Kirkham in the Vase - at Needham Market
“OK girls, how do you fancy a weekend away in a hotel at the end of the Easter holidays?”
“Great, Dad, where will we be going?”
“Ipswich”.
“Why Ipswich? And where is it?”
“It’s a few miles down the road from Needham Market”.
“Where?”
That is a rough summary of the conversation that took place in our household a few days after the draw for the FA Vase semi final was made. With Kirkham & Wesham being drawn at home in the first leg, it meant that a long trip was necessary if I was to see the semi final tie through to its conclusion, so the plans were duly drawn up to head down to Suffolk.
Mind you, after 14 minutes of the first leg when Kirkham & Wesham were two goals down, I was wondering what sort of game I’d see a week later. However, as we know, the second half fightback that culminated in Mark Wane’s last gasp winner for Kirkham meant that the tie was beautifully poised going into the second leg, so with bags packed the whole family set off on the Friday morning for Suffolk.
As we left the end of the M6 and headed along the A14 the skies darkened and soon the rain was pelting down, and that continued to be the case until late afternoon, by which time we had arrived at the hotel in Ipswich and had a look around the town centre. Back at the hotel in the early evening, the local BBC news programme ran a feature on the Vase semi finals, with Lowestoft of course being in the other semi against Whitley Bay. And it was then I found out I’d had a bit of a narrow escape.
The story began by declaring that the Needham Market pitch had passed a lunchtime inspection and was playable. The thought of having travelled that distance only to find the game had been called off was too scary to contemplate, but as it wasn’t something I’d thought would be a problem, and now wasn’t, there was no issue.
I’d grabbed a copy of the local evening paper, the Ipswich Evening Star, when out earlier, and aside of the preview of the Ipswich Town game the next day, there was plenty of coverage of Needham Market as well. Most interestingly, there was a piece by a guy called Elvin King, who is obviously one of the main sportswriters in the paper as he had done a piece on the Ipswich game on another page.
Elvin is a former player at Needham Market and still holds the club’s goalscoring record, which he referred to in the article. That being the case, you’d expect him to have some affection and support for the club, but the tone of the piece he had written rather took me by surprise. The article began:
“What a big weekend this is for me. Something is about to happen that would have been unbelievable a few years back.
“Needham Market are going to beat Kirkham & Wesham on aggregate in the semi final of the FA Vase and win a place at Wembley.”
And then later on…
“From competing for the Metaltec SIL Senior Division title to playing at Wembley Stadium is a massive leap. I wish them well.”
I don’t have a problem with positive and upbeat support for a team, and he was of course aiming his comments at Suffolk readers. However, I thought those remarks accelerated dangerously past “positive” to somewhere alongside “over confidence likely to result in egg on face”.
This general feeling was, I must say, largely echoed in the telly coverage and in sports bulletins we had heard on SGR FM, the local radio station, when travelling down. With Lowestoft Town 4-0 up from their first leg tie against Whitley Bay, you did rather get the impression that the Suffolk sporting fraternity were very much expecting to be going to watch an all-Suffolk FA Vase final on May 11th.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with supporting the local team in a positive way, but it was none the less interesting to read and listen to when you are more interested in the opposition. I made a mental note to make sure I mentioned it to a few of the familiar faces I’d see the following day.
Saturday morning produced a nice bright sunny day, and after a morning in Christchurch Park next to the main shopping area in Ipswich, it was time for me to leave the female members of the family and head back to don a shirt and the league tie, and jump in the car to head off to Needham Market.
It’s a journey of about 20 minutes from Ipswich town centre to Needham Market, which is one of those typical small market towns where shops and pubs are dotted along either side of one main street, interspersed between houses. The ground itself, known as Bloomfields, is located a few minutes off the High Street, at the back of a new-ish housing estate.
To give a Vodkat League comparison, the approach to the ground is rather like heading towards Atherton LR’s Crilly Park – once you come off the main road, you weave your way through streets with a mixture of semis and bungalows, and just as you are wondering if you have taken a wrong turning, the floodlights suddenly appear behind a row of houses.
The initial impression of the ground when you arrive is a good one. The car park must hold a few hundred cars, and there is an all weather pitch next to it. At the far end of the car park is an impressive club house, next to the turnstiles, and the roof of a decent sized stand is visible behind it.
In the clubhouse, I made my way up to the hospitality area to meet up with the various familiar faces I’d expected to see. Dave Tomlinson and Geoff Wilkinson made up the League Management Committee contingent, and Dave introduced me to one of the Needham Market officials who he had been talking to earlier. The guy’s name escapes me now, but he gave me an interesting resume of the club’s history.
