Metropolitan Police FC
Imber Court
Ember Lane
East Molesey
Surrey
KT8 0BT
Ground: 55
Date: Saturday 22nd September 2018
Metropolitan Police 2-2 Needham Market
FA Cup 2nd Qualifying Round
Attendance: 111 (official)
Attendance: 111 (official)
Metropolitan Police FC - History
Metropolitan Police were founded in 1919 and, after playing friendlies for their first nine years, the club joined Division 1 East of the Spartan League in 1928, winning the title in their first season and earning promotion to the Premier Division, which was also won at the first attempt. The club won the title again in the 1936/37 and 1938/39 seasons before the outbreak of World War 2. After the war, the club were placed in the Spartan League's Central Division, winning the title without losing a match in the 1945/46 season to return to the Premier Division.
Once again, the club won the title in their first season in the Premier Division, before finishing as runners-up the following season. The title was won again in the 1953/54 and 1954/55 seasons, before the club transferred to the Metropolitan League in 1960. The club remained in this league until its demise in 1971, gradually finishing higher up the table as the decade progressed (they finished bottom in the 1961/62 season, but finished as high as 4th in the 1968/69 and 1969/70 seasons).
After the Metropolitan League folded, the club were transferred to Division 1 South of the Southern League, remaining in this league for six seasons and finishing in the bottom half each time before being transferred to Division 2 of the Isthmian League in 1977. A runners-up finish was enough to earn promotion to Division 1, where the club lasted seven seasons before finishing third-from-bottom in the 1984/85 season to drop into Division 2 South.
The club spent three seasons in Division 2 South before earning promotion back to Division 1, but only lasted three seasons back in Division 1 before finishing second-from-bottom and being relegated to Division 2 again in the 1990/91 season. The club remained in Division 2 until league reorganisation in the 2002/03 season saw the club placed in Division 1 South. The club struggled in their two seasons in this league, before more restructuring saw them moved to Division 1 for the 2004/05 season.
In both seasons in Division 1 (before yet more restructuring saw the club placed in Division 1 South for the 2006/07 season), the club finished in the play-offs, only to lose in the semi-finals to Bromley and Dover Athletic respectively. In Division 1 South, the club reached the play-offs in the 2007/08 and 2008/09 seasons, losing to Cray Wanderers in the semi-final and then the final in consecutive seasons.
Eventually, in the 2010/11 season, the club won the Division 1 South title to earn promotion to the Premier Division. The club had a variety of finishes in this league, including a play-off campaign in the 2014/15 season (losing to Hendon in the semi-finals), before being transferred to the Southern League Premier Division South for this season amidst ongoing restructuring of the non-league pyramid.
In the FA Cup, the club have progressed as far as the 1st Round four times, most recently in the 2012/13 season, beating Beckenham Town, Berkhamsted, Dereham Town and South Park before losing to Crawley Town. The club reached the semi-finals of the FA Amateur Cup in the 1933/34 season, beating Yorkshire Amateur and Chesham United before losing to Dulwich Hamlet. In the FA Trophy, the club's best run saw them reach the 2nd Round in the 1989/90 season, beating Folkestone, Whyteleafe and Wycombe Wanderers before losing to Barrow. As for the FA Vase, the club made it all the way to the Quarter Finals in the 1994/95 season, beating Eton Wick, Collier Row, Eastleigh and Hadleigh United before losing to Belper Town.
My Visit
For my first full weekend back in Guildford, I was always going to be looking for a game and, having aimed to see a game in every Qualifying Round of the FA Cup this season (I had missed out the 1st Qualifying Round to instead visit Welwyn Garden City for Yaxley's away game there, though), I was always going to be choosing from that competition if possible. It was then just a matter of choosing which game to attend and, with Matt able to join me for the first time in a while, that helped narrow it down to a few interesting options.
In the end, I suggested a couple of options to him (this game and the FA Cup game at Egham Town, the latter of which finished 3-3) and, as I had been hoping, he wanted to do this game and the decision was made. Fortunately, even with the weather taking a turn for the worse as the week progressed and with rain forecast for the entirety of Saturday, the game was unaffected and I was able to order my train tickets with confidence.
I left the house just after lunch and got on the train just after 1pm, changing at Woking and then Surbiton (where I met Matt on the train he'd taken from London Waterloo), arriving into Thames Ditton station at 2:10pm. It was then a ten minute walk from there to the ground, with it then taking a good five minutes just to get across the road to reach the ground, and then a few minutes after that to find the way in (the entrance is annoyingly well-hidden, perhaps unsurprisingly with this being a multi-sports facility). Once we found the entrance, we each paid £10 for admission and I then paid £2 for an extremely impressive programme (one that I'll be taking inspiration from for the Yaxley programmes this season and beyond).
With the rain steadily pouring, I was quick to do my circuit of photos and, once done, Matt and I went to sit in the main stand out of the rain, and this is where we remained for the entirety of the match (no football food was purchased today, with admission and the programme using up all my cash, so Matt and I made do with some sweets and cookies I brought with me instead).
