MATCH 5: Out, Out, Out! Kingstonian vs. Horley Town

Kingstonian 4 Horley Town 1 (FA Cup preliminary qualifying round)
King George's Field, 12 September 2020

 

 

If I'm supporting anyone this season, it's Horley Town, but their 2018 move from the Combines Counties League to the Southern Combination means I won't see the Clarets as often as I'd like. I've committed to my non-League ground-hopping, but would prefer to stay near London rather than make long trips into Sussex, which the move will necessitate So I was delighted when the Clarets won at Eastbourne United to set up an FA Cup preliminary qualifying round tie at Kingstonian - a famous old club that I have long meant to visit - but I wasn't sure exactly where I'd be going.

I knew the Ks had left Kingsmeadow, as the story made the Guardian, but not where they'd ended up. Kingstonian only began playing at the 4,850-capacity ground in Norbiton in 1989, but this move facilitated their most successful period since the 1930s, as they rose up to the Conference in 1998, achieving their highest ever finish, 5th, in 2000. They also won the FA Trophy in 1999 and 2000, when former France striker Amara Simba scored their winning goal, and reached the FA Cup fourth round in 2001, knocking out Brentford and Southend before losing 1-0 to Bristol City in a replay. However, they over-reached, went back down to the Isthmian League in the same season as their best-ever Cup run, and ran into financial difficulties. The chairman, property developer Rajesh Khosla, sold Kingsmeadow to AFC Wimbledon - recently set up as a community club after the original Wimbledon relocated to Milton Keynes - for £2.4m, and kept the money. Kingstonian paid a peppercorn rent to stay, until AFC sold the stadium to Chelsea for their academy and women's teams in June 2016, to fund their own move back to a new Plough Lane in Wimbledon.

 

This caused considerable bad feeling, even though AFC Wimbledon gave £1m to Kingstonian to put towards a new stadium on the former Chessington Golf Centre, on the fringe of the Kingston borough. Wimbledon left Kingsmeadow in May; Kingstonian played in Leatherhead for a season before announcing an arrangement to share King George's Field with Corinthian-Casuals in January 2018. So I took the train to Tolworth, on the London-Surrey fringes, after checking the Kingstonian website to make sure fans were still being admitted. The website said, 'With the recent increase in Covid-19 infections, it's crucial that we all take care of each other. Please follow all instructions from volunteers, and the guidance given by posters around the ground.' asked supporters to arrive in masks, which had to be worn in the clubhouse and boardroom, which would have queuing systems, as would the burger van; there would be temperature checks and hand sanitiser on the door, and the supporters' shop would be closed. Between the station and the ground, I lost my mask, but luckily, it didn't come up on the turnstile; if it had come to it, I could have bought a Ks one, but I didn't want to advertise an allegiance when I was definitely there as an away fan.

 

This was Kingstonian's first match of the season, and I bumped into Jamie - a long-time Ks fan, and part of their media team, who I met through the London football blogging circle years ago - on entering. I told him I'd already been to four games this season, packing them in as I didn't think fans would be admitted for long, amidst fears of a big second wave of infection. He was equally pessimistic, thinking like I did that another lockdown would finish clubs far bigger than the two on display today. This led us to exchanged details of our respective clubs, and I said I expected Kingstonian - a semi-professional club with a large following - to make light work of Horley's spirited but limited part-timers. Helpfully, Jamie had written for the matchday programme, detailing K's new arrivals for 2020-21, including Tom Howard, once of Chelsea's academy, to introduce me to some of the day's players, yet again entirely unfamiliar to me.

Part of a crowd of 355 - the largest of any I'd been in since Norwich's FA Cup fifth round tie at Tottenham back in March - Horley had an away following of less than ten people, who were no more optimistic than me about the likely result. I wandered around the ground, noting another sign that this was a more competitive club than some of the others I'd visited this season - I could actually make out the announcements, including the line-ups, on the PA system. I saw Kingstonian flags, an anti-homophobia flag, and a wall of stickers for clubs including several for Corinthian Casuals, as well as AFC Wimbledon, Torino, Mechelen, Rochdale, Glentoran, Streatham Rovers and the Against Modern Football movement. I didn't notice any for the Ks, although I'm sure some were there.

 

Wishing I had a Horley sticker (or scarf), I went behind the goal where Kingstonian attacked in the first half. Next to me was a boy in a Norwich City top: I told his father that I was a Norwich fan too, and it turned out they were season ticket holders in the same Carrow Road stand as me; following last week's government announcement, they didn't expect to be back until the spring, and I feel the same way. I saw fans of other League clubs, and had a chat with a family of Fulham supporters who were quite philosophical about being locked out of their return to the Premier League, and enjoyed how this scenario had brought about camaraderie between rival fans, as we reminisced about games between Norwich and Fulham (including the single worst day I've ever had a match) and people who'd played for both clubs.

 

In his notes, the programme editor noted that that 'hateful virus that has so viciously swept the planet and changed almost every facet of almost everybody's lives' meant that Kingstonian were entering the FA Cup at the Preliminary rather than their usual First Qualifying Round, and Ks manager Hayden Bird wrote about how they could not be complacent, as they'd gone to the New Defence for a behind-closed-doors friendly in August and drawn 1-1, saying he was 'very impressed' with Horley, who had 'talented players in a well-organised team'. As soon as the match kicked off, after the sides took the knee for Black Lives Matter, there was little doubt about the result, as Kingstonian looked quicker, stronger and fitter. Winger Corie Andrews, who scored in the friendly, shot them ahead after 12 minutes; Horley struggled to produce any quality final balls in their sporadic counter-attacks, and once centre-back Simon Cooper put them 2-0 up a few minutes before half-time, I felt the match was settled.

I stayed where I was during the interval, as Jamie and the other passionate Ks fans switched ends to watch their team's attacks during the second half. Horley improved and looked a little more threatening, failing to score after a goalmouth scramble, and then Cooper made it three on 68 minutes to remove any lingering doubts. The handful of away fans were delighted to see the Clarets get a goal through Richard Pingling a few minutes later, before Lewis Pearch - who, one of our group said, had recently played for Horley on loan - made it 4-1. There was no more score so I filed out, sorry but not surprised that my adopted team had gone out of the Cup. That said, Kingstonian are one of the largest clubs currently allowed to admit fans, so if Horley had got much further then I likely wouldn't have been able to watch them anyway. Still, there's always next year - isn't there?