüüte ‘end of winter’ festival, that I would stumble on completely by chance two days later, but I would still rather have seen the blue and white.

The game’s only goal came very early on through a VAR decision, where the usual faceless panel of gloom added another layer of disappointment to a dispiriting Grasshopper season by awarding a penalty. From there, Lugano, sat in second the table, but hardly looking amazing in any way, just sat back an did enough to protect their lead.

Grasshoppers sadly looked every inch like a struggling team, who barely pass 1 goal per game, and would go on to rack up their 7^th defeat in nine matches. Even when a VAR call went in their favour, turning a Lugano foul into a red card, they seldom seriously threatened to level in the remaining quarter of an hour. The most telling excursion in the penalty box was from a golf buggy stretcher vehicle, which prompted yet another ‘injured’ Lugano player to be magically revived, rather than be driven off on the cart.

A sizeable seven point lead over last placed Stade-Lausanne-Ouchy should see them safe from automatic relegation, although an equal deficit behind 10^th placed Yverdon Sport all but condemns them to a play-off to avoid dropping back down to the 2^nd tier, just three years after escaping it.

The new stadium can’t come soon enough, then maybe Switzerland’s most storied club can start to challenge at the top end of the league again. They have 27 titles to their name, but the last of those was 21 years ago, a record drought for the club. The 28^th will no doubt be a huge celebration, although with the beer prices in Zurich, quite an expensive one too.

Schaffhausen 0 Vaduz 1

FC Schaffhausen 0 FC Vadus 1 (12th April 2024)

This was my third trip to Switzerland, but the first that saw me do something beyond passing through it to another country. Based in Zurich, and arriving early afternoon, I had the option of taking a trip up the road to the pleasing small town of Schaffhausen, whose team would be taking on Vaduz, from neighbouring Liechtenstein that evening is the Swiss 2^nd tier.

It was a rapid introduction to how the price of everything in Switzerland is considerably higher than you expect, with the train ticket costing well over double what I was expecting, and finding beer was about £9 a pint was a bit of a surprise too. Still, if you can accept that everything will cost a price that makes a motorway service station seem cheap, you can survive. It’s safe to say that nobody is going to be coming to Switzerland for a stag weekend.

Schaffhausen, about the size of Aldershot, but almost immeasurably more attractive, is nice enough to while away a couple of hours before taking the two mile trip out to the new stadium, handily located right next to an S-Bahn stop. The oddly-name “Berformance Arena” is a smart new stadium, just a few years old, that beyond that opening season, doesn’t really seem to have captured the imagination of the public.

That one season saw crowds of over 3000, but the average now is more like half that number, pretty much what they attracted at their old ground, leaving a lot of empty seats in this 8200 capacity stadium.

That is a shame, because it’s a tidy new venue, but until they can find a way to attract the crowds, it’ll always feel a little sterile, a bit like watching a minor cup competition game rather than a proper league match. The fans at either end did their bit, but it’s difficult to generate too much atmosphere when a ground has 4 seats out of 5 empty.

As for the game… well if it was typical, it maybe goes to explain why the crowds here are so low. I try to be kind in write-ups towards teams who don’t possess all that much ability, but frankly both teams here were terrible. They could control the ball nicely, and zip the odd pass about, but neither had any idea what to do in the final third, and generally lacked the motivation to try.

From about 20 minutes in, I could sense that neither team could find the goal if they had a detailed route map and a team of Sherpas to guide them, so it was something of a shock that Vaduz actually managed a goal just before half time, with a squared ball being tapped in at the back post. The Vaduz faithful went about as wild as 50 people in a seated block holding 1000 could go, but after that normal service was resumed.

Despite how bad the game was, I still quite enjoyed the experience. Nice little friendly ground, and a lovely town made it a good evening. And a saw a goal, and if not being a 0-0 was the game’s biggest plus, that’s one I’ll happily take. The beer was a damn sight cheaper in the ground too, which definitely helps.

Bury 1 Wythenshawe 1

Bury 1 Wythenshawe 1 (30th March 2024)

Bury’s Gigg Lane, a ground I’ve been to two or three times before with Reading, wouldn’t have been an obvious choice for a random Saturday visit, but with their fall to non-league following bankruptcy, and the (now receding) potential for Reading’s 24/25 season to be under similar circumstances, there was a poignancy about it.

I had actually already seen them at their Radcliffe groundshare, which probably would have been more like how any reformed Reading would have had to restart, but Bury were back at their proper ground of Gigg Lane now, even if despite their very healthy crowds (4212 would be there on this day) not all of it was open.

