Harwood Bull had hoped to be at Edgar Street last Saturday but because of National Rail watched AFC Fylde instead.
He explains why.
According to Wikipedia groundhopping is “a hobby that involves attending matches at as many different stadiums or grounds as possible. Participants are known as groundhoppers”. Well, I’m not one of those. I’ve been to just over 50 different football grounds in my life, which is nothing really. My co-contributor to BN, Son of Eric, has been to more grounds in Europe than I’ve been to in England, and overall has seen more dodgy stadium catering than I’ve had hot dinners.
However, I found myself attending a game on Saturday which I no great interest in, just to see some live football. I had planned to be at Edgar Street for the King’s Lynn game, but trains were cancelled , and the only option was a zigzag route involving a replacement bus service and multiple changes which probably would have got us to Hereford halfway through the second half. Given what I’ve heard about the game, National Rail may well have done us a favour.
So…. we were at a bit of a loose end. Consulting the fixture lists we found that Accrington Stanley were away, as were Clitheroe Town (Northern Premier League). Blackburn, Burnley and Preston weren’t playing due to the break for the international games, hence we found ourselves watching Fylde at home to Gloucester.
The game was fairly entertaining. It was easy to see why Fylde are top of the league. They move the ball quickly and accurately and have an abundance of pace down both flanks. They beat Gloucester 2-0 but the margin could have been much bigger. All of which makes our 3-1 victory there a few weeks ago all the sweeter. Gloucester were much like Hereford. Competent in defence (most of the time), neat in midfield, and completely lacking in any attacking threat. Yet they are just outside the playoff positions. What does that say about the quality of the league?
More interesting is the set up at Mill Farm, as the Fylde stadium is known. The club has grown from little more than a village team in Division Two of the North West Counties League 15 years ago, to a team with a very attractive modern stadium, with serious aspirations to make it into League Two in the EFL. Promotion this season looks highly probable, but they’ve been promoted before, and after a strong start and a couple of good seasons then found life pretty tough and were relegated at the end of the 2019-20 season.
The thing that intrigues me most is where the support comes from. The Fylde area is a low coastal plain stretching from the Ribble estuary up to Fleetwood and Morecambe Bay. It has some fairly affluent small villages and the posh areas of Lytham and St. Annes on the coast, but I’m not sure how it can muster the support needed to sustain a football club at the level they would like to be at. The attendance at Edgar Street on Saturday was very poor, but was still better than the one at table-topping Fylde. The ground is near the two small towns of Kirkham & Wesham, total population of around 11,000 , i.e. about the size of Leominster. Fylde have average crowds of just over 1,000 according to the Non-League Matters website. I can’t see that sustaining a football league club in an area where they are competing for support with Preston, Blackpool and Fleetwood, none of which is more than about 25 minutes away.
The success of the club is due to the financial input from chairman David Haythornthwaite. He’s a wealthy man (you can Google him yourselves), but what happens if he loses interest in football, or his businesses start to struggle and he has to cut back? With no real deep tradition to fall back on, the club could easily disappear and the stadium become something of a white elephant.
While talking about the stadium, I was staggered to find that they don’t offer concessionary admission to students or old blokes like me. £18 for a seat seems like a lot to watch football in the 6th tier of the sport in England. I was chatting to a lady in the queue for a pie (very good I have to
say), who said that the regular supporters are petitioning the club to ask for concessionary tickets to be introduced, so I’m not alone in thinking that they are asking too much. I will be writing to the club to complain – I’ll let you know what reply I get.
It's an interesting phenomenon. Looking around the very well furnished bar before the game which was doing a roaring trade in burgers in brioche buns with chips in nice little bowls it was hard to relate that to the more down to earth facilities at grounds like Southport and Farsley. One of the most prominent advertising hoardings was for a Porsche garage, and the hospitality suite at the back of the main stand appeared to be full of very well dressed people enjoying a pre-match meal and a glass or two.
It all seems very nice, but is it sustainable? The business model of most football clubs doesn’t seem rooted in reality and this looks like one of those where it’s all dependent on the continuing interest and goodwill of a wealthy individual, and we all know how that can end up.