25. Lye Meadow-Alvechurch

Alvechurch 1-2 Coventry Sphinx
Midland Alliance
12.2.11

Admission: Adults: £5 Children: £3
Programme: £1
Attendance: 63
Capacity: 1,700
Seated: 150
Covered: 150
Town: Alvechurch, Worcestershire
Shop: No
Floodlights: Yes
Step: 9

A 3 hour trip down to the West Midlands was undertaken with the hope of attending either a game at Kidderminster or Stourport. However to no prevail. We arrived in Redditch (our drop off point) just before 14:00 with no hope of getting to said destanations before 15:00. Instead we went into Redditch rail station and got tickets to Alvechurch. The train journey is a short ten minutes and continues up to Birmingham. Alvechurch is a very quiet town compared top the loud traffic in Redditch. We only got lost once on the way to the ground. I had decided to taken written directions rather than maps. We arrived with 20 minutes until kick off.

The turnstile, unusually has no roof yet is still of the classic design (no pay boxes here). The side you come out on is open hard standing as is the North side. The West End has 3 steps of unusual terracing over half of the width. It is unusual because as you move along this end. The terracing steps up both in depth and length. This stand was covered in the 1990s as a picture in the clubhouse depicts. The steel girders that held the stand in place are still in position. The main stand is on the south side of the ground. It contains 150 red plastic tip up seats. With a tin roof covering them. The clubouse and changing rooms are on the north side of the ground. The clubhouse has many pictures dotted around and sky sports on a projector screen!

Coventry Sphinx took the lead in the first half when a corner 'apparently'hit Williams' back and went in. Alvechurch equalised in the second half when Dempster scored just 30 seconds in.
However Coventry needed the 3 points to climb above Alvechurch and Cudworth headed home with 22 minutes to go to make sure of that.

We got the bus back into Redditch before getting another bus to Webheath. The bus that went from Alvechurch cost £2.10 for a child single for a 10 minute journey!
Alvechurch went on to finish 20th which could which was just 9 points clear of a potential relegation place.

The programme is 44 pages and is very stat heavy, yet there is no league table. But, to be fair to Alvechurch there are only 3 pages of ads. Some examples of the stats are: an all time record of teams performance in the Alliance, Stats from Alvechurch's season so far and recent league histories. Obviously a good programme for those who like stats.

My first dip into the Midland Alliance wasn't as good as I'd hoped but hopefully things will get better.