Up the road from Mayesbrook Park, West Ham were celebrating another win and counting down the games till they move to the Olympic Stadium at Stratford. But down in Dagenham, Barking are struggling on in a rundown ground and surviving only because they have a fantastic bunch of club volunteers, the same sort of people you will find at non-league clubs all over the country,
Clubs like this need help from the Government, local councils and the FA, but in most cases they get little help and have to do everything themselves - compare that to West Ham who seem to have been given the Olympic Stadium for peanuts by Boris Johnson (Karen Brady and friends in high places?)
But we should all join together and thank those club volunteers who keep the non-league game going and today we were rewarded with a good game on a wet day where many games fell foul of the weather.
Barking and Bowers were evenly matched in the first half but Barking took a deserved lead in the second half after having most of the ball but they still had to rely on their keeper to give them a win as he was called on to save a late penalty from Bowers.
So thank you the great football people at Barking and Bowers.
