Braintree Town 2 Forest Green Rovers 0

February 16, 2025February 16, 2025 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

It is roughly seven years and three months ago that I last made the 14.5 kilometre journey from my house to Braintree to watch Braintree Town play. That mild, blowy November evening in 2017 Braintree Town, or ‘The Irons’ as they are known to their friends, played out a one-all draw against Truro City and as on all the previous seven times I had been to see Braintree Town, I travelled by car. Today, having dismissed the idea of driving the 27.9 kilometres to Long Melford in my planet saving Citroen e-C4 to see ‘The Villagers’, as they are known to their friends, play Soham Town Rangers, I am going to return to Braintree. As a responsible adult however, I am keen to do things Donald Trump wouldn’t do, and to reduce the double scourge of traffic congestion and on-street parking I have therefore decided to take the X20 bus to Braintree, where most appropriately Braintree Town are to play probably England’s greenest football club, Forest Green Rovers, in the Vanarama National League. What is more, Forest Green Rovers are also supported by the Grateful Dead. As it used say on the sides of buses back in the 1960’s, “It’s better by bus”.

The X20 bus stop is only 200 metres from my front door and although the bus is about five minutes late, I am soon passing two one pound coins and two fifty pence pieces through the gap beneath the Perspex screen that separates me from the cheerful, bearded bus driver, who, although not old enough, looks a bit like he might once have been, or should have been in the Incredible String Band. Fortunately, the bus is a double-decker so I can safely sit upstairs; the leather high-backed seats are comfortable, the bus is warm, and the windows aren’t steamed up, so I look out on the gloriously grey Essex countryside as it alternately sweeps and judders by as the bus passes along the pot-holed roads. Behind me, younger, more self-centred people than myself either noisily watch ‘content’ or hold loud, vacuous conversations on their mobile phones. When I was young, old people would often sit next to me on buses and want to talk.

The timetable that I looked at on-line when planning my journey indicated that it would take twenty-three minutes, and the big blue bus is soon arriving on the outskirts of Braintree, something that is announced with its cathedral, a Tesco supermarket. From Tesco’s, Braintree unfolds as lines of dull looking houses of decreasing size. I am due to get off at the stop identified as “Braintree o/s King’s Head” and recognising the approach to the junction with Cressing Road where the King’s Head is situated and seeing a bus stop flag, I press the bell, but too soon and the bus draws up at a stop called “Dallwood Way”. Whilst stupidly unable not to think of Virginia Woolf, I nevertheless manage to say to the bus driver “Oh, I wanted the next stop . “He offers to drive on, because obviously he’s going to anyway, but I tell him it (Cressing Road) is only round the corner, and as things work out the bus is held by a red light at the junction and I get round the corner in to Cressing Road before I would have done if I’d got off at my intended stop. Across Cressing Road I can see that what was once the King’s Head pub is now a Tesco ‘local’.

It has started to rain, and weighed down with the responsibility of not wasting the valuable seconds I have gained by getting off the bus early, I step out on the ten-minute walk up Cressing Road and along Clockhouse Way to what was called the Ironmongery Direct stadium the last time I was here, but now rejoices under the name of The Rare Breed Meat Co Stadium. Being the world’s first vegan football club, I’m surprised Forest Green Rovers haven’t refused to play here, and there are so few people walking up Clockhouse Way with me I do begin to wonder if the game hasn’t been postponed. But the sight of a man in a day-glo coat, a full club car park, a man in an orange football club hat and three other people obviously dressed for an afternoon of spectating allays my fears and I head for the turnstile labelled “card only” where the wonder of modern technology takes £20 from my bank account with the mere tap of a piece of plastic. Satisfyingly, I am given a small, printed ticket in exchange, it’s number 86.

To buy a programme (£3.00) I make for the club shop, a cornucopia of old programmes, club badges and general football fan bric-a-brac in a portacabin; every club should have one, but fewer and fewer do. A radio in the club shop is tuned to Radio Essex and a time check tells me that it is six minutes to three, so I head out and onto the open terrace behind the goal to select a spot against the back wall, level with the eaves of the club house just behind.

