Market Stalls & Prisons

Tavistock  0  Willand Rovers  3

Southern League – Division One South

Admission / Programme - £10 / No

Mrs H’s Aunty Jilly runs a stall on the Pannier Market in Tavistock, and it’s a place we’ve been to a couple of times in recent years to pay her a visit.

However, those visits have never coincided with a time when Tavistock were playing a home game, and for someone with traits like I’ve got, visiting a place more than once and not actually getting to see a game becomes a bit of a niggling issue. Yes, Tavistock was starting to bug me a little bit if I’m honest.

Tavistock sits on the road betwixt Plymouth and North Devon, and can be accessed via a few routes, but we elected to go via Okehampton (Master H wanted to visit the castle) and then drop down off the A30. It’s a lovely town, but on a Bank Holiday Monday nowt is open, and Aunty Jilly’s market was bolted shut, so we took a quick detour down to Yelverton and then up to Princetown via Dartmoor to take in some scenery, look out for some escaped prisoners, and kill a bit of time.

Time was duly killed, but no sheep were harmed and no prisoners looked to be on the run from HMP Dartmoor, so once we’d got some provisions from a supermarket it was on to the ground for the game against Willand Rovers, who live at the side of the M5 next to Cullompton.

The ground is Tavistock is set down a narrow lane on the South side of the town, just off the Plymouth Road. It has a very rural feel about it, albeit it is located next to a bus depot. Parked up behind the goal, the clubhouse is on the outside of the ground, so I popped in for a pint and received a very friendly welcome from the staff who were most curious to know why a chap from Derbyshire had come to watch Tavistock!

Anyroadup, what’s this Tavistock club all about then?

Historically a South Western League club from the early fifties, they became founder members of the South West Peninsula League in 2007, starting in the Premier Division before being relegated to the Eastern Division in 2014.

They bounced straight back to the Premier, finishing third, first, second and then first again before being promoted to the Western League Premier Division. The first two seasons were a Covid write off, but then last season they went on to win it, pipping Exmouth Town to the title, and with it gaining promotion to the Southern League. We actually saw the game at the same stage last season when the two sides met in Exmouth for what was effectively a league title showdown in front of a huge crowd.

This season, before the game, they sat in a play-off place in the Southern Division, which considering the journey they’ve been on is quite an achievement. But could they get past a Willand side that weren’t 100% clear of relegation?

Before the game, let’s talk about the ground. You enter behind the goal and on the side to your left is the tea bar and a huge two story dressing rooms and office building, with two Atcost type stands positioned in front of it. On the opposite side is a small area of cover that sits between the dugouts, whereas one end was out of bounds and the end where you enter sees a grass bank leading down to the pitch side hard standing.

As I said earlier, it does have a rural feel to it, and some of the scenery is lovely, but what they aren’t blessed with are large crowds that their progress on the field warrants. The average this season is 158, with a high of 301 at New Year against neighbours Bideford. For a Bank Holiday Monday game against Willand, 188 turned up to watch it.

The game was all over by half time, in fact it was all over after twenty minutes. Tavistock were poor and went in at the break three goals down thanks to goals from Ryan Guppy (4, 19) and Jack Rice-Lethaby (15). Tavistock never looked like coming back from that and the second half in terms of a spectacle wasn’t one that will live long in the memory.

That said, Tavistock are a super club who have come a huge way in a short space of time. It will be really interesting to see where they ‘level off’, but if they do get in the play-offs and do make it to the Premier Division, it will be fascinating to see how they perform.

Dartmoor was traversed again on the way back to the Dawlish area, but this time heading South down to the A38 at Ashburton. However, we were soon back, only four days later, Aunty Jilly was expecting us to visit, on a day when everything was open!

The Lights

Bideford  3  Westbury United  4

Southern League – Division One South

Admission / Programme - £6 / £2

Bideford have the best floodlights I’ve ever seen!

By that, I don’t mean that they are the shiniest and brightest illuminative devices in existence, for all I know they might not work that well, but in terms of their sheer aesthetic beauty, wowzers, they are incredible.

I can remember watching games in the Football League in the eighties when the bulk of clubs had a structure at each corner that were colossal beasts of intertwined steelwork that resembled an electricity pylon. Nowadays, with clubs moving grounds and upgrading, those types of pylons are few and far between, typically now they are either single poles, or simply integrated into the stand roof.

Back in the mid-eighties we had a family holiday to Ilfracombe, and for some reason, we drove through Bideford on a wet day, en-route to some other coastal destination, where myself and my sister would have to don our cagoules and be dragged from the car to look at something or other. I always used to ask if I could sit in the car and listen to Radio One, but my folks would never let me do that!

Anyway, we drove past the ground of Bideford AFC, and being a young non-league enthusiast at that time, I immediately clocked it and looked in awe at the pylons, thinking to myself that based on those floodlights alone, it would be a great ground to visit.