They have been at the Bloomfields ground for about 20 years now, and the site was chosen because a local farmer let them have the land for a knockdown price, and they had also been left money by a benefactor. The area where the pitch itself is located used to be used to grow sugar beet, and the overall story was one that is similar to many you hear about non-league clubs – humble beginning, lots of hard work by volunteers, loads of grant applications, and after years of work and graft they have very nicely appointed facilities that, frankly, made for a much better setting as a semi final venue than the Coventry Sphinx ground would have done.
Inside the ground itself, there is a decent sized stand, and on the opposite side a covered enclosure that extended about the length of one half, with the rest of the ground open. The boundary fence was close to the pitch all round and with a decent sized crowd already gathering 45 minutes before kick off, there was an air of expectation amid the already noisy crowd.
With about half an hour to go to kick off I had a stroll all the way round the ground to take some pictures, and as I neared the dressing rooms I saw Kirkham manager Mick Fuller. After wishing him well I told him about the article in the previous night’s paper, and he laughed and said he’d mention it just before the team came out.
With kick off approaching I squeezed into my seat in the stand alongside Dave, Geoff and various Kirkham officials, and the ensuing first half was a tense and very tight affair, with Kirkham having the better of the few chances that were created. At half time, back in the hospitality area, the Suffolk FA officials who had been cheery and chatty before the game were a little more grim faced, helped in no small way by the half time score of Whitley Bay 3 Lowestoft 0, making that tie 3-4 on aggregate. A trip to Wembley for them on May 11th was looking decidedly dodgy.
It’s easy to say after the event, but having seen the way the first half went, you just got the feeling that the second half was going to be just as close, with tension gathering as a result as the end of the game came nearer. And that is exactly how it turned out. As the half wore on, Needham Market began to seriously exert some pressure and the Kirkham goal had some narrow escapes.
I was doing a match report on the game for the BBC website so I’d set my stopwatch when the second half began, and from about the midway point in the second half, I was giving almost minute by minute time flashes to Kirkham President David Haythornthwaite who was sitting next to me.
Sharp intakes of breath, strangled yells, and exclamations of agony and relief depending on which team you were supporting punctuated the air as the clock ticked down. My timechecks began to radiate out along the row and into the seats behind me, and just as I told everyone that the 45 minutes was up, the fourth official indicated four minutes of added time. Just four more minutes……
But we didn’t need to wait that long until we knew the game was over. In the second minute of stoppage time, a long through ball found Richie Allen in space on the left, and as he advanced in on goal he unselfishly squared the ball to Matt Walwyn, who tapped the ball into the net to spark wild celebrations among the travelling support.
Funnily enough, the thing I remember most about the moments after the ball hit the back of the net wasn’t so much the celebrations, but the reaction of Needham Market’s players. Almost to a man they were sitting down or slumped on the pitch, some with heads in hands and their collective look of utter dejection and despair gave a very sharp contrast to the jubilation elsewhere.
There was only time for Needham Market’s Glenn Snell to be red carded for a shocking challenge on Kirkham’s Tony Keefe before the referee blew the final whistle and the visitors’ celebrations began in earnest. Understandably, the home support was clearly as devastated as their players, and as the majority of them made a sharp exit from the ground, again I was left with the impression that they had been very confident of winning and that this outcome simply hadn’t featured in their script.
Camera in hand, I joined the throng on the pitch, and after muscling in alongside some press photographers I snapped away, trying desperately to take pictures that didn’t feature an outstretched hand or the back of someone’s head.
I can recall being next to a guy who had a very impressive camera as we took a picture of the Kirkham players holding a banner, and I guess he must have been from the Non League Paper as the shot that featured on the front page the following morning looked very similar one I had captured myself.
Eventually the players dispersed, and returning to the clubhouse, there was a notable lack of home officials and Suffolk FA people. I did some interviews with President David Haythornthwaite and Chairman Dai Davis for the League website, and just enjoyed looking on and sampling the atmosphere as the Kirkham players and officials mingled and chatted.
One nice touch about half an hour after the game ended was when club Press Officer Howard Jones received a text message from everyone at Bootle FC, offering congratulations. Howard passed the phone around for everyone to see the message, and it was nice to know that back in the North West, there was interest around the league in the final result.
The day ended with me taking advantage of an interview with Mick Fuller that had been set up by ITV Anglia. Along with various journalists, I positioned myself behind the camera, and switched on my tape recorder and excerpts from that interview were subsequently aired by ITV Granada on their Monday news bulletins.
By six o’clock the place was clearing and it was time for me to head back to the hotel in Ipswich to see what damage the girls had done to my credit card in the town centre shops that afternoon. The Kirkham entourage boarded the official England team coach that they had hired for the day, and I headed for the car.
As I drove down Needham Market High Street heading for the A14 to Ipswich, it occurred to me that I, like all the Kirkham & Wesham players, management and officials, might never visit Needham Market ever again – but I’ll always remember the day I did.
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