On Saturday 16th October I went to watch Handsworth play Louth Town in the Koolsport North East Counties Division 1.

With it being so local to us, we had been wanting to go to Handsworth FC ever since we had discovered that they had joined the North East Counties league at the start of the season. So with Chesterfield away at Wycombe Wanderers, we had a free weekend and decided to go.

The journey to Handsworth only took around 30 minutes, though it took us a little bit of time to actually find the ground as it is hidden, but we still got there around 10 minutes before kick off.

Their wasn’t a lot at the ground, with a perimeter barrier around the edge and a small shelter at one side, but that was expected with the team only playing their first season in step 6 of non league football.

The game began in front of 74 fans, including a fair few from Louth, and it was the away side who started better.

We walked around the ground for the first 10 or so minutes, taking pictures and watching the game at the same time. Sadly, not long into the match the rain began to fall quite heavily, so everyone went and stood under the small, crowded shelter.

On the 22nd minute Louth Town’s Kurt Crossley scrambled the ball into the net to give the away side a much deserved 1-0 lead.

The rain did begin to hold off towards the end of the half, and we went and stood behind the goal that Louth were shooting towards. Handsworth equalised on the 43rd minute with a goal from Daniel Payne, but just a minute later, right in front of us, Carl Martin gave Louth the lead once again after some poor defending in the area.

At half time we headed up to the clubhouse and had a rather nice burger, before heading back for the second half’s action. Handsworth came out second half looking the better side and trying to force an equaliser, but nothing seemed to be going in.

For the last 15 minutes of the game, we went and stood right by the dugouts. You could how much the match meant to both managers, who were screaming at their players and shouting abuse at the officials.

Handsworth got their equaliser with just 8 minutes to go, when Alex Torr’s shot went in off the post. You could clearly see how angry the Louth Town manager was with his sides second alf performance, after they looked to be cruising in the first half. However, the game ended a draw.

As we were leaving the lady who was doing the raffle approached us and asked us to check our raffle ticket because she couldn’t find the winner. My Dad checked our ticket and saw that we had won, which was a nice ending to our day at Handsworth.

And to top it all off, we heard the news that Chesterfield had beaten Wycombe 2-1 and had gone top of League 2!