The teams process onto the pitch to the strains of “Firestarter” by ‘electronic punk’ or ‘rave’ band The Prodigy, who are or were Braintree’s modern claim to fame. There is a minute’s silence before the kick-off for a recently deceased former player. It’s a silence that is at first disturbed by shouts of ‘Rovers’ from somewhere off to my right. Once achieved, the silence seems a long one as if the referee in schoolteacher mode had decided that we were just going to have to wait to begin until everyone was quiet.

When the match eventually begins, it is Braintree who get first go with the ball, sending it mostly away from where I am standing, and in a south easterly direction towards the village of Tye Green and far off Witham, where this afternoon Witham Town are going to lose heavily to Bury Town in the Isthmian League. Braintree wear a gloriously colourful kit of orange shirts and blue shorts, a brighter version of Montpellier HSC of French Ligue 1. Forest Green Rovers by contrast are in a disappointingly dull, faded looking shade of all-over green, but with black slashes on the front of their shirts as if they had originally been intended for use by a safari park eleven.

Braintree dominate the start of the game and all the action is at the far end where it looks compressed into a few yards. A few feet along from me a middle-aged man twitches and flexes as he wills Braintree to score with a quiet commentary of encouragement to himself. “Oooooh” he suddenly exclaims as an early cross eludes the straining head of an orange shirted player at the far post. The rain has started to feel like sleet. Along the walkway at the foot of the terrace, a procession of hungry-looking ten and eleven-year-olds ferry polystyrene trays stacked with chips and burgers, which may or may not be from the meat of slaughtered rare breeds. “Your support is fucking shit” comes the chant from beneath the low roof of the terrace on the east side of the ground. “Come on” continues the bloke a few feet away from me, quietly to himself as Braintree win another early corner.

It is eleven minutes past three and Braintree score. A low shot from wide on the left into the far side of the Forest Green goal. “Goal scorer for…” says the stadium announcer from his garden shed inside the low-roofed terrace. He stops mid announcement but then continues to tell us that the goal scorer is what sounds to me like “Cairo Lisbie”. “Goal scorer today” he repeats as if he thinks it’s unlikely anyone else will score, “Cairo Lisbie”. In fact, of course, he is saying Kyrell Lisbie.

“No noise from the Vegan boys” is the chant from beneath the low roof of the side terrace, as if to rub it in that we’re in the “Rare Breeds Meat Co stadium”, and I decide that the drizzle is now too cold and heavy and so I make for the covered terrace beneath the low roof. “When’s the Southend game?” I hear a bloke say as I walk by. “I’ve got a feeling it’s next month” says his interlocutor evidently preferring to rely on sensations rather than the actual fixture list, which confirms that the fixture is on April 18^th. In my new location on the covered terrace with the low roof I have a new set of neighbours. “Yellow there ref, yellow, that is a yellow, thank you” says a bloke nearby as Forest Green’s Adam May becomes the first player to be booked by referee Gareth Rhodes, whose name is similar to that of a once popular, but now deceased tv chef.

A high cross field ball from a Forest Green player is greeted with a derisory jeer from the home crowd and then a collective, disappointed ‘Oh’ as it drops perfectly onto the bounce-free turf at the feet of Rovers’ wide player. Around me the locals continue to take umbrage at Mr Rhodes’ failure to book any more Rovers players. “Should of (sic) got booked earlier” shouts someone, “How many more times?” enquires someone else, before shouting it again, and then again, making me wonder how many more times he would shout it. “Cynical!” calls a short bespectacled youth next to me, and then “I’m watching you ten”, as if this matters.

At twenty-seven minutes to three Braintree score a second goal; one very much like the first, but this time with a shot from wide on the right into the far corner of the goal by number seven, Tom Blackwell. After three minutes of added on time, half-time arrives and the public address system returns us to 1979 with the sound of ‘A message to you Rudy’ by the Specials. I eat a Polish Grzeski chocolate-coated wafer bar from the Sainsbury’s World Foods aisle and reflect on all the other delicious European foodstuffs that could have been so much more freely available had Britain not left the European Union.

Today’s attendance is announced as being 860 and the football resumes at five past four. I walk to the far end of the low-roofed terrace where I find myself amongst mostly Forest Green Rovers supporters, and I feel happier amongst the sounds of their west country burr than amongst the aggressive rants and growls of the voices of the displaced Londoners who now live in Essex.

