Atherstone Town - Sheepy Road

Atherstone Town CFC
Sheepy Road
Atherstone
Warwickshire
CV9 3AD

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Ground: 118
Date: Saturday 11th September 2021
Atherstone Town 2-1 Abbey Hulton United
FA Vase 1st Qualifying Round
Attendance: 282 (official)

Atherstone Town - History

The original Atherstone Town were founded in 1887 but folded at the end of the 1978/79 season. The club immediately reformed as Atherstone United, taking the place of the original club's Reserves in Division 1 of the West Midlands (Regional) League. Eventually, this club folded midway through the 2003/04 season, three years after being relegated from the Premier Division of the Southern League.

The current incarnation of the club formed in 2004 and joined Division 1 of the Midland Combination League for the 2004/05 season. The club won the title to earn an immediate promotion to the Premier Division, before winning the title at that level to earn promotion to the Midland Alliance League. After finishing 8th in their first season at this level, the club finished as champions in the 2007/08 season to earn promotion to Division 1 Midlands of the Southern League.

The club's first season at this level since reformation saw them finish 3rd to earn a spot in the play-offs, but they were beaten 5-0 by Chasetown. The club's fortunes took a turn for the worse after this, a mid-table finish in the 2009/10 season followed by a second-from-bottom finish in the 2010/11 season. This saw the club relegated back to the Midland Alliance League, but things did not improve as the club finished second-from-bottom again and were relegated back to the Premier Division of the Midland Combination League.

The club have remained at this level ever since and started with two top-half finishes. However, the following two seasons saw the club drop to mid-table, with consecutive 13th-place finishes in the newly-formed Midland League Division 1. This has since been followed by a 4th-place finish in the 2016/17 season and consecutive 3rd-place finishes in the 2017/18 and 2018/19 seasons as the club looks to return to Step 5 football.

In the FA Cup, the current club have twice progressed as far as the 3rd Qualifying Round: in the 2008/09 season, they beat Quorn, Hednesford Town and Southam United before losing to Chipstead; in the 2013/14 season, they beat Rocester, Studley, Redditch United and Coalville Town before losing to Barrow. In the club's three seasons in the FA Trophy, they never won a match. As for the FA Vase, the club reached the Quarter Finals in the 2019/20 season: this run saw them beat Paget Rangers, Sandbach United, Harborough Town, Malvern Town, Stockton Town and Worcester City before losing to Consett.

My Visit

Even before Tuesday's unexpected trip to Loughborough Dynamo, I had been very indecisive about my groundhopping plans for yesterday and next weekend for a number of reasons. The first of these was that I was unsure which weekend in September I wanted to use to ask for a lift somewhere to groundhop. This indecision forced me to draw up a list of options I could get lifts to as well as a list of options feasible on the train. In the case of yesterday, I was solely looking in the FA Vase 1st Qualifying Round draw for those respective shortlists.

However, upon deciding to ask for a lift for last weekend's groundhop, I was able to focus solely on options I could get to on the train. However, as I was still undecided on when I would be aiming to go somewhere costing £40+ on the train, I had to find a wide range of options price-wise to cover all possibilities. This eventually saw me end up with this, Uttoxeter Town, Brantham Athletic and Sherwood Colliery as my list of options, with this as the firm favourite.

Though this was my firm favourite choice, it wasn't until Monday's FA Cup draw that I made my final decision, as this allowed me to solidify my future plans and hence figure out exactly what was feasible from a budget perspective yesterday. From that point, it was merely a matter of keeping an eye on the weather and hoping no other difficulties would arise before the day of the match.

After a week of hot and dry weather, I felt sufficiently confident in this match going ahead to start doing my research for this blog entry on Friday morning. Yesterday morning, I did one final check that the match would be going ahead before ordering my train tickets for £23.15. With that done, I then sorted out a packed lunch to tide me over on the way (as my train was leaving just before midday, leaving no time for lunch beforehand) and then prepared everything else I would need for the day, before sitting down to watch a couple episodes of anime before leaving.

