Tilbury FC - Chadfields

Match - Tilbury FC 1-1 AFC Sudbury
Competition - Isthmian League Division 1 North
Admission - £8
Scarf - N/A
Attendance - 110
Food - Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese & Chips  7/10
Ground No - 111
Ground Rating - 4/10

We are almost 2 months into the new season now and I was finally going to see my first game of it. My main target for this season is to complete the Ryman League Division 1 North, I have 9 to get to including this one at Tilbury FC. Today's game was a league encounter against AFC Sudbury.

Tilbury play at Chadfields a small ground with a capacity of around 4000 located right next to a Gypsy site in the town of Tilbury just up the road from Grays in Essex. We arrived at the ground at around 2.15 and once we had parked up in the small club Car Park headed to the Tilbury FC Social Club for a quick pint before entering the ground.

The Social Club seemed quite dark and dingy and many of the windows had there metal shutters pulled down. Inside there was a TV and a projector screen on which they were showing the early Premier league match between Arsenal and Chelsea. There was also a large Tilbury FC Flag in the corner below the TV screen.

In the entrance there were plans detailing a possible new ground for the club which would be built on ground adjacent to there current location, which after seeing the ground was obviously required.

Chadfields is an old stadium which looks as though it receives minimal maintenance, probably due to the planned move. There are two seated stands at the half way line on each side of the ground. The Main Stand is down the touchline from the turnstiles. This stand houses the Changing Rooms which are at ground level with seating above which is accessed by a set of stairs to the side of the stand. The stand has a number of supporting pillars that would obstruct your view of the action. Each side of the Main Stand there are small uncovered terraced areas.

On the Opposite side of the ground there is another small seated stand with around 5 rows of seats (and a broken roof), this stand has covered terracing at each side of it. The team dugouts are on this side of the ground meaning that managers, Physio's etc have to walk across the pitch before each half to reach them.

The near end of the ground is where the turnstiles and Snack Bar are located  with just a path running behind the goal in front of the social club building which is inaccessible from inside the ground. At the far end there is some uncovered terracing. At both ends of the ground metal fences have been erected directly behind the goal, to stop balls flying out of the ground, this though means that anyone wishing to stand there has to look through the fences to watch the game.


Far End Terrace

   The game itself started reasonably brightly with Sudbury creating a couple of decent chances, but with the rough playing surface any type of passing football went out the game and both sides started playing very direct football with the centre halves clearing any aerial balls very easily, limiting any real goal mouth action.

The deadlock was finally broken though when Tilbury attacker Emiel Aiken received the ball around 30 yards out turned and hit a cracking shot into the bottom right hand corner of Sudburys goal leaving the keeper little chance.


Sudbury came out in the second half and tried to play more of a passing game which helped them build some pressure on the Tilbury back line. They were rewarded ten minutes into the half when former Tilbury man Tom Webb was released on the left hand side of the penalty area and scored the equaliser into the far corner of the Tilbury goal.

The remainder of the match was a bit bland with nobody really getting hold of the game which reverted back to route 1 stuff, until the last 5 minutes when both teams realised that the game was there for the taking and had a number of good chances to claim a winner but a mixture of poor finishing and good goalkeeping particularly from Howe in the Sudbury goal meant that the game finished level.

A draw in the end was a fair result from a game where both teams I'm sure were far from there best.

In conclusion a poor stadium matched by a poor game of football, but at least the season is underway (for me) and hopefully things can only get better from here

Olympic Park - Paralympic Games - Various Dates

Olympic Stadium

Paralympic Opening Ceremony 29/08/12
Paralympic Athletics 08/09/12

Copper Box

Goalball - 30/08/12
                Team GB 1-11 Lithuania
                Finland 5-6 Brazil
                Turkey 9-2 Sweden

Aquatics Centre

Paralympic Swimming 07/09/12

Over the past couple of weeks I have been lucky enough to attend a number of events at the London 2012 Paralympic games.

Firstly I attended the Opening Ceremony at the Olympic Stadium this was an incredible night I have uploaded a small portion of photos below. I didn't understand what was going on half the time but it all looked spectacular. Although the near 2 hours of watching the teams enter the stadium did drag a bit until Team GB entered and the stadium erupted.



                   

 

 

                   

                  Team GB Enter the Stadium

 



 

The next morning I went to see some goalball, this is yet another sport that I went to see during the course of the Olympic and Paralympic games that I had never seen or really heard of before.

