Saturday 8th July 2023 ko 11:00

Pre-Season Friendly

METROPOLITAN POLICE 2 (Body 4 Akinbibi 33)

YATELEY UNITED 0

Att c75

Free Entry

With my pre-season running a rough theme, of old, or third party grounds, this one definitely was one of the latter, but it was one that I’d been after for a while. Many will have been to Leatherhead FC’s Fetcham Grove, and if you haven’t visited there, it’s one to put on your bucket list. But Leatherhead Youth play on the outskirts of town, and yes, the two clubs are linked.

Given what I’ve told you, you’re probably expecting River Lane to be a dull 3G cage, well the pitch is artificial and in a cage, but there’s so much more to it. For a start there’s the two stands that remind me just slightly of the “Elascon” stands you see in Netherlands and Belgium. I can vouch for that while those two stands may be prefabricated, but the view from them is million times better than the more usual kit stands that have spread like a rash over the years.

For the pitch hoppers there’s more pitches too, and the clubhouse gives the impression of a ground waiting for a tolerably ambitious Step 7 club to move in and see their route to promotion opened up. Here there were two games played here on the Saturday, this was the first, and the many other groundhoppers scattered to the four winds afterwards, firstly to avoid the thunderstorms (just look at the backdrop to some of the photos!) and secondly to find another game.

River Lane was home to Chessington United, later Mole Valley Predators and the ground saw Combined Counties League football until 2005-6 when the side left to concentrate on youth football, and slowly metamorphosed into the Leatherhead Youth of now. In 2007 Sutton Common Rovers moved here until 2009 when they opted to move into a groundshare at Cobham FC. The ground has been extensively redeveloped since its pyramid football days.

This game saw Metropolitan Police, newly (voluntarily) relegated to the Isthmian League Division One South Central play Yateley, newly promoted to the Combined Counties Division One. So, a two division gap between the two sides, so you’d think the tie went by status wouldn’t you? Perhaps, I’m not completely sure, Met Police fielded far more players than Yateley so I do wonder how much of the win was down to their greater numbers?

But as the cliche goes, you shouldn’t read too much into pre-season friendlies.