A Tale of One City (And One Town)

When you're bottom of the league, the reasons why you're in that position can manifest themselves in unusual ways, as Beckenham Town find at Chichester City.

I'd like to think that I'm not snobbish about many things, but I am about cities. I don't hold with this modern trend for deciding that medium to big towns warrants city status. Sorry lads, if you weren't on Henry VIII's list when he was doling out the royal charters in the sixteenth century, what you've got there is a town. Royal charter? No, that's just a piece of paper with a signature on it. Sorry, but I don't make the rules. (Okay, I made that rule.)

Chichester is a city. A proper one Henry VIII approved. It even has a cathedral. As far west as Worthing, the religious among us fall under the diocese of Chichester, and even though barely 25,000 people live there, I can respect that status. Brighton and Hove? It's a lovely part of the world, but Brighton is a town, Hove is a town, and ‘Brighton & Hove’ just… isn't a thing, football club notwithstanding. Chichester is the only city in West Sussex and the county town. Having lived in this county for almost a decade now, what with the cathedral and all, I felt almost as though I was making a pilgrimage to this match.

As my train pulls into Chichester railway station on this cold, sunny Saturday lunchtime, I'm not the only person making one. There are tourists aboard even in the middle of January, and you know they're tourists by the way in which they find themselves utterly, hopelessly baffled by the ticket barriers. Fortunately, I've got here absurdly early enough for time to be of little consequence this afternoon. It's only a thirty minute train journey from the station nearest my house to Chichester, and I still left before midday.

Travelling into any town (or city) by train often leaves an unfortunately indelible mark on your first impressions because the areas surrounding a railway station are often the worst in town. But Chichester becomes handsome as soon as you're away from the station's immediate environs. I amble through the pedestrianised city centre at a leisurely pace. There's a nice mixture of local shops and chains, and a large, impressive buttercross—built in 1501—right in the city centre. Each of its four sides have a clock face, and each is telling the right time.

I stop for a pint in a pub that smells of wet paint (Chichester city centre doesn't want for pubs - there seems to be one every hundred yards or so), and then move on to the cathedral. It's not especially big, but it's certainly handsome and it's beautifully maintained. I'm not a religious person, but the dedication of those who saw fit to build this to the glory of God is rather humbling, even for a very 21st century agnostic such as I.

The ground is only a short walk from the top end of the city centre, but that doesn't make it easy to find. The map seems to show it as being on a road called College Lane, but I walk up this road, along one side of the ground and then on to the sports field for the nearby Chichester University sports field, which features a truncated athletics track and a changing room straight out of Another Sunday Morning and Sweet FA. But walking back past the ground, even though there's some lively hi-NRG disco clearly audible through their PA by now, there's no way in.

I walk back all the way round and establish that the way into the ground is through a leisure centre and car park. The lighting for the car park and the floodlights for the outdoor tennis courts next door make the stadium entrance impossible to see from the main road, but I plot a careful path through it all and finally find myself at a turnstile. After the adventure that we had trying to get into Withdean to see Brighton Electricity play a couple of months back, this has been my most difficult to find ground of the season so far, but despite all this I'm still inside by twenty past two; enough time for a bite to eat, a pint, and a bit of a nose around before kick-off.

Oakway Park is a curious little ground. I'm here this afternoon in no small part because it has an artificial pitch. It's been cold down here all week and matches on grass have been falling like dominoes all morning, but that isn't a problem here. Along one tree-lined side is a small, fairly basic stand (this is the part of the ground that I had walked past earlier), and opposite is a two-storey building which houses the club bar on its first floor, overlooking the halfway line. All the cover is at the end nearest the turnstile, a short section at the end of each terrace with a cover behind the goal.

Most peculiar of all is a row of seats built into the back of this cover in a line—52 of them in total—which would offer practically zero visibility if anyone were to stand in front of you. I wonder to myself whether these seats were hastily bolted into place in order to meet some form of minimum capacity requirement or other. The 3g pitch is in excellent condition, though the ground does suffer, as sp many with this sort of pitch do, from having too many porta-goals around its perimeter. But broadly speaking everything is fairly neat and tidy, and considering the weather and the late January financial constraints under which so many likely find themselves this year, it's a decent crowd.

