Today I needed a ground that was close enough to home so that I could head straight home afterwards to get sat down in time to watch my team, Birmingham City, in their live FA Cup fixture, at home to Newcastle United. I decided that I’d revert to a fixture in one of my favourite leagues, the SCEFL (Southern Counties East Football League) Premier Division, to watch Larkfield & New Hythe FC, a club with big plans for the future, including a new stadium and sports complex.

The Eden Estates Stadium has a modern clubhouse, refreshment vans, and decent covered seating. Parking can be tricky at times but the ground is welcoming and a good venue with a decent pitch for high quality attacking football. Crowds this season have varied, with 300 attending a cup match in August with Cray Wanderers, however normally crowds fluctuate between 80 and 120 fans.

Larkfield & New Hythe came into today’s game in fifth place, just inside the play off spots. The manager Mickey Phillips, who took over from outgoing manager Danny Lee, just last month, will have looked to the goal scoring attributes of Matt Day, Tyler Ibe and Bryan Zepo (all 10 goals) to fire his team to an expected three home points against league strugglers Stansfeld today.

Stansfeld’s fortunes have really stayed low this season, after finishing just above the relegation places in eighteenth place in 2023-24. They sat in fifteenth place, just six points above Lordswood FC who occupied the final relegation spot, coming into the match. Manager Billy Shinners has seen his side’s goals come from Chris Alhassan (8 goals), Rob Hughes (5 goals) and Dario Sesay-De Luca (4 goals) this season, but any goals scored have been balanced out by a leaky defence, which has conceded 20 more goals than the team have scored already. In the earlier game between the two sides this season Stansfeld lost 1-4 with Matt Day bagging a hat trick.

The game opened cautiously with Chris Alhassan creating openings for Stansfeld whilst Larkfield & New Hythe looked dangerous going forward. On 20 minutes a corner kick for the home side fell to the feet of Harvey Welford, who slotted home to put the Larks 1-0 ahead.

On 33 minutes it was 2-0, with Harvey Welford striking home again after some fine build up play on the left by Tyler Ibe.

On the stroke of half time Welford completed his hat trick to make it 3-0 at the break., virtually walking the ball through a very stationary Stansfeld FC defence. The crowd of 90 went into the break wondering if Stansfeld FC had it in them to launch a comeback, or if the home side would pile on more pain in the second half.

After just 13 minutes of the second half Harvey Welford had made it four for himself and the Larks with a fine lobbed finish, which I caught the end of!

As the half progressed the home side tired and Stansfeld FC finally created some chances. A free kick from Jimmy Shepard going close and another striking the cross bar on 83 minutes. In the 90th minute Billy Marsh was dismissed for Stansfeld FC for a second bookable offence which took all of the energy out of their efforts.

At the full time whistle it was Larkfield & New Hythe who continued their press for a play off place, with Harvey Welford’s man of the match, four goal performance, capping off a solid team display. Stansfeld will need to show the spirit and effort they showed in the last quarter of the match, if they are to avoid being sucked into a relegation battle this season.