Saturday 29th July 2023 ko 20:00

United Counties League Premier Division North

EASTWOOD COMMUNITY 0

MELTON TOWN 2 (Mills 9 Palmer 71)

Att 468

Entry £7

Programme £2

For me at least the principle attraction to another visit to Coronation Park, was for the metaphorical “Before and after shots.” For those unaware the original Eastwood Town played in the Northern Premier League at Coronation Park but folded due to bankruptcy in 2014.

A new community club was quickly formed but the ground was taken on by the local authority who converted the pitch to 3G allowing for maximum use, but that required levelling the pitch, no easy task when you see the slope as it was… here’s Coronation Park in May 2007.

I’m sure those attending the hop game fitted two categories, ones who were comparing old to new and those who’d seen that slope. Either way the view from the “Down” end was interesting enough! There was no end of excitement to be had on this evening, Saturday evenings on any hop tend to produce very healthy crowds, and there was a wedding reception in the clubhouse just to add even more bounce!

In fact the only issue with dealing with a crowd this big was the catering. Evening games at the end of a 4 game day will always add up to hungry hoppers, and serving through a hatch just slows things down. My wife Robyn waited 50 minutes for her chilli and rice. The odd thing is all too often the clubs with fewer facilities tend to do better with the catering, who could forget Cilgerran for example? Catering for large crowds works best when there’s enough room for plenty of servers to serve plenty of food to plenty of people, quickly. It’s a point that we’ll be reinforcing going forward.

But let’s not make the mistake of defining the evening by that. I greatly enjoyed Eastwood’s company, and the printed team sheets were a lovely touch. The game held the attention too, and Melton Town do seem to be one of those clubs who seem to be inspired whenever they take place in one of these events. They collected their second win in two years, but still strolled back to my car afterwards wondering if a Red Badger exists anywhere other than at Coronation Park?