Merstham 1 Lancing 2
Isthmian League – Division One South East
Admission / Programme – £10 / £2
It was Friday afternoon and I was sat in the Crown Inn at
Beeston with some of the lads I went to school with, the very same lads I
mentioned in a recent blog, that have spent the last thirty years of their
lives (me included), wondering at what point we need to grow up!
You see I’d been sat in a car park in Nottingham that very
morning when Mark phoned me, he wanted to know what my plans were for the
following day, only Alfreton Town didn’t have a game. I told him my plan was to
go to Surrey, the game between Merstham and Lancing had grabbed my attention.
Of course, it didn’t really matter where I was going, Mark would have jumped in anyway, but as we were discussing the finer details of the pick-up time the following morning, I happened to let it slip that I had a ticket for the Notts County v Morecambe game that night. Mark then let it slip that they were off down to Nottingham themselves that afternoon for a wee pub crawl, and of course, I was welcome to join them before the game!
So, after getting Mrs H to drop me off for the 2.30pm train
from Belper, within the hour I had my first pint in hand, on what was to be a
merry little jaunt that would take in four venues in Beeston, before jumping
back onto the train and getting through the turnstiles at Meadow Lane ten
minutes or so before kick-off.
Without dwelling too much on the Friday, given that this blog is meant to be all about Merstham, it finished up with a 5-0 home win against a side that produced possibly the worst display I’ve ever seen from a professional football team, and don’t forget my professional football watching experience includes a time when Derby County were officially known as the worst team in history! The last train back to blighty was caught, and at around 11.30pm after the uphill walk of calf pain, it was into bed with the alarm set.
Mark was collected at 10.15pm, the weather had been pretty
good and with nothing but positive noises coming out of Surrey, we made our way
down the M1, which even behaved itself around Luton, before heading onto the
motorway version of Russian Roulette, the M25! Yeah, it was rubbish in parts,
notably around the M40, for no reason whatsoever it seemed, but even with that,
due to our early departure we were leaving the M25 at the Redhill / Reigate
exit just after 1pm.
It was at that point that Mark flicked open the pages of his Good Beer Guide, and bearing in mind his boozing carried on while I was at the game the previous night, he was undeterred, the sat nav was re-set and we were on our way to the Garibaldi in Redhill, a very nice community owned pub in a very nice part of the World.
With a snifter on board, it was time to head back to the
edges of the M25 and the small town of Merstham, a town of just over 8,000
inhabitants, and, with it’s rail links to central London, a desirable place to
live if you can afford a property that probably retails at about three times
the price it would compared to if it were located in Beeston!
The football ground, the Moatside, is a leafy affair.
Flanked by trees and tall hedgerows, the approach via the housing estate gives
no indication of what you find once you walk through the turnstiles. Parking is
tight on the residential streets, and once you exit the clubhouse and pass
through the clickers, you can’t help but feel you are at the home of a village
club (in the nicest possible sense) with it’s previously mentioned green
surroundings, tight to the edges of the perimeter of the stadium.
You enter by the North East corner, with the dressing rooms and tea bar to your immediate right, and the club shop directly to your left. Following the ground round in a clockwise fashion you then have a narrow area of cover running two thirds of the width of the area behind the East goal, with two steps of terracing providing the vantage points. The South side of the ground is flat standing, but then as you get round to the West end of the ground, you have the old Tea Bar in the corner, which now looks to be used as a storeroom, while right next to it is a small seated stand.
More flat standing takes you back round to where the main
seated stand lies, straddling the halfway line, with the aforementioned tea bar
/ fan zone being located to the rear of it. What I liked about the ground was
that everything was unique and characterful, the dressing room building has
been constructed in a traditional style, while the stands were again, bespoke
structures as opposed to being kit formed efforts that arrive on the back of a
flatbed lorry!
Merstham, given the size of the club, have a recent history of punching above their own weight. The Surrey and London Spartan League’s were home until 1984 when they made the move to the Combined Counties League. This move culminated in the Premier Division championship being won in 2007-08 season when a record breaking 110 points, 114 goals and only one defeat saw them promoted to the Isthmian League. This coming after finishing runners-up in the previous two seasons.
Isthmian League Division One was a happy home, and following
a fourth placed finish in 2014-15, they beat both Faversham Town and Folkestone
Invicta in the play offs to earn promotion to the Premier Division and Step 3
football for the first time in their history.
The high point came in the 2018-19 season when a fifth
placed finish saw them beat Carshalton Athletic in the play off semi final,
before ultimately losing to Tonbridge Angels who took a place in the National
League South.
It was downhill after that, Covid struck and then in 2021-22 season they finished bottom and fell back to Step 4. The following season (last season) saw an eighteenth placed finish, which lead to an Inter League Promotion / Relegation game against Egham Town that they won 3-1. The FA Cup proper was reached for the one and only time in 2016-17 when they drew Oxford United at home in the First Round, and on what was a momentous day for the club, the professional side ran out 5-0 winners.
So, today we have a club that are sat in the bottom half of
the South East Division, having been laterally moved in the Summer from the
South Central Division, and on paper it looks like they are trying to
consolidate their status before thinking about another assault on Step 3.
A crowd of 261 rocked up for the game against the Sussex
coast visitors, a side who are having a better second season at Step 4 than
first time round, which proved to be a struggle. The first half was a period of
few chances, but then in the 55th minute, somewhat against first
half balance of power, the hosts took the lead through Tom Collins.
The goal galvanised the visitors who equalised in the 74th minute through a well placed Andrew Briggs free kick, while on the 80th minute full back Alex Neil Laing fired home an angled drive to turn things around completely.
And that was it, back to the car and another delay on the
M25 up by Heathrow. Having said that, it won’t stop us, we still set out on
Saturday morning’s full of enthusiasm and curiosity, knowing damn well that
things won’t run as smoothly as we would like.
Mrs H says I’ll grow out of it one day, that will probably
be the same day when all of us finally grow up!
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