FLASH FLOODS, THE FA CUP AND OIL WELLS

To be printed in the first league game of the National League South season v Chelmsford City Saturday 14th August 2021

Arriving by steam train after sleeping by a ditch in the rain would have been a memorable way to celebrate 150 years of the FA Cup. With East Grinstead only a few miles away from our campsite I was planning to get on the Bluebell Railway but with tickets at £25 and coming dressed as a Glastonbury mud-cake and messing up their lovingly restored trains made me change transport plans. I scrubbed off some muck, wiped my feet at the turnstiles mat and entered their smartly wasp-coloured stadium to see East Grinstead Town take on Alfold in the FA Cup extra preliminary round. Just 13 victories and a Wembley final would be theirs.

This was the same week when Manchester City bought Jack Grealish for £100 million, adding more muscle to the footballing equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters.

You couldn’t be much further in footballing terms than East Grinstead and Manchester City but the fact that they both play in the same competition is something; the chances of meeting, well I wouldn’t bet my house on it – but it’s the same rules, the same ball, but that’s where the similarity ends.

What really rankles is the fact that Slough get fined for refusing to fulfil fixtures during a pandemic, while Man City walk away with slapped wrists despite wanting to destroy the football pyramid and breaking fair play rules. It’s how the rich and powerful always operate, and you have to be rich and powerful to own a top end football club. Owning an oil well or two means you wont go bust, although climate change might cause chaos to the fixture list. I presume owning a football club probably wont be worth as much when most of the world is either burning or under water, so it might be worth switching to water polo.

This was only the second time Alfold had entered the FA Cup. Their rise up the leagues has been impressive and they now play in the Southern Combination Premier, which has about as much claim to being Premier as a Premier Inn. East Grinstead have struggled in their six seasons in the Isthmian League but the have an impressive ground, lovely pitch and decent support including a few who got behind them during the game. Mind you singing ‘Who the fucking hell are you’ to the smattering of Alfold fans was hopefully more than a little ironic. Despite a new manager, they just couldn’t gel, hardly had a shot on goal and ended up in a sort of giant killing 2-1 defeat. £1,125 in the pot for the winners, £375 to the losers (money cut to from previous years thanks to the pandemic).

What I love about any level of football is the passion of fans. 147 plus all the volunteers, players and friends is a decent crowd. The fact that lower league crowds are growing is in part to people being disillusioned with what’s happening at top level football, which isn’t really much of a competitive sport when those who spend the most nearly always win.

But its not just about making football predictable, it creates a transfer race to the top, with clubs that try to keep up ending up as financial basket cases. Mind you, Barcelona’s mismanagement is off the scale. A staggering One Billion pounds in debt; no wonder they bet on a Super League as their get-out of-debt card. They are still talking about starting the Super League with just 3 clubs signed up which would make the Scottish Premiership look competitive.

Barcelona’s wage bill accounts for 110% of their expenditure while Premier League wages were £3.25 million in 2019/20 – an increase of 3,118% since the the Premier League was formed nearly 30 years ago.

Accrington's financially savvy chairman Andy Holt nailed it again “The hardest thing when running a football club… is accepting you can’t just have who you want, accepting the massive disadvantage against others blowing their brains in. Unless you have an oil well that is. Some owners are so wealthy they will never run out of cash. They only need to pay lip service to the rules.” I wonder who he means.

The week before the cup, I took a trip to Storrington for the opening campaign in the Southern Combination Division One to cheer on Shoreham. After re-organisation Shoreham didn’t qualify for this seasons FA Cup, but there must be a way to give some Step six clubs a go. Ironically last season they got hammered by Alfold who were debuting in the FA Cup. On the bus we were treated to torrential downpours and flash flooding and the nearby Hassocks game was called off (their FA Cup game was also off due to a waterlogged pitch. At the beginning of August).
Storrington is a picturesque Sussex village where only a lairy goose and puddle splashing cars gave me any bother. So I was a little surprised to see three police in attendance. Apparently its because the club and its surrounds keep getting vandalised; cos what you really want to do is smash up the few community facilities a place has. A crowd of 76 saw Shoreham's Musselmen dominate and come out comfortable 4-0 winners.

Shoreham are on a mission to be carbon neutral and managed to get a grant from the Football Foundation to change their floodlights to much more energy efficient LED. Yet they still needed planning permission to quite literally change a lightbulb which of course cost time and money.

I get why people shake their heads in disbelief at the state of football, but scratch beneath the surface and up and down the country teams like East Grinstead, Storrington, Alfold and Shoreham are the glue that helps bind communities together. This is the football we should be out celebrating and supporting.