One end was closed off, presumably just as a cost-cutting measure, while the main stand, now the Neville Neville Stand, was limited to just a couple of blocks, I think for safety reasons. The club shop was also limited to a small room in the main stand, about the size of a typical garden shed, but even with the restrictions resulting from years of post insolvency neglect, everyone was delighted to be home.

My first visits to Gigg Lane were before the mid-90s revamp, but my last was on the opening day on the 97/98 season, and the 26 ½ years since then have clouded my memory enough to make it almost feel like visiting a new ground anyway. That 1997 visit saw away fans put in the Manchester Road End, currently closed, and the pay on the day admission for this game was the Cemetery End, where I’d watched from in earlier visits, but both it and the south side had been completely rebuilt since then.

This was also the end for visiting fans, in this case those making their way from Wythenshawe on the other side of Manchester, who weren’t segregated, but did group together in the corner.

I knew of Wythenshawe, the town, due to working for Ferranti in the 80s/90s, in Bracknell, who also had a large factory in Wythenshawe before the company’s fraud crisis and total collapse. I might have even vaguely known there was a football club in the town. Maybe more of a surprise was finding that Wythenshawe actually had two clubs, and both were directly say above 3^rd placed Bury in the table.

Wythenshawe, formerly Wythenshawe Amateurs, arrived in second place, three points ahead of Bury with a +4 advantage in goal difference, two points behind their table-topping neighbours, but with two games in hand.

It’s easy to assume the resources available to Bury, compared to other clubs in the Northwest Counties Premier Division, would mean they’d find it easy, but as the league table proves, it’s never that simple. Wythenshawe were up there on merit, and any hopes that they might crumble under the pressure of playing in front of a big crowd were unfounded.

The match has been in doubt due the state of the Gigg Lane pitch, and a spell of spring weather that had been a bit too “typical Manchester” had resulted in a few games being postponed already. Sunny weather saved the day though, but even with the pitch looking like it has dried out, it was still cratered with various random areas that resembled cabbage patches, as if someone had been scraping areas of turf away with a mechanical digger.

How that impacted the game is hard to say. There certainly were occasions where players missed their footing and passes went astray, but it certainly didn’t ruin an energetic encounter.

After a bright opening for Bury, it was actually Wythenshawe who looked the more composed side in the first half. Maybe it was a bit of nerves from Bury, on the back of a run of just one point from their last three games, hitting a blip in form at just the wrong time. Wythenshawe certainly went closest to opening the scoring, with a few shots that went only just wide, maybe the best being a header from a corner that flashed just past the post.

The second half saw Bury get more on top, and now it was they, in a game where both teams were looking for the win, who looked more likely to get it. Just after the hour, they did go in front. A foul was made on the edge of the box, which temporarily threatened to spill over with a little ‘afters’. This was floated in, and headed past the keeper from six yards. Huge huge joy, and relief no doubt, from the home side and fans. They knew just how big a goal this was.

It prompted probably the best spell of the game for Bury, and they really ought to have wrapped the game up. One move saw a shot well saved, and the follow up hit the bar, but in the 8^th minute of injury time in the minimum eight added on, Bury had a moment that could haunt them for the season if it doesn’t end their way.

Breaking down the left, the ball was squared past the keeper for what should have been an open goal tap-in from six yards. Instead, the attacker seemed to take his eye off the ball, got his feet all wrong, and could only watch in horror as the ball bounced off his feet and went wide. All around the ground, hands went to heads, not quite able to believe he’d missed.

The only consolation was the assumption that with the game all but up, it wouldn’t matter. Wythenshawe had other ideas though. From the kick off, the ball was flicked on for an away attacker to chase into the box. A clumsy attempt at a defending tackle brought him down, and and Wythenshawe has a late chance to save the game.

There was no mistake from the spot, and what was a 100^th minute equaliser had the away players running the length of the pitch to celebrate in front of their supporters in the far corner.

There was still just enough time for one final push from Bury, but it came to nothing, and with the stadium scoreboard unable to handle anything over 99 minutes, the whistle went with it on 0:28, to contrasting emotions.

There were moments where it looked like things might overheat in the away corner, but sanity thankfully prevailed. It was a very big minute for both sides. Wythenshawe maintain their three point and four goal lead over Bury, whereas if that missed chance had been put in, Bury would have gone above them on goals scored, and been favourites to go up. They are now hoping for slip-ups from Wythenshawe, who face leaders and neighbours Wythenshawe Town on Monday,. Bury are left needing a return to the kind of form they possessed before March. Two points from four games is not where you want to be at this stage of the season.

