I decided to brave a rush hour crossing of the Dartford Bridge to visit Basildon’s Hive Ground, home of both Basildon United of the Isthmian League North Division and Basildon Town of the Eastern Counties League First Division.

The Hive Ground sits down a quiet lane on the edge of Basildon and is backed by a space age onion-style storage tower structure, which was installed in 1965 by the Ford Motor Company, sitting adjacent to one side of the ground. The ground itself has character, with two covered seated grandstands and a covered standing area on one side of the pitch. There is a small covered stand behind the goal and the remainder of the stadium is open ground. The official capacity of the Hive Ground is 2000 with 200 seated.

Tonight’s fixture was an early league tie between Basildon Town, who won their opening league match, 2-5 against Cannons Wood and Southend Manor.

Basildon Town, managed by Alec Simm, saw five of their squad, Taylor Ansell-Quinton, Dylan Jones, Luke Winter, Jahvid Irish and Adam Jordan, get on the scoresheet in their 5-2 away victory in the first game of the season.

Their opponents tonight, Southend Manor, also had a fine opening day custody, 4-1 against St Margaretsbury FC, with their goals coming from Ross Barnes (2), Owen Reynolds and Lewis Brougham. Manager Mark Royal was hoping they could follow that result up with more success tonight.

The game started with both sides pressurising each other through midfield to get a breakthrough. Neither side could penetrate the last line of defence for the opening half hour, with Southend Manor going closest when a chance struck the inside of the Basildon Town post, before bouncing to safety.

Just when the game looked to be losing energy as each team cancelled out the other, on 29 minutes a long range speculative shot from Basildon Town’s Robbie Scanlon, from 30 yards out, squirted under the keeper into the net to put the home team 1-0 up.

At half time the sides went in with Basildon Town holding onto the narrow 1-0 lead. The unusually large crowd, who had come hoping to see these two high scoring teams battle it out, were still hoping the game held more goals to come.

After absorbing a wave of Southend Manor pressure, on 63 minutes Basildon Town’s Taylor Ansell-Quinton made it 2-0 with a fine headed finish after some fine counter attacking.

A minute later Southend Manor were back in the match, when a heavily disputed challenge on Louie Rodmell resulted in a penalty, which the player himself got up to slot home, bringing the away side back to within a single goal of their opponents at 2-1.

There were chances at both ends before the resulting late drama, which saw the referee point again to the spot, when a push in the back of a Southend Manor player, in the 90th minute, gave Louie Rodmell the chance to fire home his second penalty of the night, levelling the scores at 2-2.

There was no time for either side to grab the winner, so in the end the points were shared. Southend Manor left feeling pleased with their rewards for never giving up. Basildon Town however will know they had the three points in the bag and let it slip.