Desborough Town 2 Stourport Swifts 4 aet
Hold the front page! My first train actually arrived 3 minutes early. I think in 20 years it had once turned up 1 minute early, 3 minutes is simply unheard of. A simple start to the journey, no tube involved, just a stroll across the road to St Pancras. I had a bit of time on my hands, so decided to search around for lunch inspiration. I really wasn't feeling it. No sandwich either caught my imagination, or if it did, it seemed to be ridiculously overpriced. I ended up buying a very reasonably priced packet of chocolate digestives from M&S for 86p. Took me all day, but I'm embarrassed to say that I ate the whole lot of them.
The train journey from London to Kettering went without incident. I don't know Kettering so well having only been there once before and that was when I had to divert on my way home. So the issue I had was to find the bus stop. I headed towards the town centre signs, headed for the shops and more by luck than judgement, bumped into a whole row of bus stops. Took me a while to find the right one and when I did, there was under 5 minutes to wait. Good job as it was bloody freezing and felt like it was in a wind tunnel.
The bus journey to Desborough was supposed to take 35 minutes but I was there in only 15-20. A small town but with good facilities and a fair number of shops.
In search of a proper lunch, I walked into a pub next to the bus stop and promptly walked straight out again. Sometimes you just get a bad feeling about places.
So I ended up with a bag of chips from the chippy in town, unremarkable but very nice and warming.
I then popped into Coral's to pass a bit of time, through an each way bet on a 12/1 shot at Wincanton that led all the way from the start until about 50 yards from the finish when it got beaten into second. Still left with a proffit though.
The walk to the ground was about 10 minutes from the town, all along a straight road and extremely easy to find.
It is a striking ground, visit if you can. The floodlights are old school affairs, towering into the sky at each corner and looking like they were pulled straight out of my 1970's Subuteo set, I loved them! There is also a water tower in one corner that again, gives the place a unique look. There is a clubhouse just before the ground entrance that was absolutely packed when I popped in at half time. However, they had sensibly seperated the hot food and hot drinks counter which enabled the queues to keep moving. Lots of cover, standing cover along the majority of the near end, more covered standing on the near side along with a seating area that had wooden benches.
I was sitting in this area before kick-off reading the programme and was joined by an ex UCL referee. He was good company and i actually stayed in the stand for the whole game, something that I rarely do.
The game itself was great, Stourport took an early lead, but Desborough always looked dangerous in attack and equalised before half time. Stouport went ahead again right at the start of the second half but Desborough once again equalised midway through the period and took the tie to extra time.
Stourport eventually won it with 2 goals in the final extra time period.
One of those grounds that I was so pleased to have made the effort to visit, take a look around if you want on my Youtube channel through the link below, even better, visit if you can, you will not be disappointed.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoaZyU-Cu-mX5PVYzUFqgzw?view_as=subscriber
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