The Met Police teamsheet
Going into this game, both teams were in mid-table in their respective Step 3 leagues, and both had virtually identical records to boot (I would show the tables here, but I don't see much point doing that really until October at the earliest, as this is much too early in the season for league tables to really mean very much), so I was expecting a very close game and, as I report below, this was very much the case:
The opening proceedings were slow and, other than a decent chance apiece in the opening ten minutes, very little of note really occurred at first, as both teams tried to get a foothold in the game and exert some control. However, both teams largely cancelled each other out in the final third but, before the game could fall completely into the doldrums, Met Police gave away a penalty after 17 minutes after some sloppy defending. Dan Morphew stepped up to take the penalty for Needham and duly converted, placing his shot to the keeper's left and sending him to the right in the process.
This seemed to properly wake Met Police up and, after a short period of bombarding the Needham box, they equalised on 24 minutes: the Needham defence were unable to clear a corner and the ball fell to John Gilbert, but he headed into the crossbar from close range, only for Jack Mazzone to react quickest and tap in on the rebound at the near post.
It was a deserved equaliser for Met Police, but mostly because either team being ahead at that point would not have been a fair reflection of the proceedings. However, the period of home domination in the build-up to the goal had evidently concerned Needham's manager, causing him to make an early substitution, their number 9 being replaced by their Jesse Lingard-lookalike number 12. I thought a substitution so early on seemed rather hasty, especially as Needham hadn't exactly been playing badly and also considering the wet conditions, but evidently their manager thought otherwise. Regardless, the substitution didn't seem to make much difference and, for the rest of the half, both teams cancelled each other out without much in the way of goalmouth action or controversy.
1-1 at half-time.
The second half started with more energy than the first, at least in the initial few minutes, but this soon died down as the match continued to follow the pattern of the first half, only with Needham starting to have the better of the play instead. Even so, when they took the lead on 58 minutes, it certainly came as a surprise, even if both me and Matt (who was joining me at the game for the first time in a while) had predicted there would be more goals at half-time (in fact, we correctly predicted the final score): Needham's Adam Mills, who had been given far too much free space on the left wing all game, finally took advantage with a dangerous run, breaking into the box and having his initial shot saved by the keeper before placing the second over him and into the net.
For a few minutes after this, Needham took complete control of the game and created several excellent chances, only to waste each and every one of them rather than increasing their lead. On 66 minutes, they would be left to lament this when, after a high two-footed tackle and a brief scuffle afterwards, Needham's number 5 was sent off; admittedly, I didn't see the actual tackle that led to the sending off, only that a Needham player (the number 5) was down injured, so I was initially confused about why he had been sent off until I saw a Twitter post clarifying what had happened. Either way, the home side were quick to take advantage, John Gilbert scoring after a solo counter-attacking run on 71 minutes.
At this point, the question was whether Met Police would be able to fully capitalise on their man advantage after the equaliser, or if Needham would be able to hold them at bay and get the replay, but even then it wasn't quite that simple: while certainly a lot more conservative than before the sending off, Needham did still occasionally push forward in numbers in an attempt to get a winner, but without success. As for Met Police, they struggled to break through the Needham defence, but as we approached the end of the 90 they started bombarding the Needham goal, coming close on several occasions to a winner. Neither side got one, but Needham came closest from a free kick late on, the ball into the box eluding the home defence but just being kicked over the bar near the far post.
2-2 at full-time, with a replay to follow.
On the whole, this was more or less what I predicted: a close and scrappy game between two sides of very similar quality, with the end result being exactly what you'd expect, even if Met Police will be disappointed not to have taken advantage of their man advantage in the last 25 minutes. I've also seen elsewhere that a few complaints have been raised about the referee's performance, but I personally felt that - a few odd decisions notwithstanding - he did a good job of controlling the game and didn't make any truly glaring errors.
On the whole, barring the dismal weather (which is perhaps unfair to complain about after such a nice summer, but I digress), this was an enjoyable groundhop at another good ground, great programme, friendly people (as is further elaborated in this fascinating article I saw on Twitter today about the club) and some good time catching up with Matt as well.
I'm not sure what will be up next, other than that it's going to be somewhere between Guildford and Selsey, the latter of which being where my dad and his wife will be staying for a few days.
The Ground
Imber Court is a good ground by Step 3 standards, with an imposing 300-seater main stand on the near side dominating the ground and, when sat in, providing good elevated views of the pitch (although you do have to sit as central as possible to see the entirety of the pitch, which was fine yesterday but would be hard with a larger crowd). The other area of cover is an impressive covered terrace that covers the entirety of the area behind the near goal, which can also probably hold around 300 people when required.
Other than this, there are a couple of steps of open terracing on the entirety of the far side and also behind the far goal, but the rest of the ground is open hard standing, with little room to feasibly expand beyond its current state (though I'd imagine the ground would be acceptable at Step 2 if the club were to ever reach that level in the future).
The ground has an overall capacity of 3,000, with the record attendance at the ground being 4,500 for an FA Cup game against Kingstonian in 1934. The ground has been used by the club ever since their foundation in 1919.
Photos
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