Ebbsfleet's Stonebridge Road

The end of Lincoln's first season back in non-league couldn't have ended with a trip to a more typically non-league ground. Stonebridge Road isn't a ground for that those enjoy the finer things in life, but it isn't an absolutely awful ground.

Stonebridge Road is certainly a ground for the hardy souls of a football club. It is about as far away in terms of facilities from luxery as you can get. It's a full on trip to a ground that feels like it is right out of the 1970s.

Getting down to Ebbsfleet is fairly simple, that despite the distance. Going over the large bridge on the the M25 saves a lot of time and the ground is just the other side of that bridge. The ground is also right on the outskirts of the town, so it is fairly simple to get to in generally.

Once you're in the town there really isn't a lot to do at all especially directly near the ground, so near enough the only thing to do, unless you want to go into a pub, is go into the ground.

You enter the ground on the corner of two of the stands and unlike most grounds around, there is no segregation whatsoever, meaning that you can stand/sit whenever you wish, which is something that I do love doing. It's something that you don't get enough of at most games and allows a signficant amount of different views to be enjoyed. As you can tell from the amount of photos I have posted on this review, it is an awesome thing to be able to do.

The stand to your right as you enter the ground is a terraced stand that although it doesn't look overly big, it does offer an excellent view of the action from the top and is a surprisingly elevated view. Most of the time this stand is pretty deserted so that chances of having a view restricted by others is quite slim, and on the first visit I ended up being stood on that terrace in the second half completely on my own.

Going clockwise around the ground you get to a small seated stand the covers about half of the pitch. Unfortunately they don't allow away fans in this stand and reserve all the seats for Ebbsfleet fans.

Continuing further clockwise around the ground you get to the club shop in the corner, but there is pretty much nothing worth buying in there for neutrals. I do occasionally buy things from the club shops at other grounds, however, there was nothing really of interest in there.

Continuing a bit further along you reach the stand behind the goal. This is a seated stand that stretches the width of the pitch, however, upon closer inspection it seems to just be a temporary style stand that has been placed over an old terrace. There is quite a gap between the back of the seats and the back of the stand.

The view from this stand is quite good though and it is unrestricted. The only issue with this is that the view can be restricted by other people, and it can become difficult to see the goal properly.

Continuing around you get to the final stand, a pitch length terrace of which 1/2 is covered by a roof. The view from this stand is again quite god, albeit restricted by pillars.

The one thing that pissed me off about this stand was that no matter where you stood, someone would always come along and say that they usually stood there and try and force you to move, and in the second visit someone stood RIGHT next to me, literally within a foot, and wouldn't stand still. He was one twitchy fucker and it became quite distracting to say the least.

In general though, the Ebbsfleet fans are fairly friendly, although they do strike me as the "this is a local club for local people" types. They really didn't like away fans standing in their stand, even though it's not segregated.

The atmosphere at Ebbsfle is pretty non-existant, with their fans seemingly more content complaining about the away fans making an atmosphere than actually creating an atmosphere themselves.

Overall Stonebridge Road isn't an awful experience and they do have some of the oddest fans you are ever likely to meet, so I suppose in many ways it makes it one of the more unusual away games that we're likely to have.