Friday 14th of January – 7:45 kick off.
On a cold January evening we start out journey of away day blogs and ratings!
A rescheduled match saw us travel away to Barking taking us 50 minutes with a small amount of slow moving traffic.
An enjoyable car journey driven by Graham, reliving his past as a Met police officer in and around the surrounding areas of Dagenham. Myself (Alan) and Lee taking it all in and adding our input into the conversation.
The ground itself was easy to find and locate especially with the local knowledge Graham had.
Once at the ground the we found ourselves having to park outside the ground due to the car park being full (very littlespace due to a covid test centre taking up most of the car park!).
For the journey, ground location and parking I give this a 6/10
At the ground, our food correspondent Special K as he wants to known, sampled what Barking had to offer. His thoughts were that the burger was satisfactory and pretty standard, he asked for onions but did not recive any to his disappointment! The chips were a different matter, nice a light, fluffy on the inside with a certain crispness to them. Highly recommended!
I spoke to the chef who was surprised by the high demand for onions my the Maldon and Tiptree fans, maybe because the of lack of them at Park Drive…
The bar was small with a nice selection of beer and shorts, prices were reasonable.
The prices for the food and beverages were all pretty fair, taking this all into consideration I score the refreshments and Bar 6/10
The ground had one small turnstile with access available to wheelchairs. The admission cost was £12 for adults and u16 got in for free.
Once inside the pitch is artificial with 4 floodlights at each corner of the ground providing sufficient light for the evening game. The stadium mainly standing, has one section of seats and plenty of space for fans to spread out.
The toilets are located outside in portercabins, slightly run down and the hand dryer wasn’t working. If there was a big crowd a queue would likely be long as there is not many spaces or cubicals.
Very standard ground and facilities but has a lot of opportunity to improve and expand 5/10
Overall Barking finish with a total score of 17 out of 30
Let’s forget about the result on the pitch, as Browny’s boys suffered a 3-1 away defeat, without a central defender on the pitch. Poor Stokesy went off injured inside the first 10 minutes.