Saturday 20th July 2024 ko 14:00

Pre-season friendly

SPARTANS YOUTH 1 (Ralph 90)

WEALDSTONE U23 1 (86)

Att 31 at Carville Hall Park North , Lionel Road North, Brentford.

Free Entry

Where do I start with this one? Probably with the most obvious, we were taking advantage of a club that normally groundshares playing a rare game at home. Spartans Youth are starting their third season in the first division of the Combined Counties League, but have groundshared at Northwood, and this season at Bedfont FC, a little nearer to the planes flying into Heathrow!

The club’s ground is adjacent to the M4, and the other side of the motorway from Brentford’s new ground; you can just about see the club shop of the Premier League side through the trees. But let’s talk about Carville Hall Park. What you see today is roughly half of the former gardens of Carville Hall, once of owned by 17th century distiller and brewer David Roberts- the motorway cuts his former estate in two.

Spartans Youth have been around since 2006, born as the name might suggest from a youth team and while the ground clearly isn’t up to Step 6 gradings the club have applied to improve their home. The truth of it through is while I wish them all the very best with that, there’s a lot to like about Carville Hall Park North in the here and now.

That isn’t confined to just the garden furniture we commandeered, more that everywhere you looked there was a backdrop to photograph, whether that be the Le Corbusier-inspired tower blocks being buzzed by the planes, the trees, or the concrete jungle that is Junction 2 of the M4.

I was particularly drawn to the art deco Barratt Building, once HQ to Beechams, built in 1932 and originally named Wallis House after its architect Thomas Wallis, who also designed the quite wonderful Hoover Building on the A40 Westway, in Perivale. Behind it, or to the right in the photos is the post-modernist Kew Eye Tower. I’ll leave you to guess how much a flat in there would cost. I daren’t look!

Whoever put this fixture knew what they were doing; I wouldn’t have put together a National League Premier’s under-23’s against a Combined Counties Division One side. But what do I know, the two sides were well-matched, perhaps a little too well matched if goals are your thing! We did get two goals, right at the end, with Teddy Ralph’s effort quickly cancelled out courtesy of a goalkeeping error.

It’s not often that a trip is so obviously greater than the sum of its parts but this one definately was! We departed for, would you believe, a Syrian meal in Ealing!