"Hamworthy United - The County Ground"

I visited here to watch Hamworthy take on Baffins Milton Rovers in a midweek Sydenhams Wessex League Premier Divison fixture. It was the first ever meeting of the two clubs at Hamworthy's ground, BMR only just having been promoted to this level this season.
Whilst the name of the ground is rather pretentious, Hamworthy being a Step 5 club and there being much bigger stadia in Dorset (AFC Bournemouth,Dorchester Town and Weymouth to name three), The County Ground is the Headquarters of the Dorset County FA, with the predominant colour in the ground green and white rather than Hamworthy's club coours of claret and blue.

Location

Hamworthy is a suburb of Poole and is seperated from the town centre by Holes Bay. I was staying in Poole itself and walked to the ground from the town centre, taking about 25 mins and crossing over the Twin Sails Bridge. There are no pubs in the immeadiate vicinity of the ground, but there are plenty of places to eat and drink in Poole. The station is 20-25 mins walk although there is some parking at the County Ground

View

The Main Stand is situated next to the clubhouse and is a rather quaint looking affair. It reminded me of a shelter found on the promenade of a Victorian seaside resort. It probably looked older than it was but was in very good condition. There were no individual seats, just wooden benches. Capacity was over 100. The only other stand in the ground ran from the corner flag to behind the goal at the clubhouse end and was a modern metal terraced arrangement, named the Irvin Brown stand. There was also a small grass area at the front of the clubhouse with wooden picnic tables available.

Facilities

Toliets were in the clubhouse and were clean and tidy. No club shop but some merchandise was sold from the bar.

Food & Drink

There was limited food on offer - burgers, chips, hotdogs, crisps, chocolate etc with tea, coffee or soup to drink. Prices were no worse than anywhere else at this level. The bar in the clubhouse was good and had a good variety of bottled real ales available from local brewers

Atmosphere

The crowd for the game was about 60 and I didn't notice any away supporters. Obviously not a huge amount of noise but there was some light-hearted banter and a few grumbles about the performance. In the clubhouse, the barman identified me straight away as a visitor ('not from around these parts') and I was made to feel very welcome - nice friendly people.

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