Wednesday 19 February 2020

Dennis My Arse!


Bedfont Sports  1  Hertford Town  0

Isthmian League – First Division Central

Stop the World, cancel everything, Armageddon is upon us, life as we know it will never be the same again, or at least not until Sunday night….

Yes, welcome to good old fashioned British Hysteria at the prospect of Storm Dennis hitting our shores.

Ok, I don’t want to be too flippant because places like South Wales, Herefordshire and West Yorkshire have suffered, and suffered consistently over recent times, so it would be cruel to say their plight was not very serious, because clearly it was and will remain so for some time.

But, I have to say, as a nation we are a set of proper fannies!

Right, some examples from Saturday last, the National League top flight see’s nine of it’s twelve games postponed, largely due to the ‘prospect’ of bad weather and possible health and safety issues for players and spectators. We then had a situation in the Wessex League whereby Hamworthy United play on a plastic pitch, but the visitors Horndean refused to travel for health and safety reasons.

Hang on a minute, other than two games that suffered waterlogging, every single game in the top four professional leagues in England played, so, why was it ok for those to take place, and fans to travel the length and breadth of the Country, yet it wasn’t in the National League, or Horndean?

A massive overreaction if you ask me, but sadly, what we kind of expected?


I had a Storm Dennis plan, it was Bedfont Sports v Hertford Town on the plastic. My only concern being high winds and the prospect of a fussy referee or possibly even fussier players deciding it wasn’t conducive to a game of football. But, I was happy to take the risk.

I’ve had Bedfont on the radar since the start of last season, but I’ve been saving it for Dennis, or one of his cousins. Last season we didn’t get many Dennis’s so I didn’t take advantage of it, but now the time had come, over recent weeks and months the plastic card has had to be played for obvious reasons.

Bedfont, now this is a bit complicated, but I’ll try to simplify and not bore. A quick look at Football Club History Database (I use it a lot as you may have gathered!) and a search on the name brings up the following.


Bedfont, Bedfont & Feltham, Bedfont Green, Bedfont Town and of course, Bedfont Sports.

Sports and Feltham are the current clubs playing at a senior level, two different clubs, albeit playing next door to each other. While Sports, on the face of it, don’t appear to be connected to any of the previous incarnations, in fact they started life as a Sunday side, absorbing a junior club by the name of Bedfont Eagles along the way.

The rest of them, well, I’ve kind of lost the will and want to focus on the current, no offence to Bedfont and it’s footballing history like, I’m sure it’s fascinating, but not today!


The weird thing is though, Bedfont is a South Western suburb of London, close to the M25 and Heathrow Airport, with a population of around 12,000, yet so much has happened from a footballing point of view, and I’ve not even mentioned FC Deportivo Galicia yet…..

The football grounds sit on Hatton Road, which runs parallel to the airport. Bedfont Sports is the first ground you come to on the right hand side, with the pitch running widthways to the road, while the ground of Bedfont & Feltham sits next door but runs lengthways to the road. The journey itself, which was clearly very silly of me as we’d been advised to only make essential journeys, was very simple as some people had obviously taken the advice seriously and left the roads nice and clear. My journey was essential by the way, I don’t miss football on a Saturday…..


I did set off early just in case the M1 was scattered with overturned lorries, but it wasn’t, so I pulled into the car park at 1.30pm and took up a space in the bar. The rain was intermittent, and the wind was no worse than on a windy autumn day. Put it this way, a plan was landing at Heathrow every ninety seconds (I counted them) and none of them appeared to come in sideways!

So, Bedfont Sports then.

They joined the Combined Counties League in 2009 after a seven year spell in the Middlesex County League. By 2012 they’d made it to the top flight and Step 5, while a runners up spot in 2017-18 saw them promoted to the Isthmian League, where they now remain. A mid-table finish last season was viewed as a success, whereas this season they are more than holding their own in the Central Division.


The ground is excellent. They have seats on three sides, and cover pretty much runs all the way round all four sides, so sheltering from the elements was never going to be an issue. It was smart and tidy, while both the tea bar and the clubhouse did the job just fine. I have to say they were a very friendly bunch too. Yes, I liked what I saw, this is an impressive set up, and with the large junior element to the club, they look to be a thriving organisation.

Sadly, not too many turn out to watch them, with just 67 on Saturday, which was slightly under the average of the season, which is 71. A seasons best of 151 saw the August Bank Holiday game against Chertsey Town, while just 34 witnessed the visit of FC Romania back in November.

Visitors Hertford Town suffered a serious blow in the warm up when Harvie Gardiner went down injured, very badly it appeared. He was in considerable distress and pain, and had to be stretchered from the field. The chat was that he’d suffered a broken leg, but I’ve not seen that confirmed.


The game, I’ll be honest, it wasn’t great, but you couldn’t blame the conditions. Very few goalscoring chances were created, but as the game wore on I did feel if anyone was going to score then it would be the visitors. But then, just as I was counting the 28th plane landing of the second half, Sports won a penalty in the 88th minute.

Goalkeeper Ben Herd had plenty to say about the award, took his time getting ready, and then, bizarrely he decided to run up and boot the ball off the penalty spot and out of the ground. He got a yellow card, but the tactic seemed to work as he went on to save the tame penalty kick.


However, two minutes into three of stoppage time, great work on the left from Lucas Sinclair saw him lay the ball back to Veron Kokurinkov who smashed the ball into the top corner to give Bedfont the three points. Did they deserve it? Possibly not, but that’s football.

The journey home was straightforward, the roads were once again quiet. But guess, what, of all the games that kicked off on Saturday, I’ve only seen one report of an abandonment for rain, no abandonments due to the wind, and not a single report of anyone coming to grief either travelling to, or watching a football match!

Maybe next time the footballing World won’t be quite so hasty.



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