"Coggeshall Town - The Crops"

So day / match 2 of my Eastern Counties League weekend. After enjoying (enduring?) the bitter cold at Haverhill Rovers on the Friday night I was hoping for something a little more…well, warm on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately the weather was not being kind and my first choice game at Halstead Town fell victim to the frost by mid morning. This left me with one viable option in the ECL – at Coggeshall – with a back up of a debut in the Essex Senior League with Stansted v Clapton (Stansted had already tweeted that they were playing). A 1230 call to Coggeshall confirmed that their match was on, so the ECL was to be my host for a second ‘double header’ this year !

The Crops is a mixture of new and traditional....clearly the club is having money put into it, reflected by the new social facilities and the playing staff. Yet the ground for non-league fans remains very traditional.

Location

Coggeshall is a small town situated midway between Braintree and Colchester (the A120 bypasses it). The nearest station is Kelvedon which is 2 miles to the south, on the A12. Plenty of buses serve the town as its on the route between both Colchester and Chelmesford and Halstead and Chelmesford. There is also a wide variety of pubs in the town itself – the nearest one is The Fleece, but others within a few hundred yards include The White Hart and The Chapel Inn. Eating wise, I noted a chippy (which I believe is highly recommended) and a Chinese takeaway.

View

The ground itself – officially called ‘The Crops’ – is better known as West Street and is located on (suprisingly) the western edge of the town. The ground is oriented is a roughly east-west line and entry is through turnstiles in the NE corner of the ground. The clubhouse / changing rooms etc are located at the far end (NW corner) and are of wooden construction with a deck separating them. They looked to me as if they were a fairly new construction, with the clubhouse having a distinctly modern and expensive feel to it (glass doors emblazoned with the club crest, neon lights on the bar, comfy seating…). Perhaps this might have something to do with the fact that a certain Mr Olly Murs is clearly involved in the club and was sat on the bench during the game?
The rest of the ground is in contrast to the new clubhouse. The pitch level is at least 10 feet below the clubhouse and changing rooms (the players come down a set of steps in the NW corner) and the Main Stand is set at the bottom of a bank. It is an old construction…it actually retains some charm, despite there being various holes in the corrugated iron roof. Seats are of plastic tip up variety and are set in four rows, the stand containing about 100 in all. Behind the far goal (clubhouse end) is a long low covered terrace which runs the full length of the pitch. The other end is uncovered, whilst the far (dugout) side is inaccessible.

Facilities

Toilets are in the clubhouse and, whilst clean and modern, are surprisingly small. The club has no shop and sold no merchandise, although, as with Haverhill Rovers, the programme is good value and contains a fair amount of content – something which seems to be the norm in the ECL.

Food & Drink

For food and drink there is the bar and a hatch on the outside of the clubhouse selling hot drinks and various hot food and chocolate. The Sausage Rolls seemed particularly popular although I didn’t try one myself

Atmosphere

Coggeshall seem to be a club on the up. Having come up from the ECL Div 1 last season they are firmly in the hunt for a second successive promotion and seem to be attracting players from higher leagues this season. The crowds reflect this with 142 present for this game. Not quite as noisy as Haverhill, but still pretty boisterous with lots of kids present. I wonder if it would be like this without a certain Mr Murs?

Write your own review of The Crops

Have you been to The Crops? Write a review!