Rovers begin the half with purpose, and in the first few minutes spend as much time in the Braintree penalty area as they did in the whole of the first half. But then Braintree breakaway and hit the post or the bar with a shot. “Come on Rovers” call the people around me from beneath their green and black knitted headwear. “We’re winning” says a young bloke nearby and it seems from subsequent mention of Liam Delap that he and his friends are either Ipswich Town supporters watching Forest Green, or Forest Green supporters who follow Ipswich.

I’m seeing Forest Green at closer quarters this half and soon establish that their team is ‘set up’ in the traditional formation of a couple of big blokes at the back, a big bloke up front with smaller blokes all around, especially on the wings. Braintree would seem to be similar and with a blend of youth and experience which includes the venerable thirty-five year olds John Akinde, a man in the mould of the legendary Adie Akinbiyi, but obviously not as big, and defender Jamal Fyfield. Despite more possession this half, Forest Green are not making any decent chances. “Shoot” plead the people around me. “Bring on a fuckin’ strikerr” says another, more directly and rolling his ‘r’s like a comedy pirate in the process. It’s nearly twenty to five when Forest Green have a shot good enough to force the Braintree goalkeeper into making a save and by then they have replaced half their outfield with substitutes, including one Harvey Bunker, who I like to think has a brother called Cole.

The second half is one of frustration for away supporters and tension for home fans, only occasionally relieved by a wet, slippery, muddy pitch which induces a sprinkling of pratfalls and mis-kicks for added comedic effect. Eventually, after the initial ninety minutes are played out, Mr Rhodes adds another six for good measure and halfway through these the Braintree fans feel sufficiently confident of victory to begin chanting “We are staying up”. Their optimism is well placed as not surprisingly, given what has happened since three o’clock, Forest Green fail to produce a miraculous come-back .

With the final whistle, a mostly happy crowd slips away into the receding dusky light whilst a few Forest Green fans hang about to berate their players by way of encouraging better in the future. I too drift away, past the interesting 1930’s modernist workers houses beyond the club car park and back down Clockhouse Way and Cressing Road to the bus stop. The bus will be late again, the stop has no shelter and it starts to rain again, but as the win to the local team proves, it’s better by bus.

Colchester United 2 Salford City 1

December 24, 2023January 20, 2024 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

Although I do want to see Col U play Salford City, it is against my will that I am driving to the Colchester Park and Ride car park because, scandalously, there is no public transport to the out in the middle of nowhere Community Stadium, and the one bus service (Shuttle S1) that is within a twenty minute walk might require leaving before the end of the match to get back to the railway station in time for the last train home. When Col U first moved from lovely, ramshackle Layer Road to remote, windswept, Cuckoo Farm there were buses laid on from all points of the compass and from across the road to the Bricklayers Arms, a five-minute walk from the railway station. Despite a lot of talk about being green and saving the planet, no one really cares do they? I’d advise everyone to stop having children now because we’re surely condemning them to a horrible future and probably a lingering death.

But what the heck, ‘tis the eve of the eve of Christmas Eve and Col U are about to play Salford City, the only current members of the Football League that I haven’t seen at some time or other. As I tell Gary, who I had arranged to meet in the Park & Ride car park, I’ve not been to what I still like to call “Layer Road” since October last year, when Col U played Harrogate Town, another Football League club I hadn’t previously seen play. The Colchester Park and Ride car park is a bleak, desolate place and Gary and I walk as swiftly as we can along the barely lit path towards the bridge over the A12. The lighting either side of the path is phenomenally ineffective, illuminating nothing more than a tiny circle around each light and casting no light whatsoever over the path itself, it’s so useless it could have been designed by any or all the UK’s last five Tory Prime Ministers.

