Cottesmore AFC
Westray Park
Burley Road
Cottesmore
Oakham
Rutland
LE15 7DH
Official Website
Ground: 142
Date: Saturday 2nd July 2022
Cottesmore 5-2 Horncastle Town
Pre-Season Friendly
Attendance: 35
Cottesmore - History
Cottesmore were founded in 1941 as Cottesmore Amateurs (it is not clear when they dropped the Amateurs from their name) and spent the first 40 or so years of their existence in local leagues. In the 1980s, they moved up to the Leicester & District League before moving up to the Leicestershire Senior League in 1992. After finishing 3rd in their first season in Division 1, they won promotion to the Premier Division and remained there until a bottom-place finish in 2001 saw them relegated back to Division 1.
Seven years later, the club finished bottom of Division 1 but found themselves promoted to the Premier Division due to vacancies arising from the creation of the East Midlands Counties League: eight clubs left the Premier Division to join the new league, and this allowed Cottesmore to be promoted due to their ground being floodlit. They have remained in the Premier Division ever since, but they have ambitions of climbing the pyramid and have applied for promotion to Step 6 in recent seasons.
Despite having never played above Step 7, the club have competed in the FA Vase once before: in the 2019/20 season, they beat higher-level opposition in Radford and Harrowby United before losing to fellow Step 7 side Clay Cross Town in the 1st Round. On a more local level, they became the first side outside of Lincolnshire to win the Ancaster Cup in the 2012/13 season, repeating the feat in the 2014/15 and 2018/19 seasons. They also won the Leicestershire Senior League's League Cup in the 2019/20 season.
My Visit
It's been a long and boring six weeks of no football, a decent chunk of which has been spent coming up with different plans for pre-season groundhopping. The monotony was broken up by a week away in Cromer in mid-June, my first holiday since the covid pandemic. It was a great holiday, but no football being on felt like something of a missed opportunity when we were staying so close to Cromer Town's Cabbell Park ground (I also got some photos of Wells Town's ground when we visited Wells-next-the-Sea during the week).
Either way, my plans at that point were to start groundhopping on the 9th of July, with my first match of the season set to be Yaxley's home pre-season friendly on the 2nd of July. While on holiday, I set my sights on a long-overdue visit to Great Yarmouth Town on the 9th of July, but by the time I was home again I realised that this wouldn't be affordable due to having to pay for a pre-order earlier than I was expecting; wherever I went for my first groundhop of the season, it would have to be a fair bit cheaper than Great Yarmouth would be.
Then another wrench was thrown into my plans by the fact that Yaxley's first pre-season friendly was cancelled due to a shortage of players. This left me with a dilemma: should I try to find a new ground to visit on the 2nd instead, or would I be better of waiting until the 9th for there to be more options involving lower-level teams that would be more affordable to visit on my low budget?
I thought about it for a bit and ultimately decided to ask for a lift to this game because I didn't really want to wait for football any longer if I could avoid it. While I had been considering visiting Cottesmore on the 23rd for the Rutland Cup final, this was preferable to not getting a game in at all for another week (and I've also found plenty more options on the 23rd anyway).
After receiving approval for a lift I had the rest of the week to do my usual research, think of more potential plans for the rest of the month and continue to work on updating the Step 7 page of my football grounds document (I'll add that to the blog next month, or whenever I'm satisfied that it's fully up-to-date). I was also starting to think about planning around my ambition to watch a match in every single Step 7 league (excluding groundshares and second pitches) and this briefly made me regret ticking Cottesmore for a pre-season friendly, as it was comfortably my easiest way to get a tick in the Leicestershire Senior League Premier Division. However, there's plenty of other easy options for me in that league, so the regret quickly passed.
With Cottesmore only being a half-hour drive away, we didn't have to leave the house yesterday until just after 1pm and this saw me dropped off at the ground with around 25 minutes to go until kick-off. It started to rain a little as I made my way into the ground, before stopping for a while as I worked on my circuit of photos and watched some swallows flitting around inches above the pitch in search of food.
