Tims 92

Causeway United

The Beeches

Ground No. 97

Visited - Saturday 12th August 2006
Result - Causeway United 2-3 Atherstone Town
Competition - Midland Football Alliance
Attendance - 125

Thanks to Sky TV, Wolves’ game against Preston had been put back 24 hours to the Friday evening, so that meant I had a chance to visit another new ground. I’d set my eyes on a local game, and after looking down the fixtures, Causeway United’s first match at The Beeches seemed like a good prospect, with them hosting newly promoted Atherstone Town.

During the summer, Causeway had been evicted from their previous home, (The Grove), and so the future of the club had been in some doubt, before Tividale stepped in and offered the use of their facilities. Although Tividale played at a lower level, the ground was suitable for the Midland Alliance, and so the clubs future was assured for the time being.

Being local, I didn’t have to leave home until gone midday, catching the train from Wolverhampton down to Dudley Port at about 1:30pm, before making the short walk to the ground from there. When first approaching ‘The Beeches’, you can’t really see it until you are right outside, with the ground being tucked away behind houses at the bottom of a small cul-de-sac. Despite this, once there it opened out, with a sizable car park taking up the space from the entry gates to the turnstiles.

After going in, I was greeted with a scene fairly typical to this level of football, with only two sides being developed and flat standing around the other two. The main seated stand was to our left as we entered, running the length of the pitch. It wasn’t a particularly large structure, featuring only two rows of bench seating, but it was covered, not that shelter was needed on what was a gloriously sunny afternoon! At the far end and along the far side (where the dugouts were situated) was hard standing, whilst at the turnstiles end was more hard standing in front of the club house, which contained all of the facilities inside. The most notable feature of the ground however wasn’t the stands, it was in fact the pitch, which had quite a slope running down from the dugouts side towards the stand.

Having taken a few pictures, and found somewhere to sit, it wasn’t long before the game got started, although it was soon stopped again when after six minutes the Atherstone keeper was injured. At first it looked like a bit of a ‘comedy fall’, with him seemingly tripping over his laces when bending down to pick up the ball, but it soon became obvious that it was more serious when a stretcher was needed to carry him off and be replaced. After that, Causeway dominated the first half, going into the break 2-1 up, with two goals from Andy Jones, including an overhead kick, but in the second half they just didn’t turn up, letting Atherstone back into it. The visitors equalised on the hour mark, and there was more bad news for Causeway when they had a man sent off for a late tackle. With the advantage of an extra man, it was all Atherstone after that, and they managed to take all three points when with five minutes left, Mark Williams headed over the oncoming keeper from the edge of the area to make it 3-2. Despite a fair amount of injury time, Causeway never looked like making a comeback, and so it was the visitors who got their campaign off to a good start, looking to have made the step-up from the Midland Combination with relative ease.

After the final whistle had gone, I made a quick getaway to get the early train home, arriving back in good time.

Overall, it had been quite a good day. The ground is a nice little place, although probably not one to visit in winter with there being little shelter other than in the stand. Despite this though, I did quite like it, and so will probably get back there one of the days.