Mile Oak FC
Chalky Road
Mile Oak
Portslade
Brighton & Hove
East Sussex
BN41 2WS
Twitter
Ground: 59
Date: Saturday 20th October 2018
Mile Oak 0-1 Selsey
Southern Combination League Division 1
Attendance: 45 (official)
Mile Oak FC - History
Mile Oak were founded in 1960 and initially joined Division 8 of the Brighton, Hove & District League, winning the division at the first attempt and jumping up to Division 6 as a result. A runners-up finish in the 1963/64 season was then enough to earn promotion to Division 5, followed immediately by promotion to Division 4. The Division 4 title was then won in the 1965/66 season, but a couple of seasons later the club found themselves back in Division 5, before again earning promotion to Division 4 a season later.
A runners-up finish in Division 4 in the 1971/72 season was enough to jump up to Division 2, and in their first season at this level the title was won to earn promotion to Division 1. The 1973/74 season then saw the club win Division 1 to earn promotion and, after a few seasons in the Premier Division, the club won the title, followed by three consecutive runners-up finishes from 1984 to 1986. Shortly after this, the club decided to move up into senior football and, in the 1987/88 season, the club joined Division 3 of the Sussex County League.
After a few seasons in Division 3 - all but one of which saw the club finish in its top half - the club finished as runners-up to earn promotion to Division 2. Then, after three seasons in Division 2, the club won the title to earn promotion to Division 1 for the 1995/96 season. The club spent three seasons at this level, but never finished higher than 16th (out of 20) and were soon relegated back to Division 2.
Upon their return to Division 2, the club had a few difficult seasons in which they mostly finished in the bottom half of Division 2. However, after an 11th-place finish in the 2004/05 season, the club's fortunes began to improve again, eventually culminating in the club finishing as runners-up in the 2008/09 season to earn promotion back to Division 1. As before, though, the club struggled and immediately returned to Division 2 after finishing bottom. Since then, the club has remained in Division 2 of the Sussex County League (now Division 1 of the Southern Combination League) and has generally finished in the top half, with a highest finish of 4th in the 2016/17 season.
In the FA Cup, the club have twice progressed as far as the 1st Qualifying Round: in the 1996/97 season (the club's first in the competition), they beat Lancing before losing to Dover Athletic; in the 2004/05 season, the club beat Fareham Town before losing to Hastings United. As for the FA Vase, the club's best run has seen them reach the 2nd Round on two occasions: in the 2005/06 season, they beat Eastbourne United Association, BAT Sports and Slade Green before losing to Deal Town; in the 2008/09 season, the club beat Southwick, Wealden and Cobham before losing to Croydon.
My Visit
My destination for yesterday was all but decided as early as this time last week, but I had to wait to see how the weather progressed during the week until I could definitely confirm that I would be heading here. Rain in the early stages of the week had me concerned that I'd have to put this off for another time, but by Thursday it became clear that I was unlikely to have any issues with the weather. Even then, it wasn't until I checked the forecast on Saturday morning that I truly felt confident to purchase my train tickets.
I left the house just after 11am, picking up my train tickets when I made it to the station and then catching my first train of the day at 11:35am. Starting with this first leg of the journey, I decided to make a start on reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which I would need to have read for my course a few weeks down the line. This briefly stopped when I got off at Havant for my first change of the day, but as I had a 25 minute wait there I was happy to continue reading.
The next stage of the journey saw me change at Worthing, waiting just five minutes for my final train to Fishersgate station to arrive. This final leg of the journey was a brief 15 minutes, so no time to read really. The bright side was that the train went past Southwick's ground just before getting into Fishersgate, so I got a sneak preview of sorts for when I eventually get the chance to visit them (it looked a decent little ground, so I'm looking forward to it).
The train eventually got into Fishersgate station around ten minutes before 2pm, after which I had a half an hour walk to the ground according to Google Maps. This walk saw me heading steadily uphill (including a brief stretch of road without any footpaths to walk on), with me eventually arriving at the ground at 2:20pm. At this point, no one was at the gate to take admission, so I walked around the two sides of the ground that appeared to be open to spectators (turns out they all were, but I digress) and took a few photos until a club official showed up to man the gate. At this point I headed over to pay for admission and a programme (£5 and £1 respectively) and received a warm welcome, which was a pleasant surprise after quite a long journey down to the south coast from Guildford (the only indication of being so close to the coast was the constant sound of seagulls, as the sea could not be seen from the ground at all).
