Saturday 1st November 2025 ko 17:45

Southern Combination Premier Division

LANCING 1 (Collier 36)

NEWHAVEN 3 (Blunt 3 Roag 60p Oliver 87)

Att 293

Entry £8

Programme £2

If you are going to revisit a ground as a neutral, then I’d suggest leaving plenty of time between the visits, and go when the changes to the stadium are clear and manifest. I’d argue that Culver Road and I would be a case in point.

The complicating factor here is that the ground is the Sussex FA Ground, the association having bought it from the club in 1981. Lancing themselves had played at Culver Road since 1952, but the lights and the stand you see today are all built by the Sussex FA. Or putting it another way we knew the club would be restricted as to what they could do to profit by a bumper Saturday evening crowd.

I’d visited here back in 2005 to see Lancing beat Bexhill 2-0 and the standing joke then was that the stand was being condemned – one block at a time!

Robyn and I arrived and I didn’t recogise the place, or at least until I spotted the FA offices towards one corner, they still slightly obscure the view even with the new stand. But once we arrived we could see two things. Firstly what a good club Lancing are, but also just how difficult playing here is.

It was suggested that this ground costs around £400 per match and to make things even more difficult, they get no income from the tea bar and even have to pay for the removal of litter. Little wonder they are struggling at the wrong end of the table. They did all they could here though, putting on a curry and the club shop/ hut did a roaring trade too. More than anything else, I hope having us there helped them. On the pitch Newhaven won straightforwardly enough; that in itself was worrying of you happen to be involved at our hosts. Whatever the realities of being Lancing FC are, they certainly were excellent company, and you hope that in the future that they can find a more equitable existance.

The next day we visited both Loxwood and Godalming Town who were both excellent hosts and stood up well to the bumper crowds we’re getting used to seeing here. I drove back to Oxford happy that we’d finished GroundhopUK’s 2025 on a high, but also that once again the Southern Combination had put themselves in the best possible light.