I am pleased that Mr Lardiman has negotiated getting the pics from his phone to this thread quicker than I managed to find the ground yesterday. It took me an hour from Hayes and Harlington station to the ground, which should have only taken 30 minutes. Concession admission £6 Programme £2 Badge £3 2 coffees £2 Total outlay £13
Hayes and Yeading are coasting this league and have now won 11 consecutive home games. This finished 8-1 and could have been more. H&Y have been back 1 year after groundsharing. Behind, and in the main stand, the ground looks like a building site, suggesting they have money worries.
The protest takes me to Cobham v Banstead today. I need to get off the train at Cobham & Stoke D'Abernon, this is directly opposite Chelsea's fantastic training ground. I went there in Oct/November 2007 to see our U18's play Chelsea(surprise surprise). The f****** place was huge, you could have put about 12 full size pitches on their comfortably.
There are 8 full size pitches at Sparrow Lane two of which are 3G pitches, 1 pitch is away from the main complex beyond the 3G pitches.
I imagine the place has changed a bit since I last went, about six years ago. Anyway, enough of the boring serious stuff. Can we now get back to the matter in hand of.....................
Just arrived in the club house. No booze on tap, a very poor show. Explaining the very bland Budweiser being consumed.
Saturday afternoon was spent outside Colditz/Chelsea's training ground then onto a rather run down Combined Counties League ground to see Cobham v Banstead. Trying to get a few pics of the entrance to the ground Mr High Viz approached me and (very politely)said I would not be hanging around too long as I was on "closed property", wtf is that? I was quick to say to him that "I hope you are not saying I am tresspassing?", he quickly said that was not the case. As there were no Chelsea players to ask for an autograph I made my way over to more friendly surroundings. I popped into my shop just to make sure all was ticking over nicely, things are looking up.
The ground was very run down with a club house and changing rooms in dire need of a refurb, having said that there were two decent stands along the side, behind one goal there was a 'stand' made up of scaffolding! A poor game was livened up by Banstead equalising to perk up the 35'ish and two dogs crowd for the remaining 20 minutes. £5 FULL admission with programme £1 Badge £6 Two bottles of Budweiser Total outlay £12