Wokingham & Emmbrook FC
Lowther Road
Wokingham
Berkshire
RG41 1JB
Ground: 101
Date: Saturday 7th December 2019
Wokingham & Emmbrook 4-0 Abingdon Town
Hellenic League Division 1 East
Attendance: 70 (official)
Wokingham & Emmbrook - History
Wokingham & Emmbrook were founded in 2004 as a merger of Wokingham Town and Emmbrook Sports. The club were placed in Division 1 East of the Hellenic League and spent their first six years at that level.
Their first season saw them finish 11th, but they finished 3rd the following season before going one better in the 2009/10 season to earn promotion to the Premier Division. However, they had to move into a groundshare with Bracknell Town to be able to earn promotion, due to difficulties in getting planning permission for ground improvements.
After three mid-table finishes in the Premier Division, the club were forced to return to Division 1 East for the 2013/14 season. They finished as runners-up in their first season back at this level, before going on to win the title the following season to return to the Premier Division. This time, the club had to groundshare with Henley Town, but this only lasted for a season as the club finished bottom and were relegated.
After a season of recovery at Step 6, the club were forced to groundshare with Bracknell Town again due to the FA beginning to be stricter with enforcing ground-grading (while the club's ground had received planning permission for the necessary improvements, it wasn't ready for Step 6 at the time). After consecutive 6th-place finishes at Bracknell, the club were able to return home at the start of this season and are currently competing for promotion to Step 5.
The club have competed in the FA Cup twice so far, with their best run seeing them reach the 1st Qualifying Round in their debut season in the competition (the 2011/12 season): they beat Holyport and Kidlington before losing to North Greenford United. As for the FA Vase, the club progressed to the 1st Round in both the 2012/13 and 2015/16 seasons: the 2012/13 season saw them beat Highmoor Ibis before losing to Marlow, while the 2015/16 season saw them beat Shrivenham before losing to Hartley Wintney.
My Visit
After heading further afield for my 100th groundhop last week (and pushing my pre-Christmas budgeting to the limit), I was always going to have to stay more local this week. For a while, I had this match on the horizon, but I also had a few others as options. However, when news of the December South Western Railway strikes emerged in early November, I realised I would have to cut most of my options due to them being either impossible or highly impractical to get to.
As is always the case when South Western Railway go on strike, this means that my only option is to head west towards Reading and maybe beyond that towards Oxford. This would have been fine if I hadn't gone very far last week, but the fact that I did meant I was even more restricted than normal. In fact, excluding Step 7, I only had three options, one of which was a 3G: this, Reading City and South Park.
While this wasn't necessarily a problem, I wanted to have one or two more options just in case the weather turned for the worse (as is highly likely to happen in winter). This meant I started looking at the few Step 7 and below options of interest, ultimately finding that only Bicester United (of the ones I am interested in) were at home. So, going into Friday, I added it to the list.
On Friday, I realised the problem with taking Step 7 options into account in cases like this is that I would have to make an early decision of whether to get any cash out or not (I would need cash for any of the other options, but not for Bicester). I considered the issue after my morning lecture, eventually deciding to take the less risky approach of getting cash out (as that would leave more options than not doing so).
After making this decision, I looked at the weather forecasts on Friday night and was pleased to see that it wasn't expected to rain yesterday. Still, upon checking with Wokingham & Emmbrook on Twitter, they mentioned that they would check the pitch in the morning, so I wasn't 100% confident at that stage.
Yesterday morning, however, they announced reasonably early that the pitch was fine, so that was my decision confirmed. As such, I ordered my train tickets at around 11am and started getting ready to leave. I had lunch around an hour later, before leaving the house just after 1pm, making sure to allow myself a little more time to get cash out on the way to the station.
When all was said and done, my train left Guildford station at around 1:45pm, arriving at Wokingham station 25 minutes later. It was then a 25 minute walk to the ground, a minute or two being wasted while I figured out which way to go upon initially leaving the station. Upon arrival at the ground, I received a warm welcome from the club secretary and paid £5 for admission and £1 for a programme.
From the entrance, I walked up the path towards the clubhouse and stood there for a while before kick-off, receiving a warm welcome from a couple more club officials as well as fellow groundhopper Joseph (his Youtube video on this match here, with me in the thumbnail). I spent much of the time before kick-off talking to Joseph and the club officials, getting a photo of the teams from one of the club officials in the process.
