Carshalton Atletic v Sittingbourne

War Memorial Sports Ground

Bostik League South 

January 6, 2018

Ground No 202

THIS might be the eighth tier of English football but Carshalton Athletic are cutting edge trailblazers, and make no mistake.

There's the 4G pitch, the bold plans for a £12m revamp of the ground a few years ago which were scuppered by NIMBYs and even the availability of a wonderfully tasty latte at the tea bar.

And then - how about this - there's also the e-programme. Yep, a programme that's available to read on your phone at the match after connecting to the free stadium Wi-Fi, and to download, print out and add to your collection when you get home if (like me) you feel cheated an empty if you go to game and don't get a programme.

The first about this great leap into the cyber-unknown was after I heard parted with my tenner to get in. I queried whether the programmes were available inside since none were immediately visible and we'd arrived in plenty of time.

"No," said the turnstile operator, "you get them on your phone." Now that was something of a curveball. I'd never heard of such a thing! I didn't know whether to be impressed, horrified or somewhere in between.

Neither of the people at the turnstile was entirely sure how to actually access said e-programme but a tweet to the club's official Twitter feed provided me with a link to the website quicker than you could say "IP address unknown".

I'll be honest, at a stadium called the War Memorial Sports Ground, I'd expected to see a stone obelisk honouring those who fell in combat, or maybe pictures of renowned fighter pilots on the clubhouse walls.

Turns out, however, there's neither, although the ground was named in memory of  club players and officials who died in the First World War, which ended just three years before Athletic took up residence there.

Had the redevelopment, planned in the early 2000s, gone ahead, the War Memorial Sports Ground would look very different to how it does today. Bad news for the club, but better news if you like visiting grounds with a bit of character.

Behind each goal is an area of hard standing. The end nearest the entrance is fully covered while the opposite looks as though it was at one time, but there's now just a roof over the section behind the goal. 

The sheet metalwork behind each bears more than a few battlescars of banging from enthusiastic fans as they chant for their team on a matchday!

The tea bar with the nice latte is immediately on your left as you enter, and then you come to the clubhouse. Get there early enough and you can bag yourself a seat at the window with an excellent view of the pitch as you sup your pint. 

On the other side of the halfway line is the main stand - a neat and sturdy structure with 240 seats. This fella would be wise to keep his wits about him, though... the one him replaced burnt down along with the earlier clubhouse 18 years ago and the previous permanent structure that stood there was blown down by strong winds.

At many grounds the centrepiece is its main seated structure, but here that honour goes to the imposing covered terrace than runs the full length of the sloping pitch on the other side of the ground.

Stand on these majestic terraces and you could be at a lower division League game in the 1980s.

Close your eyes and you can imagine the smell of fags, stale beer and BO in the days when  terraces like these would be jam-packed full of fans enjoying their weekly football fix and when the thought of getting a match programme on your phone was steak and kidney pie in the sky.