Tuesday 11th April 2023 ko 18:30

Banbury, District and Lord Jersey League- Premier Division

CHESTERTON 0

GRAVEN HILL 5 (Watts 45 Quarterman 48 Smith 52 Munday 60 Edwards 78)

Att 30

Free Entry

Groundhoppers do tend to love that last part of the football season when the clocks of gone forward, and the clubs with no floodlights can play midweek fixtures. It tends to evoke thoughts of warm evenings, watching games in a t-shirt and shorts as the sun slowly sets. Well, in theory at least!

Chesterton is a well-to-do village south-west of Bicester. The Lord Jersey in the league title references the Villiers family, Earls of Jersey, who owned large tracts of land in the Bicester area, most notably Middleton Park, near Middleton Stoney. More locally the whole village was owned by the Villiers family until 1921, with the manor house visible behind the trees eventually becoming Bruern House School, a private facility specialising in the education of those who dyslexia and dyspraxia.

Some may recall Oxford United having a training facility in the village. That facility is to the west of the village and is owned by the Bicester Sports Association, who used to own the Oxford Road ground in Bicester itself used by the now defunct Bicester Town FC, who folded after a dispute with the Association. That site looks like it will be swallowed up by the Bicester Village shopping complex. As it stands the town has no site or stadium capable of staging Step 6 football.

The evening’s opponents Graven (pronounced Gray-ven) Hill certainly aim to change that. They represent the Graven Hill district of Bicester and currently use the Sunderland Drive facility. The seem ambitious, and are looking to build a facility capable of returning Hellenic League football to the town. 

Chesterton play at the village playing fields, just behind the community centre. And on just about any other spring evening it would have been pleasant to watch two local sides slug it out. But the temperature was a case of winter maintaining its unwelcome presence and the rain hammered down.

The game followed the form book, Graven Hill won well, en route to runners-up spot. I timed my walk back to the car to coincide with the final whistle. The fact that I made a beeline for the nearest coffee shop spoke volumes.