CB Hounslow United

CB Hounslow United FC is a non-league football club based in the west London suburb of Hounslow, close to Heathrow Airport. The club was formed as Richmond Rangers who disbanded during the 1987-88 season.

The club was reformed and named CB United; with CB standing for Cater Bank, which was a company owned by the father of the chairman who sponsored the club at the time. The team competed in the Hounslow & District Football League.

Local senior club Hounslow FC folded in 1991 as CB progressed to the Middlesex County League for the 1994-95 season; adding Hounslow to their title to take up their present name while playing at Osterley Sports Club.

The club became members of the Combined Counties League for the 2006-07 following the demise of another local side; Hounslow Borough who had reached the Premier Division of the Hellenic League. CB initially consolidated their position in Division One of the competition.

Numerous senior and junior sides were added to the club, with the first team mainly finishing in the bottom third of the table. However, the club received good news in their quest for their own facility as they were given land at Green Lane formerly used for football pitches.

CB moved to share with Bedfont & Feltham at The Orchard for the 2013-14 season while awaiting for their new development to take shape. Chairman and Manager Frank James led his side to the Division One title in 2015-16 to win promotion to the Premier Division.

Relegation was averted in 2016-17 before the club moved into their new Green Lane venue for the 2017-18 campaign, which yielded a mid table finish.

CB Hounslow United FC will lay in the Combined Counties League Premier Division in the 2018-19 season.

My visit

CB Hounslow United 1 Sutton Common Rovers 0 (Thursday 10^th May 2018) Southern Combination Cup Semi-Final (att: c120)

I’d had a hectic time of it over the previous week, with this been my eighth consecutive day of football or cricket watching. There was no way I was going to pass over the chance of visiting a new ground once I’d seen the fixture on Twitter.

It turned out to be quite an eventful evening, but not how I’d expected. Non-league football was about to undergo its biggest overhaul in fourteen years with the introduction of new midland divisions in an effort to cut down on team travel to matches.

There had been plenty of conjecture and projections in public about where this would leave several clubs close to the border of more than one league. It had been predicted that my adopted side Hendon would remain in the Isthmian League.

The team had lost in a penalty shoot out to Dulwich Hamlet a few days earlier in the play-off final in a bid to win promotion to the National League South. The club had played unbroken in the Premier Division of the Isthmian League for the previous fifty five years.

Therefore, it was a bit of a bolt out of the blue when I awoke after a siesta following early shift at work to find that The Dons had been placed in the Southern Division of the Southern League. Twitter and Facebook was going mad at the news. It’s fair to say that there wasn’t much jubilation.

The immediate worry was how many players and even the management team would defect to play in clubs nearer home in the Isthmian League. It was a kick in the teeth coming while the defeat of the previous Monday was still raw.

However, I continued onwards and took the Jubilee, Metropolitan and Circle lines to Hammersmith before catching a Piccadilly train west to Hounslow Central where I alighted and walked down Lampton Road to catch the 222 bus at Bell Close.

This deposited me at Parkway on the Great South-West Road from where it was a brisk five minutes walk to the entrance to the ground on Green Lane next to the Heston & Hounslow Rifle and Heathrow Gymnastic Clubs.

I paid my £6 admission along with an extra quid for the programme before actually entering the ground as I’d read in advance that the catering outlet was at the rear of the main building facing the second pitch at the facility.

£5 got me a cheeseburger, tea and bottle of water. I headed inside and over to the far side of the ground to take up a seat in the stand while catching up with the social media outrage from the announcement. I tried my best to remain positive, while respecting fans of far longer standing than myself.

Meanwhile I took stock of the tidy football ground around me. Aside from the seated stand, there was a small cover behind the far goal, a small bench cover opposite and shelter from any wind in front of the clubhouse and changing rooms building, which had been built tastefully.

The rest of the arena had a mixture of flat open grass and hard standing. It was good to see representatives of one of CB’s junior sides acting as mascots, with many parents also in attendance. It seemed like a proper community club.

There were also a few supporters who’d made the journey from Sutton in the hope of seeing their side go a step nearer to retaining the trophy. The match was played at a fast ace on a hard surface and refereed well by an official who seemed to have a good rapport with the players.

To be honest it wasn’t a classic game by any means. Rovers looked the more likely to score, but a mixture of poor finishing and decent keeping meant the score was blank as the teams trotted down the tunnel at half time as the continual procession of planes coming in to land a mile or so away carried on.

I was rally struggling to concentrate in light of events at FA HQ. I contacted my trusted pals at Hendon FC who were far from happy, but doing their very best to remain positive. It was certainly going to be an interesting few days ahead.

The West Ham v Manchester United game on the radio sounded as tight and dull as the game I was experiencing. United came out after the break looking a far better outfit. It was a similar pattern to the first half and it was becoming obvious that one goal could settle the outcome.

My attention was also been drawn to the travel options to get home. I was working early again the following morning and buses looked few and far between nearby if I wanted to stay until the end. I went for a compromise and made my way round with ten minutes remaining.

It proved an astute call as a home attack saw a forward push the ball past the onrushing keeper and place the ball into the empty net. The Sutton players were furious claiming handball, but the referee was having none of it as he ushered them away.

That was my call to head off. In the end I walked up The Parkway towards Cranford Library, where there seemed more services. My Bus Mate phone App came up trumps again. I needed to job down the underpass to the other side in the nick of time.

The 222 took me back to Hounslow West where a Piccadilly line train took me to Acton Town, where I changed to go to Alperton before jumping on buses to Wembley Park for another tube home.

The journey beat Google Maps projection by twenty minutes and I was pretty proud of myself making the effort to head to the match and in my ingenuity in getting home. I certainly didn’t need any help to get to sleep!