MATCH OFF finally strikes me down... or does it?

Taking a decision to call off the National League South match between St Albans City and Hampton & Richmond less than two hours before kick-off was a reminder of how tinpot non-league football can be.

It was on the way back from the game at Dorking last week that I started giving some thought to the way in which I watch football. I’d spent the previous couple of hours watching two teams, Dorking Wanderers and Ebbsfleet United, about whom I couldn’t have given much less of a damn, and while it had been an enjoyable enough afternoon, it had also got me feeling that I needed to feel something again. I needed to get home. But as things turned out, it all turned out to be a little more complicated than that.

If my life can roughly be divided into three thirds of around the same length, the third spent in Hertfordshire probably influenced who I am as an adult more than any other. We moved there from a relative concrete jungle on the day before the 1982 World Cup final. I watched the third/fourth place play-off between France and Poland on a portable set balanced precariously on an upturned tea chest. When it finished, I went outside and kicked a ball around the garden in the dusk. It was the first time I’d ever done that in our own garden.

I was just shy of my tenth birthday on that warm summer’s afternoon a little over four decades ago. I moved away just shy of twenty years later. In the meantime, I went to school and college in St Albans, had my coming of ages there, studied my GCSEs and A Levels there, and worked there. All my coming of ages were there. Fake ID at 16, legal ID at 18. Losing my virginity somewhere in between.

But I can’t afford to live there any more. Gentrification made St Albans wealthy, and there’s a tiny cadre of people I went to school who clambered aboard the property ladder in the mid-1990s and have done well for themselves out of it. Good luck to them. I couldn’t ever begrudge anyone foresight. But while I don’t like to ask, it does sometimes feel on Facebook as though a majority of us lost out in some way or other.

Of course, it’s a long way from the Sussex coast to the middle of Hertfordshire, with further layers of jeopardy added by the train companies, who continue to view weekend travellers very much in the same way as vivisectionists view rats. ‘Travel at the weekend and see just how bad the railways could get” would be an appropriate advertising slogan. Perhaps if I’d worked in advertising, I’d have been able to afford to buy a house there.

It’s an early start, the 8.28 train to Brighton. I’ve booked my train and match tickets ahead. I tend to do this to lock myself into the commitment of going wherever I’ve decided to go. It’s considerably more difficult to back out of bothering to make the journey if you’ve already spent thirty quid on it before you even leave the house.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather all week, and while it doesn’t look great there’s little in the forecasts which predicts unplayability. St Albans is built on hills, and the football ground is halfway down one of them. Even if there is an end of week downpour, the drainage should be able to cope with it. Social media channels give no hint whatsoever of what’s to come. At about the time that my train is pulling into East Worthing station, someone asks them on Twitter whether a pitch inspection is planned. “No”, is the monosyllabic response.

East Worthing to Brighton. Brighton to London Blackfriars. London Blackfriars to St Albans City. By the time the train rumbles into ole’ Verulamium it’s past eleven o’ clock. I’m already mildly annoyed. Thameslink, who run the train service from Brighton, through Hertfordshire and on to Bedford, are one the of the few remaining train companies who don’t believe in letting people charge their electronic devices as they travel.

Having the ability to do so has been an absolute blessing for me, this season. My phone is starting to reach that point in its lifespan at which it takes as long to discharge its battery as it does to charge up in the first place. My train tickets and match ticket are stored on there. I cannot afford to have the battery running out until I am at least on my train back to the coast after the match, so I spend a large proportion north staring out the window of the train at the clouds and the rain. And yes, I know this is a first world problem, but still.

It’s the longest train journey I’ve made to a match this season, and it’s also the longest. By the time I get off the train at St Albans I’m craving some form of mental stimulation, but I’m no more than 50 yards from the station when a bird-scattering, blood-curdling “OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE” fills the air. Sorry about that, but there will be a pitch inspection after all, and at the hilariously late time of 12.45.

I’ve complained long and loud about the practices surrounding pitch inspections this season, but it remains the case that, despite the fact that “MATCH OFF” or MATCH POSTPONED” has trended on Twitter more or less every Saturday this season, clubs and leagues continue to apparently remain ill-prepared to deal with them. This isn’t really about my inconvenience. I chose an inconvenient journey; only got myself to blame for that.

