Match: v Kettering Town - Blue Square Premier
Date: Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Result: Kettering 0 Cambridge United 1
The Journey
Departure Time: 4pm
Arrival at Ground: Having collected a passenger in St Ives, I was delighted to find that the build up of traffic at the M11 end of the A14 hadn't congealed too far west. So it was a straightforward journey - and, after Saturday's long haul to Barrow, a mercifully brief one - and I parked in a surprisingly steward-free car park behind the away turnstiles a little before 5.30pm.
At The Ground
The Ground: Set on a roundabout, beside a bowling alley, Kettering's Rockingham Road ground is a real throwback to non-league days of yore. The press entrance is via a large, corrugated metal gate behind a social club - a gate that, unless you've been there before, looks shut fast. But a firm push swings open the portal and reveals a steward who you might have expected to have been standing on the other side of the gate in a position that would have been a little more welcoming. Anyway, as I'd been before, I didn't fall into the trap of waiting forlornly outside an open gate!
Once inside, a walkway eventually leads to the main stand that is large in height rather than in length. Filled with blood red, plastic seats it runs from level with an imaginary point about a third of the way inside one half of the pitch to a point about level with the edge of the six yard box at the other end of the ground.
The press areas are at the back of this stand, almost level with half way line. I say 'press areas' as there were two; a small bench with three seats in the open air and a larger enclosed area, access to which was jealously guarded by the local press. Shadows cast by the floodlights made working at night in the outside press section a little tricky; I had to get my stopwatch at exactly the right angle to read it and, for some reason, that angle was never the same twice. It was so crepuscular here that only something with excellent night vision would feel at home … which might explain the large owl that perched on a girder above the outside press area. Garishly painted, this owl was probably not real, although the droppings beneath it suggested otherwise.
The working experience was made even more 'interesting' by the roof of the social club, the windows and frames of the indoor press area and some large girders that hadn't quite rusted enough to see through. These obstructions combined to mean that a large area of the pitch, from the touchline level with the edge of the penalty area almost to the near goal post, was completely invisible without the aid of the Hubble Telescope. The whole press experience was capped after the match when all the lights in the stadium were turned off midway through the writing of match reports. Fortunately, a member of the local press eventually returned to cast some illumination from the hallowed halls of the interior press area, so all worked out well in the end!
Behind the goal at that end of the ground, there is an open terrace of four steps, with a large, flat area of tarmac behind on which one almost expected to see the lines for a schoolyard netball game marked out.
Opposite the main stand an old, covered terrace has football-battered advertising hoarding hanging down from the roof. The leads to a barren area of segregation - I know it's usually called a 'sterile area' but I find it very hard to associate the word 'sterile' with any old football ground! The remaining end of the ground consists of more uncovered terrace with a red caravan serving refreshments to the away fans to whom this terrace is allocated.
United Fans: Despite an open terrace and the prevailing wind driving drizzle into their faces, U's fans were in good voice throughout.
Home Fans: Plenty of grumbling, particularly about the referee.
Programme: £3 for 44 pages. If you flick through the programme quickly, starting at the back, you might think that there are an inordinate number of adverts, mainly on right hand pages. But that would give an unfair impression of a programme that contains a decent number of readable articles.
State of Toilets: Although there were limited facilities for those in the main stand, they were clean enough and surprisingly uncrowded.
Numbers
Mileage: 109.6 miles
Total Distance for Season: 4,184.3 miles
Mark Johnson
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