Words & Pictures to Follow: Brain fog and Burgess Hill
There was one I missed, last season, and this Saturday is an opportunity to put that right.
The brain fog that starts to attack you in middle-age can be a frightening thing because it starts to cloud not only the things that you can’t remember, but also those that you can. An example. Every week, I sit down and make a decision over which football match I’m going to attend. I go through as many fixtures as I can until something springs to my attention.
I went to something like forty matches last season, mostly across Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire, and by the end of it all I felt as though I’d just about rinsed this part of the south of England completely dry and that it was time to move onto somewhere else. London, for a variety of different reasons, felt like a good place to move onto.
But things haven’t quite worked out that way, have they? Sometimes, life gets in the way. Two weeks ago, it was Woodside Road for Worthing. Last week, it was Horley, right on the dividing line between Sussex and Surrey. And this week I’m back in Sussex for a match over which I’m feeling somewhat perplexed.
This week, my ex-wife is away and has asked me to have the kids for the weekend. This week, perhaps, it’s time for Burgess Hill. And this is where the brain fog sets in. I feel as though I should have been to Burgess Hill Town last season. It’s a relatively straightforward journey from my house, it’s a ground that I don’t think I’ve visited before, either, and regular readers will already be plenty aware of the appeal of that to me. But I’m also feeling mildly unsettled by this all for the simple reason that… shouldn’t I have done this place last season?
So, I start looking. I search through the sitemap for this place and find no reference to Burgess Hill anywhere. I search the 503 posts that have appeared on here this last year and a half or so, and nothing. I note from a quick map search that Burgess Hill’s ground is actually much closer to Wivelsfield railway station than it is to Burgess Hill railway station, so I search my historical train ticket purchases, but again… nothing, nada, zip. So I guess, let’s do this. Sorry, kids, the Playstation will have to wait.
For Burgess Hill Town, this season marks their 20th in the Isthmian League since reorganisation thrust them up from county league levels. They’ve dealt with that pretty well, on the whole. They even won the Division One title in 2015, running up 33 wins, 105 goals and 109 points from 46 matches. But the Premier Division was a stretch too far. They were relegated back after four seasons of struggle—they finished 23rd in 2018 but were spared the drop by more reorganisation, before falling the following season instead—and have broadly been a mid-table presence a division lower since.
Their opponents this weekend—and lord preserve us, it’s an actual league fixture—are East Grinstead Town, another Sussex club who I’ve not visited, on this occasion because I was once told that it’s a bit of a ball ache to get to from the coast and this fact has lodged in my head. Checking the National Rail website, it is a ball ache. Two and a quarter hours on the train, despite being a journey of just under forty miles. I could get up to Hertfordshire or Essex for that sort of time commitment.
After 84 years in the Sussex County League, East Grinstead Town were promoted into the Isthmian League in 2014. At the end of their first season, Burgess Hill Town won the title while they finished third from bottom. Their highest final league position over the last decade is 13th, and that was six seasons ago, now. Last season they finished 18th out of twenty, avoiding the drop by eight points and with only one team going down. For the record, Burgess Hill Town finished in 12th.
This season has thus far been a surprising one in the Isthmian League Division One South-East. Top of the table with eight matches played are Beckenham Town, who finished 19th last season were only reprieved from relegation by league reorganisation. Three of the current bottom four, Three Bridges, Lancing and Ashford Town, finished last season 4th, 6th and 11th respectively.
Burgess Hill Town are in 6th place going into this match, but with league tables looks can be deceiving at this time of the year. While leaders Beckenham have played eight league matches, Burgess Hill have only played four. Were they to win their games in hand (and no-one else above them played theirs), they’d go top of the table. East Grinstead Town, meanwhile, are at the rarefied heights of 9th place, with two wins, two draws, and two defeats from six.
In the FA Cup, Burgess Hill made it as far as the Second Qualifying Round before losing at home to Amersham Town, while East Grinstead fell two rounds earlier, at home to Redhill in the Preliminary Round. In the FA Trophy Burgess Hill lost on penalty kicks to Littlehampton Town last week, while East Grinstead fell a round earlier, losing 2-1 at Hartley Wintney, who are one of those football clubs that seem to be named after a teddy bear from a long-forgotten Edwardian children’s story. Wembley will have to wait for another year.
It’s still possible that I have brain fog over this. If you, dear reader, can remember me having gone to Burgess Hill last season, then do please remind me, because for all the lack of confirmation that I did I still feel as though I… should have done? Still, this weekend is an opportunity to put that right, and if that means my kids being dragged halfway across the county because Daddy is, quite frankly, an eccentric, then so be it. Words and pictures to follow, on Sunday.