It’s been a long wait though, that was probably around 1986, it’s now 2023, so thirty seven years in the waiting, but all good things as they say…..

The current family holiday had entered day two, we’d stayed overnight in Exeter, and the following morning it was a cross country journey via Torrington to the North Devon coast. We arrived pretty early and inadvertently ended up parking right outside the ground, which by definition is incredibly close to the centre of the town. A quick run around the town centre, the Pannier Market, and a coffee later, it was time to head back to the Sports Ground and get set for the big game against my old mates from Wiltshire, Westbury United.

The Sports Ground in Bideford, even taking the floodlights out of the equation, is a wonderful thing, an old school beauty, football ground pornography in fact, I loved it. You walk in through the turnstiles in the corner and immediately to your right behind the South goal is the clubhouse and the offices set in a two story building. Moving round to the Eastern side of the ground you then have a long area of cover running along the main road side which is seated in the middle and terraced at either end. Behind the North goal is hard open standing while down the West side is a narrow but tall seated stand, with the dressing rooms and tea bar alongside. The ground itself is set within a huge footprint, and when you look at a Google Map view of it you can see that each corner in terms of the pitch surround is curved rather than angled, giving it something of an oval feel.

Then of course the floodlights, four of them, all solid four sided structures in silver / grey, with a large rectangular frame at the top that housed the actual bulbs. To be honest, I couldn’t stop looking at them, and if wasn’t so scared of heights, I’d probably have asked permission to climb them, not that it would ever be granted of course!

But what about the actual football club then, well this is quite a tale if I’m honest, and the story of a club whereby geography has not really done them any favours.

They joined the Western League as founder members in 1949, where they remained until 1972 when they moved to the Southern League, having won the Western League in the two previous seasons. The Southern League experience saw two good years followed by a poor one, which ultimately saw them drop back down again, although that was more financial than it was football wise, the travelling in the Southern League being pretty taxing.

The Western League was to be home again until 2010, where it was won a further seven times, including five times in nine seasons in the noughties, which ultimately lead to a promotion back to the Southern League again. The South & West Division was to be home for two seasons, with the club winning it in the second season and gaining promotion to the Premier Division. The top flight experience lasted four seasons before relegation back to the regionalised Step 4 leagues.

This season, the relegation play off should be avoided with games in hand, however it’s certainly not guaranteed, but that said, the travelling in the Southern League this time isn’t anything like it was back in the early seventies, mainly because of the numbers of West Country clubs that have taken promotion over the recent years.

The FA Cup has been good to the club, with First Round appearances in 1964 (Colchester United), 1973 (Bristol Rovers), 1977 (Portsmouth) and 1981 (Barking), while the FA Vase semi-final was reached in 2004 and ended in defeat to Winchester City, while the quarter finals were reached in both 2007 and 2009.

So what about the game then? Well it was a bit of a cracker, Harvey Flippance (great name!) gave the visitors the lead in the eighth minute, only for the hosts to come roaring back by equalising through Javan Wright in the 22^nd minute and then taking the lead ten minutes later through Aaron Taylor. A third goal for Bideford on the stroke of half time thanks to Joseph Charles did make you think the game was done and dusted but Westbury had other ideas.

Ryan Bole scored in the 53^rd minute, Gary Higdon equalised five minutes later and it was the same player who get Westbury’s fourth, and the winner with ten minutes to go. To be honest, it did look like an unlikely comeback, but once Westbury had got a goal back you felt like they had all the momentum.

So that was it, and being April we had no need to see the floodlights come into play, but you never know, we’re not planning on giving up on Devon holiday’s anytime soon, so maybe one midweek in the future?

A great game at a cracking club though, and I do hope they can get the points they need to avoid having to go into a play off, Bideford are too big a club to be dropping back into the Western League.

Those floodlights are too good to go down……….!

**Postscript - It's the Play Off's after a tough final week of the season, the opponents likely to be Saltash United at home, I really wish Bideford well, the Southern League would be a poorer place without them.....

Broadchurch

Bridport  4  Axminster Town  2

South West Peninsula League – East Division

Admission / Programme - £6 / £1.50

I don’t watch too much television these days if I’m honest. I don’t have a great attention span, and in recent times I’ve lost count of the number of series that I’ve started watching but never completed.

Having said that, one series that I did watch from start to finish was the first Broadchurch which of course starred David Tennant, Olivia Colman and Jodie Whittaker amongst others.

I do remember being quite taken by the setting, with the large cliff face leading to the long stretch of sand, and of course the modern yet subtle circular building that was in effect the local nick! Like anything, I was curious as to where this may have been filmed and a quick bit of research told me it was a coastal area close to Bridport in Dorset.