Wythenshawe will be fired up for that derby game now, knowing a win will put them firmly in the driving seat, after gaining what was a deserved point. They may have been ‘amateurs’ until recently, but by keeping on going right until they end today, they put on a professional display.

British Airways 2 Amersham 2

British Airways 2 Amersham Town 2 (23^rd March 2024)

At the start of the year I saw Amersham overcome Westfield to win 4-1 and stay well clear at the top of the table. On this day I saw them get a draw, to nudge them nearer that finishing tape, with 2^nd place well behind.

2nd place, as it happened, were today’s hosts, British Airways FC, currently groundsharing with Bedfont. A spanner in the works scuppered plans to go further afield, so this was a decent substitute, especially after a bit of food in The Green Man, just up the road. The pub is directly under the Heathrow South Runway flight path, with the planes coming in so low that they look at risk of knocking off a chimney. Plenty of chatter in the bar along the lines of “…and that was the XWB variant, which obviously sounds completely different…” indicating that the runway proximity is a bigger draw than the beer and food for many – which is a shame as both were good.

Arriving about 20 minutes before kick off, the club car park was busier than I expected, in truth more due a function going on in the social club than that the football. 81 would be in attendance, significantly higher than the club’s average, but not so much that it would have turned the car park into the game of Tetris that it resembled.

First-timers to the ground must be obvious, as they’ll be the only ones still fascinated by the planes coming in to land 400m to the north, and I’ll happily admit to being in those ranks. When taking ground pics, it’s always nice to get something in the background, and a Singapore Airlines A380 does that quite well.

This is, after all, the 10^th tier of the national game, and you aren’t going to get any genuinely impressive grounds. But for a club (ground owners, Bedfont) getting double-digit crowds, having cover on all four sides is certainly a plus, and on a (mostly) sunny afternoon, it’s not a bad place to while away a couple of hours. Having another club, Bedfont Sports, directly next door, is unusual though. And with both Bedfont and Bedfont Sports having groundsharing arrangements, the shouts from next door could regularly be heard, even if only 43 were present at that game.

Amersham arrived seventeen points clear of BA FC, with just eight games left in their season. Top spot couldn’t quite be guaranteed today, but with 129 goals already in the bag, they must have been confident of victory, even against a BA side having a very good season themselves.

Amersham did indeed start well, but went behind to BA’s first real attack of the game. A through ball had the keeper stranded, and after a moment of composing himself, the BA attacker passed the ball into the gaping goal to give the hosts an early lead.

Amersham threw what they could at BA to get back on level terms. Amersham’s assistant manager, Richard Pacquette, a veteran of more clubs than probably even he can remember, tried to lead from the front, but only got painfully taken out (accidentally) by the home keeper for his troubles.

When they did find a way through, it was yet another case of a goalkeeper being stranded, and an empty net chance taken. Maybe the keeper was distracted by the almost biblical hailstorm that suddenly whipped up on a previously sunny afternoon. The ref took the players off for shelter rather than restart immediately.

If Amersham thought they could press on for a win after half time, they were in for another shock, as BA took the lead again. This time, a cross couldn’t be collected by the Amersham keeper, and a looping header at the near post dropped into the net.

With the half being played in the odour of jet exhaust being blown in from the runway, and the roar every two minutes of departing aircraft, Amersham levelled with a shot that the home keeper, who had an otherwise decent game in his efforts to keeper the league leaders at bay, might feel he could have done better with.

British Airways then had a player sent off for a foul as the last man, although it was hardly a cut and dried decision. With twenty minutes left in the game, many might have expected Amersham to go on and win, but BA held out for a deserved draw. Amersham’s best chance was probably a shot that flashed across the six yard box, with nobody able to get a final touch, but BA had their chances too, and it’s a shame that the sending off probably robbed the game of a potentially exciting finish, where both teams would have been going for the winner. With the play-off situation, BA’s need was probably greater. On this showing, they’d be in with a very good chance.

For Amersham though, needing just eight points from their remaining seven games, it may not quite be over yet as far as promotion goes, but the fat lady is on stage and is clearing her throat, and will almost certainly be there doing an encore medley long before the season is out.

Hassocks 3 Pagham 1

Hassocks 3 Pagham 1 (3^rd February 2024)

A late change of plan had me heading south for a meet up at Hassocks, just north of Brighton, in a town I’d never previously heard of. I knew the name Hassocks, but thought it to be one of those esoteric and unusual names, normally more associated with rugby clubs, that don’t derive from the town they play in. But Hassocks is indeed a proper town, with a railway station and everything, serving the London to Brighton line, upon which trains pass Hassocks’ ground’s east end.