After talking to the man on the gate for a few minutes, I resumed my circuit of photos before moving into the covered standing on the grass bank side of the ground ahead of kick-off, mainly to avoid the glare of the sun. However, as the game kicked off it became apparent that the structure's supporting pillars would substantially hinder my view of the game, so I moved towards the far goal and sat on the concrete step. This did mean the sun was more or less directly in front of me, but there was little I could do about that on this occasion.
Looking at the table, it seemed logical to assume that Selsey would be firm favourites for the victory, especially after eventually triumphing against Mile Oak in the FA Vase 1st Qualifying Round (it took a replay for them to do so, but they did win 3-0 in the process). However, I had noted that Mile Oak had seen an upturn in form recently, so I was expecting a tight but interesting contest, while also being a little concerned about over-familiarity between the two sides after the two Vase meetings this season.
Here's my report on what was undoubtedly the worst match I've seen so far this season, an extremely niggly, physical and bad-tempered contest between two sides who seemingly had a few grudges to settle after the previous meetings:
The game got off to a decent start (albeit 3 minutes late, thanks to the fabled "Isthmian time", which is relevant here as this is very much Isthmian league territory), with Mile Oak almost taking the lead after just 6 minutes: Selsey goalkeeper Connor Kelly fumbled what should have been a fairly easy catch at the edge of the box and Mile Oak's Callum Wells was quickest to react and got a shot away, but luckily for Kelly a defender was covering and cleared the ball off the line. This blunder was soon forgotten though, as Selsey took the lead after 10 minutes: Ryan Morey beat the offside trap and then rounded Mile Oak keeper Aaron Stenning before shooting from the edge of the box at a tight angle to score. This was almost repeated in the 23rd minute where Morey once again beat the offside trap, but this time he could only get a glancing touch on the ball, making it an easy save for Stenning.
Another Selsey attack two minutes later saw Stenning come out to intercept the attacker - as he had done for the goal and aforementioned chance - but this time he collided with the attacker, leading to a few moments of handbags afterwards (based on the comments from a few Selsey fans I was sitting near, there had been a few similar incidents in the two Vase meetings between the sides this season, so this is perhaps unsurprising as a result). This was effectively kept under control by the officials, but this didn't last for long when, on the half hour mark, another Selsey attack saw Stenning on the end of a high tackle from Selsey's Dan Bassil; being so soon after a similar - albeit less serious - incident, and with lots of pressure from the Mile Oak players and management, the referee was left with little choice but to send Bassil off, with the game being briefly delayed as he initially refused to head down to the changing rooms.
When we eventually got back underway and, with no indication that the steadily-growing tensions and physicality were likely to go away, Mile Oak didn't wait long to make the first substitution, taking off Joe Hall for Lee Early. Presumably this was an attempt to capitalise on the man advantage, but it didn't seem to make too much difference in the remainder of the half: while Mile Oak weren't playing badly (although their defensive intensity was certainly questionable on occasion), their attacking efforts were lacking any real penetration as, other than the goalkeeping blunder early on, Selsey's defence had held firm and not had too much to do. By comparison, while Selsey did have the lead, they didn't look fantastic either: they were creating more chances than Mile Oak were, but generally speaking they were either of poor quality or led to some of the incidents described above. Still, going into half-time, that was perfectly sufficient for them.
The second half eventually started (after a half-time break of 18 minutes) in similar fashion to the first, with lots of physicality and the occasional afters here and there (as players perhaps looked to address grudges from the previous meetings between the sides this season) but little in the way of actual quality or clear-cut chances. It wasn't until the hour mark that the game came back to life when Mile Oak's Michael Gould was booked for a shoulder barge/shove to stop a Selsey attack. This was then followed by another chance for Selsey's Ryan Morey three minutes later: he gently chipped the ball over Stenning and ran past him into the box, but with an open goal to aim for he lost his balance and scuffed his shot wide.
