Histon - Bridge Road

Histon FC
Bridge Road
Impington
Cambridge
Cambridgeshire
CB24 9PH

Official Website
Twitter

Ground: 122
Date: Saturday 23rd October 2021
Histon 0-2 Yaxley
Northern Premier League Division 1 Midlands
Attendance: 194 (official)

Histon - History

Histon were founded in 1904 as Histon Institute and joined the Cambridgeshire League, where they remained until the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939. During the war, the club played in the East Anglian League, but they returned to the Cambridgeshire League after the war ended. They won the Premier Division title in the first post-war season, but left two years later to move up to the Spartan League. In 1951, the club were promoted to the Premier Division.

In 1952, the club dropped Institute from their name to change to the current name. Eight years later, the club joined the Delphian League and finished bottom in their second season at this level. After the league failed to complete its 1962/63 season due to poor weather, it disbanded and most of its clubs (including Histon) became founder members of Division 2 of the Athenian League.

After two consecutive bottom-place finishes, the club dropped down to the Eastern Counties League for the 1965/66 season. Initially, this did little to improve the club's fortunes as they finished second-from-bottom in the first season and again in the 1969/70 and 1970/71 seasons, while also finishing bottom in the 1980/81 season. A few top-half finishes in the mid-1970s broke this sequence, but the club generally finished in the bottom half until the club were placed in the Premier Division when a second division was added for the 1988/89 season.

The club finished 6th and 7th in their first two seasons in the Premier Division, but in the 1994/95 season the club finished second-from-bottom and were relegated to Division 1. However, it only took two seasons for the club to earn promotion back to the Premier Division, and this saw the beginning of a major period of success for the club.

The club finished 3rd in their first season back in the Premier Division and won the title two seasons later to earn promotion to the Southern League East Division. After four seasons at this level, the club finished as runners-up in the 2003/04 season to earn promotion to the Premier Division. The 2004/05 season saw the club win the Premier Division to earn promotion to the Conference South.

In their first season at this level, the club finished 5th and competed in the play-offs, but lost the final to St Albans City to miss out on promotion. Twelve months later, though, they won the league title to earn promotion to the Conference National for the first time. Their first season at this level saw them finish 7th, before a 3rd-place finish in the 2008/09 season saw the club compete in the play-offs, but they lost 2-1 on aggregate to Torquay United in the semi-finals.

After this, the club's fortunes took a considerable downturn as they finished bottom of the league in the 2010/11 season and were relegated to the Conference North. After three seasons at this level, the club finished second-from-bottom and were relegated back to the Southern League Premier Division. The club were then relegated twice in three seasons to return to the Eastern Counties League Premier Division for the 2017/18 season, but they won the league title in the 2018/19 season to return to Step 4 football, this time being placed in Division 1 North of the Isthmian League. For the 2021/22 season, the club were transferred to the newly-formed Division 1 Midlands of the Northern Premier League.

In the FA Cup, the club's best run saw them reach the 3rd Round in the 2008/09 season, beating Durham City, Swindon Town and Leeds United before losing to Swansea City. In the FA Trophy, the club reached the 4th Round in the 2004/05 season, beating Dunstable Town, East Thurrock United and Team Bath before losing to Gravesend & Northfleet. As for the FA Vase, the club made it to the 5th Round in the 2018/19 season: after receiving a walkover against Team Bury in the 2nd Qualifying Round, they beat Colney Heath, Woodbridge Town, Leverstock Green and Lye Town before losing to Northwich Victoria.

My Visit

As soon as Yaxley's fixture list for the current season was confirmed, I had pencilled this one into my schedule. Our away match here against Cambridge City was earlier in the season but as it was a midweek and as City are set to move into their own ground fairly soon (I believe at some point in early 2022), I chose this fixture as my opportunity to visit this ground.

Naturally, because I had decided on this fixture so early on, there isn't really as much to say about my planning for this as there has been for my last few groundhops. My initial plan had been to head here via the guided busway, as I recalled that the ground is right next to it when it passes through Impington. However, having moved since the last time I needed to use the guided busway, I was disappointed to see that it wasn't really a practical option from where I'm now living.

As a result, I was instead thinking of asking for a lift from someone at Yaxley, but realised at our FA Trophy match against Biggleswade two weeks ago that this also wasn't going to be especially practical. Instead, I asked my mum to scrap the plan for a lift to Kettering Town last weekend to instead get a lift to this match.

