Erith Town 0 Cray Valley PM 0

Match 90/15/1295 - Tuesday, 19th April 2016 - SCEFL

Erith Town (0) 0
Cray Valley PM (0) 0
Attendance: 56

Entrance: £5 Senior
Programme: £1
Mileage: 82/6,429

Ground-hopping is the trainspotting of football, people with notebooks and cameras turning up at the far-flung corners of the country to watch a game of which they have no direct interest in either of the participants. To a certain extent, I am a groundhopper, but in normal circumstances I have at least a passing interest in one of the competing clubs.

For a past-time that has no rules, it has a complicated set of unwritten regulations to which the late Tony Kempster's site provides the bible. Let me give you a for instance, the case in point being Arsenal. I saw Arsenal on many occasions at Highbury and have visited the Emirates to watch an international match, but I haven't seen Arsenal play at home at their new home. So under the rules, I haven't done Arsenal! Understand? Nobody does!

However, these rules were the reason for turning up at the Badgers on a chilly April evening. I was only at the home of Cray Valley a couple of weeks ago but their ground-sharers, Erith Town on this occasion were the home team, allowing the cross to go through their name on the Southern Counties East League list. Unfortunately, this was also Erith's penultimate game at Cray before embarking on a new groundshare at VCD, another place I've been to but will not count against Erith's name!

This was dubbed the BadgersDerby and, considering both sides were at home in effect, an attendance of just 56 is woeful.

As usual in this situation the lack of a team sheet makes it difficult to report the match with any certainty. The star performer of the evening was the Erith Town left winger, who wore the No. 7 shirt, I believe it was 17-year-old Anthony Adesite.

Early chances for Cray Valley fell to Brad Potter, ex of Tunbridge Wells and Rory Hill, ex of Tonbridge but neither tested the goalkeeper.

After 15 minutes, Adesite brought the first save of the match out of Brad Morgan and on 35 minutes, some brilliant work set up an opportunity for Stuart Zanone who wasted the chance dragging his shot wide.

The principal moment of the second half came with 20 minutes remaining when Cray Valley full back Adam Gross vehemently protested his way into the referee's notebook and within a couple of minutes committed a foul that the official deemed worthy of a second yellow.

With 17 minutes remaining a mazy run from Timmi Osibodu ended with an effort blocked by Corey Holder.

Not a game to write home about, but a tick in the book. Sad trainspotter.