Fast forward, the Easter break was upon us and the family getaway was to be in South Devon. That was to begin with an early start on the morning of Good Friday, with the aim to be down into South West Peninsula League land in readiness for one of the 11am kick offs. Worst case, depending on traffic, Cullompton Rangers just off the M5 was the first destination we would get to, after that we could have gone to Honiton Town or Okehampton Argyle, but ideally if all behaved itself it would be Bridport v Axminster Town.

Bridport is an interesting one, they only joined the SWPL at the start of the current season having transferred from the Western League. To the best of my knowledge they are the first and only Dorset based club to play in a league that had been previously a solely Devon and Cornwall competition.

The traffic was fine, Bristol didn’t do any damage to us and before long we were exiting the M5 at the Yeovil / Weymouth junction and heading down through Chard and Axminster to our destination. Bridport is kind of the first place of size you arrive at when travelling from Devon into Dorset, and is a place I’ve driven past on more than a couple of occasions but without ever stopping off to take a look.

Parked up at the ground to the South of the town centre a good hour or more from kick off we had a little walk into the town for a look around and what a lovely place it is. One kind of random spot as we wandered down the main street was a vehicle parked up with the branding for Tristan Murless, a local electrical contractor. Now, that is the kind of name that’s not overly common, and I immediately recognised it from reading the book by journalist Ian Ridley about his time as Chairman of Weymouth Football Club. In that book Tristan Murless was talked about at regular intervals as a fellow director of the football club, and described by Ridley as ‘a man about town!’, read into that what you will!

Anyhow, randomness aside, the circular walk took us along to the river and down the path back to the ground. The sun was shining, it was a glorious day in Dorset and a good sized crowd were making their way into the tidy ground. So the ground then, you enter in the South corner with some open flat standing behind the goal immediately to your left. In front of you is another area of flat standing that runs the length of the touchline but in the middle is a tall area of cover providing shelter.

Behind the North goal is the clubhouse that was doing a good trade, while next to it is a pretty tall and imposing building that houses the dressing rooms. Moving round to the West side of the ground you have the tea bar, and a seated stand that straddles the half way line. Just further on from the seated stand is another smaller shelter that appears to serve as accommodation for those less able or mobile. I liked it, a ground that gave the spectator everything they needed, but at the same time unspoilt by progress and indeed draconian ground grading regulations.

So what’s the story with Bridport then?

Well, they were founder members of the Dorset Combination in 1957 before joining the Western League in 1961 where they remained until the 1983-84 season. That particular season saw the club resign part way through and their record expunged, with the club effectively taking the reserves place in the Dorset Combination again. They managed to win the competition three times on the bounce and did eventually return to the Western League in 1988, where again they remained until the end of last season, albeit being promoted and relegated between its two divisions a couple of times. They have regularly competed in the FA Cup, Trophy and Vase over the years but sadly they have yet to win any of those competitions!

But last season, their last in the Western League, was a disaster, They were in the Premier Division and lost 34 of their 36 games, conceding 185 goals in the process. Relegation was always going to happen but how they felt about going into the SWPL as opposed to the bottom tier of the Western is a question I don’t know the answer to. Looking at the geography, I suspect life in the SWPL may be somewhat easier.

This season they are in a lower mid-table spot having clearly regrouped, whereas the visitors from just up the road were in the top five of the table that is currently looking like a battle between Crediton United and Brixham for the title.

The best of the season crowd of 238 at St Mary’s Field were treated to a cracking game of football.

Luke King gave the hosts a third minute lead with a header before Riley Weedon made it 2-0 in the 11^th minute with a well placed free kick. A penalty was then awarded to the visitors, one that divided opinion to be honest but for me it was a penalty kick, which Richard Hebditch duly despatched.

Within a minute was 2-2 when Kieren Daniels inadvertently put an attempted clearance into his own net, albeit the defender had very little thinking time, or margin for error. However just before half time Bridport regained the lead when Weedon weaved his way into a shooting position and found the net with a low shot.

Oscar Latas saw red for the visitors early in the second period following a second caution, and that to a certain extent killed the game, with Bridport looking the more likely to get any further goals in the contest. Chances did go begging but eventually in the closing stages Brad Rowe sealed the victory for the hosts when he was given space to pick his spot.

Meanwhile, Master H had been busy trying to think of something for us to do after the game, before we could go and check in at base camp in Exeter. He suggested we go to a little seaside resort called West Bay that was just South of the town.

None of us knew anything about it, so taking his advice, off we went, and after finally finding a parking space in which was clearly a popular location, we had a wander up to the beach. It was only then that it struck me where we were, to our left was the instantly recognisable cliff face, which then prompted us to look right and spot the recently constructed circular building. We were in Broadchurch, and bizarrely at no moment during the day, up until that point, had I given any thought to the fact that we were going to be in the vicinity of the iconic TV setting.

