Underground overground to Redbridge, and a very... retro experience

Tucked away next to Barkingside railway station there is a little football ground which feels like a real blast from the past.

The clouds sit like a thick feather blanket over this autumnal Saturday lunchtime in East London. It feels as though the weather is feeling skittish again this weekend. It's barely been a fortnight since it couldn't contain itself in Walthamstow and we got soaked on the walk from the pub to the ground. This weekend we're headed in a different direction, but it feels as though a similar fate could befall us again. A hoodie is a wise choice for my travelling companion. I take my chances with a fleece jacket with a huge picture of Snoopy in shades on the back of it. It's kind of a long story.

This week it's nine stops north-east on the Central Line on the Newbury Park loop towards Hainault. As you travel out, you don’t just head north-east, but also up and down. As all train nerds know, 55% of the London Underground by volume is actually overground, and we go up, down and then up again before eventually emerging at Barkingside station, to which the ground is more or less adjacent. Some of you may be aware that there is a Barkingside Football Club, but they don’t play here. They play a couple of miles away in Ilford, he says, tapping the “It’s complicated, around here” sign. Oakside is the home of Redbridge FC, Newbury Forest FC, and London Seaward FC, who were the Leyton Orient women’s team until 2021.

We’re more or less on the dividing line between London and Essex, here. That line has all but disappeared, both to the east and the west, where urban sprawl has rendered the Green Belt ineffective. Only here is there a sense of resistance to London’s tentacles, a patch of greenery that shoots up and out, between Hainault and Collier Row. Oakside is opposite the Fairlop Waters Country Park, which is pleasant enough to go for a bit of wander around in the 45 minutes or so that we have to kill before kick-off.

It’s not unreasonable to suggest that the entrance to Oakside is a little… scruffy. The entrance is strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of life non-league football; half-discarded, faded signs, old fences and plastic bottles of… something. And once in it’s a perfectly pleasant non-league ground. Three sides of it are three steps of open terracing, and on the fourth there’s a stand with a couple of hundred seats into which most of the crowd of 115 settle.

There’s corrugated iron everywhere—we’re not that far from Rainham, the home of long-standing pitchside advertisers Rainham Steel—including the roof of the stand, which is held up by scaffolding poles. There are signs all over the place. PRESS BOX. HOME OFFICIALS. AWAY OFFICIALS. When the players come out onto the pitch, it’s from a fenced off corner of the pitch. Away behind the far goal, you can see underground trains arriving at the station.

But most noticeably of all, there doesn’t appear to be a PA system in use, so there’s no pre-match music, no announcements of substitutions or anything like that and—as comes to be quite important later on—no indication given of how long there is to play at the end of the match. It takes a little while for the place to generate anything that could be reasonably described as an ‘atmosphere’.

The bar is clean and tidy, albeit with a small mix-up when the barkeep pours a pint of ale instead of cider. “This is the strangest cider I’ve ever tasted”, she says. I take a sip. There’s a reason for that. It’s not cider. “Oh God I’m sorry”, says the barkeep, “You know what happened? I was looking at the cider pump while pulling the other one”. There is, most definitely, a joke in there somewhere. Several, actually.

On the corner of the L-shaped bar is the Essex Senior Cup, which Redbridge won at the end of last season by beating Colchester United 5-4 on penalties following a goalless draw. (It should be noted that this won’t have been Colchester’s first team.) It’s bloody massive. Easily double the height of the FA Cup. I quietly enjoy the absolutely quintessential Essexness of going so large on a piece of silverware. Sterling work.

Meanwhile out on the pitch, there are goals. It only takes ten minutes for Heybridge’s Andrew Fennell to receive a pass through the left channel, cut inside under no particular pressure, and bend the ball round the goalkeeper to score. There’s a tiny cheer from the dozen or so Swifts supporters who’ve made the journey over, and for a while it does look a little as though Redbridge could get steamrollered. But then after 34 minutes Tendi Quamina gets a little too much space on the right and rolls the ball across the face of goal for Rodney Botuli to score from close range. The teams are still level at half-time.

Eight minutes into the second half, a cross from the Redbridge left is deflected high up off an opposing boot and falls to the home side’s number ten, Malachi Napa. Now, I don’t wish to throw any shade here, but there is no way whatso-fucking-ever that he means what happens next, which is the ball bouncing off the top of his foot and teeing itself up perfectly for Quamina to curl a shot around the goalkeeper, who can only get a ‘big hand’ on it. He is, of course, perfectly entitled to claim that he totally meant it.

(He didn’t.)

Two quick goals turn the game on its head again, and it feels as though Redbridge might come to rue having had the lion’s share of possession from a much improved second half performance. With eighteen minutes to play, a corner on the left results in a downward header from Joseph Adewunmi being scooped away, a small squawk, the linesman’s flag going up, and the referee whistling to indicate the goal. It’s almost impossible to see from the other end of the ground, but the lack of protest from the home players indicates just how clearly the ball must have crossed the line. There’s no delay in giving the goal whatsoever.

And six minutes later, Heybridge have the lead. The equaliser seems to have put the wind behind them, and a long throw from the left is flicked on for Eddie Carrington-Alberdi to turn the ball over the line from close range with what may have either been his thigh or his bum. It’s difficult to see from the other end of the pitch. As legs have started to tire, it’s become an increasingly engrossing match.

At the end of the ninety minutes there’s no announcement of how much longer will be added for stoppages. We’re already a couple of minutes in when I overhear one of the Heybridge players asking the referee how long there is to play. “Two and half minutes”, comes the reply. Thirty seconds later, Redbridge score to make it 3-3, Napa scoring from seven yards from a pass inside from the right.

This time it’s the Redbridge players scooping the ball up and hurrying it back to the centre spot, and there is even time for one more chance when Quamina can’t quite get on the end of a low cross from the left, and if anything takes the ball away from a better-placed runner behind him about whose existence he clearly knew nothing.

The final whistle blows a few seconds later. It’s been a most surprising game. All present bar barely a couple of dozen of us had taken up residence in the stand throughout the entire match, and one of the advantages of this is that the corrugated iron roof does echo the sound around quite well. So even though this is a match watched by a pretty small attendance, an atmosphere was generated.

The Heybridge players look crestfallen, as well they might. They worked hard, and having a lead snatched away at the death like that is always tough. Redbridge nudge up to 9th in the table with their point. Heybridge remain 12th. For those interested in such matters, Tilbury top the table while Haringey Borough, who we saw losing to Brightlingsea Regent a couple of months ago, are second from bottom, above Wroxham. Redbridge are five points off a play-off place.

There was something retro about this match. It felt a little like watching non-league football in about 1990, with the big giveaway that we weren’t being the artificial playing surface. The crowd looked older, and you can only wonder whether a slightly more limited youth set-up may affect them. They run teams from under-10s up, but not for those younger ages when a kid’s brain is more malleable and pester power may drag dad and lad there on a Saturday afternoon. There’s no women’s team because London Seaward play there. Two decades ago this year, Ford United changed their name to Redbridge FC in order to better connect with their community. Perhaps better performances in the league this season will help to grow them.

And there’s a charm to this scruffiness. It often feels these days as though football is having all the kinks ironed out of it, that everywhere is becoming a more sanitised experience. This has obvious benefits. It is clear that better facilities are a good thing. But at the same time, it’s a good thing that clubs like Redbridge still exist, ploughing away in their own way, certainly not always successful but striving nevertheless. We all need some spit and sawdust in our lives from time to time. Charlie Brown would definitely approve.