Like most grounds at the level, there’s not going to be too much in way of a stadium, but there’s enough to give it a bit of interest. Opposite the clubhouse side there is a fine view over the hills, with a couple of windmills atop one, providing a nice backdrop to the games.

This side had the only real stand. It’s of the minimum-requirement Meccano variety that cash-strapped clubs are rather forced into, but at least the steps were of a decent height. The seats, possibly Withdean leftovers, looked like someone had attempted to scrape off years of sun-weathering, but only succeeded in making them look like they’d been attacked by a graffiti artist with one can of green paint.

Beside this stand was a handrail embedded into the grass, should anyway need assistance in walking up the small slope on this side. A few watched from this side, although a spectator’s dog was more interested in the stick it had found than the game.

A higher embankment behind one goal was a kids’ play area. Pretty useful given that most young kids would rather play their own game of football than watch the one taking place on the pitch. If any did fancy taking in some action on the ‘big pitch’, the embankment provided the best view in the ground.

The game itself maybe wasn’t the best. Despite there being four goals, both defences looked well drilled, and comfortably withstood almost anything aimed in their direction.

The hosts were having the edge, but it took a set-piece to open the scoring, nodding in from a corner. With the game seeing to peter out before half time, Hassocks had other ideas. Picking up the ball near the corner of the penalty area, a low shot was fired in at the near post for a fine goal.

Pagham had really struggled to create much in the first half, but a decision to go more pragmatic in their approach paid dividends with them threatening far more in the second half. This was rewarded with a penalty, which was kicked so hard you wondered if he’d caught the ball in bed with his wife. The keeper went the wrong way, but even if he’d guessed right, he wouldn’t have stopped that one.

An more even second half was ended late on with Hassocks getting a penalty of their own. No complaints about the foul, but there were suspicions that it happened outside the box. “You’re the only one in the ground who thought that was in the box” shouted the keeper, but I’ve never seen a ref yet who has changed his mind after a complaint. This one was rolled in rather more calmly, and despite a few more efforts, for Pagham this time, there’d be no way back.

Amersham 4 Westside 1

Amersham Town 4 Westside 1 (6th January 2024)

Having been in the habit of taking in random grounds now and then for quite a while now, I am kind of running out of grounds that don’t involve a 90+ minute drive that I actually want to go to. Visiting a functional new ground with an Atcost stand and a bus shelter down one side, located by an industrial estate, just for the sake of getting another ‘tick’, isn’t really my thing. I need something a little more.

Amersham Town’s ground, boasting just one small stand on one side, wouldn’t therefore be an obvious candidate, but nested into the Chiltern Hills, it offered fine views of the countryside, with Shardeloes House, an 18^th century mansion, perched up on the hills, overlooking proceedings from a distance. Whether any mansion-dwelling cheapskates, with a good telescope, ever watch the matches here for free, is unknown.

Had they instead coughed up the £6 admission for themselves and their Bentley, they’d have found parking directly behind one end, and their driver could no doubt clean up any mud splats from wayward shots that land on their windscreen.

Reaching the ground itself also requires passing though the picturesque old part of Amersham, which I had planned to stop off in for a pub lunch, before noticing too late that this game kicked off an hour early at 2pm. As bad luck would have it, this also coincided with no cooked food being available in the clubhouse on this day. As nice as two packets of Walker’s ready salted crisps are, they aren’t a great substitute for meal in a traditional old pub.

Never mind. These things happen. Seeing another 0-0 would be worse. And that was the other big draw for me on this day.

Amersham are having a rather good season. They are 16 points clear at the top, and if they got three goals today they would rack up 100 league goals for the season. I thought Reading getting 99 in 46 games in the long gone days of 05/06 was special, but Amersham could achieve it after just 25 games, within the first week of January.

Trying to prevent them from doing so were Westside, from South London, who were mid-table, but arrived up for the challenge. The first challenge for me was to work out which team was which. Amersham normally play in black and white, but here one team was in yellow, and the other in blue, so working out who was who took a short while. A rousing shout from one player of “come on, pies”, using the colloquial nickname, gave it away. ‘Pies’, being short for magpies, obviously, but with the detail that the club’s ground was given to them by the founder of the Bowyers pie company, the opportunity for creating an urban myth as to why they are known as ‘the pies’ was sadly missed.

