YOU'VE GOT TO LOVE a floodlight failure. Actually I suppose it depends on your perspective. If you are a groundsman, or an electric company, or one of the disgruntled fans whose night of action is spoiled by the unexpected eclipse then you probably hate a floodlight failure.
But if you are like me, an FA Cup addict, then floodlight failure equals good. Because floodlight failure means abandonment, and abandonment means rescheduling, and just when it seemed like my association with the Extra Preliminary Round of this season’s competition had come to an end, here was another fixture to slip in. Unexpected (flood) light at the end of the tunnel of inter-round inactivity.
After a two-all draw in the first match, the original staging of the replay between Chichester City United and Crawley Down had been due to take place on the night that I was visiting Royston Town. But just before half time, the lights went out and despite hasty attempts to illuminate the scene, after twenty minutes it was apparent that nothing was doing and the game was abandoned. It emerged that an electrician had wrongly wired the changing room heating to the floodlights.
I only spotted this by chance when I was beginning the decision-making process of which Preliminary Round fixture I would plump for at the end of August, and noticed that both teams were still in the hat for the right to face Isthmian Div One South outfit Cray Wanderers. A spot of web investigation later and a Cheshire Cat-style grin started to spread across my face when I saw that the fixture had been rescheduled to Tuesday August 26th. I would once again be holidaying with the family near Poole that week, and Poole to Chichester could only be about seventy miles. Eminently doable.
The only impediment lay in the previously deployed phrase ‘family holiday’, which itself does not always equate with ‘slipping off to football’ and so some careful planning and delicate negotiation was called for. To start off I would need an ally and so phoned my father – who we would be visiting in Poole – and alerted him of the opportunity, to ensure he kept that day clear. Next I built a dossier on why a ‘day trip to Chichester’ would be good for the holiday spirit, and then presented my plans to the aforementioned family.
The original concept was green lighted by my wife Vanessa, but the day before the trip, my mum dropped the bombshell that she would not be attending because she planned to go to a local residents’ association meeting on the night of the match. This led to an abandonment of the day trip, and with my scheme unravelling faster than a toilet roll flung from the Chicken Run at Upton Park, I ultimately ended up driving from Poole to Chichester, back to Poole and then home to Essex all in one night. Such is the lunacy of the FA Cup fanatic.
Anyway, enough preamble, now to the match. Chichester City United. Strange name. Doesn’t quite sound right. Think about it for a minute. Manchester City United? Derby County Rangers? Crewe Alexandra Palace? There is of course a legitimate reason for the double-barrelled moniker, and this is the merger in 2000, of the two semi professional teams in the town, Chichester City and Portfield. When the two teams were united, so too was the nickname. Crawley Down were themselves founded from the merger in 1993 of no less than three teams which operated in the village, and so there was a lot of footballing history on show.
Both teams now compete in the Sussex County League although Chichester have bragging rights as they play in the step five Premier Division, in comparison to step six Crawley in the second tier of the league. Not that you necessarily would have noticed that in the opening exchanges of this fiery tie as both teams set about this replayed replay as though their lives depended on progressing to meet Cray Wanderers.
Arriving at the ground however, it was another case of being slightly underwhelmed by the surroundings. Oaklands Park is set in the middle of a large sporting complex dominated by a series of tennis courts belonging to a nearby club. Driving through the maze of cages you reach Chichester’s ground which is a pitch, four floodlights, a non-descript building which doubles as changing rooms and a clubhouse and a pair of dugouts straddling the halfway line. Not a lot else as yet, although the website says that the council owes them a new clubhouse. I was pleased though that the spire of Chichester Cathedral could be seen in the background allowing me to continue my occasional series of photographs entitled Football Grounds With Spires in the Backdrop, which began in Saffron Walden.
As the four large floodlights began to (reassuringly) blink on one by one, they illuminated something of a battleground. First half bookings came think and fast as a combination of accidentally and intentionally late challenges, revved the engines of the resident firebrands on each side. The gulf in stature of the two teams was not really evident, if anything it came down to one or two players on the Chichester side who showed a touch more flair than the others.
One of which, Chichester striker Ben Vassallo, opened the scoring on the half hour mark with a neat piece of work on the edge of the box where he cut across the defence and then rifled a hard shot goalwards which took a deflection past the Crawley keeper.
More bookings then ensued in the run up to half time and it was obvious that there was little chance that we would finish the night with a full compliment on both sides. Dad and I began to calculate odds on who would get his marching orders first as we walked around the ground at half time in search of another cuppa from the teabar. It was a mild night and the thrill of the cup had attracted what I estimated to be a crowd just shy of 100 to Oaklands Park.
Into the second half and you sensed that Crawley had made some adjustments to their team calibration. Aggression reduced slightly, work rate upped, and they began to make some inroads, not least of which fell to the feet of Crawley right-sided attacking midfielder Andrew Tuckey, who when clean through on goal blasted over the bar wastefully.
It was a mini turning point. One of those big chance moments. The ones which galvanise one side and demoralise the other. Only by degrees, but enough to make a difference. As Crawley heads were thinking about how they should be all square, they went further behind. United midfielder Adrian Brockway toe-poking home after some edge of the box bobbling.
But we were treated to a grandstand finish (had there been a grandstand that is) when Mark Saunders reduced the deficit to one with an excellent free kick from outside of the box which sped into the top corner of the Chichester goal, wiping its feet on the underside of the bar.
The dreaded extra time and penalties poked their collective heads out from behind the bedpost at that point as Crawley pressed for the equaliser, but the nightmare was banished to the back of the closet by a late-awarded Chichester penalty which was converted by substitute Billy Huntley with just minutes to go.
As the match wound down to its now obvious conclusion, I heard one of the Crawley supporters begrudgingly exclaim: ‘We must be one of the only teams to play three games and still get knocked out of the first round of the cup.’
They’d seen three Extra Preliminary Round matches. I’d snaffled a fourth.
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