United Counties League

Division 1

Wednesday 29th March 2023

Kick Off 19.45 Actual 19.47

Hucknall Town 1 Southwell City 1, attendance 283

44’ 1-0

82’ 1-1

@ RM Stadium

Aerial Way

Hucknall

NG15 6DW

£6 Admission

£2 Programme, 32 pages, very poor value.

So, for the second successive night, I did a floodlit ground, despite teams without lights now scheduling early mid week kick offs. Most of my choices fell foul of the weather and my first choice game at Nantyglo, in the Gwent Premier League, did start, but was abandoned at halftime, due to a waterlogged pitch!

Hucknall Town have moved into their new ground here in Aerial Way this season. It is only a hundred or so yards across the opposite side of the B6009 from their former home, which I had visited way back in August 2006. There has been little thought put into the design here though. The covered end is flat standing, so of little use and as with so many new build grounds, the roof doesn’t keep the front couple of rows of seats in the stand dry when it rains, which it did tonight from about fifteen minutes in. The pitch here was perfect (not that the club bothered replying on Twitter as to whether there was a pitch inspection or not) despite the rain (thankfully light, rather than the 2 hours heavy rain forecast from 5-7pm) and looked no worse at the end of the match than it had at kick off.

The match was 3rd versus 14th in the league table, with Hucknall very much in the shake up for play off places. I haven’t been too impressed with games I’ve seen in this league over recent years, but this was pretty entertaining and Southwell probably did enough to have even nicked the three points. Hucknall broke the deadlock just before halftime, when a diagonal cross in from the left was headed into his own net by a Southwell defender trying to head clear from just inside the six yard box. The deserved equaliser came eight minutes from time, when a cross from the right was headed in from 6 yards.

This just leaves me with tonight’s visitors as the only ground not visited in this league. As usual, the journey home wasn’t smooth. Problems on the M1 meant a diversion via A43 and M40 back towards London and a single file section on the M25 near Junction 9 was also slow. Oh the joys of midweek football!