The Community Stadium floodlights shine like a beacon along with the neon signs of the nearby McDonald’s and like moths around a flame Colcestrians are drawn to both. Gary and I head for the turnstiles, and I hand him my mobile phone on which there is an e-mail with a ticket and QR code. Waving the phone about in front of something works, and Gary is in; he hands the phone back to me as the turnstile clicks. The e-mail says I would be sent two e-mails, but only one ever arrived. However, it doesn’t matter, there is a second ticket and I wave it about and a green light comes on, I’m in too. Before heading for our seats I pause to collect a free programme for each of us from three neat piles, a woman eyes me suspiciously as if I’m about to set fire to them or steal hers. Despite my misgivings about the location of this football ground and its accessibility, the free programme is a sign of true civilisation, it’s like being in France.

“The teams are in the tunnel” announces the electronic scoreboard, as if this might be an exciting development. “Make some noise” entreats the stadium announcer and from the loudspeakers up in the eaves comes the sound of the splendid “Post horn galop”, which Wikipedia tells us was composed in 1844 by German cornet player Hermann Koenig. Flags are waved in the South Stand and a drum beats to chants of Ole, Ole, Ole, sung in a style that sounds to my admittedly, slightly blocked up ears, like Olde English folk music. The evening is off to a good start.

With the teams lined up it is Col U who get first go with the ball, which they are hoping to put in the goal at the far end of the ground which backs picturesquely onto the A12. Salford are kitted out uninspiringly in all-black, as if they couldn’t be bothered to come up with an original away kit, which they don’t need tonight any way because Salford’s club colours are red and red. The latest incarnation of Col U’s kit is probably one of the worst, with the normally blue stripes of the shirts faded to a washed out grey like they’ve been put on too hot a wash. The pale green goalkeeper’s kit looks similarly carelessly laundered. From their kits alone it’s easy to see why Col U are languishing in 22nd place in the twenty-four team fourth division and Salford are 20th

A couple of elderly latecomers arrive and we have to stand to let them past. One brandishes a plastic bag “Been Christmas shopping have we?” I ask, insolently, implying that’s why I have been inconvenienced. Four minutes gone and Salford win the game’s first corner. The drums are still beating. The scoreboard tells us that tonight’s match is sponsored by the Colchester and East Essex Cricket Club. The first player who has come to my notice is the Col U number 7, a small bloke with floppy hair who seems to fall over a lot. I don’t think he’s diving, he’s just little and not very steady on his legs when a big northerner comes up behind him. “Too easy, too easy” exclaims the bloke behind me as Salford string two passes together and threaten to undo the Col U defence; a timely tackle saves the day. An empty crisp packet blows across the pitch and I notice a possible redeeming feature of Col U’s kit, hooped socks. “ If only we had a target man” says the bloke behind me longingly, adding an unexpected frisson of homo-eroticism to the evening.

After fifteen minutes we witness the first shot on target, the Salford number seven is guilty however of failing to place it anywhere either side of the Col U goalkeeper who promptly catches it without having to move. Two minutes later and referee, the suspiciously neat Mr Finnie, airs his yellow card for the first time, his victim being Col U’s Arthur Read, a man who in my opinion has the best name of anyone on the pitch; it’s as if he has travelled to us through time and he makes me think of Arthur Seaton in Alan Sillitoe’s novel ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’. Arthur Seaton would definitely have been first into the book too.

Salford win a free-kick and tension mounts as we wait for it to be taken, but we needn’t have worried as once again it goes straight to the goalkeeper. There follows warm applause, not because of good play, but merely relief. Arthur Read has a shot and earns a corner. “Well done lino” says a voice bizarrely as Col U quickly win another corner. “Where’s Tom Eastman when you need him?” asks the bloke behind me. “Enjoying life at Dagenham” says the bloke next to him, suggesting another side to Dagenham I hadn’t previously imagined. This a strange game, neither side is very good, but they are both trying to play decent football and they are evenly matched, which between the poor passes and lack of a plan makes for quite an absorbing encounter. Col U’s Connor Hall is booked for possibly the least subtle shove off the ball of an opposition player I have ever seen; is this what being ‘an honest professional’ means I wonder?

The game rolls on towards half-time and Salford create the best chance so far as a clever series of no more than two passes puts McAleny through with just the goalkeeper to beat, but he doesn’t. Salford earn their first booking, but only after Mr Finnie walks back and forth a bit as if forensically examining the scene of the foul, whilst also possibly listening to the advice of the home crowd. Col U win another corner; the Salford goalkeeper pats the ball down in a sudden panic and somebody clears it or deflects it high over the goal, possibly Curtis Tilt, whose surname is ideal in a match where action in the penalty area resembles that on a pinball table.

