Spectrum

Bracknell Town  7  Staines Town   1

Isthmian League – Division One Central

Forty seven years down the line, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a bit different. Ok, lets be more precise, I’m actually a bit weird!

The signs were there to see when I was a mere toddler, because according to my Mum I used to astound the passengers on the Belper to Fritchley bus service by being able to name the make and model of every car we passed on the journey, I was still in nappies!

It was flags and capital cities next, I could look at a flag, from anywhere in the World, name the country and the capital. My primary school teacher described me as a special, back before special meant something else!

We then had a fish obsession phase, which I cleverly combined with my football obsession. So much so my Mother was quite perturbed one day when she found I’d created the ‘Fish World Cup’, indeed the Perch v Pike semi-final was a pivotal encounter what with the Barbel awaiting the winners in the final….

We had a bout of trainspotting, that was quite brief, and I suppose quite normal under the circumstances, but then as I reached my latter teenage years, something very unusual took over.

It all started in Sixth Form, I was in a Geography A-Level class when my teacher, the wonderful John Featherby who I still see from time to time at Belper Town games, came out with a comment. We were looking at a map of Charleroi in Belgium when he said “I find maps fascinating.”

That was it, I may have been 17, I may have just got my driving licence, I may also have popped my cherry for the first time, but, I too had decided that I was going to find maps fascinating!

What I did next was quite bizarre. I started with a London A-Z Map, I then branched out to all of the major cities in the UK, it then moved onto the smaller provincial towns, but going beyond the A-Z company. Estate Publications, GB Barnett, Wanderley, Bartholomew, you name the company, I had an account with them!

By the end of it, I had dozens and dozens of street atlases and maps of the UK. Did any of them come to any use? Apart from Birmingham for football purposes, largely they were of no use whatsoever, but I did like looking at them! I mean, at what point in my life is a street map of Ely ever going to be useful? But it didn’t matter, and, strangely, my Mum also quite liked them, and guess what, I’ve still got them all.

By now, if you haven’t already gone away from reading this because it’s simply too disturbing, you are probably thinking that if I had been born thirty years later my parents could probably claim some kind of benefit due to my condition. It hasn’t gone away I might add, football grounds, football programmes, You Tube videos of fish, train timetables and fare manipulation, I’m into it all. I’m not into Real Ale though and beer ticking, knackers to that, set of freaks that they are!

Anyway, one of the A-Z street atlases I bought was Bracknell, but it wasn’t just Bracknell, it also included Wokingham and Ascot to be precise, and at the time of the acquisition, I genuinely did think to myself that it would never be of any benefit as I would never ever go to Bracknell.

Being honest though, the advent of satellite navigation and Google Maps has made printed maps redundant anyway, so in theory I will never need to pick up a map again, and that’s quite sad in many ways, but reality I guess.

Another thing that’s a little unusual for me is my memory, I remember the most bizarre things, most of them historic, but it’s the level of detail that sticks with me. For example, I could quote the surname every person who lived on Dale Close in my former home village of Fritchley and what the house numbers were, from 1985, there were 21 of them. 

So, Bracknell, I’ve never been, I’ve never seen the team play, but I do remember something from the early Noughties (my memory again). It was the Non-League Paper and a column written by former Arnold Town player Stuart Hammonds. He was talking about his emotions having been ‘forced’ to leave Bracknell as a player due to a budget cut. He mentioned a song that he played on his car CD player on his way home from that final meeting that reduced him to tears, because it was the players song, and because the team had broken up, they would never have that moment together again. Frustratingly, I cannot remember what the song was!  

Bracknell Town have a plastic pitch, and at this moment in time, that’s a very good position to be in. Not only that, from my own selfish perspective, it means I can undertake a lengthy journey without concerns. Like Bedfont last week, I’d saved it, and now was the time.  

I didn’t fancy the M25 so I elected to go down the M40 and then exit at Wycombe, taking the road via the edges of Marlow and Maidenhead, which in turn took me into Bracknell via the pretty and expensive looking village of Holyport.

Bracknell is a sizable place, the centre of which looks modern and well catered for by the service sector. A number of modern style flats and apartments have been built, no doubt to meet the demand for a growing workforce in the town, but also to cater for those who like to commute into London.

The ground on Larges Lane is very close to the centre of the town, just off what is known as the Met Office Roundabout, which makes me think the aforementioned organisation is based in Bracknell. Parking is available at the adjacent cricket club, and once through the turnstiles and up the ramp you can see the ground in all it’s glory.

Three sides of the ground are purely hard standing, but on the cricket field side of the ground is both a seated and a terraced stand, while two club bars are situated either side of the spectator accommodation. The changing rooms are also located within these buildings. It looks modern, and I suspect when the 3G was put down, much of the ground was refurbished at the same time.

They are also well supported, a crowd of 327 pitched  up to watch a side that over the years has tried in vain to get to a level a town of it’s size would warrant. Back in the Seventies and early Eighties they were a Spartan League outfit, before being admitted to the Isthmian League in 1984.

They tripped around in the lower levels of the Isthmian until 2004, when they were moved into the Southern League, a competition they left in a downwardly fashion in 2010 when the club ended up in the Hellenic League. By 2012 they had gone down again and were at Step 6, unthinkable really.

They bounced back and a runners up spot in 2018 saw them promoted back to Step 4, where last season in their first campaign they reached the play offs, only to lose to Cheshunt in the final, after Westfield had been beaten in the semi stages.

So a Step 4 Play-Off is as good as it’s got, but with the size of the town, the support levels that go with it, and the perfect location on so many levels, this is a club that needs to be and should be playing a level higher.

Bracknell went into the game sat just outside of the Play Off places, while visiting Staines Town were next to bottom, having sacked ex Derby County player Martin Kuhl the previous day from the managers role. Staines have been in freefall for a few years now, and to be fair, the game exemplified that hugely.

By half time the hosts had torn Staines apart and lead 4-0. Nathan Minhas had netted a hat-trick in a twenty minute period, while Max Herbert had got the fourth. Daniel Bayliss smashed home a brilliant fifth just after the break, before Sebastian Bowerman and Bayliss had made it 7-0 on the 70^th minute. Staines pulled a goal back thanks to a neat finish from William Efambe, but salt was rubbed into the visitors wounds close to the end of the game when goalkeeper Louis Dixon got a straight red for handling outside the box.

So that was it, a very good day out, it went smoothly, without any need whatsoever to peruse the Bracknell A-Z. I was back home by 7.15pm and soon adding football match 3502 to my all time records (I forgot to mention those….)

In case you were wondering, I did have a computer when I was a kid, it was a ZX Spectrum, how appropriate…………