Walton and Hersham

For various reasons bordering on the sensible having woken this morning in time I deicided to give the Brentford away trip to Bradford a miss. Instead I headed the few miles down the road to see Walton vs Windsor. Walton are having a good first season in the Rymans premier and before this game sit in 8th place and have some expectations of being involved in the end of season play-offs. I dont have a view on this as I neither know the rules nor even know if the rules have been created. Last season the various leagues seemed to make up the rules about which teams were eligible as they went along. In contrast Windsor, whose president is the duke of edinburgh ( not present today!) leading to the obligatory jokes about the Windosr catering ( such as serving only King Prawns and Pheasant kebabs ) are having a most miserable season. They have only won twice all season and are looking confidently at relegation with only Redbridge below them who have won exactly one game. The Windsor manager is Dave Carroll, ex of wycombe in the era when they first gained their league status. Indeed around that time for a few seasons I rather confusingly had season tickets at Adams Park ( before it became the Causeway Stadium ) as well as Brentford.
A decent crowd arrived of 220, about double the average. Plenty of families with their children. For a wizened adult like myself an £8 fee gained admission, for children £4 sufficed.
The first half was a dull affair mostly. Windsor played without too much confidence and little obvious motivation. .During the game Walton managed to gift Windsor more goals than they had scored in their previous 8 games. The first one arrived midway through the first half courtesy of a ridiculously given away penalty from Lee Allum. Walton equlaised before half time and took control of the game in the second half to lead 3-1 with 15 minutes remaining.Robert Traynor the ex-Brentford junior scored one goal and was man of the match. They then gifted Windsor their second goal with an own goal. A decent cross was turned in by a defender aghast to see the ball trickling towards the goalline and over. In between time the Walton goalkeeper Ricky Perks, was not having a comfortable day and looked less than convincing. A 3-2 win for Walton thus being made more difficult than in reality it really was.Dave Carroll looked emotivated and not far from chronically depresed throughout the game. Standing in the obligatory box he said little often retreating to the sanctuary of the dug out. If a managers role is to motivate his players then he fails miserably on this parameter.In the last 15 minutes Windsor played some decent football and on a lucky day might have equalised. Frankly they looked like a side doomed to relegation. Windsor have played 10 home games this season with an average crowd of 266 ( in comparison the Walton average is 173 ). This statistic hides one salient fact that they have already played AFC Wimbledon at home and Walton have not. The lowest Windsor crowd is 86 for a league game and the highest 1,012. Have a guess whom the visitors were for the larger crowd? Wimbledon tend to bring along at least 1000 fans and thus boost the average by over 50 fans a game.The other bad news for Windsor was that Redbridge who are the only club below them chose this afternoon to beat Margate 3-1 and record their second win of the season. The other game of note in the Rymans Premier was at Chelmsford where the home side beat their near neighbours and before today tenants, Billericay town , 2-1 in the first game at their new stadium in front of an amzing crowd of 2,998. I can be fairly confident that neither of these two sides will see crowds that sized unless AFC Wimbledon come to town in a meaningful game. As an endnote on that point AFC may well get promotion to the Nationwide Conference South this season whereas MK Dons (AKA Wimbledon or Franchise FC) are prime candidates for relegation to League 2 making only two divisions difference between the two sides. I for one would love to be there when they first play each other!