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Monday, January 09, 2017

Chichester City FC


Chichester City 1 Buckland Athletic 3


Clubhouse and dugouts at Chichester


Athletic Buck their ideas up

Chichester City 1 Buckland Athletic 3

I wasn't at all sure this was a wise idea. Undertaking a route which involves travelling on Southern Trains is never going to be an easy, comfortable experience. Their trains were running which is a minor miracle in itself, needless to say, planned engineering works made the journey more tricky than it needed to be.
I had to change at Barnham and there was an interesting moment when trains were on adjoining platforms, both going to Bognor and neither of two station staff knew which train was leaving first. Cue a member of public to unleash large amounts of sarcasm towards one of these staff members including thanking him for all his help over the last few months. Hard to have any sympathy for him when the public are continually held to ransom and are unable to earn a living for their families. Enough said!
I was in Chichester in good time, quite a large town centre or is it City centre? I decided to kill some time in a bookmakers and placed a bet on the 13:30 Wincanton, at least that's what I was told. I never actually saw the race due to an absurd amount of fog. The horses appeared on screen only three times and I heard my horse mentioned once. Not the greatest viewing experience I've ever had.
I bought a chicken and bacon pastie from The West Country Pastie Company, the server did warn me that it had just come out of the oven but dear God ,was it hot! I ended up with what felt like third degree burns on both my fingers and in my mouth. A nice pastie but way, way too hot.
This didn't turn out to be a ground that I loved, it is situated at the edge of a large City car park which gave it a bit of a soulless feel. There is a clubhouse with a little bar and this is situated on a building above the changing rooms. There is a small stand on the far side and a couple of covered standing areas, one on each side.
The game itself was played in front of a reasonable sized crowd and was pretty good. Buckland were always on top and had a 2-0 half time lead including a 25 yard outside of the foot rocket that was as good a finish as you will see at any level. Chichester good one back through their impressive centre forward and despite giving it a good go, couldn't get back on terms and the final goal wrapped the game up with 12 minutes to go.
Enjoyable contest in an interesting town.