Goalball is played by two teams of 3 at each end of a small court where they have to roll the ball into the others goal. The difficulty in this sport is that all the players are either blind or partially sighted and wear eye masks so that they are all on a level playing field. The ball has bells in and therefore players are listening for the ball rather than looking for it. As such the crowd must remain silent while the ball is in play but are able to cheer when a goal is scored which isn't as often as I would have thought as the players hearing must be incredible.

Goalball was played in the Copper Box on the Olympic Park. The Copper Box is one of the Smaller Venues on the park holding around 6000 Spectators in two tiers of multicoloured seats. It is a permanent venue and will be transformed into a sports hall after the games.

The first game in the session was between Team GB and reigning world champions Lithuania

We were only entered into the tournament due to being the host nation and the class difference definitely showed in this match. In Goalball a game is stopped if one team goes 10 goals ahead and this one was with still 8 minutes to go of the second half (each half is 12 minutes long) with the Lithuanians leading 11-1.

The second match was what was to be the final of the tournament between Finland and Brazil. Brazil just scrapped a 6-5 win. Finland gained revenge in the final winning 8-1.

Match action Brazil attacking

The last game in the session was between Turkey and Sweden with Turkey winning comfortably with a score of 9-2.



Eventual Champion Finland Defending

 

 

The next week we went to the Aquatics Centre to watch the Paralympics Swimming, the night we went involved all finals.

 

 

 

The Aquatics Centre is probably the most impressive looking stadium on the Park and holds around 20,000 spectators. The seats inside the venue are located on either side of the pool with big screens at one end and the diving pool at the other. From the top tier of seats you are unable to see most of the seats on the opposite side of the pool due to the roof that curves down low towards the pool.

 

View from seats



 

One of the most impressive races of the night was the T11 men's 400m Freestyle. T11 is for blind swimmers who are tapped on the head with a long stick with a foam ball on the end when they get to each end of the pool so that they are able to complete there turns perfectly. The winner was an American ex Navy serviceman, who I believe was injured in action.  

 

T11 Men's 400m Medal Ceremony

 

The last race of the night was the Women's 4x100m medley relay, Great Britain were in the race. They started slowly but with 50m to go were catching the leaders very quickly and the noise within the Aquatics Centre while they were doing so was incredible, of all the sporting events I have ever been to I have never heard a noise like it, it was deafening and I was unable to hear my own shouting. Unfortunately Team GB were just pipped to gold by 0.03 seconds. But the race ended the night perfectly.

 

 

The next day I was back at the Olympic Stadium to watch the last night of the Athletics. The stadium seats 80,000 in two tiers with large screens at each end between the two tiers. The stadium is due to be decreased in size after the games but to what nobody is entirely sure until it has been decided who is to occupy the stadium.  There were very few Brits involved in any of the finals I saw, but did get to see the Paralympics poster boy Oscar Pistorious win the T44 400m Final.The best event of the night though was in fact the High Jump, with the eventual winner from Poland breaking the current world record by jumping 2.12m. his was not the only world record of the night though as every race seemed to break a World Record there were at least 7 on the night.

 

 

 

Now that the Olympic/Paralympics are over I will now concentrate back on the football. My aim this season is to complete the Ryman League Division 1 North. I have 9 clubs to get to. I also want to complete the London based premier league clubs of which I only need to get to QPR's Loftus Road ground.

 

My first game will be at Tilbury on the 29th Sept. But until that time I will leave you with one more picture of the Olympic Park.

 

 





Olympic Park - 8th August

Riverbank Arena - Hockey

9-10 Classification (Women) Japan 2-1 South Africa
7-8 Classification   (Women) S Korea 1-5 Germany

Basketball Arena - Handball

1/4 Final (Men) Croatia 25-23 Tunisia


With the football season just about to begin I am just starting to think about my groundhopping for the coming season but before all that starts there was another small sporting event taking place in London that warranted some interest, the London 2012 Olympic Games.

As the "biggest show on Earth" and with it being just up the road I couldn't not make the effort to get hold of tickets for this once in a lifetime experience.As a groundhopper I wanted to try and get to as many of the stadiums and arenas as possible especially those on the Olympic Park themselves. As with many people though I was unsuccessful in getting any tickets in the first round application process, but was lucky enough to get hold of tickets for a couple of sessions in the second round.