Evolution In The Shire

 Holbrook St Michaels  1  Mickleover Reserves  0

Central Midlands League - Premier Division South

Admission / Programme - £4 / No

I can walk to Holbrook St Michaels ground from my house, if I so wanted.

But given just how close I am to the delightful little setting in the grounds of the Holbrook Hall Nursing Home, I can count on one hand the number of times I've ventured out to it, and never once on foot!

But what you have got with the club who I shall refer to as HSM going forward, is a great example of the shift in local grassroots football in Derbyshire.

When I first started to get interested in non-league football back in the mid eighties, we were just starting to embark on putting a pyramid structure in place. Belper Town, who I became involved with, had just become a founder member of the Northern Counties East League, and at that time, that was effectively Step 3 of the system, with only the Northern Premier League and the Alliance Premier League sat above it. It's hard to imagine now, back then at the third tier you didn't have to have floodlights! But to be fair, it wasn't a true pyramid, not many sides won the NCE and moved into the next level, in fact of those that did (Shepshed Charterhouse and Spalding Unted), they actually moved to the Southern League. To my memory, in the first five seasons of the NCE (until the NPL formed a First Division), no one actually moved up to the NPL Premier.

What's that got to do with the likes of HSM then? Well, nothing directly, but this is where the story lies. Back then, the local sides at the very base of football on a Saturday, could effectively pick and choose where they played. Some played in the East Midlands Regional League, some played in the Central Alliance, and some plied their craft in the Derbyshire Premier League.

The first shift came in the middle of the Eighties when the Derbyshire Premier League re-branded as the Central Midlands League (they had a vision of filling a void for a Midlands Premier League - it didn't materialise), while the Central Alliance and the East Midlands Regional League joined forces to create the Midlands Regional Alliance.

So what you now had was a CML that spread it's wings across the East Midlands and into Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, while the MRA was very much a local league and perhaps more of a Derbyshire Premier League than the CML had been previously. The MRA wasn't solely Derbyshire based, but the Shire was it's heartland.

The MRA created a lot of interest locally, thinking back to the late eighties and early nineties you had the likes of Belper United, HSM, Holbrook Welfare, Ripley Town, Butterley Brick, Kilburn Welfare, Wirksworth Town, Bargate Rovers plus the reserve side of Belper Town (who kind of drifted in and out).

It was a competitive set up, and over the years some of the champion clubs have gone on to do well and move upwards, examples being Matlock United, Rowsley 86, Belper United, Dronfield Town and Allenton United. But in recent seasons the MRA has been eroded somewhat, and I have to say, no blame is being apportioned here. The number of clubs has fallen anyway as interest dwindles and costs rise, that's not unusual across the Country as a whole. 

Also many clubs no longer run reserve sides, but in addition, as the pyramid has grown in terms of structure, and the CML has tried to establish it's role as having two Step 7 divisions (they would prefer to be a Step 6 league if we were being honest and to be fair, in many cases there is a justification for that), the MRA has become a hunting ground, especially clubs in the Derbyshire area. 

Let's be honest, the CML would be foolish not to bolster it's Derbyshire clubs because surely they must be mindful that the FA at some point will try and force them to become a county league as per the rest of the Country. At the minute, the CML footprint over it's two leagues is huge, and it crosses over other leagues as well. In short, you could carve the CML up and have a much neater structure, leaving it to predominantly focus on Derbyshire.

So where has this left HSM then? They were a long established MRA club for years up until the end of the 2011-12 season when they finished 14th out of 16 clubs in the Premier Division. But, at the end of that campaign they made the move to the CML, joining near neighbours and rivals Belper United who had made the same move a couple of years earlier. The first few years were a struggle, notably the 2014-15 season which saw them lose all but two of their 28 games. However a sixth paced finish in 2018-19 and a seventh place last season gave the club hope that the transition to the new world will be a fruitful one.

This season hasn't been so great though, they currently sit next to bottom in the Southern Division in a league made up of 16 clubs. Geographically though it does tick the boxes, you could argue that games against Graham Street Prims, Mickleover RBL, Cromford & Wirksworth Town, Wirksworth Ivanhoe, Derby Singh Brothers and Mickleover Reserves are local derbies. Hang on a minute, is this not the MRA from years back??

I do keep hearing rumours that the CML and MRA are in discussions about a merger, but that appears to be all they are, rumours, but anyway, let's remain on topic and talk about HSM.

The Holbrook Park ground is a lovely place to watch football, located just of the Makeney Road as you leave the village, you drive up through the entrance to the nursing home and the pitch is to your left. You park behind the goal, while behind the opposite goal is the building that houses the dressing rooms and a small tea bar, while to the side of this is  a small covered shelter. Clad in green material, the building almost hides itself in the trees that line the end of the ground. On the drive side of the pitch are the dugouts and a small area of uncovered seating. It's impossible to imagine the club progressing from this level, getting floodlights would be a planning nightmare I suspect, the ground cannot be enclosed and taking admission can only be done by walking round the pitch collecting money and relying on honesty. And being honest, I don't think many would want to see it change, 'improvements' as far as I can see, would spoil the aesthetic nature of the ground.

