Ewell never walk alone

I’ve been to two grounds recently, Croydon Sports Arena (Croydon FC) and Gander Green Lane (Sutton United FC), where I’d seen plenty of football in the ‘60s but hadn’t visited for many years. There was another one on Saturday – Merland Rise, now the home of both Banstead Athletic and Epsom & Ewell.

It used to be just Banstead and I saw them clinch promotion from the Surrey Senior League to the Spartan League in 1965 and play their first match in the latter, a 2-1 home win against Crown & Manor. Epsom played at West Street in Ewell, where the pitch sloped from end to end and side to side, and in one of the matches I saw there, Southall’s Alan Devonshire impressed watching scouts enough to be signed up by West Ham.

Epsom were playing Sandhurst Town in the Combined Counties League on Saturday, the teams placed third and fifth respectively in the Premier Division. ‘The E’s’ took a 27th-minute lead against ‘The Fizzers’ but a crowd estimated to be 65 saw the visitors hit back to win 2-1. There was a heavy shower for the last ten minutes and all of the walk back to Tattenham Corner station.

The sky over Regent’s Park on Sunday morning was a little menacing but thankfully it stayed dry. On Pitch 8 I saw a team called ‘Reprieve FC’ lose 1-0 to West Acton. A few minutes into the match a couple – a Japanese lady and a German man – walked along the path behind the goal, the lady’s white boots with blacks spots exactly complementing the Dalmatian dog she had on a lead!

The match was refereed by a huge, bald, Turkish-looking man who could’ve been the genie in Aladdin’s lamp. He had a big booming voice and his ‘Corner!’, which sounded more like ‘Corrrner!’ could probably have been heard several pitches away. The only goal came on 61 minutes, Reprieve’s ‘keeper making a ‘volleyball save’, diving forwards to fist the ball high into the air for a West Acton to nod home as it dropped conveniently for him.

There was no late breakfast with the curvy Croatian at Baker Street this time, as her little café was crammed full of Southampton fans destined to see their team lift the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy at Wembley that afternoon. So I had soup and a sandwich at the hotel before returning to Regent’s Park for a 2pm kick-off. I chose Shepherds Tuesday v Lyric Celtic in the ‘Super Sunday League’, again on Pitch 8.

The ‘visiting team’, i.e. the one which didn’t have to put the nets up, won 3-1. The attendance at the morning match was one and for the afternoon match a much more impressive two. 

My three matches during the week were Chelsea v Blackburn Rovers (FA Youth Cup Semi-Final), Camden Town v L’Inizio and England v Austria at QPR (Women’s World Cup Qualifier). I thought the one at Camden sounded like a ‘Europa League’ fixture but it turned out to be a Second Round tie in the Islington Midweek League Invitation Cup.