Now able to work out which team was the home side, I watched Amersham approach their “three goal challenge” with an enthusiasm that bordered on manic. It was clear Westside were going to have to put in a lot of work this afternoon. Fortunately for them, they played as if the thought of Amersham hitting that 100 goal target against them was some kind of insult, and played with a tigerish determination throughout.

Most of those in the crowd seemed to think Amersham had opened the scoring with a shot early on, which went just wide but rebounded into the back of the net, but the expectation was that a real first goal would come soon enough.

The fact that in actually took 38 minutes for the first goal says a lot for Westside’s efforts, even if a little more composure, and a little less ‘enthusiasm’ in some of Amersham’s shots, could have paid dividends. As often happens, when the deadlock is broken, another goal comes soon, after, and a second for the hosts in a long period of stoppage time made the HT score 2-0, which really didn’t tell the story of the half.

It wasn’t all one-way traffic. Westside did pose threats now and then, and were seemingly clinging on to the idea that if they could nick one back, it would be a different game. The third goal of the game, perhaps inevitably, went to Amersham though. Westside’s keeper had a fine game, but couldn’t punch away a corner ball swung into the box, and the ball was then drilled low from the middle of the box to bring up the 100.

“On to the next 100” came a shout from the far side, but rather than a now inevitable loss breaking their spirit, Westside probably had their best spell of the game. They pulled one back with a far post header, to at least get some reward for their efforts, and not long after had another ruled out for offside. Make no mistake though, while both sides were creating chances, the large majority were going to Amersham.

With the game going into stoppage time, Westside missed their final good chance of the game, putting a shot wide, and Amersham added a fourth with almost the next attack, turning and hitting a shot off the post, to give the score a probably more realistic impression of how the game went. An exasperated Westside player pointed out, not exactly usefully, that it could have been 2-3 had the chance not been missed, but now it was game over. When the adrenaline subsides, they will surely accept they were just beaten by a significantly better team.

On another day, against weaker or less determined opposition, this could have been a rout, but with 67 points and 101 goals already in the bag, nobody at Amersham is going to be too bothered. Seasons like this don’t come along too often, so enjoy every minute.

Cheltenham 2 Reading 2

Cheltenham Town 2 Reading 2 (29th December 2023)

I used to be a regular away traveller with Reading in the late 80s and 90s, tailing off in the 00s, and increasingly sporadic in the 10s, meaning this was my first away league game since a 4-2 win at Burton in 2017 – although I did manage to attend both the Kidderminster and Eastleigh cup debacles.

I have a kind of fondness for Cheltenham though, dating back to going there for a cup tie in 1998, when the ground was very different on three sides, and I was pleased when they gained League status, and other than a one-season blip, they seem to have established themselves. I didn’t really expect to be playing them in the League itself too often though.

When I first went, almost 26 years ago now, I was in the covered side terrace, which I remember as a bit of a ramshackle enclosure, but probably wasn’t that bad. Now it’s a smart seated stand for about 2000, and I had a seat up the other end, not far from a scoreboard that would cast a red glow over everyone in that corner. I have also watched from the seated stand to my left, for a friendly a few years back, and from the main stand when they hosted the (then) co-tenants and neighbours Gloucester City. Their old rivals would also, in my mind, theoretically be a great addition to the league, but although they have managed to move back to the city now, they are a long way off that in both playing ability and infrastructure.

It’s fair to say Cheltenham didn’t have the best of starts to 2023/24. No Cheltenham player scored until their 14th game of the campaign. The solitary goal in their favour, during a 1-4 cup defeat by Bristol Rovers, was put in by a Rovers player. They have hit 15 in the 10 League games since though, and they look to be heading in the right direction to escape the bottom four.

The same could probably be said of Reading, who have looked harder to beat, with a resiliance added to their game that was severely lacking before. It was the Reading of earlier months that was on show in the first half though. They were frankly abject, bullied off the ball, unable to string two passes together, losing every 50/50, and thankful to the keeper for keeping the score down.

Even when he did save though, almost comical calamity struck, as an attempted clearance in the six yard box was kicked against him, to rebound into the goal. Reading looked hopeless, completely outplayed, and it was a case of just lasting through first half injury time without conceded again, to try to regroup.

Then, out of nowhere, the same group of players scored twice in two minutes. Completely undeserved, and just as beautiful. That’s the joy of football.

The second half was more even. Reading even held out against a free kick and corner, both coming after the added on five minutes were up – which would have been nailed on for a home goal just a few weeks ago – and the points were shared.

(a small set of photos – I don’t tend to take photos at Reading games)