Three minutes remain until half-time when a run down the wing, a low cross, and a half-hearted, indecisive looking nudge-on precede the ball running to Joe Taylor and he shoots with ease past the Salford goalkeeper. Col U lead 1-0 and the final three minutes of the half plus minute of added on time are much more exciting as both teams decide to get a bit of a sweat up before half-time.

With the half-time whistle, Gary and I opt for a change of scenery and retreat beneath the stand, for no reason in particular. I ask Gary if he’d like anything from the catering facilities, but he’s not keen, and nor am I. Fizzy beer and fatty snacks are not enticing and it’s not a particularly cold evening, so hot drinks aren’t needed either. We stand, and talk, and reminisce about Friday evenings at Layer Road in the dim and distant past of Roy McDonagh and Tony Adcock and the Barside. I ask him if he’s ever been to any of the events that are held up here, such as the comedy nights. “I’ve been to Slimming World” he says.

We time our return to our seats to perfection and as we sit down the teams reappear on the pitch. The game is now wonderfully scrappy. Col U’s number seven seems to fall over even more than he did in the first half. We both agree that the far end of the ground is somewhat dingy and it’s not always easy to follow the path of the ball even though it is bright yellow. The scrappiness of the game matches the acoustics of the stadium, hollow shouts and guttural moans echoing off the steel roof, plastic seats, concrete and empty spaces. It might not sound it, but it’s pretty enjoyable, this is what fourth division football is all about, especially when the teams in twenty-second and twentieth positions meet.

Col U make a double substitution; not to be out done so do Salford, for whom Matty Lund replaces Liam Humbles. Lean, 33-year old Lund is described on Wikipedia as a “real good passer of the ball” and he cuts a dash with his grey hair, like a fourth division Zinedine Zidane. Col U earn a corner after a decent shot from the exotic sounding Jayden Fevrier and then a foul by a Salford player provokes chants of “You dirty Northern bastard” from the South Stand, and my evening is almost complete.

More substitutions follow for Col U with about twenty minutes still left to enjoy and endure. Goalscorer Taylor is replaced by John Akinde, an enormous man with no hair who stirs memories of former Wycombe Wanderer Ade Akinbiyi, and is so popular with the crowd that he only has to boot the ball off the pitch for people to cheer. Col U have been the better team in the second half without making the chances to prove it, but full-time is approaching and the anxiety of holding onto the win elicits chants of “Come on Col U, Come on Col U”. An eighty seventh minute Curtis Tilt cross and a powerful header over the cross-bar by Matt Smith don’t help, but then unexpectedly Akinde delivers a precise through ball, Chay Cooper is away beyond the Salford defence and passes the ball beyond Cairns the Salford ‘keeper. Col U lead 2-0 and if anyone wants to leave early for that stupidly early last bus, they probably can.

But the modern game produces things like six minutes of added on time, even in the fourth division and within a minute Salford are back in the game as McAleny turns and produces an instant shot into the top corner of the Col U goal from over 20 metres out. It’s a spectacular goal, the sort that people prone to exaggeration might say was worth the entrance money alone. The remaining minutes are tense. Akinde is the fifth and final Col U player to be booked by the overly neat Mr Finnie and a final substitution of Will Greenidge for Fevrier is made. “Fuck off Greenidge” shouts a committed fan, and one of the possible reasons why Col U are struggling becomes apparent. But the final minutes are played out and all that happens is that I notice the Salford number three has the name John on the back of his shirt, I wonder for a moment if he is a Brazilian like Fred and Oscar, but the back of the programme tells me he is Welsh, and his first name is Declan, which oddly sounds Irish.

The final whistle brings a rare victory for Col U and applause from the crowd. As we head back to our cars I confess to Gary that I quite enjoyed the match and I think he did too. “But was it worth £21.00?” I ask him. “No” says Gary without hesitation and in the context of what we used to pay to see at Layer Road forty years ago I don’t suppose it was.