With my train leaving at 11:54am, we left the house just before half-past so I could be dropped off at the station with plenty of time to pick up my tickets and make my way to the platform. Though we did run into some traffic on the way and had to take a different route, I was still dropped off with just over ten minutes to go and got to the platform well before the train arrived.

When it did arrive and I saw how busy it was, I realised I'd failed to take into account the fact that Leicester were at home and that the first leg of my journey - from Peterborough to Nuneaton - would take me straight through Leicester. As a result, I didn't get to sit down and so decided not to bother reading on my Kindle as I had planned to. Instead, I alternated between flicking through Twitter and looking at the scenery outside until the train arrived in Nuneaton at around 1:15pm.

With a forty-minute wait until my connection to Atherstone would arrive (kind of annoying when it would only take six minutes to get from Nuneaton to Atherstone on the train), I had plenty of time to kill and sat in the waiting room to eat my lunch, before heading over to platform 1 to buy a cold drink (as I realised that the one I had brought with me would not be enough on its own to get me through the day) and one of those new Kit Kat Zebra bars. I still had plenty of time, so I continued to flick through social media until my connection finally arrived just before 2pm.

Six minutes later, I got off at Atherstone station and started to make my way to the ground, passing through the nice-looking town centre (and taking particular notice of all the pubs I passed) and arriving at the ground 15 minutes later. After taking a photo from outside the ground, I passed through the turnstile and paid £6 for admission and £1.50 for a programme. At this point, I still had forty minutes to spare before kick-off, so I made sure to take my time with my circuit of photos and to really appreciate everything the ground had to offer. I then took a seat inside the main stand before kick-off, only moving to get a burger just after kick-off when the food van finally opened.

Besides looking at the league tables, I'll admit I didn't too as much research as I perhaps could have done going into this match, as I had completely forgotten that there are no replays in the FA Vase anymore until someone mentioned it midway through the second half. Either way, a cursory glance at the respective tables suggested that Atherstone would be favourites based on their dominant start to their Step 6 season, though I knew very little about the comparative quality of the respective Step 6 leagues these clubs compete in.

After having most of the ball in the opening few minutes, Abbey Hulton took the lead 6 minutes into this tie when Lee Cropper got his head onto a Tyler Barnes cross at the far post. Atherstone were quick to respond and equalised in the 12th minute, showing the quality that has them top of the Midland League Division 1 table with some excellent play on the left wing to set up Chris Cowley, the striker then turning inside the box and finding space to place a shot in the far corner of the net.

Having got themselves back on level terms so quickly, Atherstone gradually began to up the pressure and take control and it only seemed like a matter of time before they would take the lead. However, it took until the 25th minute for the home side to carve out another clear-cut chance, Cowley bringing an aerial ball down excellently and attempting to shoot on the half-volley, only for Abbey Hulton defender Zak Hill to excellently block the effort. Atherstone spent the rest of the half stretching Abbey Hulton and trying to find an opening, but being frustrated by their resilience at the back. In fact, it was Abbey Hulton who came closest to regaining the lead when Tyler Barnes's audacious curled shot from 25 yards forced a fingertip save from Carl O'Neill in the Atherstone goal.

Both teams made a change at half-time to try and find a breakthrough, but the second half initially continued in much the same vein as the first half as Atherstone dominated possession but found themselves frustrated by the Abbey Hulton defence. It took until the 55th minute for either side to create another noteworthy chance, Atherstone's Joshua Ruff scuffing a shot wide at the far post after Abbey Hulton failed to clear several crosses.

Nine minutes later, Abbey Hulton twice came very close to scoring own goals to gift Atherstone the lead: the first of these saw a cross cleared directly into an Abbey Hulton midfielder and bouncing off him towards goal, forcing Jack Pointon to make the save; then, another Atherstone cross was headed narrowly wide of the far post by an Abbey Hulton defender. Between these two let-offs, Abbey Hulton almost regained the lead when a rare counter-attack ended with Lee Cropper attempting to chip O'Neill but sending the effort wide of the post.

