Non-League must stick together...
ONE of my earliest memories of the Camrose, former home of Basingstoke Town, was as a local newspaper reporter in the early 2000s.
It was a game against Aldershot Town (if I remember rightly), played around about this time of year on a cut up, patched-up sand-based pitch, more akin to beach football than the Conference South.
As the ball got caught up in the boggy centre circle for the umpteenth time, one elderly home supporter, sat in front of me, turned around to his mate next to him and groaned: “This pitch needs to be completely dug up”. Oh the irony of that observation now.
From whichever side of the fence you sit at, watching the diggers plough through this now-derelict old stadium in recent weeks is nothing short of criminal.
A famous old club, friendly rivals to the two Hampshire clubs I covered as a junior reporter over the last two decades, being made to beg and borrow just to stay alive at their temporary home in Winchester and sitting second bottom of the Step 4 Southern League Division One South table. It shouldn’t happen.
This week, though, the Basingstoke Gazette, unearthed a ‘lost’ covenant, signed in 1953 by Lord William Berry, Viscount Camrose, stating the site must remain as a football ground until 2053.
Whether it still applies is a matter for the legal teams to decide, but at last Basingstoke Town have a glimmer of hope.
Chairman Terry Brown – ironically the manager of the Aldershot team playing in the above game – is leading the pleas for help. “We’re coming to a crisis point now,” he explained (full story page 8). “We’ve got to have started work at Winklebury by March 31 and if we haven’t done that and we can’t raise the money to do the necessary ground grading improvements then we’re going to go out of business.
“We’re only surviving by the goodwill of our supporters. We have no revenue streams. We’re unable to fund the team hence why we’re bottom of the league.”
In the week the football community have united in aid of Worksop Town, there’s a similar cry of desperation stemming from north-mid Hampshire.
Let’s all come together once more and keep our fingers crossed that the covenant can now throw this once-proud club a lifeline.