Tonight I had a meeting at 7pm at the Community Centre. It was only a meeting of the Finance sub-committee so did not last too long and I just had enough time to walk down the road to the Broadfield stadium to catch Crawley Town play Barnet in the Conference league.

I managed to squeeze into the ground in time for the kick-off, and it really was a squeeze because the attendance was 2949. It might not look a lot compared to the gates for Arsenal, Manchester United, or even West Ham, but for a midweek non-league game its a very healthy turnout.

One reason for the large crowd was that Barnet are top of the league. Another reason is that Crawley went into the game with an unbeaten home record this season so hopes were high for us to beat the league leaders. The stakes were raised by Barnet coming to the game with an unbeaten away record. On the face of it that might look like a recipe for a draw, but Crawley have not drawn many home games and Barnet have not drawn many away games.

In the end it was a 3-1 win for the visitors, but the game was closer than that result suggests. Barnet did not look as comfortable as they did when they demolished Dagenham in their televised game earlier in the season, and it was at least half an hour before they scored and at half-time it was still one-nil. It was two-nil pretty early in the second half, but Crawley kept putting pressure on and had a goal disallowed soon after before they clawed one back eventually. Towards the end, it looked like there might be a late equaliser until a fantastic strike in injury time sealed the game, causing the ground to start emptying before the final whistle.

So its no longer ‘fortress Broadfield’ but if Crawley keep playing that well there will not be many teams who can come here and get a similar result.