A Tragedy? Never.....

Arnold Town  5  Wirksworth Ivanhoe  3

Central Midlands League – Premier Division South

Admission / Programme - £5 / £1

It would be completely out of context to describe a football clubs demise on the pitch as a tragedy.

The word tragedy itself is too strong a word when it comes to pure sport, sport is a pastime, a game, a source of entertainment, it is not as Mr Shankly foolishly said, more important than life or death.

But when I think of Arnold Town, I do so with a sense of sadness, and by the way, what I am about to say bears no reflection on those currently running and volunteering at the club, and nor is it in any way meant to be patronising or condescending, it’s just merely my thoughts.

When I first started watching non-league football in the early eighties, and thoughts turned to Nottinghamshire, they immediately went to Arnold Football Club. Based at the Gedling Road ground in the centre of the town, they were a force. In the 1977-78 season they reached the First Round of the FA Cup, losing in a replay to Port Vale, after holding them to a draw at home. But having originally been formed as Arnold St Marys, in the sixties and seventies they were one of the brighter lights in a powerful Midland League, finishing runners-up on a couple of occasions before becoming founder members of the Northern Counties East League.

Belper Town won the NCE in 1984-85, but the following season Arnold took their crown with a fine side lead by Ivan Hollett and John Harrison (who themselves had jointly managed the 1979-80 Belper Town Midland League winning side). They could have applied to join the Northern Premier League at this point, but along with many local clubs they took the decision to enter the newly formed Central Midlands League Supreme Division.

The grand plans for this competition never came to fruition, and Arnold didn’t grab it perhaps like some expected, and having merged with neighbours Arnold Kingswell to create the modern day name of Arnold Town, they finally clinched the title in 1993, and with it gained promotion to the First Division of the NCE, which of course was one league lower than where they left it seven years earlier!

They smashed their way through the new league at the first attempt and then the following season they were runners-up to Lincoln United in the top flight, all was good in the World, Arnold were back on the map again.

They didn’t really kick on though, having mixed seasons thereafter, but always a well supported club, they were a mainstay of the Nottinghamshire scene, but then it all changed.

At the end of the 2007-08 season the club were forced to leave Gedling Road, and I don’t know the exact details as to why but from memory it was something to do with it being a public park, and one individual kicking off about rights of way and charging admission etc. I could be wrong, but put it another way, the club didn’t have a choice in the end, and I don’t think they were overly happy about having to give up Gedling Road.

Gedling Road was a lovely ground, with a low seated stand behind the goal and a long covered terrace along one side, I went on many occasions. I remember seeing them beat a powerful Burton Albion side in the FA Trophy in 1983-84, while the following season as Belper marched to the championship I can vividly recall our last defeat of the season coming at Gedling Road when we lost goalkeeper Mark Thornley through injury.

So, the club had to find a new home, and that was to be Eagle Valley, a large open space just over three miles North of Arnold, in fact closer to the village of Calverton than it is to Arnold. Put bluntly, it’s in the middle of nowhere just off the main road that runs from Arnold up to the eastern side of Mansfield. If you haven’t got a car, you aren’t going!

And that was kind of the problem, you had a town centre ground that pretty much everyone could get to, and then you move to Eagle Valley where a large chunk of your support would find a challenge to visit.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice facility with a variety of pitches, and a stadium pitch which has both a seated stand and a terraced stand, complete with large clubhouse, plus a huge car park, because of course, without a car, you ain’t going!

So crowds dropped, interest waned, the club fell into the East Midlands Counties League (Step 6), and then after a disastrous 2018-19 season when they finished bottom having conceded 154 goals (the fourth season in a row they conceded three figures), they found themselves back in the Central Midlands League, which was a very different competition to the one they thought they were joining in 1986.

In the first post Covid season of 2021-22, they finished next to bottom of the South division, again conceding over 100 goals, and at the time I must be honest, I was starting to fear for the clubs very existence. I actually watched them play away at Retford United last season and in that game they shipped nine goals, it was sad to see. I remember back in the day, gents like Roy Francis, Ivan Long, Mel Leivers and many others, what would they be thinking and feeling?

But, it seems things might finally be starting to turn, this season they have been largely sat in a mid-table place and on a lovely night for football I decided to head to Eagle Valley for the first time in a many a year to see the game against Wirksworth Ivanhoe.

Getting to Eagle Valley by car is straightforward enough, off the M1 at junction 27, head to Hucknall, turn left through Linby and into Papplewick before heading towards Nottingham on the Mansfield Road. At the junction with Oxton Road sits the ground on your left, surrounded by fields and trees.

A modest number of spectators rolled up for the game, 67 it seems, and crowds are typically below three figures these days anyway at Eagle Valley, but what they were treated to was a fantastic game of football.

Arnold were 2-0 up at half time, but shortly after the break Wirksworth had pulled it back to 2-2, and then found themselves 3-2 up as the game swung in completely the opposite direction, but that was the spur Arnold needed.

Jake Ogden completed his hat-trick and thanks to two goals from Liam Black, the game swung back again, with Arnold scoring three times without reply to record a 5-3 victory over a side who had held them to a 1-1 draw a week previously.

It had been fantastically entertaining, and you did wonder just whether the fortunes were starting to change for Arnold after so many seasons of toil. 

Ok, it’s a long way back, and Eagle Valley will never be Gedling Road, but surely if there is any justice in football, this club will get back to Step 5 and at least be punching along with old rivals Hucknall Town and Eastwood in the near future.

So no, it wasn’t a tragedy by any means, the club still exists, a nightmare, absolutely, but it’s possible to recover, and maybe now, that recovery is under way.

I certainly hope so.