Kintbury Rangers FC
Recreation Ground
Inkpen Road
Kintbury
Berkshire
RG17 9TU
Ground: 107
Date: Saturday 22nd February 2020
Kintbury Rangers 2-1 Purton
Wiltshire Senior League
Attendance: 34
Kintbury Rangers - History
Kintbury Rangers were founded in 1890 and spent much of their early history in local leagues. After World War 2, the club joined the Newbury & District League and won the title in the 1958/59 season. In the 1967/68 season, the club joined the Premier Division of the North Berks League, before suffering back-to-back relegations to Division 2 a few seasons later.
In the 1975/76 season, after five seasons at Division 2 level, the club won the title to return to the Premier Division. The club then won the Premier Division title twice - in the 1977/78 and 1981/82 seasons - before moving up to Division 1 of the Hellenic League in the 1983/94 season. The club spent five seasons in Division 1 before finishing 3rd to earn promotion to the Premier Division for the 1988/89 season.
The club spent a decade in the Premier Division but struggled in the bottom half of the league throughout. In their last two seasons in the league, the club finished bottom and then second-from-bottom before resigning and returning to the North Berks League at the end of the century. The club spent five seasons back at this level, winning the title three seasons running before earning promotion to Division 1 East of the Hellenic League at the end of the 2004/05 season.
In their first season back in the Hellenic League, the club finished as runners-up in Division 1 East. A series of respectable top-half finishes followed before the club finished 13th in the 2009/10 season. After this, the club resigned and returned to the North Berks League, winning its title in the 2013/14 and 2015/16 seasons before transferring to the Wiltshire Senior League for the 2017/18 season. Last season saw the club finish as runners-up in the league, and they have applied for promotion back to Step 6 this season.
The club have yet to compete in the FA Cup, but competed in the FA Vase on several occasions in the 1990s. However, they have so far only won two games in the competition: in the 1990/91 season, they beat Wallingford Town in the Extra Preliminary Round before losing to Abingdon United in the Preliminary Round; in the 1996/97 season, they beat Portsmouth Royal Navy in the 1st Qualifying Round before losing to Brockenhurst in the 2nd Qualifying Round.
My Visit
Initially, I had been hoping to get in another groundhop last weekend, with the initial plan being to visit Chichester City to take advantage of their £1 student admission. However, after my food shop at the start of that week, I was just short of being able to afford the train tickets to Chichester. As such, I had planned to instead head here or to Horsley as it was all I could afford.
However, any such plans swiftly fell by the wayside thanks to Storm Dennis, coming right off the back of Ciara and causing more chaos on all fronts. Had my budget been less restricted, I could have probably got a match in somehow, but the restrictions I was under put paid to that, with all my options being postponed early on. This meant that last Saturday was a blank Saturday, so I was hoping to make up for that both this weekend and this coming Tuesday.
To facilitate my plans for a groundhop on Tuesday, as well as my impending visit to Tottenham the following Wednesday and my regular slate of Saturday fixtures, I wanted to head somewhere cheap this weekend, which gave me a similar range of initial options to last weekend: this, Chichester and Battersea Ironsides.
However, another week of poor weather meant that I was very wary of anything going ahead. With this in mind, I had initially set Chichester as first choice, only to change this plan after realising it would not leave me enough change to buy a programme at Maidenhead on Tuesday night. Instead, I set this as first choice again, not least because of how few home games Kintbury seem to have left this season.
The only potential spanner in the works was an early pitch inspection planned for yesterday morning (which I only learned about from opposition Purton's Twitter feed) after the week's poor weather. This meant that all I could do yesterday morning was check the forecasts, look at train times and wait for news one way or the other.
The pitch inspection was supposed to take place at 10am, so I was hoping news of it would come out reasonably quickly so as to allow me to get the 11:45am train to Kintbury. This would get me there by 1pm, meaning I would have arrived at the ground with an hour before kick-off after the ten minute walk to the ground (kick-off was the strange time of 2:15pm). This scenario wasn't exactly ideal, but it seemed preferable to getting the train an hour later and only arriving at the ground with five minutes to spare before kick-off.
Unfortunately, news of the inspection's positive outcome didn't come through until 10:50am, meaning I could not order the 11:45am train tickets (as you can only order up to an hour in advance). This meant that I had to go for the 12:45pm instead, which wasn't exactly ideal (not least because it meant I had to wait until half-time to do my circuit of photos). On the bright side, it did mean I had time for an early lunch, before leaving the house at 12:15pm.
