Vintage Aldershot: On the yomp

Words: Tom Reed

Images: Tom Reed

Aldershot is a strange town of expansion and contraction.

Home of the British Army and a football club that’s been slapped about by financial problems in the past.

How do you juxtapose those two things; the movement of vast numbers of troops to battle and the shimmying of forwards, trying to hit the net?

The Crimean War versus Kidderminster Harriers at home.

There’s a weight that this place carries on its shoulders.

Then called “Aldershott”, a Hampshire village of 851 that was little more than heathland in 1851, grew to a town of 16000 by 1861, chosen for a large garrison due to its proximity to the South Coast.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Aldershot Town FC.

The football team is back on the rise again, up in the National League playoff places and hopeful of a return to the Football League.

They are called Aldershot Town now, but it’s not their first incarnation. Aldershot FC, formed in 1926, went to the wall in 1992 with debts of £1.2 million.

Their final match at Cardiff City on Friday, March 13 1992 no longer exists as it was expunged from the records. The Shots lost 2-0 in South Wales with a team of kids, including the son of the groundsman. The City fans held a whip round to raise some bunce for the unpaid Shots players and a classic Aldershot Union flag flapped around forlornly in the away end.

They are used to a yomp here and the re-formed Aldershot Town went from the Isthmian League Division Three to the Football League within 16 years but then went into administration in 2013.

The administration ruling came just five days after the Shots relegation back into non-League for a club that was used to being kicked in the bollocks when it is down on the deck.

Reed/ Terrace Edition. Aldershot Town FC.

Yet, just as those heath farmers in the 1800’s would have had a “what the fuck” moment when the barracks, named after far off campaigns began to be built, Aldershot Town fans are scratching their heads at another turn of events.

It’s Wealdstone instead of Waterloo and Halifax Town instead of Talavera now though.

They put seven past Swindon Town in the FA Cup First Round proper in Wiltshire, with the scoreline worthy of a full vidiprinter worded spelling given the astonishment.

Swindon did score four in return but Aldershot had begun to pique the interest from old-school types who remembered the Shots from those 90’s days, when their now manager Tommy Widdrington was a teenager given his debut at the Dell by Southampton, an hour down the road.

Players like Lorent Tolaj and Jack Barham have given the Shots fans confidence of mixing it at the top end of the National League with a cup run thrown in too.

Swiss striker Tolaj was schooled by FC Sion before joining Brighton and adds power to Widdrington’s front line, while the versatile Barham, signed from Maidenhead, brings pace and guile which is what you need to unpick close matches at the top end of non-League.

The Beatles infamously played to just 18 people at the Aldershot Palais Ballroom in 1961 for their first gig south of the Mersey. The local paper didn’t print the advert, leaving George Harrison and Paul McCartney to dance the foxtrot and play football with the bingo balls.

While their wasn’t quite the excitement of giddy Beatles trying to control small balls, there was a quiet buzz around Saturday’s match with Kidderminster Harriers at the Recreation Ground.

That it took place on Remembrance Day was obviously significant, with the dignified shuffle of Royal Gurkha Rifles veterans around the ground at odds with the tensions of protests in London.

Aldershot is home to a large community of the Nepali soldiers and their families, with the sacrifices of troops from outside the UK writ large and in the creaking bones of Gurkhas trying to get up the steep hills surrounding the Rec.

A bad taste sticker with an image of Joanna Lumley, who campaigned for Gurkha resettlement rights made the news in 2017.

The word is that it was probably only a tongue-in-cheek thing but might speak of an uneasy understanding of the change in demographics with an estimated 10,000 Nepali veterans said to live in the area.

In truth, you’re more likely to be on the end of a crap joke from the regulars in the Crimea pub than you are a Gurkha’s “Kukri” and Aldershot retains the charm of a ground that is a five minute walk from the town centre.

The Recreation Ground is on the list of the few remaining league-level grounds with that old-school feel. It’s East Bank terrace retains the sound of when an “end” was a thing and coming to Aldershot came with the risk of being whacked by squaddies on leave.

There’s another contradiction at play here, in that Aldershot have a quintessentially English football experience with these vast floodlights and the East Bank with its barrel roof and the outside bar under the trees, yet with plans to redevelop the site.

As we’ve seen at Griffin Park Brentford and the soon to be gone beauties at Kenilworth Road, Luton and Goodison Park, Everton, the trend is to replace our traditional grounds with new-builds that squeak of modernity.

Yet, in a society that seems to understand heritage in other spheres, from the preservation of notable buildings to the restoration of antiques, it is strange that this doesn’t extend to football grounds, which cradle our precious weekends.

It will be a travesty if the Recreation Ground, as we know it, goes and the Aldershot lads in their acid green adidas stripes and Acquascutum check can’t bounce underneath the barrel any more, reduced to trying to enjoy the world’s worst house party like in the new gaff at York City.

But that’s Aldershot for you, always expanding and contracting and after a further win, they will be dreaming of a return to the Football League which has often kicked them in the bollocks when they are on the deck.

The upcoming FA Cup Second Round clash against Stockport County will be a dirty classic, under those looming lights.