Ground Number: 262
Monday 1st April 2013
Royston Town 3-1 Biggleswade Town
Southern League Division 1 Central
MY VISIT
After a day off on Easter Sunday due to their being few games to chose from, I was back on the football ground trail. I'd been in work till 11. After going home for a bit of a rest, I left home at 12.50, getting into Aylesbury at 1.15 to meet Anwar, who also bought his daughter along for the day. It was a longer journey than I expected, but we were still there just before 2.30. After finding a space on a local side street, we went in. There was a table selling club merchandise including a scarf for the very reasonable price of £4. The programme was also excellent value at £1. Despite the small price is was pretty thick and nicely presented. Unusually it had the home clubs history, which might get repetitive for home fans, but was a good read for me. There are also plenty of stats and an article by a person called Brian Buck, who I have seen posting on forums. Amazingly he attended his 220th match of the season by 20th February, which puts even my record to shame. Although annoyingly they didn't have the Biggleswade history or team in there, a fact that I only discovered when writing this blog. But a commendable effort nonetheless.
I had attended the reverse fixture of this game and that was a niggly old encounter with plenty of bite, typical of a local derby. There was a sending off and plenty of bookings too, and this game turned out to be no different. In the original game, a Royston player was sent off for a blatant handball but on this occasion, it was a Biggleswade man that went, after a bad tackle. Royston probably deserved to win anyway, playing the better football throughout, but Biggleswade did have periods of the game where they were dominant. Jason Beck knocked home after a parry from the keeper to give Royston a half time lead. Despite Biggleswade having a man sent off, they still managed to grab an equaliser when Brett Donnelly, easily the visitors best player scored with 13 minutes remaining. But 2 goals from Kaan Fehmi in the last 5 minutes sealed a victory for the ecstatic home side in a keenly fought local derby. So another match that I had enjoyed seeing. I also met Tom, a Royston fan who I chat to on Facebook and another Wycombe fan who lives in Royston, but who I had not seen before. I had to fill up with petrol on the way home, but was still back home by 6.45, having made good time on the way back.
THE GROUND
GARDEN WALK is mainly open standing, which seems to be the norm for this level. The seated area along the side holds around 150, whilst there is covered standing for around the same amount on the other side. There is also a small bit of cover in front of the newly refurbished clubhouse, which is smart inside and does a decent range of drinks. The club shop (or table) does a fair range of stuff at cheap prices. The tea bar range is a bit limited and more expensive than other grounds in this league, but the hot dog I had was pretty nice.
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