The kick off was scheduled for 6pm, and arriving just five minutes before that, I was pleasantly surprised to see the players lining up to enter the field. Other games in the league had been down for 6.30pm starts, which was a tad ambitious, but fair play to both sides for being ready on time in this case.

A modest crowd was in attendance on a lovely evening for football, and a tight game was decided by a goal late in the first half from Holbrook's Fraser Kirk who had a great game, leading the back line superbly. It was a much needed win for Holbrook, who still have a number of games to fit in, and, a Derbyshire Divisional Cup South Final against Derby Singh Brothers to look forward to, when Belper Town can acomodate the fixture!

So that was it, home in five minutes, and to be fair had I so wished I could have headed down to the A6 to watch the Belper Town v Marske United game, but by the time I'd parked up and all that, the game would probably already have been ten minutes old.

I do happen to think in a difficult climate, local grassroots football is thriving in Derbyshire, ok, it may be a bit intertwined with other counties and it may be spread across a number of divisions, but that conundrum is for someone else to solve, because you suspect politics and agendas won't allow it to happen naturally.

Sing When We're Fisher

Fisher  3  Kennington  2

Southern Counties East Football League  – Premier Division

Admission / Programme - £8 / £2

I’m getting to a stage now where I think me getting to a game at Hanworth Villa is jinxed!

My first planned visit in October went belly up because of a re-arranged game, then with pre-booked train tickets to London for early December, a heavy frost saw my next attempt aborted and a trip to Sutton Common Rovers take it’s place.

Of course we had the other week when I arrived at the ground just as the game was being called off due to waterlogging, and then, with Guernsey due in town for the first Saturday in April, my thoughts were that surely nothing could go wrong?

We were down for the weekend, driving down to London on the Saturday morning and then staying overnight in Covent Garden, before returning home on Sunday. Mrs H was going to the theatre on the Saturday afternoon to see James Norton get his kit off, while I was going to jump on the train to Hanworth and finally get a game in.

It all looked good, until the preceding two days when the rains fell, and as soon as Hanworth announced they were having a pitch inspection on the Friday night due to Guernsey having an early flight, I knew full well the game was going to be off.

So, noting all of the above, I needed a game within the boundaries of the M25, accessible easily by public transport, ideally on a plastic pitch because of the weather and the forward forecast, and, it needed to be a new venue for me.

Some nifty research pointed me in the direction of a few options, I started by looking at Broadfields United who were playing Egham Town in the Combined Counties League, and that was happening on the plastic at Rayners Lane, an easy one to get to. I also found Park View v Wivenhoe Town in the Eastern Counties League and that was taking place at the River Lane Sports Stadium on White Hart Lane. An easy one to get to in terms of the train, but a bit of a walk to the ground.

The one that really caught my eye though was the game that turned out to be not much more than a twenty minute tube ride from Covent Garden, and then a short fifteen minute walk from Canada Water to the St Pauls Sports Ground on Salter Lane. Fisher v Kennington in the Southern Counties East League, or the Kent League as it was formerly known.

Yes, that ticked the boxes on all levels, plus, Fisher are the new incarnation of the club that once sky rocketed through the leagues in the late Eighties called Fisher Athletic. That therefore gave me an opportunity to do some research into the clubs intriguing history, but more on that later.

After leaving Mrs H in a queue for the Harold Pinter Theatre just off of Leicester Square, it was up to the tube for a short journey along to Green Park where a Jubilee Line train would take me South of the river via Waterloo and London Bridge into the heart of the docklands at Canada Water.

Canada Water is a sizeable place it appears, in fact the train, bus and underground station is a bit of a beast in itself. Located within the area of Rotherhithe, almost in the centre of it in fact, and North of Surrey Quays, then with Bermondsey further West along the Thames, it’s an area that looks to have been hugely redeveloped from it’s days of being, well, a dock I guess. And now it’s all about commerce, retail and of course housing. The name Canada Water is actually derived from a lake, called guess what? Anyway, I then had to take a fifteen minute walk to the ground.

Twenty minutes later I was getting somewhat annoyed with myself, for some reason I found myself walking round aimlessly on a housing estate, finding road names on my phone but not seeming to be able to compute them with what I could see in front of my eyes. To cut a long story short, I decided to take a breath, then work out my bearings and plan a route, it worked, and at ten to two I was crossing over Salter Road to the St Pauls Sports Ground.