A massive let-off for Mile Oak, especially as the game started to open up a little more and almost become end-to-end going into the final twenty minutes of normal time. Mile Oak then made their final substitution on 74 minutes, with Owen Scerri replacing Adam Dine as the home side intensified their efforts to score an equaliser. However, just six minutes after coming on, Scerri was sent off for a poor two-footed challenge in the middle of the pitch. With the numbers now even again, the game opened up even more as Mile Oak jumped straight into a counterattack from the Selsey free-kick, Callum Wells breaking through with a fine turn and passing to Louie Foster, who put his effort well wide.
In these final ten minutes, Mile Oak created more chances than they had at any point previously, but many of their efforts were either from long range and well off-target or saw Wells or Jack Marriott break through on the wings and send the ball across the face of goal, only for there to be no one in an orange shirt in the box to tap it in. As for Selsey, they went on a few attacks of their own but, with many of the Mile Oak attacks being entirely ineffective, they saw and seized the opportunity to start running the clock down, taking the ball into the corners when possible or finding other ways to delay (such as Ben Buckland kicking the ball away after giving away a foul, earning a yellow card for his trouble). Other than a few more stoppages for injuries and the like - and one for a toddler somehow getting onto the pitch during a Mile Oak attack - little else of note happened and the game finished just after 5pm, with Selsey claiming the victory thanks to Morey's early goal.
As I alluded to above, this was easily the worst game I've seen so far this season, with ill-discipline marring much of the contest and becoming the main talking point as a result. In hindsight, with the teams having met twice already this season, I perhaps should have anticipated something like this, but it never even came to mind as it's been ages since I've seen such a niggly and ill-tempered 90+ minutes of football. While they didn't create many good chances (only a couple of shots on target, as far as I can remember), Mile Oak were perhaps unlucky to lose this game, as Selsey weren't too impressive at all; on a different day, with a less stop-start game, the home side could easily have gotten a point out of this tie, especially with how their form has improved in recent weeks.
As for next Saturday, I don't have any sort of concrete plan yet and it's likely going to depend on a couple of factors: if Matt is able to join me or not, and if I go out drinking the night before, as I promised my housemates I would on Friday night (that will basically come down to how drunk I get and then how hungover I am the next day, which may be a lot as I rarely ever drink and haven't actually been properly drunk before).
However, I know where I'm going two weeks from now: as I have a week off from University from the 3rd until the 11th of November, I'm going to go home and will be utilising the Yaxley Supporters' Coach to head to Bromsgrove Sporting on the 3rd (and hopefully another new ground the following Saturday, if we can beat Kidsgrove Athletic in the FA Trophy next Saturday).
The Ground
Chalky Road is, like most Step 6 grounds, fairly basic, but it's a pleasant one with a decent amount of character as well. Behind the near goal is a fairly standard 100-seater Arena stand, but it's painted in the club colours on the sides and is also different in that a gate comes down from the roof in front of the stand: this seems to be intended to reduce the threat of vandalism, as that seems to be something the club has to deal with more often than most (including just a few weeks ago, in fact).
The other area of cover at the ground is a small area of covered standing on the grass bank side of the ground (so-called by me due to the massive grass bank behind it): this is my personal favourite feature of the ground, painted nicely in the club's colours and possibly having space for around 100 people when required. Either side of this covered standing and at the bottom of the grass bank is a small concrete step that does a decent job as uncovered seating.
There is open hard standing on three sides of the ground, with there being insufficient space behind the far goal (due to the close proximity of houses and a footpath) to add hard standing there. Other than this, as the ground is on a hill the pitch noticeably slopes from the grass bank side to the dugout side, though this doesn't seem to have too much of an impact on the game itself. Also worth noting is that the players have to walk up some steps from the pavilion changing rooms to reach the pitch, and supporters have to do the same albeit from a different entrance (both are clearly signposted, so it's impossible to get wrong).
I'm unsure of the ground's official capacity (most likely 1,000, maybe more if the grass bank was allowed to be used as well, rather than being banned as per a recent FA ground grading directive), but the record attendance at the ground was a crowd of 143 for a match against Worthing in the 2015/16 season.
Photos
I was at game.excellent report of match and of ground.toddler went on pitch to retrieve his mini football.!
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