Saturday 9th September 2023 ko 15:00

Somerset County League Division Two

IMPERIAL 5 (Miles 20 Morgan 60 69 78 Sanders 83)

WELTON ROVERS RESERVES 0

Att 22 at Imperial Sports Ground, Brislington, Bristol

Free Entry

I’d been foisted by my own petard. As my regular reader knows my wife Robyn is from Knowle West in Bristol’s southern suburbs so I do tend to see quite a lot of the area visiting family. On such as visit I’m mused that I must have visited every single ground in the city with a set of floodlights? Our nephew Jack immediately commented, “Have you seen a game at Imperial then?” No, I hadn’t…..

I had no excuse, I’ve driven along Airport Road enough times and seen the signage, the ground is only about a mile from Whitchurch where he lives! Perhaps my only fig leaf was that Imperial don’t use the 3G cage; that gets used by Bristol City’s cerebral palsy team.

The ground was formerly the works sports facility for Imperial Tobacco, who had a factory in nearby Hartcliffe, and if you wanted a personal angle on it, Robyn and I were married at Combe Lodge, Blagdon, about 14 miles southwest. That was the home of the Wills family whose W.D. & H.O. Wills company eventually became part of the Imperial Tobacco Group from 1901. The company now rebadged Imperial Brands still has a base in Bristol.

The sports ground is now owned by Bristol City Council and is leased to Imperial Sports Ground, a charity that aims to increase participation in sport locally. It may be an awkward use of words but the grounds do act as a set of green lungs for the Brislington area and the backdrop of Knowle Water Tower (a Grade II listed building) and the Pavilions townhouse development at one edge does add interest.

There’s more than just football too, at the other end of the grounds a rugby match was producing all the sound effects of a tug o’ war, and the cricket team in 1989 featured an 18 year old Shane Warne, who slept in the clubhouse and who later commented that his time in Bristol was where he learned to drink!

The weather was sweltering, it was difficult to watch a game let along play in one! I soon retreated to the shade of the tree, and let the younger ones sweat. It proved to be a good vantage point as the game proved to be highly entertaining on a superb pitch. Yes, Imperial won and won well, with hat trick hero Keegan Morgan the obvious stand-out but both sides passed and moved far better than the level (10 promotions from League 2) would suggest.

I shuffled back the car, chugged back a bottle of water, and headed back to my family.