Tag Archives: isthmian league

Blackwater

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

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Tuesday 10th November 2015 ko 19.45

Isthmian League North Division

HEYBRIDGE SWIFTS 1 (Morrison 76)

BRIGHTLINGSEA REGENT 5 (Malton 4 Kelly 9 15 Gould 55 Read 90)

Att 134

Entry £10

Programme £2

Badge £3

Looks can be deceiving sometimes. You pull into the car park at Scraley Road and the ground immediately impresses. There’s a large main stand, with its little brother opposite, and there’s the friendly club shop too. I enjoyed having a chin-wag at the burger bar, and the clubhouse is spacious and well-appointed. It is the kind of place where I could sit back before the game, and watch the club being unconsciously competent. The problem was that one of my footballing bad habits was to bite me somewhat. Continue reading →

The Oxygen Of Life

29 Thursday Oct 2015

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Tuesday 27th October 2015 ko 19.45

Isthmian League Premier Division

NEEDHAM MARKET 1 (Mills 30)

BILLERICAY TOWN 3 (Nesbitt 3 24 87p)

Att 255 

Entry £10

Programme £2

A small market town isn’t, at first glance, the most obvious place to find a real footballing success story. The small town lies plumb in the centre of Suffolk, and is best known for for Joseph Priestley if you’re a scientist (he discovered oxygen), and June Brown if you’re a fan of Eastenders (she played Dot Cotton), but there’s obviously something in the water at Bloomfields that allows football to grow.

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Crossroads

11 Sunday Jan 2015

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Friday 9th January 2015 ko 19.00

FA U21 Premier League

WEST HAM UNITED 1 (Morrison 37)

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR 3 (Ward 21 90 Winks 55)

Att c500 at Rush Green Stadium, Romford

Entry £3

Programme FREE

As a writer I suspect if you want to find a football ground to write about, the easiest way of find some subject matter is to head to East London. The Rush Green Stadium is on the A124 at Romford’s edge. Its now home to West Ham’s academy, although the club’s training base is still at Chadwell Heath, a few miles away, and you do wonder when the club moves to the Olympic Stadium the season after next, whether one of those bases will lost.

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Suffolk Punch

02 Friday Jan 2015

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Thursday 1st January 2015 ko 15.00

Isthmian League Premier Division

LEISTON 1 (Godbold 78og)

WITHAM TOWN 1 (Wraight 21)

Att 210

Entry £10

Programme £2

Badge £3.50

As a carload of slightly hungover groundhoppers half clambered, half fell out the car at the Crown Inn, Leiston no one remembered just how close we all were to Sizewell Nuclear Power Station. Just the railway line with its old-fashioned level crossing gates gave a clue when we bumped over the line, waking my 3 passengers!

The Suffolk town grew in the 19th century through the production of steam tractors. At the Leiston Works, Garrett & Sons produced the vehicles together with a wide variety of metal products, munitions included. Continue reading →

Roll-on, Roll-off

12 Friday Dec 2014

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Tuesday 9th December 2014 ko 15.00

Isthmian League Division One North

TILBURY 2 (Carlile 4p Daniel 74)

THAMESMEAD TOWN 1 (MacGeechan 82)

Att 40

Entry & Programme £9

Tea £1

I suspect Tilbury is one of those towns which few have visited, but many of their possessions have. The port town replaced the London docks as the major destination for goods entering England via the Thames Estuary, and for exports heading out. Today the containers arrive and leave at a bewildering rate, and wherever I looked, in the background I could see the twinkling lights of the docks. Continue reading →

The Town That Didn’t Stare

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

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Tuesday 25th November 2014 ko 19.30

Isthmian League Cup 2nd Round

EAST GRINSTEAD TOWN 2 (Campbell 3 Joseph 37)

PEACEHAVEN & TELSCOMBE 1 (Gatting 62)

Att 59

Entry £8

No Programme

Tea £1

It would be all too easy to treat East Grinstead as part of that sprawl of London commuter-belt south of the M25. Are you in Surrey, or are you in Sussex (the latter!) the endless affluent suburbia making the county irrelevant. But this is one of those towns where you need to park your prejudices and look at little deeper. Continue reading →

The 100 Club

18 Tuesday Mar 2014

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Monday 17th March 2014 ko 19.45

Isthmian League Division One North

BARKINGSIDE 3 (C Liddiard 5 Carwell 32 Rolls 45)

ERITH & BELVEDERE 0

Att 92

Entry £8

Programme £1.50 (reissue from postponed game)

Badge £1.50

Tea 80p

Supporters Handbook £1

In the beginning, well 1957, the underground trains at Barkingside rattled along the Central Line destined for Central London, but if you fancied something more exotic you could travel the other way and visit Hainault and from there change. That got you to Woodford, and exciting-sounding destinations were within your grasp such as Theydon Bois and Epping. There was even a further branch north-east of that where treats such as North Weald, Blake Hall and Chipping Ongar could be explored.

But just beyond the northbound platform, a football ground was being built. Barkingside took a long lease from the local council to give them a suitable home and slowly Oakside Park was put together. Very much from the Heath Robinson School of Architecture it was practical, but homely. The club built themselves up on the field too, moving through the leagues until a second place finish in last season’s Essex Senior League saw them play Isthmian League football for the first time this season. Continue reading →

Modus Operandi

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

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Tuesday 4th March 2014 ko 19.30

Isthmian League Division One South

CRAWLEY DOWN GATWICK 2 (Sargent 28 Akanbi 42)

THREE BRIDGES 3 (Romain 53 Daniel 68 Rivers 90)

Att 113

Entry £8

Programme (reissue with insert) £2

Badge £4

Tea £1

The Mid-Sussex village is one of those pretty settlements that utterly belies its location close to Gatwick airport, and the M23 and M25 motorways. In fact I’d planned on visiting just before the Maltese tour, details here, but genuinely couldn’t face driving to Gatwick, then driving home, and returning a few hours later! Continue reading →

The Carshalton 6

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

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Tuesday 25th February 2013 ko 19.45

Isthmian League Premier Division

CARSHALTON ATHETIC 0

DULWICH HAMLET 4 (Clunis 21 Lodge 30 Daly 39 51)

Att 277

Entry £10

Programme (reissue from postponed game on 1st January with insert) £2

Badge. Carshalton Athletic I am NOT paying £5 for a badge.

Tea £1

My original idea was to visit the War Memorial Ground a couple of weeks ago, but then it was suggested to me by Mishi Morath that it would be more interesting to wait for Dulwich Hamlet to be the visitors. I diverted to an interesting evening at Tunbridge Wells, including a supporter reinforcing a cliché by complaining that I’d referred to them as Tunbridge, something she found, “Tres Annoying!” Mishi’s advice proved to be sound, and my trip to the ground just off Colston Avenue proved to be far more interesting than I expected. Continue reading →

The Sweetener

03 Thursday Oct 2013

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Tuesday 1st October 2013 ko 19.45

Isthmian League Premier Division

BURY TOWN 0

DULWICH HAMLET 4 (Oztumer 35 75p Walker 35 57)

Att 273

Entry £10

Programme £2

Badge £3

On the way home from Bungay I’d actually stopped for petrol in Bury-St-Edmunds without realising I was less than a mile from Ram Meadow. Nevertheless, regular readers will know that if I pass by a town, the chances of me returning to watch their football team increase dramatically!

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