Taking a map view of the location of the Fisher FC ground, the old Surrey Docks Stadium that the clubs former incarnation played it was on the other side of the road and a couple of hundred yards or so to the West. In simple terms, they've moved across the road! I never went to the old ground, but I do recall reading about a crowd of over 4,000 being in attendance for a game against Barnet, in the season when the North London side were on the way to promotion to the Football League.

So what's the story then of this unique football club?

I'll be honest, I genuinely thought in a somewhat ignorant fashion that the name 'Fisher' was in some way linked to the docks and fishing. Turns it that's got absolutely nothing to do with it, Fisher Athletic were formed in 1908 by a schoolmaster who wanted to create a sports club for the underprivileged children of the Bermondsey area. The club were named after the Catholic martyr Saint John Fisher, who himself had nothing to do with the fishing industry, and in turn became one of the very few clubs in the World named after a person.

Playing in the local leagues for many years, the club joined the London Spartan League in 1975, winning it twice in 1981 and 1982. The second championship saw them elected to the Southern League Southern Division, which was won at the first attempt, and then as a Southern League Premier Division side they reached the First Round Proper of the FA Cup in 1985 losing 1-0 at home to Bristol City.

The Premier Division title was won in 1987 and with it came promotion to the top flight of non-league football, the Conference. Bristol Rovers received a visit in the clubs next foray into the FA Cup proper, but by 1991 the club were relegated back to the Southern League Premier Division, and then a year later, another drop came back to the Southern Division. 

The early Noughties saw an upturn in the clubs fortunes, and they did find themselves back in the Conference South at one stage, however in May 2009 the club were wound up the High Court with significant monies owed (£250,000 the reported figure). However, a new club was formed, playing at Dulwich Hamlet's ground, and the newly named Fisher FC started life in the Kent League, which eventually became the Southern Counties East League. The move to the St Pauls Sports Ground took place in 2016.

It is also worth pointing out that Fisher FC is actually the fourth name that the club(s) have had since it's formation. The Fisher Athletic name changed to Fisher 93, in err, 1993, but by 1996 they had become known as Fisher Athletic (London). 

The ground is tidy. Once through the turnstiles to the right you have a seated stand sitting on the halfway line, while next to it running right the way up to the corner flag to your left is the dressing rooms and clubhouse complex, which was selling cans of locally brewed beers. Behind the West goal is a small area of terracing while the rest of the ground is open hard standing. If you look out behind the East goal you do get magnificent views of the towers in Canary Wharf, which provide a pretty spectacular backdrop.

I must also say what a superbly friendly bunch they were too, from the turnstile, to the bar, everyone wanted a chat. The club reminded me a little of the experiences I had at places like Corinthian Casuals, Whitehawk and Dulwich Hamlet, where enthusiastic and passionate volunteers went the extra mile to make visitors welcome. The supporters were also a very passionate bunch, loving a good sing song while surrounded by a fine array of flags.

We were treated to a very good game as well. In front of a crowd of 157, the visitors took the lead somewhat against the run of play just before half time when Liam Whiting scored with a header. The hosts equalised just after the break through Darnelle Bailey King who volleyed home, but with twenty minutes to go Kennington took the lead for a second time when Rajan Sahni scored with a low shot.

Fisher upped the ante and equalised almost immediately through Isaac Thompson who curled home a beauty from outside the box, and then as we moved into the final minute the comeback was complete when Thompson found the net again for the winner with a calm far post finish.

The journey back to Canada Water was a lot more straightforward, this time walking past Mayflower Park which is the site of the former Surrey Docks Stadium (nothing remains). The tube connections were fine and by 5.45pm I was walking out of Leicester Square station.  

A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon at a club with quite a story, and had it not been for the bad weather and Hanworth's dodgy pitch, I might never have got the chance to pay them a visit.

Insurance

Cribbs  3  Royal Wootton Bassett Town  1

Hellenic Football League  – Premier Division

Admission / Programme - £8 / Online

It’s the time of year when I start to look closely at the league tables.

By the time we get into mid to late March you can start to get a rough idea of who is in the shake up for promotion, and the area that interests me is those clubs who look likely to move from Step 5 to Step 4.

This season, every winner of a Step 5 league gets promoted, whereas every runner up will go into a single legged play off against a side from Step 4, so you could be looking at anything between 16 and 32 new entrants moving into Step 4.

I’d had a look to see who were in the pole positions and one league that was quite interesting was the Hellenic League. For the large part of the season it’s been very much a two horse race between Malvern Town and Cribbs, but it was the Bristol based club who have seemingly had the slight edge all the way along. Corsham Town, the FA Vase semi-finalists have games in hand but it would take a monumental effort for them to propel themselves into the mix.

As it stood, if I was to place a bet on a club at Step 5 (where I’d not been previously) to get a top spot and a direct promotion, I would stick my money on Cribbs to keep Malvern at bay and move into what is likely to be the Southern League. So that’s them jinxed, sorry guys!

