Frimley Green FC
Frimley Green Recreation Ground
Frimley Green Road
Frimley Green
Surrey
GU16 6GY
Ground: 75
Date: Saturday 9th March 2019
Frimley Green 5-1 Bedfont & Feltham
Combined Counties League Division 1
Attendance: 108 (official)
Frimley Green FC - History
Frimley Green were founded in 1919 and won the Surrey Junior Cup in 1928. At some point after this, the club the Surrey County Intermediate League's Western Division, winning the title in the 1958/59 and 1959/60 seasons before joining the Surrey Senior League. The club initially struggled at this new level - finishing bottom in the 1962/63 season - but started to improve in the latter half of the decade: three consecutive 4th-place finishes rounded out the decade before the club went one better and finished 3rd in the 1970/71 season.
However, the club's fortunes soon took a turn for the worse and, after finishing bottom again in the 1973/74 season, the club joined the Spartan League. After one season, this merged with the London Metropolitan League to become the London Spartan League, with the club placed in Division 2. Promotion to Division 1 followed, and after one season in Division 1 it was renamed the Premier Division. The club remained in this division until finishing second-from-bottom in the 1979/80 season to be relegated to the Senior Division.
After one season in this division, the club opted to transfer to the Western Division of the Combined Counties League, which was then reduced to a single division after their first season (in which they finished 7th out of 11 teams). The next decade was a difficult one for the club, as they struggled to break into the top half of the league: they finished second-from-bottom on two occasions but finished as high as 9th in the 1990/91 season. However, the club finished bottom of the league three seasons later and returned to the Surrey County Intermediate League.
After a few seasons in this league, the club finished as runners-up in the 1998/99 season to earn promotion to the Surrey County Senior League. After finishing 4th and 6th in their first two seasons in this league, the club finished as runners-up to earn promotion back to the Combined Counties League in the 2001/02 season. After one season in the league, it gained a second division, with the club placed in the Premier Division. The club then remained in the Premier Division for three seasons before finishing 18th out of 21 teams in the 2005/06 season to be relegated to Division 1.
After six seasons of inconsistent finishes in Division 1 (as low as 16th out of 18 in the 2008/09 season and as high as 6th in the 2007/08 season), the club won the title in the 2012/13 season to earn promotion back to the Premier Division. However, despite a respectable 12th-place finish in their first season, the club struggled to maintain this and finished bottom in the 2014/15 season to return to Division 1. The club have remained here ever since, steadily improving their league position and now finding themselves firmly in a promotion race this season.
In the FA Cup, the club have only progressed as far as the Preliminary Round on five occasions, most recently this season when they beat Fareham Town in the Extra Preliminary Round before losing to Lymington Town. As for the FA Vase, the club's best run saw them reach the 3rd Round in the 2008/09 season, beating Bookham, Redhill and Binfield before losing to VCD Athletic in a replay.
My Visit
As I stated in last week's blog entry, this was going to be my 75th groundhop and I was originally planning to head to Farnham Town. In fact, this was still the plan until midway through yesterday morning when, on a whim, I decided to look at the other two options I'd noted down (this and Fleet Spurs, both of which were intended as back-ups in case Farnham was postponed).
When I looked on the Frimley Green Twitter feed, I noticed that they were offering reduced admission prices of £5 for their home fixtures this month. Granted, it wasn't a massive reduction, but it was enough to catch my attention and make me rethink things. I then had a quick look at the Combined Counties League Division table and noted that this game was a top-of-the-table clash, and that was what finally swayed me to choose this instead.
With my decision made, I promptly ordered my train ticket and had lunch, before heading out at around 12:35pm. My train left Guildford at exactly 1pm and arrived at Frimley station 40 minutes later. At this point, I opened Google Maps to figure out my route, only to find that the walk would only take 25 minutes rather than the 30 I had noted down.
Of course, at my walking pace that meant it would take just over 20 minutes, so I ended up arriving at the ground just before 2pm, paying my £5 for admission and £1.50 for a programme. With roughly an hour to kill, I took my time with my usual circuit of photos (or as much of a circuit as the ground layout allowed), before taking a seat in the main stand awaiting kick-off.
About ten minutes in the game, I opted to leave the stand due to some of the most annoying people I've ever run into at a football ground: a group of five or six or so teenagers who were yelling, playing awful music off of their phones and smashing the back of the stand like maniacs for little reason. This was the only real black spot on the day, but thankfully they had disappeared from the stand at half-time, allowing me to return and take a seat to at least try to escape the bitterly-cold wind.
As I said before, this was a top-of-the-table clash and, considering that and the two teams' identical recent form, I was expecting this to be a tight match and was expecting the two teams to cancel each other out. However, as I report below, this game completely defied everyone's expectations as Frimley Green overwhelmed Bedfont & Feltham in the second half to make a real statement in the promotion race:
The home side had two good chances in the opening ten minutes, the first of which saw a shot poked inches wide and the second of which saw a volley whistle past the post. Bedfont & Feltham then started to push up in response and forced some real defensive scrambles as they attempted to take the lead. In these early stages, both teams were placing immense pressure on the opposition defence, while at the same time leaving their own exposed to intense counter-attacks. One of these almost saw Dan Bone give Frimley the lead as he found himself through one-on-one with Bedfont keeper Devon Gordon, only for a good save to deny him. At the other end, Bedfont missed a golden chance three minutes later, a low cross played across the box before Ross Nunn and Farhad Mahboudi both scuffed their attempted tap-ins.