Chichester City used to be two clubs, but Chichester City and Chichester United merged under the slightly cumbersome name of Chichester City United in 2000, dropping the last bit of their triple-barreled name nine years later. Founder members of the Sussex County League in 1920, they remained at this level for 99 years before getting promoted into the Isthmian League in 2019. A year later, they reached the First Round of the FA Cup for the first time in 59 years and were awarded a bye as the team who would have played Bury. The club made a donation towards the costs of Bury AFC as a result. In the Second Round they lost 5-1 at Tranmere Rovers, which was a marked improvement on their previous appearance at this stage of the competition, when they lost 11-0 at Bristol City. Their previous couple of seasons have both seen them finish mid-table.

Beckenham Town have been on a similar journey. They bounced around various local leagues before joining the Kent Senior League in 1982 and stayed there for forty years before winning promotion in 2022. And their first season at this elevated level was not unsuccessful. They finished in fourth place in the table and were only beaten 1-0 by Whitehawk in the play-off semi-finals. Their journey serves as a reminder of how quickly things can change. They arrive for this match rooted to the bottom of the table with none points from eighteen matches. But for all this, they've brought some supporters, and they're youth, no less, a group of about a dozen teenage lads in black coats, at least one of whom has a 1970s party horn, which rasps out a high pitched ‘PARRRRRP’ at various stages throughout the afternoon.

It turns out that Beckenham are pretty bad, but not in an immediately obvious way. Indeed, for the first half hour or so they dominate possession as Chichester, who'd lost their previous game 3-1 at home to Herne Bay, look nervy and skittish in possession. The home supporters under the cover in the corner of the ground are starting to get a little frustrated by the midway point in the half. But while Beckenham are surprisingly bustling as they get forward, they seem to run out of ideas once they get within thirty yards of the opposition goal. That’s what a league record like this does to a team. It saps the confidence to such a point that even when they’re not playing badly… they’re still kinda playing badly.

It doesn’t feel like that much of a surprise when, ten minutes from half-time, Chichester stroll up the other end and win themselves a penalty kick, which is converted by Ethan Pritchard, who scored a hat-trick the last time I saw him, on New Year’s Day at Littlehampton. “He should be paying me to be here”, I ponder to myself as I wander off for a pre half-time cup of hot chocolate. The home side lead at the interval, but not by the margin that we might have expected beforehand.

But when you’re bottom of the table… Two minutes into the second half Chichester win a corner on the right-hand side. During the 1980s, there was a period during which what is now the National League experimented with no offside from free-kicks. After it resulted in the unedifying sight of about every free-kick ending with 20-odd players jostling for position on the goal-line, it was dropped. I was reminded of this several times throughout the second half of this match, and on the very first of these occasions the ball was swings over to the far post, the goalkeeper can’t reach the cross, and Connor Cody, who I choose to believe is nicknamed “The Conor Coady of The Isthmian League”, bundles the ball in at the far post.

The colour seems to drain from Beckenham faces with conceding a goal so early in the second half, and even a second yellow card for Chichester’s Joe Clarke twenty minutes in can’t alter the direction of traffic. Four minutes after the red card, Isaac Bello makes it 3-0 and it doesn’t look as though Beckenham are even benefitting very much from the one player advantage. Even when they do finally get the ball into the Chichester net there’s a “WEYYYYYYYYYYY!” from the home supporters upon the realisation that the linesman’s flag is in the air and the goal won’t count. A relatively normal-feeling four minutes of stoppage-time is long enough for Pritchard—contact me for details of where to send the payment, Ethan—to add a fourth goal and complete a slightly flattering 4-0 win for the home side.

Chichester stay in eighth place in the table, still four points short of the play-off places. There’s plenty of time to make that up, but even though I’ve seen them win 3-0 and 4-0 in the last three weeks, I’m not sure they’re strong enough for promotion. Of course, they may retort by saying that there’s plenty of time for them to improve between now and the end of the season. And Beckenham Town stay bottom. It’s difficult not to have sympathy with those supporters who made this long journey down from the London-Kent border. When the game is already beyond you, all you really want is one goal, but when they even managed so much as a consolation it was immediately wiped from the record by the officials. They remain bottom on nine points, a further nine points from safety.

There’s a train just after 5.20, and the final whistle blows at 4.55. I feel as though it’s going to be tight, but in eventuality it turns out that I must have completely ambled my way to the ground in the first place, because at a brisk stride it takes less than fifteen minutes to get back to the railway station and I’m back in Worthing before 6.00. This town is something like five times the size of Chichester, with a football team who I note remain in second place in the National League South following another win. But it’s only been eight years since they were playing at this level. Chichester City are a little short, but some sort of upward ascent remains possible and being in contention is what really matters right now. Beckenham Town should probably be considering adopting the brace position. At least, so far as I can establish, they don’t make any claims towards being a city.