Cribbs v Royal Wootton Bassett Town, now that had a nice ring about it, and with the sun shining on a Saturday morning, I made the decision to give them a visit, and of course re-familiarise myself with the M42 and the M5 which I will be making use of at Easter when it comes to the family holiday in Devon.

For those not familiar with their Bristol based geography, Cribbs are located in the Western suburb of Cribbs Causeway which sits right at the side of the M5, before you get to the Avonmouth Bridge. So getting to it is a proverbial doddle, other than the traffic issues you can encounter by the large shopping area at Cribbs Causeway, and what appears to be a large new housing development adjacent to the ground that means you have to take a little detour to get to it.

The journey was a comfortable one, and once I’d located the ground, it was apparent that it was part of a larger area of sporting complexes, with a couple of rugby clubs, a hockey pitch and tennis courts all being within very close proximity. The Cribbs Sports & Social Club element where the football club is located, contains, as you would expect, a large two story club house with dressing rooms underneath, but, it has a former life that is close to my heart….insurance!

I work in the Financial Services industry and one thing my team of highly motivated, trained and talented consultants excels at is selling insurance that is linked to mortgages and housing transactions. Now the Cribbs Sports & Social Club has previously been the sports and social bases of insurance companies AXA, Sun Life and Friends Life, so much so the football club has previously had names that has been associated with these insurers. They started out as AXA Sun Life, before becoming plain and simple AXA. The AXA bit then went and the club became known as Cribbs Friends Life, before finally becoming plain old Cribbs are recently as 2013.

We deal with AXA, and we dealt with Friends Life before they were taken over by Aviva, so I am pretty familiar with these companies and their products, but because I wasn't directly employed by any of these organisations, it turns out that I wasn’t allowed any free beer or the opportunity to run out with the team as a mascot for the day!

Disappointment aside, with a pint in hand, I had a scan at the clubs history and having worked out the timeline of different names, I could see that they were formed in 1976 and started in the Bristol & Avon League, before a twenty year spell in the Bristol Combination which ended in 1999 when they won promotion to the Gloucestershire County League.

The league was won for a first time in 2012 and with it came promotion to the Western League First Division, which in turn was won at the first attempt. With Step 5 attained, the club did end its ties with the insurers in 2013 (at a cost), but undeterred they maintained their position and at the start of 2021 they were moved laterally to the Hellenic League, due to the Western League footprint moving further South West.

Under the stewardship of Richard Luffman, the club finished fourth last season, but as I said earlier, this time around the championship is within their gift, and a dream promotion to Step 4 that it brings.

The ground is a tidy venue. Located on something of a plateau, it’s fully enclosed, it has hard standing all round, with two areas of cover sitting on what can best be described as the M5 side of the pitch. A seated stand sits at the stop of the bank to one side of the dugouts, while a smaller covered area containing seats and a standing area sits on the other side of the dugouts albeit much closer to the touchline.

The game was a good one. The hosts took the lead as early as the 3^rd minute through David Duru, but the battlers from the well known Royal town in Wiltshire equalised on the 14^th minute through Matthew Jones. It didn’t take long for Cribbs to re-take the lead though and in the 26^th minute through Aysa Corrick, and to be fair when Sonny Harnett-Balkwill got a third for the league leaders just before half time you felt the game was pretty much done and dusted.

No more goals came in the second period, and with news coming through that Malvern Town were winning comfortably against Longlevens, the race for the title moved on with the points advantage remaining the same as it had prior to the game. Since the game though, Cribbs did win comfortably the following midweek and are now in a position whereby they need eight points from four games to clinch the crown.

I'm pretty confident I've called this one right, but Cribbs probably don't want to be reading that right now....

Binos

Stirling Albion  2  Forfar Athletic  0

Scottish Football League  – Second Division

Admission / Programme - £15 / £2.50

This Scottish malarkey is going far too smoothly for my liking.

It seems like every month the work related trip coincides with a plethora of choices when it comes to the football, yet, in previous years that wasn’t always the case.

A couple of times I’ve had to scrape the bottom of the barrel, to the extent that I’ve stood in a crowd of around 30 or so watching Queens Park Reserves playing at Lesser Hampden, although to be fair the nearby Clockwork Beer pub made the effort worthwhile.

But, especially in the colder and darker months, many a time I’ve not been able to get out at all, bearing in mind midweek football, especially in the lower levels, was not really a thing, probably due to quite recently the bulk of clubs not having floodlights, certainly outside of the so called professional ranks. Even in the professional leagues, midweek football is not a huge thing like it is in England, I mean, Elgin to Stranraer is a good poke on a Tuesday night for players who have full time jobs!

But, since we came back from the lockdown periods and travel was allowed again, it’s been really productive heading North of the border. Partick Thistle, Dumbarton, Albion Rovers, Sauchie Juniors and St Johnstone were all graced with my presence up until the start of the current campaign, while regular readers will be aware that this season I’ve already managed to get five new grounds under my belt.