In the 24th minute, a push from Bedfont's Jamie Pearce saw Frimley earn a penalty, with Zac Horkan stepping up and calmly converting to break the deadlock. After this, the game became tense and scrappy as both teams searched for further openings in their attempts to change the game. A few chances came at both ends, but for much of the next fifteen minutes the two midfields dominated. It took until the 39th minute for another clear-cut chance to come: a long ball over the top eluded the Bedfont defence and forced Gordon to come out for it, with Sean Latimer chipping past him and towards goal, only for the ball to bounce wide. 1-0 at half-time.
After a less-than-stellar first half performance, Bedfont would have hoped to make a better start to the first half, but instead they crumbled in alarming fashion: Frimley kicked off the second half, instantly played a longball over the defence to set Latimer through to shoot and score off of the post. This can't have been much more than ten seconds into the half, so Bedfont were understandably shell-shocked. As such, it barely came as a surprise when Frimley made it 3-0 five minutes later: a corner was played into the box and an initial shot was blocked, but the Bedfont defence failed to clear and the ball eventually fell to Bone for a tap-in. Then, in the 57th minute, Latimer almost made it 4-0 with an attempted tap-in from a cross, but his effort went just the wrong side of the post.
Bedfont had their first real chance of the half just after the hour mark, Mahboudi receiving the ball from a corner and getting a shot away, only for his effort to be blocked and then cleared away after a bit of scramble. However, the game looked all but over in the 66th minute as Bone made it 4-0: the long ball over the top once again wasn't dealt with and Bone had plenty of time to receive the ball and calmly chip over Gordon. Despite this, though, Bedfont didn't give up on their attempts to attack and they brought on Jordan Sarfo in an attempt to at least get a consolation: this almost immediately paid off in the 69th minute, as a Sarfo cross reached the head of Mahboudi and was only kept out by an excellent save from Frimley keeper Chris Harris.
A few more Sarfo-led attacks followed - including one where he ran the length of the pitch before having his shot saved - before Bedfont deservedly scored their consolation: several shots were saved or blocked on the line before Elliott Hayden got a tap-in. This really seemed to revitalise Bedfont and they started to surge forward, forcing a few more goalmouth scrambles but somehow failing to score each time. However, that very faint hope of a Bedfont comeback was ruthlessly extinguished when Frimley scored their 5th in the 81st minute: Bedfont lost possession in their own half, allowing George Bowerman to finish with a powerful shot from the edge of the box. Even after this, the game continued to be end-to-end, but it gradually died down as the final whistle approached.
So, this was absolutely not what I expected at all: despite these two teams being the top two going into the game, Frimley ran away with it and won emphatically to go top. Looking at the game as a whole, though, the first half actually was what I expected from a top-of-the-table clash: tight but entertaining, with Frimley just edging things ever so slightly. However, the second half was nothing short of a demolition job from Frimley, and Bedfont were simply blown away. Overall, this game was fantastically entertaining, easily one of the best I've watched this season.
So, bitterly-cold wind and extremely annoying teenagers aside, this was another thoroughly enjoyable groundhop, with comfortably the best match I've seen in quite some time after a few dismal ones of late. The club on the whole also seemed pretty friendly, which at least somewhat compensates for those teenagers.
Though the train back was direct, the journey back itself was a litte more eventful than normal: after getting out of the ground pretty quickly after the game (due to there being minimal added time in either half), I was able to get to within a couple of minutes of the station as the next train to Guildford (and last one for another half-hour) pulled in. At this point, I didn't fancy waiting on the platform for ages for the next train (not with that wind), so I had to run to catch the train just before it left. This also meant I was back in the house just after 6pm, which was not what I was expecting.
My plan for next Saturday is still to head to Woodstock Town, but other plans have come up on Saturday the 23rd, meaning I disappointingly have to miss the Chertsey FA Vase semi-final. Instead, I'm looking to slot in a groundhop either on the Sunday or some point in midweek after that Saturday, and I'll have hopefully made a decision on that front by next Saturday.
The Ground
Frimley Green Recreation Ground is a decent Step 6 ground, with three different areas of cover. One of these is a standard 100-seater Arena stand, while the other two areas of cover have a little bit more character.
The first of these is a very odd area of cover, a small sloped covered shelter just by the ground entrance: a few chairs are situated beneath it, but even without these you would probably only be able to get 10-20 people under it at most. The other area of cover is on the other side of the clubhouse and probably provides cover for around 100 people.
Other than this, the rest of the ground is open hard standing, though there is a small area beyond the main stand that lacks hard standing, for whatever reason. In its current form, the ground is likely good enough for Step 5, but upgrading it to anything above that (if it ever became necessary) would be very difficult, partially because of a lack of space but also because it's so easy to watch the match from outside of the ground and there doesn't seem to be much the club could do about that.
Photos
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