National League North
Tuesday 8th March 2022
Kick Off 19.45 On Time !
York City 3 Darlington 1, attendance 3,579 (616 away)
69’ 1-0
70’ 2-0
79’ 3-0 (pen)
90’+ 3, 3-1
@ L.N.E.R. Community Stadium
Kathryn Avenue
Huntington
YO32 9AF
£20 Admission
£5 Car Parking
Programme ? Never saw any on sale or anybody with one.
York City moved into their new 8,500 capacity L.N.E.R. Community Stadium (shared with York City Knights R.L.F.C.) during last season, when games were played behind closed doors, or with limited capacity, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is typically bland and cheap looking for a new build, rather like a giant ’Meccano’ ground and consists of four all seated stands, with random seat colouring, which offers no clue that it is home to The Minstermen. It is built on the former site of Ryedale Stadium, where I had seen Ryedale-York R.L.F.C. lose 6-13 to Sheffield Eagles in a Regal Trophy 1st Round match on 17th November 1991, in front of a crowd of just 1,138.
I had visited City’s former home, the much more characterful Bootham Crescent, for a Football League Division 4 match on 4th November 1989, when a crowd of 2,496 witnessed a 1-1 draw versus Torquay United. I also managed to see rugby league here as well, when I saw York City Knights lose16-18 to Whitehaven on 18th June 2017.
Tonight’s match had the feel of a Football League match, rather than Step 2 of non-League, helped by the fact that both clubs are ex-League, York having been relegated in 2016 and Darlington in 2010, although the club have been re-formed since then. Charging £20 admission at tier two is ridiculous and if you arrive by car, you are more or less forced to pay £5 on top of this to park, as there are parking restrictions around the entire ground. The visitors had an impressive 616 fans in the North Stand, and probably a fair number dotted around in the ’home’ sections. I opted for a seat in the West Stand, in Block B, which is unallocated seating, or at least it was supposed to be. I had to move twice, as I was sat in a Season Ticket holder’s seat! I did tweet about this and received a reply from York City, who told me there was no unallocated seating in the West Stand, although the match ticket clearly states otherwise! Perhaps they need to pay a little more attention to detail.
Despite this being 7th (the final play off place) versus 11th in the league table, it wasn’t good to watch. The first hour or so had been dreadful. Apart from a couple of efforts hit straight at the ’keeper, it never looked like producing a goal. Then, out of nothing, York broke the deadlock. Cutting in from the left, a shot/cross was fired into the 6 yard box and the bounce seemed to deceive the ’keeper and the ball found it’s way into the far corner of the net. Within a minute it was 2-0, the striker played through to finish one on one, with offside appeals from the Darlington defenders waved away. An emphatic finish from the penalty spot made it 3-0 nine minutes later. Darlington grabbed a consolation goal in the final minute of stoppage time.