Initial progress into Reading was fine, but my connection from there to Kintbury left the station five minutes late. This meant that, in the absolute best-case scenario, I would just about arrive at the ground in time for kick-off. However, hope of even that seemed to vanish upon arrival due to how awkward it was to get across the narrow and busy road next to the station.
This lost me several minutes, so all I could was powerwalk in the hope of reaching the ground and only missing the first couple of minutes. Fortunately, it transpired that I arrived at the ground just in time to see the match get underway, so I ended up not missing anything in the end. Throughout the match, I stood on the side closest to the entrance and near the away dugout, heading into the bar at half-time to escape the bitterly cold wind.
From the table, it seemed as if there would be very little to separate the sides, but with potential for plenty of goals. My only concern was that the strong, cold wind would ruin the match, at least from a spectator's perspective.
Here's my report on a closely-contested match which saw Kintbury just about edge out Purton for the three points in testing conditions:
Purton had an early chance within the first minute with a wayward shot, before the match descended into fast-paced aerial balls as both teams tried to adapt to the very blustery conditions. This meant that, though Purton had much of the ball and were largely keeping Kintbury pinned into their own half in the early stages, there were few chances of note to speak of from either side and little flow to the initial proceedings.
The next good chance came in the 21st minute when Purton's 11 floated a ball across goal to 8 at the far post, but the latter couldn't connect with the ball and could only watch as it drifted wide. Purton continued to waste chances after this and, in the 37th minute, Kintbury made their opponents pay by scoring from a quick counter: Tom Mahoney dribbled into the box from the left wing and shot low beyond the Purton keeper.
The second half started in similarly slow fashion, but Kintbury steadily began to exert control over proceedings as they started pressing Purton with greater intensity. However, a lapse in concentration gave Purton a way back into the match as they equalised in the 64th minute: debutant Robbie Hendry was given time and space to shoot from 25 yards and lashed his effort into the top corner.
This woke Kintbury back up and they almost reclaimed the lead six minutes later when someone ran into the box and had a weak shot/cross saved. Then, mere moments later, a shot from close range was blocked and went out for a corner. From the corner, Kintbury reclaimed their lead through Russell Benham: an initial shot was blocked on the line and cleared to the edge of the box, with Benham shooting low to score.
Considering the impact of the wind, this match was a reasonable contest once it got going, though the aerial approach of the first half-hour was difficult to endure. Still, it was a competitive match which saw Kintbury take their chances against a profligate Purton side: had Purton taken their chances, they could have been at least three up before Kintbury took the lead with their only real chance of the first half.
The walk back to the station after the match was a short one, but because the trains from Kintbury only run once every hour, I had almost 40 minutes to wait for the train back to Reading. The shelter at the station did little to protect from the wind, so it was a long and miserable wait. Thankfully, the train to Reading was nice and warm and I didn't have to wait on the station for my connecting train back to Guildford. When all was said and done, I was back in Guildford at 6:10pm, getting back into the house around 25 minutes later after a pit stop in Sainsbury's.
Earlier in this entry, I mentioned that I was planning to head to Maidenhead United this coming Tuesday, but I've realised that it's not likely to be affordable, so I've scrapped the idea. Instead, I'll be going somewhere further afield next Saturday before the midweek trip to Tottenham. I'm going to leave it to a poll between four options at some point in the week, so I don't know which of these I'll be ending up at yet: Andover Town, East Grinstead Town, Fareham Town and Hungerford Town.
The Ground
Kintbury Rangers' Recreation Ground is a good Step 7 ground which isn't too far away from being ready for Step 6. Unlike most at this level - and particularly in this area of the country at this level - the ground is floodlit, with old-school floodlight pylons on both sides of the ground. The only area of cover at the ground currently is a small metallic covered structure on the far side, which provides standing cover for around 20 people.
Unusually, the two dugouts are on opposite sides of the pitch, with the home dugout on the far side near the stand and the away dugout on the near side near the clubhouse in the bottom corner of the ground. The only seating currently at the ground is two benches behind the far goal. The ground's other unusual feature is some small skateboarding ramps behind the near goal.
The ground currently lacks hard standing and this, along with the lack of seating, are the main areas of improvement the club will need to make the ground Step 6 compliant. A pay hut of some description will also presumably be needed, though there is plenty of time and room for the club to make these improvements and earn promotion.
The record attendance at the ground is 256 for a match against Holyport in August 2005.
Photos
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