An over-opinionated PA guy and a tale of two clubs with different ambitions: on Steyning vs Maidstone in the FA Cup

Maidstone United are looking to win their place back in the National League while Steyning Town have bever been past. the FA Cup Second Qualifying Round before. Yet here they were, playing each other.

The journey north from Shoreham-by-Sea to Steyning, in the heart of the Sussex Downs and so far from Shoreham that it strictly counts as Hosrsham, is one that I am extremely used to. For three and a half years I worked in Upper Beeding, one of the small villages adjacent to it, taking a tortuous bus journey which departed from outside the Churchill Square shopping complex in Brighton at about 6.00 in the morning and which ended up in Upper Beeding about an hour later.

I soon learned to maximise my gains. By getting the train to Shoreham, I could shave a substantial period of time off my journey, cutting off the same bus as it started to wander inland from the coast. But then came my brilliant idea. The game-changer. Shoreham to Beeding was only open to me by bus, but that bus got to where I worked about fifty minutes before I started. Unless I had the keys to the building, I was stuck outside until somebody else bothered to turn up. 

But by bedding myself in at the back of the bus, I could get some extremely valuable sleeping time in, all the more if I allowed myself to sleep all the way through Beeding and into Steyning, whereupon the bus would go back on itself, stopping outside where I worked at a highly convenient ten to eight in the morning. I even ended up setting an alarm to wake me up for the return journey in the end. 

The consequence of all this is that, while I have been to Steyning likely hundreds of times, I had only ever seen glimpses of it through quarter-open eyes at a relatively unsavoury hour of the morning. It's pretty, my mental bank was telling me, though how much of that was my over-active brain filling in the gaps will forever remain a mystery. 

As you leave Shoreham in the direction of Steyning, it's clear that you're heading away from the world of towns, cities and convenience. Even in a car, it's an entertaining journey, with the Shoreham bypass, under which cows and horses graze as a result of an obstinate farmer who wouldn't sell his land, and the huge Beeding Cement Works, now ramshackle to the point of being dilapidated. My grandad worked on this building; it was a big part of the reason why my dad lived in this neck of the woods during the Second World War.

Steyning is clearly not built for big match football. The town itself, along with its neighbouring villages of Upper Beeding and Bramber, have a combined population of just under 6,000. The streets are narrow and winding. There's a small graveyard, in which I found a memorial to a soldier killed in battle just a couple of weeks before the end of the First World War. The streets are quiet and sleepy. We're a world away from the big city. 

And yet here are Steyning Town Community Football Club, in the second qualifying round of the FA Cup, playing host to Maidstone United, of the National League South. It goes without saying that they've never reached this stage of the FA Cup before. But they also have a 100% record from their four league games in the Southern Combination Football League and beat Hadley, a team from a division above them in the Southern League, in the previous round. 

Of course, these early rounds of the FA Cup are an irritation that Maidstone United could well do without. They were relegated from the National League into the National League South at the end of last season, and their league season so far hasn't been especially impressive. By five o’clock on Saturday afternoon they were in 8th place in the National League, just outside the six-team National League South play-off places.

It should go without saying that all leagues in which there is only one automatic promotion place and one play-off winners place can be an environment in which there isn't as much room for error as a 46 match league season might be expected to afford. Maidstone are still in touch, for now, but they are already also surely aware that title ambitions can start to fade extremely quickly indeed, in this particular division.

Steyning's ground, The Shooting Field, has the air of a village barbecue on steroids about it. Booze is flowing freely, a healthy queue has formed for ice cream, there's even a guest appearance from that most non-league football of Saturday afternoon gambling events; a Meat Raffle. 

It's very clear that a substantial proportion of the village has turned out to cheer on their team, while the Maidstone supporters, an admirably large number of whom have made this journey, look if anything a little apprehensive before kick-off. When a team several divisions below is winning match after match, it can be difficult to gauge just how strong they might actually be. 

But The Shooting Field is probably about what you'd expect from a club with a men's team in the SCFL Division One. There's a cluster of small stands along one side, floodlights and an artificial pitch. It's the pitch that is the giveaway to the growth and development of Steyning Town Community, and the different priorities that this club holds to many, many others.

The club was initially formed in 1892 and played in local leagues until the mid-1960s, when they joined the Sussex County League. Brief spells in the Wessex and Combined Counties Leagues from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s coincided with their previous best run in the FA Cup, to this stage of the competition, where they lost 3-1 at home to Whitehawk 35 years ago.

But this is a community football club. The merger of the club with a successsful youth set-up in 2013 and the installation of the artificial surface at The Shooting Field three years later have made the club into a football club with arms which spread far beyond what happens to the men’s first team on a Saturday afternoon. As of the 2023/24 season, Steyning Town Community run thirty teams including a women’s team, two veterans’ teams, five girls teams and fifteen mixed youth teams in local leagues. They have more than 500 registered players, for the 2023/24 season.

And if that’s had any tangible effect on the men’s first team, then it’s fair to say that it’s probably been positive. Maidstone turn out too strong in the end, deserved winners by a 4-1 scoreline, with Sol Wanjau-Smith particularly impressive in attack, with a first hat-trick for the club.

They were, eventually, comfortable winners, but there was a brief period when Steyning did put the wind up them. Maidstone were already two goals up and apparently sailing as half-time approached, but Steyning pulled a goal back and forced an excellent save from the Maidstone goalkeeper Lucas Covolan in the few minutes before half-time, and it doesn’t seem implauasible that the visiting players might have received a bit of a rocket up the backside at half-time.

But afternoons like these are often best remembered for their idiosysncracies. The two teams are greeted by a line up young players in full kit with flags as they take to the pitch. A group of kids in full kits then station themselves behind the goal at which most of the Maidstone supporters have congregated spend the early stages of the match yelling, “WANKER, WANKER, WANKER” at, presumably, the Maidstone goalkeeper while the crowd watch on with barely concealed tittering.

Elsewhere, the PA guy spends a substantial period of time before the match telling the assembled crowd to respect the referee and their assistant, only to rather overshoot his announcement of the first Maidstone goal by adding, “no idea what the ref was doing for that one”, before apologising for letting, ahem, his emotions get the better of him.

Maidstone, then, move onto the Third Qualifying Round, two wins from the competition proper. Financially it’s worth their while being there, and fans in the non-league agame still don’t really consider FA Cup matches to be a burden, so they’ll be happy enough to be there. And they were given a test. Certainly not the greatest they’ll be given this season, but almost certainly not the worst either.

As for Steyning Town, well, the future looks rosy. The amounts of money raised by this match may seem like chicken to Premier League clubs, but a reported crowd of 1,135 isn’t to be sniffed at, along with the money raised from food and drink, as well as their prize money for having got this far in the first place. The men’s first team have started well in the league, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them making the step up to the Isthmian League come the end of this season.

And, since you ask, I’ve still never seen the centre of Steyning in anything bar a catatonic state. But since that was the result of getting taken to and picked up from the ground itself, I am absolutely not complaining.