For the March trip, I had choices, once again. Dundee were at home but that was a logistical challenge (getting back to Glasgow that is), while I could have headed over to Albion Rovers again, a ground and club that I really enjoyed visiting last time around. Had the weather been bad a short run down the Clyde would have taken me to the Clydebank v Kilwinning Rangers game, but, the one I really wanted to get to was the game around a 35 minute train ride North of Glasgow.

Stirling Albion v Forfar Athletic, I really can’t understand why the TV channels weren’t fighting over this one. The Second Division encounter pitted a home side that would go top of the league had they won, whereas for Forfar, the glory was a night out in Stirling and a chance to gain some ground on the play-off contenders.

The train from Queen Street was a straightforward affair, calling at Larbert on the way North, which it seems is only a short walk from the home of Stenhousemuir FC, now that’s one for the future I’m sure. Anyway, we soon pulled in to Stirling, and being aware that it was a historical and cultural hotbed with landmarks aplenty, I chose to do the obvious thing, I had a walk to the Wetherspoons.

I only had the one, the service was very slow, but the clientele was a very different one to the locals who frequent the two establishments close to Glasgow Central. You did feel like you could catch someone’s eye in Stirling and still have your own intact when you left the building!

To get to the Forthbank Stadium from the middle of Stirling you head back to the station, over the footbridge to the rear and then follow the road which runs alongside the river, before the ground appears on your left hand side, set in an area where out of town retail seems to be the name of the game.

The Forthbank Stadium is a new ground. Well, new-ish, the club moved to it in 1993 from their previous home of Annfield Stadium, which was located on the South side of the city, before it was replaced with housing.

Just beyond the Forthbank Stadium is a pub called the Springkerse View. It’s one of those pubs you find in areas that are retail dominated, catering for families and food, but to be fair, on a football night it seems to be the place where the locals gather for a pre-match Tennents.

With that tested, and the kick off less than fifteen minutes away, it was a short plod over the roundabout and into the queue which lead to the turnstiles that took you into the main stand, which in a typically Scottish fashion, was the only stand that was going to be opened for the game.

The away fans (Loons apparently), of which there were about 40 or so, occupied the North end of the stand, and feeling a bit sorry for them, I chose to sit amongst them to watch the game. The ground itself is made up of a large main stand, and opposite is another slightly smaller version of the same stand. Behind both goals are identical uncovered terraced areas, but the question for me remains, how many times a season do they open up more than one side of the ground?

The pitch was in excellent nick by the way, and talking of pitches, did you know that in 1987 Annfield Stadium had the first ever artificial surface in the Scottish professional game? No, neither did I until I looked on Wiki a couple of minutes ago…..

So what about Stirling Albion then?

Think of a stereotypical yo-yo club and that just about sums it up. In the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s the club seemed to bounce between Division’s One and Two, and then as we got into the 2000’s and an extra tier was added, they bounced in and out of that one as well! In fact at one point a few decades ago, the phrase ‘Going up and down like Stirling Albion’ was used in a similar context to how the phrase ‘Going up and down like a tarts knickers’ may have been used by those of a less politically correct nature!

So, the ‘Bouncing Binos’, as I have named them, partly because the clubs actual nickname is the Bino’s, then lead me down a wormhole of discovery to try and find out where that name actually derived from. You see in Scotland clubs have unusual nicknames, like the aforementioned Loons (Forfar), the Red Lichties (Arbroath), the Bully Wee (Clyde) and the Doonhamers (Queen of the South), but it transpires that Binos is just a derivation of Albion (in the plural, but with a couple of letters missing).

810 rocked up to watch the game, which was slightly better than the clubs average attendance of around 750, and this is in a league where the best supported club is Bonnyrigg Rose who get around 850, while the worst supported is Stranraer with 350. But let’s be fair, Stirling is a big place, and the club is one with a history, so you would expect a decent number going through the turnstiles.

Forfar battled hard in the game, but it was the hosts who finally took the lead through Ross McGeachie who netted in the 70^th minute, while the game was finally made safe eight minutes later through Dale Carrick. The Binos in the crowd were delighted, with the locals youths in full voice at the end of the stand. Meanwhile, down in the section for the away fans, the Loons were less than happy, they had a sixty mile drive to contend with, because as we all know Forfar isn’t blessed with a railway station anywhere near……what do you mean you didn’t know that, I thought everyone knew that??

The trains from Stirling to Glasgow run well into the night, so I was under no pressure to get back to the station on a dark and damp evening. That got me thinking, just how many more Scottish League grounds can I get to on a Tuesday night? I reckon if the fixtures fall right, I’ve got another season and a half’s worth to go at.

But it doesn’t always work like that does it!