Finding my Football Manager hero…. Farnborough FC v Wimborne Town FC

Today was the day where I finally ticked off a ground that I have wanted to tick for a long time…

Farnborough was the destination and you may be wondering why this is such an illustrious tick for me, well the reasons are two fold:

• Their ground is fantastic for the level they play (seventh tier)
• Reggie Young plays for them (we’ll get onto this)

Anyway today’s story starts a good five hours before kick off when we left London, the reason for this is that I had a doctors appointment in Guildford so I needed to be back for that.

I’ll spare you any gory details but we spent about an hour and a half rushing around Guildford for various reasons but thankfully it ended with one of the nicest KFC’s I’ve ever had.

Soon enough it was time for us to drive to Farnborough and after an event free drive we had arrived.

If you are a dedicated fan of my blog you will remember my grumblings at the unwelcoming nature of Beckenham Town FC, thankfully today was the complete opposite.

When we pulled into the ground the parking attendant gave us a very warm welcome and for the next 15 minutes we were in a groundhoppers paradise.

Considering this was a game in seventh tier of English football and we are used to going to, lets face it, tiny grounds every week, this was nothing of the sort.

We basically fell in love with the club because of the elite level of their ground and I implore you to google pictures of it because we couldn’t believe it.

I have probably bigged it up too much at this point, but over 1,900 seats at a ground at that level is unheard of.

We were absolutely buzzing for this game and finally we were actually gripped by a game. It started in a very end to end fashion with both teams playing some nice attacking football.

Farnborough scored a couple of first half goals (which we had a fantastic view of from high in the stand).

A number of Farnborough’s players were excellent in the first half, including their right winger Reggie Young, who i’d describe as a ‘football manager legend’.

Earlier this year I did a career with Cheltenham Town in League 2, with a limited budget I turned to Woking’s reserve side for a new signing. The next thing you know Reggie Young is on his way to Gloucestershire to become part of George Geaves’ revolution.

To cut a long story short, Young ended up bagging a hattrick for me in League One (yes I got them promoted), and I almost had tears in my eyes as I had plucked this unknown from the National League South and made him into Gloucestershire’s golden boy.

Thanks for bearing with me during that little interlude, but I thought you should know the context behind my excitement of seeing Farnborough in the flesh.

Young probably completed about seven dribbles in the game and constantly showed off his deft touch, which brought back memories of him tearing down the wing at the Jonny-Rocks stadium, okay I’ll stop now.

Wimborne scored early in the second half but they couldn’t find a second and Farnborough managed a win that halted their poor form.

This was probably the most exciting game of the season so far and I had a very pleasant time so thank you to all those at Farnborough FC who contributed to that!

The drive back to London only took just over an hour which isn’t bad at all, so overall the groundhopping gods seemed to be in our favour tonight.

Look out for my next ‘Five things that annoyed me about football this week’ on Friday, and on Saturday we will be following Chelmsford City in Tonbridge.

Wish me luck…

• GROUND: Cherrywood Road
• GAME: Farnborough FC 2-1 Wimborne Town
• COMPETITION: Southern League Premier Division South
• GROUND NUMBER: 62
• WOULD I GO BACK: Yes
• TICKET PRICE: £6