West Didsbury and Chorlton 1-2 Darlington, Saturday 14th September 2024

West Didsbury and Chorlton 1-2 Darlington, FA Cup 2nd Qualifying Round, Recreation Ground, att. 1,320 (sellout)

I’ve a free Satdy, a planned rail strike (called off, but by then replaced with abominable fares) mean I’m giving the Super Reds a miss today. Scanning the fixtures earlier in the week, I see my boyhood local team Darlo are away at West Didsbury in the FA Cup. The dream draw for Darlo Kev, in Ashton-under-Lyne, surely. ‘Have you bought a ticket?’ ‘Course I have, I was one of the first in the queue.’ He’s slightly disappointed that the Darlo masses haven’t snaffled the rest of the tickets and mere casuals such as myself can still bag one, online. It’s Tuesday, but by Friday, the game is, indeed, a sellout. What does a 1,320 capacity ground look like?

I pick Kev up and we mosey on down to Chorlton-cum-Hardy. What a wonderful place it is. ‘It’s like we’re in Hampstead’ Kev says, as we survey small cafes with French names and streets with actual trees on. Apparently he looked at here when moving back up north, but it was out of his price range. No wonder. We park up and park ourselves in the first pub we come to, The Lead Station. Sat in the bay window with our reassuringly expensive IPAs (Shindigger Mango Unchained, very nice), it really was like Hampstead.

For West Didsbury, ‘South Manchester’s Premier club’ (how many are there?) it’s a 1st time at this stage of the FA Cup. 2nd qualifying round and a former league team coming to the ‘burbs. Kev worries about the upset. 3 divisions apart, surely the Quakers will steamroller this lot into oblivion? Err..not quite. But (spoiler alert!) they do make it through.

We get to the Recreation Ground, and, despite making a big show of the tickets being segregated, it blatantly isn’t. That’s fine though, everyone’s in good humour. We walk around the ground, flat standing on this side, with a fence backing onto wealthy folk’s gardens. At the far end is the pavilion, with a couple of rows of seats under the overhang. Adjacent, there is a small ‘fell off the back of a lorry’ stand. The other long side, meantime, has some grass banking, and on a glorious day like today, this is the place to be. By now we’ve also bumped into Kev’s Greater Manchester-living cousin (who’s not his cousin, but I can’t remember how they’re related). He used to live in a tiny flat here till he married and ‘realised what he could get in North Manchester for the same money’. I’m telling you, this Chorlton-cum-Hardy place is nice.

Although the ground was well populated, it was by no means a squeeze, aside from an area at the end opposite the pavilion. A small terraced stand was packed out with the regulars. Indeed, this wasn’t WD&C’s first four-figure crowd of the season. For a side in the 9th tier, they do very well for themselves crowd-wise. And the shock was on, as an early Darlo lead was cancelled out with a deflected 20 yarder which looped over the keeper. Darlington had looked much the better team, but missed chances. Thankfully Kev and Cuz weren’t embarrassed. Second half, star man Hatfield pulled his hamstring or something while on the attack, but manfully played on and cut it back for a teammate to scuff it in off the post before collapsing and being helped off (Hatfield, not the goalscorer). West Dids had put up a great fight, but their time was over. Kev just doesn’t want a ‘glamour tie’ cos he’s off to see Buffalo Tom in Glasgow the same nite. Is it 1993? Anyway, we both agreed we’d have to come back here again, preferably with a pre-match pub crawl. It is, after all, a very nice place, with plenty of nice looking pubs.

The Damage:
£7 ent
£2 prog
= £9