The rain was very stop-start throughout the first half before becoming torrential for much of the second half, so I spent the entire match under the wooden cover while moving every now and then to try and get the best view possible of both goalmouths (easier said than done with support pillars in the way). It definitely didn't feel like a summer's day in terms of the weather or temperature, to put it lightly.
Date: Saturday 2nd July 2022
Cottesmore 5-2 Horncastle Town
Pre-Season Friendly
Attendance: 35
Cottesmore - History
Cottesmore were founded in 1941 as Cottesmore Amateurs (it is not clear when they dropped the Amateurs from their name) and spent the first 40 or so years of their existence in local leagues. In the 1980s, they moved up to the Leicester & District League before moving up to the Leicestershire Senior League in 1992. After finishing 3rd in their first season in Division 1, they won promotion to the Premier Division and remained there until a bottom-place finish in 2001 saw them relegated back to Division 1.
Seven years later, the club finished bottom of Division 1 but found themselves promoted to the Premier Division due to vacancies arising from the creation of the East Midlands Counties League: eight clubs left the Premier Division to join the new league, and this allowed Cottesmore to be promoted due to their ground being floodlit. They have remained in the Premier Division ever since, but they have ambitions of climbing the pyramid and have applied for promotion to Step 6 in recent seasons.
Despite having never played above Step 7, the club have competed in the FA Vase once before: in the 2019/20 season, they beat higher-level opposition in Radford and Harrowby United before losing to fellow Step 7 side Clay Cross Town in the 1st Round. On a more local level, they became the first side outside of Lincolnshire to win the Ancaster Cup in the 2012/13 season, repeating the feat in the 2014/15 and 2018/19 seasons. They also won the Leicestershire Senior League's League Cup in the 2019/20 season.
My Visit
It's been a long and boring six weeks of no football, a decent chunk of which has been spent coming up with different plans for pre-season groundhopping. The monotony was broken up by a week away in Cromer in mid-June, my first holiday since the covid pandemic. It was a great holiday, but no football being on felt like something of a missed opportunity when we were staying so close to Cromer Town's Cabbell Park ground (I also got some photos of Wells Town's ground when we visited Wells-next-the-Sea during the week).
Either way, my plans at that point were to start groundhopping on the 9th of July, with my first match of the season set to be Yaxley's home pre-season friendly on the 2nd of July. While on holiday, I set my sights on a long-overdue visit to Great Yarmouth Town on the 9th of July, but by the time I was home again I realised that this wouldn't be affordable due to having to pay for a pre-order earlier than I was expecting; wherever I went for my first groundhop of the season, it would have to be a fair bit cheaper than Great Yarmouth would be.
Then another wrench was thrown into my plans by the fact that Yaxley's first pre-season friendly was cancelled due to a shortage of players. This left me with a dilemma: should I try to find a new ground to visit on the 2nd instead, or would I be better of waiting until the 9th for there to be more options involving lower-level teams that would be more affordable to visit on my low budget?
I thought about it for a bit and ultimately decided to ask for a lift to this game because I didn't really want to wait for football any longer if I could avoid it. While I had been considering visiting Cottesmore on the 23rd for the Rutland Cup final, this was preferable to not getting a game in at all for another week (and I've also found plenty more options on the 23rd anyway).
After receiving approval for a lift I had the rest of the week to do my usual research, think of more potential plans for the rest of the month and continue to work on updating the Step 7 page of my football grounds document (I'll add that to the blog next month, or whenever I'm satisfied that it's fully up-to-date). I was also starting to think about planning around my ambition to watch a match in every single Step 7 league (excluding groundshares and second pitches) and this briefly made me regret ticking Cottesmore for a pre-season friendly, as it was comfortably my easiest way to get a tick in the Leicestershire Senior League Premier Division. However, there's plenty of other easy options for me in that league, so the regret quickly passed.
