Arlesey Town - New Lamb Meadow

Arlesey Town FC
New Lamb Meadow
Hitchin Road
Arlesey
Bedfordshire
SG15 6RS

Arlesey Town's Website and Twitter
Baldock Town's Website and Twitter

Ground: 114
Date: Sunday 8th August 2021
Baldock Town 1-0 Wembley
FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round
Attendance: 214 (official)

Arlesey Town - 5 Facts

1) Arlesey Town were founded in 1891 and initially plaed in local leagues such as the Biggleswade & District League before joining the Bedfordshire County League - which would later become the South Midlands League - in 1922, yo-yoing between Divisions 1 and 2 until the outbreak of World War 2.

2) The club won the South Midlands League in the 1951/52 and 1952/53 seasons, before moving to the Parthenon League in 1954. A move to the London League followed in 1958, but two years later the club returned to Division 1 of the South Midlands League. Despite a bottom-three finish in the 1961/62 season, the club were promoted to the Premier Division but were relegated back to Division 1 after one season. A third-place finish saw the club immediately return to the Premier Division.

3) After almost 20 years in the Premier Division of the South Midlands League, the club transferred to the United Counties League Premier Division, winning the title in their third season in this league (the 1984/85 season). The club remained in this league until they resigned at the end of the 1991/92 season, returning to the South Midlands League once more. In the 1994/95 season, the club won the league title with a record 107 points and also went on to win the FA Vase: Hoddesdon Town, Boston Town, Barnstaple Town, Diss Town, Cammell Laird and Raunds Town were beaten on the way to Wembley, before the club beat Oxford City 2-1 to win the final.

4) The club won the league title again in the 1995/96 season and once more in the 1999/2000 season (by which point the league was now called the Spartan South Midlands League) to earn promotion to Division 3 of the Isthmian League. Twelve months later, they finished 3rd to earn promotion to Division 2, before being placed in Division 1 North for the 2002/03 season due to restructuring. The club moved between Division 1 North of the Isthmian League and various Southern League Division 1s for the next few years before winning the Division 1 Central title in 2011 to earn promotion to the Southern League's Premier Division. The club spent four seasons at this level before being relegated, then dropped back down to the Spartan South Midlands League Premier Division after finishing bottom of Division 1 East in the 2017/18 season. This is where the club have remained ever since.

5) The club's best FA Cup runs saw them reach the 1st Round in both the 2011/12 and 2012/13 seasons: in the 2011/12 season, the club beat Tilbury, Hampton & Richmond Borough, Thurrock and Forest Green Rovers before losing to Salisbury City; in the 2012/13 season, the club beat Barton Rovers, Dulwich Hamlet, Brackley Town and Didcot Town before losing to Coventry City.

As for the FA Trophy, the club's best run saw them reach the 5th Round in the 2003/04 season: they beat Fleet Town, Hampton & Richmond Borough, Boreham Wood, Hayes and Dagenham & Redbridge before losing to Exeter City.

Baldock Town - History

The current incarnation of Baldock Town were founded in 2003 as Baldock FC, two years after the original club (founded in 1905) resigned from the Eastern Division of the Southern League and folded. The new club were comprised of members of the old Baldock Town's youth team and they joined Division 1 of the North Hertfordshire League. After a 3rd-place finish in the 2004/05 season, they earned promotion to the Premier Division.

In 2006, the club became founder members of the North & Mid Hertfordshire League Premier Division and changed name to Baldock Town. A runners-up finish saw the club earn promotion to Division 1 of the Hertfordshire County League, and they won this league at the first attempt to earn promotion to the Premier Division for the 2008/09 season. At this point, the club changed its name to Baldock Town Letchworth due to playing their matches in Letchworth. In 2011, the club reverted to the Baldock Town name as they returned to playing their matches in Baldock.

The club won the Premier Division title in the 2011/12 season, but were denied promotion to Step 6 as their ground did not meet the necessary ground grading criteria. This saw the club move into a groundshare with Hitchin Town for the 2012/13 season, which allowed the club to earn promotion to Division 1 of the Spartan South Midlands League after a runners-up finish.

The club spent five seasons in Division 1 - moving groundshare to Stotfold in 2015 and then to Arlesey Town in 2017 - before finishing as runners-up in the 2017/18 season to earn promotion to the Premier Division. They earned an impressive 5th-place finish in their first season at this level, but were on course for a mid-table finish in the 2019/20 season before it was curtailed.

In the FA Cup, the club's best run came in the 2017/18 season when they reached the 2nd Qualifying Round: they beat Ardley United, North Greenford United and Thame United before losing to Aylesbury United. As for the FA Vase, the club progressed to the 2nd Round in the 2018/19 season, beating Long Melford, Stanway Rovers and Brimsdown before losing to Stowmarket Town. Besides this, they have reached the 1st Round in almost all of their FA Vase campaigns, only missing out in the 2009/10 and 2015/16 seasons.

My Visit

As I mentioned on yesterday's entry, I originally had a visit to this ground on the shortlist for Saturday when Arlesey were at home, but a chance look at a thread on the Non-League Matters forum revealed that this match was taking place on the Sunday and I decided to add it to the schedule, thinking that the ground was really close to the train station. However, a look on Google Maps dispelled this misconception as the ground was listed as a 40-minute walk from the station.

Generally speaking, I'm not keen on walking any more than half an hour from a train station to a football ground, but at this point I was so eager to start getting to matches and new grounds again that I was happy to make an exception to fit this in. The only potential concern with the weather forecast was that it would rain during that long walk and I would end up getting soaked.

