Carshalton Athletic's War Memorial Sports Ground

The site of quite possible the lowest point in Lincoln City's history is the ground of Carshalton Athletic.

Very few people imagined that Carshalton Athletic would give Lincoln City manager problems when the sides were drawn together in the FA Trophy Second Round, however, the team who (at the time) played three divisions below the Imps gave City a run for their money and took the Imps to a replay. It was quite bizarre before hand as Carshalton had made a really big deal about coming to Lincoln, including arranging their coaches to get to the city several hours early to do some sight seeing. It was quite bizarre to read.

A few days later the clubs met in the replay, but getting there was far trickier than it had initially seemed as the route that sat-navs took you was right through London, rather than around the M25. I know that the M25 isn't great at the best of times, but it is a damn bit easier than going through London, and it took nearly an hour to correct ourselves and get onto the motorway.

Once at the ground we were shown into the car park that is right behind one of the stands and the only issue is that there didn't seem to be a lot to do around the ground, other than maybe go and look around their neighbours Sutton United, but we didn't, so it was straight into the ground.

I had never even seen a picture of Carshalton's ground, so I had absolutely no idea what the ground looked like, and to be quite honest I was surprised that it wasn't just a bar around the pitch. I've been to a few grounds at that sort of level (at the time) and it was one of the biggest that I have been to.

Immediately to your right when you enter the ground is a small terrace where the majority of the Carshalton fans were gathered in the second half. Following it around in a clockwise direction is a tiny seated stand towards the far end of the ground. It was of a similar size and position to Poacher's Corner at Sincil Bank.

Following the ground around further still and you get to a pitch length, one stepped terrace that has about ten feet worth of roofing over the centre of it. This was where most of the Lincoln fans stood in the second half.

The final stand is a fairly large pitch length terrace. It is about 8 or 9 steps high, which is bigger than a lot of terraces much higher up in the league structure and this is where I spent most of the game. The view from this stand was quite reasonable to be honest....so I got to watch City's pathetic performance from a decent stand point.

In a crowd that was completely unsegregated it was pretty much impossible to tell how many fans for each side that there were, which also means that it was hard to tell  who were the Carshalton fans and therefore judging friendliness would be difficult, however, not once did they try and antagonise the obvious Lincoln fans. 

Whilst Carshalton's fans didn't create a LOT of noise, they were fairly consistent with their singing and it's rare to find a club in the non-league that actually sings quite often.

Overall Carshalton isn't an awful ground for that level, or indeed as a place in general, however, I find it extremely unlikely that I will ever visit this ground again, unless of course we draw them again in a cup competition.