Cinque

Brightlingsea Regent  0  Gorleston  1

Isthmian League – Division One North

Admission / Programme - £11 / £2

I do like the last day of the regular non-league season in the top four steps, lots to play for, championships, promotions, play-off spots, relegations to avoid, oh yes, it all happens on that last day!

So why not pick a game 200 miles away with absolutely nothing on it!

That’s what I did, and to be fair, I’d earmarked it a few weeks earlier, because I really did quite fancy a trip to Brightlingsea Regent, but, I had method in my madness.

I remember some years ago now when Steve went to Brightlingsea, he had to pick his moment carefully, because, as he pointed out to me, “Once you go to Brightlingsea, you are going to Brightlingsea, if you have a problem, you aren’t going anywhere else!”

And that was the issue, if I took a gamble on Brightlingsea, and it went wrong, I was pretty much stuffed for getting to a game at the levels I cover, anywhere near to the place, so, it had to be a good weather day when I went for it.

April 27th really ought to be a good weather day didn’t it? And so it proved to be, it wasn’t exactly scorchio, but it wasn’t wazzing it down either. Bearing in mind the last time I was in the vicinity it was Ipswich Wanderers back in November and that was a gamble that paid off, just!

For those unfamiliar then, let me explain where Brightlingsea is. If you imagine that Colchester is in the middle of a clock face, well Brightlingsea is at about 4 o’clock, where the River Colne estuary meets the sea, and the Brightlingsea Creek merges with it. To the West is Mersea Island, just over the water from the beach. Put simply, it’s very much out on a limb where the Essex and Suffolk borders converge.

The journey down was pretty painless despite the remoteness of the place, my mind was a little elsewhere though, you see it was a big day for Derby County, a point at home to Carlisle United in the 12.30 kick off would guarantee promotion back to the Championship, so from about Kettering on the A14, all the way down past Ipswich and across country, I had that on the radio for company.

I got to Brightlingsea during the half time interval in the Rams game, and quickly realised as I drove in that this was a pretty little town, a Cinque Port Town if you will. I asked Steve what a Cinque Port was, he said it was something to do with France, I left it at that to be honest.

The ground is hemmed in by housing, and the road to the car park is a tight one, but being relatively early I was in and parked with no problems. It was time to have a look at what the place was all about.

It’s a tidy ground to be fair, characterised by a plethora of structures. You enter just to the right of the halfway line, and immediately on your right is a small area of cover. To your left is a seated stand and then just beyond that is the clubhouse building with a further overhang of cover in front of it.

The dressing rooms conjoin the clubhouse with the entrance to the pitch being almost in the corner, while then moving round behind the goal you have a further area of covered terracing that runs the width of the pitch. If you then move to the side opposite the clubhouse you have a tall but thin seated stand of the temporary variety (but it now looks pretty permanent), and then another area of cover sits beyond the dugouts up towards the area behind the goal. Again, another area of cover, which looks pretty new, sits behind the goal. All in all seven different areas of cover / seats, and according to the Chairman’s notes in the programme, another one is due to be erected during the close season, albeit I’m not sure where they’ll put it!

The clubhouse was busy pre-match, someone had the bright idea of putting the West Ham United v Liverpool game on the big screen, which was clearly not the biggest game of the day by any means, that was of course at Pride Park and showing live on the other channel. I did think about asking but as we were in Essex, I thought better of it!

By kick off around 300 spectators had rocked up to watch the game but who exactly are Brightlingsea Regent?

Brightlingsea United were formed in 1928 playing in the Essex & Suffolk Border League, with decent success, but then in 1972 they opted to join the Essex Senior League, which was won in 1989 and 1990 before they moved to the Eastern Counties League.

They moved between the two divisions of the ECL until the start of the 2002-03 season when they quit having lost the manager and the players. They took the place of their reserve team back in the Essex & Suffolk Border League, laboured for a couple of seasons, before merging with Regent Park Rangers to form the club that they are today.

By 2011 they were back in the ECL, and by 2014 they had finished runners-up in the top flight and with it earned a promotion to Division One North of the Isthmian League. A runners up spot in 2016-17 saw them promoted to the Premier Division, it was heady days indeed for Regent.

They lasted in the top flight until the 2022-23 season, and now this season they find themselves comfortably mid-table back in Division One North again.

I tend to find final games of the season with nothing on them go one of two ways, they are absolute thunderbastards that end up 5-5, with four red cards and a fight in the crowd, or they are dull as dishwater and absolutely nothing of note happens at all. Sadly, this one leaned more towards the dishwater than the thunderbastard category, however the one goal we did get came in the first half thanks to a Gorleston penalty that was awarded after the home goalkeeper did his best Bruce Lee impression when coming out to claim a ball. It was one of those where the ref could have said the ‘coming together’ was all part an parcel of what a goalkeeper does, but this ref decided it was not only a penalty, but also a red card!

Backed by a noisy and passionate home following, albeit Gorleston did make a bit of noise themselves, the home side went for it in the second period but an equaliser was not forthcoming and they had to console themselves with a presentation evening piss up in the bar afterwards!

The journey back was straightforward but long, however it mattered not, “they docked us 21 points, but we are going up…………. “