Match: v Crawley Town - Blue Square Premier

Date: Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Result: Crawley 2 Cambridge United 1

THE JOURNEY

Departure Time: 3.10pm

Arrival at Ground: Being our nearest motorway - albeit the one used least for away matches - there might be a chance of having a blasé, seen it all before approach to the road, but this journey started with an unusual sight... a cyclist, presumably with a death wish, peddling his way along the hard shoulder!

The rest of the journey was uneventful, with traffic flowing freely enough to allow bags of time for a brief, but necessary stop where we found Pease Pottage service had been taken over by the entire Hayes & Yeading United FC squad.

The ground was easy enough to find - the giant red and white football on the roundabout beside it was a bit of a clue - and we were safely ensconced in the car park just before 5pm... and dismayed to find a sign saying that reception wouldn't be open until 6.30pm! Fortunately the receptionist arrived well before the appointed hour and produced a pen with a flashing blue teddy bear on top with which to sign in the members of the press corps.

AT THE GROUND

The Ground: A reasonably new ground, on the outskirts of the town, the exterior of Broadfield Stadium is all breezeblock, corrugated metal and scaffolding-style exoskeleton, which somehow combine to give it the air of a fire station.

Inside the ground, an impressive main stand, with a of maze corridors, offices and entertainment areas, runs almost the length of one side of the pitch. With a sea of blood red seats, this is the only seating area in the ground other than the dug outs. Entrance to this stand is via assorted flights of steps at the front, which meant that even the lowest row of seats is raised well above the adverting hoardings that surround the pitch.

Behind either goal, breezeblock backed terracing is covered by a low roof; with the end to the left of the main stand allocated to visiting supporters. The back wall to the terracing facing the away end was decked out before the match by an array of Crawley Town flags that looked so pristine that they were either brand new or had been extremely carefully laundered after every match.

A low, uncovered terrace runs along the remaining side of the ground. As the dual carriageways of the A23 run from the motorway into Crawley behind this side of the ground, the low back wall of the terrace is supplemented by a high mesh fence and stand of trees of prevent the passing traffic being caught up in the action.

As with most grounds in the Conference, television gantries have mushroomed since our visit last season. Although those at Crawley had eschewed the black mesh used as ineffective camouflage elsewhere, they didn't seem too intrusive - despite one built onto this side terrace that was large enough to serve as a main stand at some Conference grounds.

Four floodlight poles are also along this side of the ground, but the light they provided was patchy at best with vast pools of stygian gloom engulfing large areas of the pitch. There was enough light to see an assemblage of yellow posts stuck into the pitch before the match. These turned out to be ski poles, which the Crawley team were to use as part of their warm up routine. But when we arrived the poles were clustered together prior to being set out, giving the impression that the ground had been used in a re-enactment of a scene from the film 'Zulu'.

Crawley is only a couple of junctions down the M23 from Gatwick. With no sign of sand or surf, its proximity to the airport is the only reason - albeit a tenuous one - why the teams ran out to the theme form Hawaii 5 - 0. While it was good to hear something different being used as run out music, it did sound rather incongruous on a cold March evening in West Sussex.

United Fans: A good number of the Amber Nation made the trip and the support they gave was nothing short of magnificent. This was particularly the case in the second half when they kept up an almost constant barrage of support, despite the team not being at their best and Crawley looking the more likely to score the next goal.

View from Away End: With a reasonable slope to the terrace and no pillars in the way, the view was decent enough.

Home Fans: Not much was heard from the home fans, other than an occasional chant of "lump it long". Their side duly obliged.

Police/Stewards: With ongoing controversy regarding Crawley Town's owners, the stewards' briefing before the game seemed focussed more on the home fans that the visitors and ended with a reminder that "we don't take any s***" - a little less poetic than Hill Street Blues' "let's be careful out there", but similar sentiments. During the match, they seemed to keep themselves to themselves.

Programme: 48 pages for £2.50. With gates often below 1,000, economy measures had been taken, so there was a pre-printed section of adverts while the outer eight pages were the only ones in colour. Nonetheless, this was a decent programme as there were plenty of well-written articles.

Half Time: Now here's something I'd never seen before. As the teams left the pitch at the end of the first half, the referee was stopped by a club official to make the half time draw.

AFTERWARDS

The Journey Home: As Night falls and traffic eases, the cones come out to play on the motorways of England. There were millions of them blocking off motorway carriageways for no apparent reason on the journey back. I particularly enjoyed the section of the M23 that had been reduced to single lane seemingly just to allow two 'workers' to stand on a bridge above the funnelling traffic below. Just what you need after a disappointing away defeat!

Mileage: 190.2 miles

Total Distance for Season: 5,285.9 miles

Mark Johnson, with additional reporting by Gordon McMillan

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