So there I was at 5am picking Will Harmer up from his house and on my way down the M11 to Epping Tube station to go and watch some Hockey and Handball, two sports that I have never watched previously and had very little or no knowledge of.

The journey to the park was very easy and on leaving Stratford station were greeting by a mass of the volunteer Games Makers who were directing everyone to the Olympic Park. Entering the Park was similar to going through border control at any major airport and the military personnel who were managing things made it very quick and easy and there were no issues.

We entered at the Stratford Gate and were immediately met by the impressive Aquatics Arena to our left with the Orbit and the Olympic Stadium in front.

I will have more photos of both the Aquatics Arena and the Olympic stadium in a later blog as I have tickets to both for the upcoming Paralympics.

As we had an early session at the Riverbank Arena the other end of the Park we made our way straight there to take our seats for the first of two matches that were included in the session, Japan vs S Africa in the 9-10 classification match for the Womens competition.

The Riverbank Arena is a temporary Arena and is made up of 4 scaffolding stands holding around 20,000 spectators and as such looked very basic. There is no covered seating apart from the very centre of the West Stand which is reserved for VIPs, so we were hoping that the dark clouds that were looming would not produce any rain.

The match was a very close game which was eventually won with a penalty stroke (not a Penalty Corner) by Japan in Golden goal extra time. The match finishing 2-1.

Japan score there first goal with a Penalty Corner (Not Penalty Stroke)

The second match was the 7-8 Classification match between S Korea and Germany, this match had much more action and Germany ran away with a comfortable 5-1 win that secured them 7th place in the competition.

S Korea and Germany line up for National Anthems

The atmosphere within the arena started off very subdued as it was only half full possibly due to the early start time with most people not arriving until at least half time of the Japan - S Africa match but this definitely brightened up during the second match along with the weather which became very warm and sunny in the early afternoon.  

Olympic Stadium and Orbit as seen from the river
that runs through the Park



The session finished around 1.30pm and we then had an 8 hour wait until our evening Handball 1/4 final match was due to get underway. During this time we had a walk around the rest of the park.



Velodrome



After having a walk round the Park we met up with my parents who had been to see some athletics that morning for a quick catch up, we then left the Park and hopped on the tube to Kings Cross and went for some lunch and a pint in the Euston Flyer along Euston Road, which was a lot cheaper than eating at the Park and watched some of the other Olympic action on the big screens that had been set-up.

Around 6pm we made our way back to the Olympic Park making use of the Javelin service that was running between St Pancreas Station and Stratford International.

We made our way to the Basketball Arena and sat watching the big screen that has been set-up in the centre of the Park to watch Usain Bolts 200m Semi Final before entering the Arena.

The Basketball Arena is also a temporary Arena which I believe is to be reused at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014 and possibly again at the next Olympics in Rio. The Arena was used originally for the Basketball Group matches, the games were then moved to the O2 (sorry North Greenwich Arena) once they reached the Knockout phase of the competition. The Handball was moved to the Arena for their Knockout Phase. The court was transformed from Basketball to Handball in under 24 hours.

Although it just looks like a big tent from the outside the Arena looks rather impressive on the inside.

I had never watched a Handball match before and had no idea what to expect. The sport is very minor in this country but in the rest of Europe it has a massive following and the supporters of both Croatia and Tunisia were very vocal and created a fantastic atmosphere within Stadium.

This sport may just be one of my new favourites. A cross between Football, Basketball and Rugby this is a full contact sport and both teams, especially Tunisia didn't hold back, with one of their players even being suspended from the rest of the game just before half time after kicking an opponent at least 3 foot in the air. The game was fast and action packed.

Croatia came in as favourites but found themselves behind at half time but in the end there ability shone through and they managed to make it through to the semi final winning by 25 (goals,points,runs I have know idea) to 23.

I have no photos of match action as flash photography during play is forbidden but trust me if you ever get a chance to go to a game do it you wont be disappointed.

Finally a massive thanks should go to all the Volunteers and Military personnel who have worked on the Olympic Park during the games they would not have happened without them.

I had a great time at the Olympic Park and can't wait to go back for the Paralympics where I will be blogging on the Opening Ceremony,Athletics and Swimming as well as Goalball.

After that I will be back to the usual football grounds for the 2012/13 season.

Laters