An evening in late March and a chill breeze blows along the valley of the River Blackwater. Individuals and people in small groups stride purposefully in the diminishing light through the quiet streets of Coggeshall and across open meadows. At the edge of the town along West Street, the floodlit turf of ‘The Crops’ football ground, draws them in.
Tonight is a big night in the Thurlow Nunn Eastern Counties League First Division. Tonight Coggeshall Town (3rd in the league table) play Stowmarket Town (top of the league) in a re-match after their initial encounter was controversially abandoned well into the second half as one of the linesman complained of not being able to keep his footing on the frosty pitch; Coggeshall had been 2-0 up at the time.
The Crops is a great name for a football ground, particularly for one in a small country town like Coggeshall (pop. 4,727 in the 2011 census), with its half-timbered houses and fully-timbered medieval tithe barn. Just to over-do the bucolic-ness of it all the football team are nicknamed the Seed Growers too. 
The Crops is dug into the side of a field that slopes down from West Street towards the winding narrow river. The path from the turnstiles to the club house and changing rooms runs behind and above the low main stand with its four rows of seats, characterful uneven fascia and dark corrugated iron roof. 
At the front of the stand a large sign reads ‘Chelmsford Plastic Warehouse’; I like to think this is an actual thing, like plastic flowers or the Plastic Ono Band. Either side of the stand a steep-ish grassy slope runs down to the pitch-side. The changing rooms occupy a dark wooden building with steps leading down to onto a corner of the pitch. Dug into the ground behind the goal at the clubhouse end is a long low covered terraced with a corrugated tin roof like a utilitarian municipal tram shelter. You can stand behind this ‘tram shelter’, rest your beer on the roof and get a good view of most of the pitch, though you can’t see the near goal-line or a large part of the goal come to that.
For an evening match it’s possible to get to Coggeshall on the number 70 bus from Colchester, but it’s not possible to get back again. Coggeshall has no train station and never has done, so with no lights on my bike, tonight I must make use of the large car park at the side of the ground;
it’s almost completely full but could be fuller if people had smaller cars or didn’t indulge in ‘greed parking’, taking up more space than they need. According to Parking News (genuine trade paper of the parking industry) this has become more prevalent due to increased levels of obesity. Fat bastards. Entry to the ground is a bargain £4 tonight, the admission reduced because over 200 people had already paid to the see the first match on 21st January, which was never completed. The small but colourful and glossy programme costs £1.00.
The teams take the field, Coggeshall in red and black stripes like AC Milan, Stowmarket in yellow shirts so pale they are almost beige, and red shorts, like a washed out Watford. The Stowmarket shirts bear the Nike logo, but with their insipid colour they look like they’re from Primark. Both teams are clearly tense and the game begins with fouls and squabbles, protests and pleas, and the referee quickly needs to take control. The confident Stowmarket No5 sneers at Coggeshall’s diminutive No8 and insults him, “What’s up midget-boy?” he asks. Rude. These are two well organised and committed sides and what develops is an opera of constant shouts and calls, curses and oaths combined with a ballet of runs and leaps and turns. Under the floodlights it’s a sporting son et lumiere, but with a hint of surreal comedy as a giant cartoon cockerel watches impassively from the sidelines; 
it’s Rocky the Rooster, the Coggeshall mascot.
Goalless at half-time, in the second half the match becomes a drama as with an hour gone Stowmarket score a penalty; but Coggeshall quickly equalise with a goal of beautiful simplicity, grace and speed. Their fleet of foot No 7, frizzy hair buffeted by the breeze, runs at the defence then threads through a perfect pass for the number 9 to chase and poke past the Stowmarket guardian. Coggeshall hopes are reborn, but the drama builds as with the game entering its final ten minutes hesitancy in the Coggeshall defence allows Stowmarket to score again. All the time this drama is played out before a tiny chorus, the Stowmarket six, a group of visiting supporters who chant and shout from within the tram shelter, their cat calls amplified by its tinny echo. “He’s got his IQ on his shirt, He’s got his IQ on his shirt” they sing to or about someone, it’s not obvious who. As Coggeshall strive to equalise a final twist turns the play into a tragedy as a poor tackle fells the Seed Growers’ Matt Southall; he’s too badly hurt to move immediately and there is a ten minute hiatus as a host of people in big coats run on and off the pitch and concern mounts. Some of the 310 strong crowd leave. Eventually Matt leaves the field to applause, but on a stretcher; his ankle is damaged and a long evening in A & E awaits.
The remaining five minutes produce half chances at both ends, the netting behind the goals does its job in catching stray shots and Stowmarket use up the time doing nothing whenever they can. But this tale has run its course and the game ends to scenes of gay abandon amongst the Stowmarket camp who may well win the league championship now, whilst Coggeshall’s disappointment is tangible, it’s clear this game mattered a bit more than most of the others.
whose nickname is The Hawks. It costs £10 to watch this standard of non-league football and for another £2 a programme can be had. The teams enter the arena to the strains of Oasis’s, ‘Roll with it’. The Hawks are second in the league table and Needham third; anything might happen so to ‘roll with it’ seems like wise counsel.
