Tuesday 26th November 2024 ko 19:45

Russell Cotes Cup First Round

MONEYFIELDS 4 (Kamin 14 Sargeant 23 Mahammedkier 67 De Sousa 83)

BAFFINS MILTON ROVERS 1 (Lukonyomoi 2)

Att 117

Entry £5

Programme £1

You may recall that a few years ago I visited the Portsmouth suburb of Copnor for the Moneyfields Sports Ground, named after the avenue on which it was located. The trains rumbled past behind the goal past the site of a station that was never built.

The site was used by Portsmouth FC as their training ground in the past and so it was of no great surprise that the ground was taken on by Pompey’s Portsmouth in the Community charity in order to redevelop it as a training ground, a community facility and a home for Moneyfields. Yes, I’ve put the priorities in order, my order as I see it!

The new stadium is named after John Jenkins, a veteran of D-Day and a lifelong Portsmouth supporter and the redevelopment saw Moneyfields groundshare at Havant & Waterlooville’s Westleigh Park for the 2022-3 season and only returned for this season. That provokes two questions, has the Moneyfields’ pitch moved, and how has the new stadium affected the club?

If the pitch has moved, it certainly isn’t by much the new houses on the dugouts side sit on what used to be the bowls club, and the clubhouse and changing room block between the two pitches has drastically reduced the footprint that Moneyfields have to work with. I may have seen my visit as a means of completing the Wessex League, but Moneyfields are in their first season in the Isthmian League and the ground gradings seem set to make the club’s life difficult.

Imagine yourself stretching your arms out wide; that is as close to being as room as there is on three sides of the ground between the pitchside rail and the perimeter fence. The main stand is on the other side, there’s other little bits of cover but the limitations on future development are both obvious and worrying in equal measure. There’s not even enough space for a spectator to walk behind the dugouts.

The game was a derby in every sense, you almost inevitably pass by Baffins’ Langstone Sports Ground on the way here. The Russell Cotes Cup is for senior clubs affiliated to the Hampshire FA but holds no senior status, existing as a fund-raising competition for the Hampshire FA’s benevolent coffers. Inevitably some clubs do take use the cup as a means to blood younger players, and the reduced entry fee was a fair indication that Moneyfields saw it that way.

And it could have easily backfired on them, shipping a goal in the second minute, and losing Ciaran Martin to a red card for an out-of-control challenge. The irony was that young Martin was on loan from Portsmouth…. It seemed to me that the setbacks galvanised the hosts and in time they made that higher status count and eventually won easily.

It was a hugely enjoyable night out, and that 3G pitch will no doubt be used at wet weather insurance by southern-based groundhoppers. I do worry though what the long-term implications will be for Moneyfields FC.