Saturday 2nd July 2022 ko 14:00

Pre-Season Friendly

WOKINGHAM & EMMBROOK 1 (17)

KNAPHILL 1 (56)

Att c50 at Emmbrook School

Free Entry

Just recently I read a thread on Twitter about what constitutes a new ground. Its fair to say that none of the participants had particularly high ground counts- the low hundreds being typical, and with the tendency to include that count in their Twitter “Bio” too. The conversation was around what constitutes a new ground- and that certainly didn’t include 3G cages.

I do see their point, and there are merits to that point of view. The main gripe is that you could be virtually anywhere- to such an extent that when I saw this fixture I thought I’d actually been to the ground before- I was thinking of King’s Academy in Binfield, in my defence the opposition was Knaphill FC too! It does rather prove their point even if I don’t agree with them. 

Of course what these cages are, are superb community sports facilities. I’m old enough to remember adverse weather sports on caged asphalt pitches, and at university on a caged shale pitch. Believe me you only slide tackle once on those! That’s why the schools do good business renting them out, and at least this one, just 200 yards from Wokingham & Emmbrook’s Lowther Road had a viewing area. With cricket taking precedence during the summer, this was a satisfactory substitute.

We saw a perfectly adequate game too, with the draw fair on the balance of play. But in the final analysis this was less about the result, and more about the work out. And I was happy enough with that.