The next twenty minutes saw the match remain at a tense impasse as Atherstone continued to unsuccessfully push for a second goal and Abbey Hulton continued to soak up the pressure and try to play out on the counter, only for Atherstone to move quickly to win the ball back and go again. This saw Atherstone threaten the Abbey Hulton goal on numerous occasions, but they lacked composure in front of goal and struggled to produce anything to truly threaten Pointon.

Following this pattern, the match gradually petered out as both teams seemed to settle for penalties. In the 87th minute, Atherstone scorer Cowley was sent-off for kicking out at Billy Silvester to stop an Abbey Hulton counter-attack and some handbags ensued. Once this was calmed down, momentum didn't shift in Abbey Hulton's favour as I had expected it to. Instead, Atherstone were galvanized and within a minute of play resuming Lewis Collins scored the winning goal: he broke away after an advantage was played, ran into the box and shot low across Pointon to score.

Overall, this was an entertaining cup tie, though other than that dramatic final few minutes it perhaps didn't quite live up to the promise of the opening fifteen minutes. After coming so close to taking the tie to penalties (if an FA Vase match is level after 90 minutes, it now goes straight to penalties), Abbey Hulton can perhaps feel a little hard done by. However, Atherstone were on top for almost the entire match and so it's hard to begrudge them the victory: I was especially impressed with their work rate throughout the match to constantly win the ball back whenever Abbey Hulton tried to make things happen. Atherstone now head to Worcester Raiders in the next round in two weeks.

After the match finished and I made my way back to the train station, I had a fifteen-minute wait before my train back to Nuneaton arrived. Thankfully, I only had to wait fifteen minutes at Nuneaton this time before my connection back to Peterborough arrived, and this time the train was much quieter even after passing through Leicester when all the Leicester fans got on again. Eventually, my train arrived back in Peterborough at 7:15pm, apparently being delayed by close to ten minutes on the way (which I hadn't noticed as I was reading the whole way back as my phone battery was getting low).

After getting picked up from the station, I was back in the house at 7:30pm, sorting out my photos before having dinner at 8pm. After finishing dinner, I set to work on my match report before relaxing for the evening and eventually going to bed at 1am.

Next Saturday, I'm planning to head into London to visit Hanwell Town for their FA Cup 2nd Qualifying Round match against Eastbourne Borough. However, I noticed fellow groundhopper Russell mentioning some problems with TfL in certain areas of London leading to replacement services and the like, so I'll be keeping an eye on that before making a final decision on whether to head into London or not. If I do head into London but Hanwell becomes more awkward than I'd like thanks to those issues, I do have a few back-ups noted down, but we'll see how it all goes.

The Ground

Sheepy Road is a characterful, fantastic ground for Step 6 that wouldn't look at all out of place at Step 3 level. The ground's most impressive feature is the large stand on the far side that covers most of the length of the pitch. This stand provides a mixture of seating and standing cover, with 500 seats and a similar amount of covered standing space. The support pillars do somewhat hinder views, but you can still see both goal areas from most seats in the stand.

Next to this stand is a smaller area of covered standing, with a couple of chairs and benches providing temporary seating inside. Directly across from the main stand is another area of covered standing with four steps of terracing inside. This provides covered standing for around 500 people. The rest of the ground is open hard standing, but there are three or four steps of terracing all along this hard standing.

There are turnstiles on three sides of the ground, with only the near goal lacking a turnstile. The turnstile behind the far goal appears to be disused, while the one behind the main stand seems to be infrequently used compared to the one closest to the clubhouse. There are gates in both large covered areas that can be used for segregation as needed.

All the facilities at the ground are painted in the club's red and white colour scheme to give the ground that extra bit of charatcter.

Photos