But this isn’t really about me, it’s about all of us. Hampton supporters wanting to travel to the match have been left in limbo (there are already some in town centre pubs, half-wondering what to do with themselves), while once again there has been no indication whatsoever given at any point, all week and up to the morning of the match itself, that a pitch inspection would be called for this game.

There were no banner adverts on the club’s website saying that a pitch inspection may be called and that it may be worth your while holding fire until the referee has given the go-ahead for it to be played. And it feels money-grubbing, that clubs just carry on taking this ticket money until the very last minute, at which point they rug-pull and leave you clicking your heels, a long way from home.

It’s been raining in St Albans all morning, but it’s starting to clear by the time I get there. I walk, almost habitually, down to the Westminster Lodge athletics track and into the pub. Verulamium Park is a large open space with a lake at the foot of the hill taking you away from the city centre. A not reasonable proportion of it is submerged under water, which feels portentous.

I walk up through the Abbey Orchard to the cathedral. Whenever I think of the weirdness of people killing each other in the name of religion, I end up thinking of St Albans Cathedral and the fact that so many people were sufficiently enthused by the glory of God to build that place. It’s not even a matter of the heart growing fonder in absence to say that it really does take the breath away.

Next door to that is the Rose Gardens, a small, walled garden in which 16 year-olds used to get drunk on cheap cider and stoned on terrible hashish in the late 1980s. I was there on the evening that somebody kicked the wall so hard that it practically collapsed. It was rebuilt, and three and half decades on you can hardly see the joins. I walk the length of St Peter’s Street and settle on a pint in The Cock, at the far end of the high street, because I have the sense of humour of a ten year-old.

12.45 comes and goes, and I start walking down to meet my friend, up Lemsford Road and across the railway bridge behind the main stand. The sun is shining as I cross it. Through the gaps between the fence, the wooden main stand and the bushes, I can see the pitch inspection taking place. The pitch is looking lush and green. The sun is shining. 1.00 comes and goes without an announcement having been made.

We’re sitting in the Hatfield Road Sports & Social Club with another pint—my third of the afternoon; ruh-roh—listlessly watching Huddersfield vs Leeds by the time something finally comes through. MATCH OFF. It’s not that far off 1.30. As I walked past the ground a little earlier, players were wandering in. Everybody’s time has been wasted by this, and considering that seems to be happening practically every week, it’s surely time for a slightly more considered protocol than the apparent free-for-all that we have to put up with at the moment.

Because I have questions. Now, I do get that the decision over whether a pitch is playable is down to the referee and that sometimes the weather will just roll a pair of snake eyes, but still… why was the club’s social media so confident at 8.30 in the morning that the pitch would be playable? Why was the inspection not carried out at ten, or eleven, or twelve?

Why, when the cancellation finally came through, were there no accompanying photos or videos showing why the match couldn’t be played? Why was there no warning on the club website’s ticketing page that perhaps, with a pitch inspection having been deemed necessary, people might want to hold fire on buying a ticket until the referee had made a final decision?

Because while the National League South is a regional league, it’s not that regional. St Albans City’s supporters have some long away journeys this season; to Torquay, Weston-super-Mare and Taunton, to Weymouth and Yeovil. People have to travel and this sort of thing just blows a hole in your entire Saturday. It should be fundamentally unacceptable to be calling a match off ninety minutes from kick off. Hampton (or Richmond) to St Albans is a relatively short journey for this league, but it’s still a journey, and not an especially easy one, either by car or by public transport. If this sort of decision is to be made, there should be a firm cut-off point before anyone has started travelling, and plenty of signposting that a postponement is possible.

I’ve taken care to select a couple of back-ups. Colney Heath, the team of the village adjacent to the one I grew up in, were due to be at home against Shefford Town & Campton, but I was already familiar enough with the topography of their pitch to be completely unsurprised when that’s called off while I’m on my way to St Albans. My third pick had been Boreham Wood vs Gateshead in the National League, but I’m not really feeling that. I don’t have the energy levels that would mean that I could make kick-off time at Meadow Park. When does one ever have the energy to go to Borehamwood?