Just before kick-off, I walked towards the pitch (as the clubhouse is a reasonable distance away from it) and took my photos of the ground, before taking a seat in the only stand as the match kicked off. At half-time, I went into the clubhouse and ordered an excellent cheeseburger and chips for £4.50 (it should have been £5, but I was given 50p change), before returning to my seat as the second half kicked off.
As I discussed last week, the Hellenic League's Division 1s aren't always the easiest to judge due to both the number of teams and the disparities in matches played. However, though Wokingham & Emmbrook's position seems to be lower than it should be (given that they have games in hand over everyone else in the league), this one seemed a little easier to judge due to Abingdon Town's struggles.
However, I had noticed that they beat Langley 2-0 in midweek, so I was hoping to see a slight resurgence (though this seemed unlikely when I noticed on Twitter that they had lots of players missing going into this match). So, upon seeing that they were only just scraping a full team for this match, I was expecting goals but hoping that this wouldn't be a complete farce.
As is always the case when South Western Railway go on strike, this means that my only option is to head west towards Reading and maybe beyond that towards Oxford. This would have been fine if I hadn't gone very far last week, but the fact that I did meant I was even more restricted than normal. In fact, excluding Step 7, I only had three options, one of which was a 3G: this, Reading City and South Park.
While this wasn't necessarily a problem, I wanted to have one or two more options just in case the weather turned for the worse (as is highly likely to happen in winter). This meant I started looking at the few Step 7 and below options of interest, ultimately finding that only Bicester United (of the ones I am interested in) were at home. So, going into Friday, I added it to the list.
On Friday, I realised the problem with taking Step 7 options into account in cases like this is that I would have to make an early decision of whether to get any cash out or not (I would need cash for any of the other options, but not for Bicester). I considered the issue after my morning lecture, eventually deciding to take the less risky approach of getting cash out (as that would leave more options than not doing so).
After making this decision, I looked at the weather forecasts on Friday night and was pleased to see that it wasn't expected to rain yesterday. Still, upon checking with Wokingham & Emmbrook on Twitter, they mentioned that they would check the pitch in the morning, so I wasn't 100% confident at that stage.
Yesterday morning, however, they announced reasonably early that the pitch was fine, so that was my decision confirmed. As such, I ordered my train tickets at around 11am and started getting ready to leave. I had lunch around an hour later, before leaving the house just after 1pm, making sure to allow myself a little more time to get cash out on the way to the station.
When all was said and done, my train left Guildford station at around 1:45pm, arriving at Wokingham station 25 minutes later. It was then a 25 minute walk to the ground, a minute or two being wasted while I figured out which way to go upon initially leaving the station. Upon arrival at the ground, I received a warm welcome from the club secretary and paid £5 for admission and £1 for a programme.
From the entrance, I walked up the path towards the clubhouse and stood there for a while before kick-off, receiving a warm welcome from a couple more club officials as well as fellow groundhopper Joseph (his Youtube video on this match here, with me in the thumbnail). I spent much of the time before kick-off talking to Joseph and the club officials, getting a photo of the teams from one of the club officials in the process.
Just before kick-off, I walked towards the pitch (as the clubhouse is a reasonable distance away from it) and took my photos of the ground, before taking a seat in the only stand as the match kicked off. At half-time, I went into the clubhouse and ordered an excellent cheeseburger and chips for £4.50 (it should have been £5, but I was given 50p change), before returning to my seat as the second half kicked off.
As I discussed last week, the Hellenic League's Division 1s aren't always the easiest to judge due to both the number of teams and the disparities in matches played. However, though Wokingham & Emmbrook's position seems to be lower than it should be (given that they have games in hand over everyone else in the league), this one seemed a little easier to judge due to Abingdon Town's struggles.
However, I had noticed that they beat Langley 2-0 in midweek, so I was hoping to see a slight resurgence (though this seemed unlikely when I noticed on Twitter that they had lots of players missing going into this match). So, upon seeing that they were only just scraping a full team for this match, I was expecting goals but hoping that this wouldn't be a complete farce.
Though Abingdon Town only had one substitute listed on the teamsheet, two more turned up after half an hour and were allowed to come on in the second half
Here's my report on a match which saw Wokingham & Emmbrook dominate and deservedly beat a struggling Abingdon Town side:
Wokingham & Emmbrook made the perfect start here by taking the lead in the 2nd minute: they won a free kick on the left just outside the box and floated it into the box, with an unmarked Kylo Atkinson heading home. At this stage, it seemed likely that the floodgates would open, considering Abingdon Town's recent struggles (for this match, they'd only just scraped an eleven together and started with just the one sub, though two more arrived after half an hour). However, it didn't quite pan out like that, even if the home side did dominate for the entirety of the first half.