After doing my research into Histon's history on Friday, I had an early start to my day yesterday when I went to get my flu jab at 10:30am. After that, we stopped off at Costa for drinks and cake before heading back home. I spent the rest of the morning watching videos on Youtube before having lunch around 12:30pm, shortly after Norwich's match against Chelsea kicked off on the TV (as I went downstairs to make lunch, I saw Chelsea score the first of their seven goals).

In the end, we left the house at 1:20pm and made it to the ground around 50 minutes later, having initially missed the turn-in to the ground (very easy to miss, to be fair). After going through the turnstile for free as a guest with Yaxley, I went to the toilet inside the ground before starting my circuit of photos, talking to a couple other Yaxley fans on the way. As I was finishing, I bumped into our chairman and headed up to the boardroom in the main stand for a cup of tea before kick-off.

After finishing my cup of tea five minutes before kick-off, I headed back outside and stood on the near side with the other Yaxley fans to await kick-off, moving to the other end of the pitch for the second half. At half-time, we headed back into the boardroom and were given a jacket potato topped with chilli to round off the excellent boardroom hospitality.

Even at this relatively early stage of the season, this had the feel of a relegation six-pointer and I was seriously hoping we could build on our win in the last round of the FA Trophy and get our first league win since August.

Yaxley took the lead 21 minutes into this match, Matt Sparrow being set through by what initially looked like a wayward ball from Ross Watson and placing a low shot beneath Sam Roach in the Histon goal. This came a minute after Sparrow had been brought down in the box, but was booked for diving: cue a Klinsmann-esque diving celebration for the goal.

Six minutes later, Hameed Ishola came close to doubling Yaxley's lead: he received the ball on the right wing from John-Paul Duncliffe, used his strength to hold off some Histon defenders before shooting across goal and narrowly wide of the far post. Histon had two excellent chances to equalise in the 43rd minute: first, Connor Peters had to clear a shot off the line after Butcher was caught out of his goal; then, when the ball wasn't fully cleared, a cross was played from the right wing to the far post and Butcher had to make a close-range save to keep the header out.

After a tense start to the second half, Yaxley had the ball in the net again in the 62nd minute, but were denied by the linesman's flag: a long throw from Duncliffe reached Tom Waumsley in the box and the striker passed to Sparrow to poke home from close range, but Sparrow was judged to be narrowly offside.

Fifteen minutes later, Yaxley had the ball in the net again and this time the goal stood: Roach came out to punch away a Yaxley corner, but he could only punch it back into the box and into the path of Ross Watson to power a left-footed shot into the top corner. Deep into stoppage time, Yaxley had another goal disallowed for offside when substitute Pierre Omombe-Epoyo was judged to be offside when he tapped in a Dan Cotton pass.

So, an absolutely massive and well-deserved win for Yaxley to pull us out of the bottom four for the time being. Still a few minor concerns with some aspects of the performance, but in the end getting the result was probably more important than the manner of the performance and hopefully it provides the confidence boost to help us pull off a shock in the FA Trophy next week.

As soon as the full-time whistle blew, I exited the ground and was picked up near the entry to the car park and it was a quick journey back home, with us making it back at around 5:40pm. This gave me plenty of time to sort out my photos and get my match report written up before dinner (said report will also go upon the Yaxley club website once this blog entry is finished) and that made for a relaxing evening overall.

Up next is Yaxley's FA Trophy match at Lowestoft Town. I had been planning to go there on the train, but I was told yesterday that we're putting a coach on for this one, so I'll be using that instead as it saves me a good amount of money.

The Ground

Bridge Road is an interesting ground with cover on all four sides. Each goal is fully covered by Arena terraces, while the far side is fully covered by Arena seated stands with faded red seats. Each of these Arena stands has sponsorship signage at the top of them.

The ground's most interesting features are the two main stands on the near side, one of which also serves as the Cambridgeshire FA's headquarters. Looking from across the pitch, the Steve Fallon Stand is on the left and contains the boardroom and bar, while the Cambs FA Stand is on the right with an unusual blue pillar on the roof (I'm not sure what purpose that serves, but it's interesting to look at). Both of these stands provide decent elevated views of the pitch.

The ground has an overall capacity of 4,300, of which 1,700 is seated. Back in 2008, the ground was deemed to be good enough for the Football League and I would imagine that is still the case unless ground grading requirements have become much stricter since then. The record attendance at the ground was 4,103 for the FA Cup 2nd Round match against Leeds United in 2008.

Photos