All of which leaves a stark choice; either get on the train and start wending my way back towards the coast… or Harpenden. Barely four miles to the north of St Albans, Harpenden is St Albans’ fancy little brother, the one who did really well for themselves, and they have a plastic pitch. Eric Morecambe used to live here, they’re not shy of telling you over and over.

It’s another train journey and it’s in a league with which I’m largely unfamiliar, but’s barely a five minute journey and a ten minute walk it’s a football match on a Saturday afternoon, and the 3g pitch that they have—a relative rarity in this neck of the woods, certainly compared with Sussex—will ensure that it’s on. It’s a Spartan South Midland League match, but beyond that I’m a little shy on detail as I make my way to the station.

With about five minutes to spare before kick-off, I’m at the turnstile at Rothamsted Park. I played on this pitch a few times during the 1990s, but it’s very different now to then. It’s not only the pitch. Rothamsted Park used to have this vaguely unkempt air, with bushes behind one goal which suggested that anyone wandering too far away from the ground to retrieve wayward footballs might end up on the set of a 1970s slasher movie.

But nowadays, all is neat and tidy. There are two small stands—one covered and one seated—along the near side of the ground, and the rest is relatively undeveloped. There’s no apparent hot food for sale, just a bar with crisps. There don’t appear to be any programmes, either. Harpenden Town are in yellow and green, and their opponents are Aylesbury Vale Dynamos, in red and black.

Somewhat bafflingly, this is Aylesbury’s home game. The match has been switched here from Aylesbury because of the weather in their neck of the woods. With time starting to run out before the scheduled end of the season and a lot of games having been postponed, we’re reaching the point at which no-one can be too precious about whether you’re the home team or the away team, so long as you actually get the game on.

Harpenden look quite clearly the stronger of the two teams, but it takes them until ten minutes from half-time before they take the lead, a shot well saved and driven into the roof of the goal. I even miss a third rainbow of the season because I’m already in the bar, trying to cover for the fact that I’ve eaten nothing but a cinnamon bun at about 8.45 and a packet of crisps all day with another pint of beer. My older kid, the greatest aficionado of rainbows that I know, would not approve.

By the closing stages of the second half, I’m feeling drunk and slightly belligerent. I opt to stand on my own, far from the rest of the crowd of 125, just in case I accidentally find myself in a ludicrous argument with someone over something I don’t care about. Has this been a bad afternoon? I caught up with some old friends (albeit more briefly than I would have liked), had a nice walk around St Albans, and had a few drinks. If this is a problem, it’s definitely one born of the first world.

As Aylesbury start to tire, Harpenden run in two late goals to complete a 3-0 win. They’re still 6th in the table, level on points with the exotically-named St Panteleimon, but having played three games more. Aylesbury Vale Dynamos are in 14th, surrounded by some familiar non-league names from my adolescence, Dunstable Town, Baldock Town and Arlesey Town. They probably won’t get relegated this season, but with most of the teams around them also having games in hand, it might yet be close.

But it did all feel a little bit empty, and that is on the surface strange. I watch football at this level all the time. Regular readers will already be aware of the fact that the Southern Combination Football League has become a semi-regular home for me this season. You haven’t lived until you’ve been part of a crowd of 30 watching a team call Brighton Electricity at a former EFL ground.

There’s an obvious explanation for this. This is not what I signed up for when I made my commitment during the week. And while my predilections may be considered niche, the way in which non-league football has been handling this winter’s vast number of postponements feels unsatisfactory. It’s been less than a month since a hitherto unmentioned pitch inspection was called at Hastings for 11 in the morning. Increasingly, I’m picking my weekend matches on the basis of where I believe will best be able to withstand our increasingly mushy climate.

At least the train back from Harpenden to Brighton is a direct one. I sit down on a seat and promptly fall asleep. Eight hours of walking and drinking have finally caught up with me, and I wake up, as God intended, just as the train pulls out of Preston Park railway station, no more than two or three minutes from Brighton. I’ve still got another train to catch in order to get home, but at least I’m back on familiar territory. Considering where I travelled from, it’s been a somewhat rum state of affairs.