With Cottesmore only being a half-hour drive away, we didn't have to leave the house yesterday until just after 1pm and this saw me dropped off at the ground with around 25 minutes to go until kick-off. It started to rain a little as I made my way into the ground, before stopping for a while as I worked on my circuit of photos and watched some swallows flitting around inches above the pitch in search of food.
The rain was very stop-start throughout the first half before becoming torrential for much of the second half, so I spent the entire match under the wooden cover while moving every now and then to try and get the best view possible of both goalmouths (easier said than done with support pillars in the way). It definitely didn't feel like a summer's day in terms of the weather or temperature, to put it lightly.
Normally, I don't post league tables this early into the season, but at least for pre-season matches I think it will be interesting to post last season's league tables to see how the two teams fared last season. In this case, we can see that Cottesmore had a much better season in Step 7 than opponents Horncastle Town did last year, but not quite good enough to win promotion as they finished behind two other applicants.
Only Horncastle posted a teamsheet, but without numbers it didn't help much with my match report
Cottesmore caught Horncastle napping early on to take a 2nd minute lead, their number 10 hitting a shot beneath the keeper. Cottesmore were on top for most of the first half after this and Horncastle struggled to get any sort of attack together.
The away side had their first shot on goal in the 39th minute before equalising two minutes later: after a quick counter, the Horncastle 7 ran onto the ball and chipped it over the keeper from just inside the box. On the stroke of half-time, Cottesmore regained the lead as their 9 ran down the wing and set up 10 to turn past a defender and place his shot in the bottom corner.
Ten minutes into what became a very wet second half, Horncastle equalised for a second time when someone found space in the box to hit a low shot across the keeper and in. Cottesmore regained their lead once more in the 71st minute when their 9 was left unmarked on the edge of the box for an easy finish.
In the final ten minutes, the game started to become very stretched and Cottesmore were taking full advantage by playing long balls over the top. This tactic paid off in the 82nd minute as Cottesmore's 17 scored their fourth with a powerful half-volley after being left in acres of space. It was then 5-2 six minutes later as their 10 beat the offside trap and calmly chipped the keeper.
After six weeks away, this was a good game to start my 2022/23 groundhopping season with, or about as good as you could expect from a pre-season friendly. Certainly a good run-out for both sides to start their pre-season preparation with.
Despite kicking off around five minutes late, a slightly shorter half-time break meant the game finished at around 3:45pm and I headed straight out of the ground and back to the car to get out of the rain. The half-hour drive home gave me more than enough time to write up my match report, and this allowed me to make an early start on sorting out my photos before settling in for a relaxing evening.
In terms of my upcoming groundhopping plans, I've got some broad ideas for what I want to do this month, but I'll wait until next week's FA Cup draw to finalise them one way or another. Regardless of that, I'll be aiming for another groundhop next weekend, either by visiting my most local club FC Hampton (who play below Step 7) or by getting a bus into Peterborough to tick off Netherton United. That will depend on the weather and on if FC Hampton actually have a game next weekend or not.
The Ground
Westray Park (named in recognition of their former chairman's 61 years of service to the club) is a great ground for Step 7 that probably only needs seats to be good enough for Step 6. Unlike many at this level, the ground is floodlit and enclosed, thanks in part to being surrounded by trees and hedges on three sides. Furthermore, the ground has hard standing on two sides: behind the near goal and on most of the near side. There is also space to potentially add more hard standing behind the far goal in future, while the dugout side looks too cramped and overgrown for hard standing to be viable.
There is also some covered standing at the ground in the form of a small wooden structure that is very pleasing on the eye. However, its supporting pillars do somewhat restrict the view of the pitch, depending on where you stand inside.
A small training/children's football pitch sits above the main pitch and is even fitted with two small wooden dugouts. A series of shipping containers can also be found up here for toilets, a tea hut known as Cotts Cafe and the players' changing rooms.
Photos
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