I was able to avoid the worst of the queue and settled down at a Yogi Bear style picnic table with a pound’s worth of tea to read the programme. The advertisements were especially impressive, in particular the full page colour one on the back page for “Certified high quality recycled aggregates for all your building and resurfacing projects”. This contrasted nicely with that for Boux Avenue, purveyors of lingerie, nightwear and accessories which featured a picture of a big-breasted brunette wearing a cross between a brassiere and chiffon mini-dress. Finally, there was an advert for Mark J Morsley & Associates, financial advisors, which would be very boring were it not for the fact that Mark Morsley is the Needham manager , though sans the letter ‘J’, but it has to be the same bloke; though he looks more like a financial advisor than a football manager. What that assortment of advertisements says about the type of people who the promotional team think attend Needham games I am not sure. But I like to think that the old boys in caps who make up a good part of the crowd are the target audience for all three; financially careful lotharios with a penchant for extravagant DIY.
whilst Needham had the ‘kop’ behind the other goal which at last inspired a handful to once or twice shout ‘Come on Needham’ or something like it. Meanwhile the Havant fans were joined in the stand by two overweight, middle aged blokes in matching blue suits and blue and yellow striped ties. These two most stereotypical, small time football club directors had sat in their dedicated seats in the main stand 
during the first half, but were now moving amongst the people. 
Another of the wonderful and yet also slightly amusing and at the same time slightly worrying things about non-league football is the presence of blokes in suits and club ties, all doing their bit for the club most laudably, but also rather anachronistically, it’s all so stuffy and respectable; it’s like the 1960’s never happened. Why can’t they just dress as if they’re going to a football match like everyone else?
Eighteen pounds and fifty pence seems a lot to watch semi-professional football I thought, even if a lot of the teams they play against in the Vanarama National League are fully professional. Oh well, I’m here now. The only food outlet in the ground is just inside the gate and I breathed in the smell of chips, vinegar and oil as I watched the teams warm up and four middle aged ladies toiled away behind me preparing their saturated fat-based fayre.
there is sheet metal fencing behind one end; the main stand (the only one with seats) is a box of steel girders and metal sheeting and on the opposite side of the ground the terrace has a long, low metal roof over it. Behind the goal at both ends of the ground even a part of the very terrace itself is made of steel. The whole place is tied together with bolts and lashings of blue and mostly orange paint; it looks a treat. Even the buckets of sand 
to sprinkle on the pitch are orange,but sadly they’re made of plastic; note to self – a sales opportunity for Ironmongery Post-Haste.
he could have just got here from a job in the city. He is animated and between encouraging shouts to his players he has a gesture driven conversation with his coach; with his wide range of hand movements if Garry Hill didn’t have that job in the city he could be a bookie at a race course. In contrast the Braintree Town manager Hakan Hayrettin 
stays wrapped up in his massive polyester manager’s coat inside the Perspex dug-out; he barely moves and looks like he’s digesting a heavy meal. Hakan leaves the animation and shouting to a coach in a shapeless blue coat, who has Ken Dodd hair and patrols the ‘technical area’. As an aside, why does football insist on calling that oblong in front of the dug-out a ‘technical area’? What’s so technical about a rectangle of turf and a few white lines? It must have been the FA who coined the term, the same FA who based a nation’s coaching ethos on the so very technical ‘get it in the mixer’ approach of Charles Hughes.
Wivenhoe have remained at £6.00 for adults and £3.00 for concessions for the past seven years or more. Rich the turnstile operator tells me that this afternoon’s attendance of 80 brings in about £370 in cash. A few weeks back the referees’ expenses came to £200; it makes you wonder if the FA really give a monkey’s about ‘grass roots’ football. Why not charge clubs a flat fee for the referees and then use about 0.0001% of the Premier League TV money to pay for the travel expenses? It wouldn’t de-rail the gravy train too much would it? It’s not the clubs’ fault if referees don’t live near the places they are sent to referee in.
catching up on the past two weeks over cups of tea, pints of beer, burgers and bacon rolls. Atypically for an Eastern Counties Premier League club (step nine of the football league ladder), Wivenhoe has a thriving club shop and blue and white hats and scarves abound and today there is a couple buying a club shirt to send to their son in America, although they won’t be staying to watch the match.
and the warm glow of spitting hot fat and cones of chips that emanates from a shiny white burger van.
always features local non-league teams and tonight there is a piece on Halstead Town; 
it is hilarious. Halstead goalkeeper Luke Banner has swallowed a lexicon of footballspeak and cliché “…you never know” he is quoted as saying “If we take one game at a time and keep picking up wins and points then who knows what can happen”. Wise words Luke. Whatever you do you don’t want to be one of those clubs that plays several games at once and loses them all; that’s a recipe for disaster if you ask me. I don’t blame Luke for the banality of his comments though, I blame the reporter on the Gazette who he was apparently talking to.
a blue void at one end of the sparsely populated stadium barely creating echoes; it must miss that joyous throng of Portsmouth fans that occupied it at the weekend.
it says on the paper cup, but that sort of play on words doesn’t impress me; I should hope it bloody does begin with the tea, although we all know it really began with the motivation of profit. That’s why a few crushed up dried leaves and some hot water costs a quid. I am going to smash capitalism one day you know; it’ll probably be between May and August when there’s no football.
trippingovertheball 