 |
| Billy Murphy With A Shot For Hereford At Basingstoke In 2018 |
As I scrolled through my Twitter feed this morning, I came across a Henry Winter (chief football writer for The Times) retweet that caught my attention. It was a long scroll by Katie French a Basingstoke journalist (@journokatie) who explains why if we were going to Basingstoke Town this season, we’d end up at Winchester City where they are ground sharing.
Our game at Basingstoke in 2018 was memorable for several reasons. Although played in mid March it was FREEZING. I followed a gritter lorry as caught the bus out of the town towards the ground and it was one of those games you wished it were over before it began. I was doing the match report that day and I could hardly write, my fingers were so cold. It was a poor game, we lost 3-1 and deserved nothing out of the trip. We’d lost the week before to King’s Lynn and there were grumblings about Peter Beadle (imagine that!) but we then picked up and went unbeaten for the rest of the season, leaving King’s Lynn trailing in our wake (how times have changed).
Basingstoke Town was founded in 1896 and in 1945 and Lord Camrose, a local land owner, as well as proprietor and editor of The Times, gave the club the ground at Winchester Road, with a covenant, which protected the ground for 100 years from 1953-2053, ensuring football would be played there. The ground was named The Camrose Stadium.
The ground is now owned by Razi Razzak who was chair of the club for 25 years. Around the time we played them he had sought planning permission to build a 5,000 stadium elsewhere in the town but this was turned down. He then purchased the ground but stepped down as chairman. The club became community lead. Last year Mr Razzak evicted the club from the ground and submitted planning permission to redevelop the land (yet to be granted). In recent weeks the pitch has been dug up and assets sold off, even the irrigation system appearing on E-Bay.
The local paper The Basingstoke Gazette has found the original covenant and in an article today ( see https://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/18216783.revealed-camrose-covenant-discovered-public-told-lost-missing/) the controversy over the whole situation carries on with claim and counter claim.
Over the last couple of seasons we’ve grumbled a lot at Hereford, me included and no doubt we will continue to do so. However, we have a huge amount to be grateful for, not least the local council and to those who stepped up in December 2014 to ensure tomorrow we can go to our ground at Edgar Street to see a Hereford team play. The fate of Basingstoke Town could have been ours, we must never forget that.