In the 10th minute, Atkinson should have made it 2-0 after a through ball set him one-on-one with Abingdon keeper Omari Edwards, but his shot beneath Edwards instead drifted wide. Atkinson had another one-on-one chance six minutes later, but this time his shot hit the post. After some more wasted chances - and chances stopped by the offside flag - Wokingham & Emmbrook finally doubled their lead in the 26th minute: I didn't see all the build-up, but it looked like a cross was played into the six yard box to Luke Scope, whose sliding shot went beneath Edwards and in.
Not long after this, the away side had their best chance of the half: Tom Clark spotted Wokingham & Emmbrook keeper Sean Woodward off his line and attempted to chip over him into the net, but he scuffed the shot wide. Other than this effort, the home side dominated for the rest of the first half, but without being able to extend their lead before half-time.
Abingdon Town made some half-time changes (utilising their late-arriving substitutes) and made a strong start to the second half, doing a better job of both holding onto the ball and pressing the home side when they were in possession. This meant a quiet start to the half, though, as Abingdon struggled to break through the Wokingham & Emmbrook back line, while the home side struggled to keep the ball and produce anything meaningful.
This changed in the 55th minute, when Atkinson scored his second of the game: he picked up the ball and ran on goal before lobbing Edwards to make it 3-0. This served as a sucker punch to Abingdon, but they still produced one or two chances even as Wokingham & Emmbrook began to regain control. This saw a return to the pattern of the first half, except now it was both sides wasting good chances rather than just the home side doing so.
In the 76th minute, Wokingham & Emmbrook scored their fourth goal through substitute Dan Best: a ball was played over the top and fell to Best, who had time and space to shoot low to score due to the defence stopping to appeal for offside. It was almost 5-0 three minutes later as Best drifted into the box and passed to an unmarked Atkinson, whose shot went narrowly wide. Little of note happened after this, other than Abingdon's Jannai Scott being sent off for two bookings and having to be escorted away from the pitch (as he wanted to remain pitchside and initially refused to move when told to by the referee).
Overall, I would be hard-pressed to call this match entertaining, as it was one-sided throughout and Wokingham & Emmbrook didn't fully make the most of that; they produced chance after chance, but they wasted so many and struggled to remain onside a lot of the time too. Had they been more clinical in front of goal, they could have easily scored at least eight. As for Abingdon Town, they tried hard throughout but never offered anything to make this a compelling contest.
Beyond the match, this was an enjoyable groundhop due to the friendly welcome I received from all the club officials; not many clubs go out of their way to make people welcome, but Wokingham & Emmbrook certainly did and are hence one of the friendliest clubs I've visited so far.
During the match, I considered running part of the way back to the station to catch the 5:15pm to Guildford, but by the end of the match I decided not to bother and just walked back instead. This saw me miss that train by only a few minutes, so I had a twenty-minute wait inside the station for the 5:40pm train, which saw me back in Guildford at around 6:10pm and back in the house for 6:30pm.
Next week, I'm going to attempt to navigate the South Western Railway strikes to revisit Chesham United for Yaxley's match against Aylesbury United, as I need to do that to be able to get home for Christmas. As a result of that, my next groundhop will hopefully be on the 21st, when Yaxley are scheduled to visit Wantage Town in the league. That will be my 36th and final groundhop of 2019, unless it gets postponed because of the weather (or unless anything else pops up).
The Ground
Lowther Road is a fairly basic ground (very similar to Roffey's, except floodlit), but perfectly sufficient for the club's current needs. The only cover at the ground is a 100-seater Arena stand on the far side, with views of one corner of the pitch obscured by the brick dugouts on that side.
Besides that, the ground only has open hard standing on two sides (behind the near goal and on the far side with the main stand) and has permanent fencing in place on three sides; the fencing on the near side is temporary due to the ground being shared by the cricket club.
The clubhouse is a considerable distance away from the pitch, with a small concrete path bridging the gap between it and the pitch. Inside the clubhouse is a spacious bar area, with a good range of food and drink options available.
Photos
No comments:
Post a Comment