More pertinently, I was keeping an eye on both the forecast and social media for potential news of a weather-related postponement, though with Arlesey's game here going ahead on the Saturday I wasn't too worried about a postponement happening. Still, as is my usual approach when going to a football match on the train, I didn't go to order my tickets until the morning of the match. In this case, that was after writing this section of yesterday's blog entry.

Due to my train being due to leave Peterborough station at 12:45pm, I didn't get time beforehand to get an early lunch again, so I packed a lunch before leaving with plans to eat that on the train. As I had to collect my tickets from the station first, we left the house at 12:20pm, arriving ten minutes later. I'd taken an umbrella with me in the car, but after taking another look at the weather forecast for the afternoon I took a risk and decided not to take it after all.

After picking up my train tickets, I made my way onto the train and took a seat, starting on my lunch as I waited for it to depart. It left Peterborough a few minutes late and I occupied myself by reading the online programme for the match as well as some Japanese short stories. The train arrived at Arlesey station at around 1:30pm and the ominous sight of black clouds in the distance was very worrying. Thankfully, the rain was little more than a very light drizzle as I left the station, set up Google Maps and began to make my way to the ground.

The route to the ground was more or less a straight path through Arlesey, so I barely needed to keep Google Maps open to track where I was going. I passed a few pubs on the way, a couple of takeaways and some nice Tudor-style houses before eventually arriving at the ground at 2pm, just as the turnstiles were opening. I paid £7 for admission and immediately started on my circuit of photos while the ground was more or less empty. This took about 20 minutes and once I was done I took a seat in the main stand, before leaving 20 minutes later to order a bacon cheeseburger and some chips for £5 overall (£3.50 for the burger, £1.50 for the chips); the burger was fantastic, but the chips were somewhat overdone (though I can forgive this given how large the portion was for £1.50).

I ate my food in the stand as I waited for kick-off, getting a photo of the teams as they came out. For the second half, I was going to move across to the stand on the opposite side, but ended up settling for the terrace behind the far goal once I noticed that the sun was shining directly into the stand on the far side.

I had a quick look at how the two teams had started their seasons before this match and noticed that this would be Wembley's first competitive fixture of the season due to the Combined Counties League not starting until tomorrow night. Baldock, on the other hand, had slumped to a 2-0 defeat in their opening league match against Leverstock Green. My gut feeling was that Baldock would narrowly edge this tie, based solely on the possibility of Wembley's squad being at least somewhat changed after their lateral transfer to the newly-formed Combined Counties League Premier Division North.

After having the best of the opening proceedings, Baldock took the lead after 20 minutes when Tommy Reynolds intercepted a poor defensive clearance and drilled a first-time shot past Wembley keeper Raheem Belgrave into the opposite corner of the net. Wembley had their best chance of the first half in the 31st minute when they almost scored direct from a corner; Cameron Groom made the save in the Baldock goal, but looked like he may have gone behind the line in the process. The appeals of the Wembley players were dismissed and Baldock maintained their lead going into half-time.

Wembley made a much better start to the second half and almost equalised in the 47th minute when someone narrowly poked over from a corner. After a period of Wembley pressure, Baldock began to regain a foothold and this saw the match peter out as the two sides cancelled each other out. The best chances for both sides came from brief lapses in defensive concentration, but neither team was able to capitalise with another goal.

One of the problems of watching two matches in very quick succession - either on the same day or on consecutive days - is that drawing comparisons between the two is more or less inevitable. In that sense, this match was a disappointment as play regularly broke down for both teams in the final third and most of the clear-cut chances came from attackers latching onto defensive mistakes from the opposition. Baldock just about deserved the win as they produced more meaningful chances than Wembley managed to, but just didn't take more of them.

The full-time whistle blew around 5pm and, after taking a few minutes to navigate through the crowds getting out of the ground and into the car park, I made my way back to the station and arrived with just short of fifteen minutes to spare before my train arrived. I started reading again as the train made its way back to Peterborough, arriving at 6:30pm. This meant I got back into the house for 6:45pm, having a packet of crisps and donut in lieu of an actual dinner before I got started on sorting out my photos and writing out my match report (it ended up so short because midway through the first attempt my browser crashed, and I couldn't be bothered to rewrite it in full once I got back onto it).

With this FA Cup weekend double done, I plan to be visiting my most local unvisited ground at Step 6 or above in Whittlesey Athletic next Saturday. After that, I'll hopefully be able to visit Hitchin Town on Bank Holiday Monday at the end of this month, as that's a ground I've been looking forward to visiting for a long time.

The Ground

New Lamb Meadow is an impressive ground for Step 5, no doubt due to the fact that Arlesey have recently spent time as high as Step 3. There is cover on three sides of the ground, with the main stand being attached to the clubhouse on the near side. This stand holds 200 people and is raised above pitch level, but views aren't the best from the lowest row of seats.

Directly across from this is another covered stand on the far side. This stand has seats on one side and covered terracing on the other, providing seats for 150-200 people and standing cover for a similar amount. Behind the far goal is a tall uncovered terrace and a small area of covered standing, the latter of which seems to currently be used as a storage area.

The rest of the ground is open hard standing, though the greenery surrounding this is becoming somewhat overgrown, causing some damage to the perimeter fencing enclosing the ground.

Baldock Town have groundshared here since the start of the 2017/18 season.

Photos