Groundtastic GT23 | Page 46

Floodlights Floodlights Hemel Hempstead Beauty is in the eye of the beholder Vince Taylor visits a ground that did not please the Ryman League There was much controversy at the tail-end of last season when Ryman League Division Two champions Hemel Hempstead Town were denied promotion when their Vauxhall Road ground failed to attract the necessary grading. This is hardly a new situation. Rarely does a season go by when some unfortunate club or other falls fail to officialdom in this way. But what was novel in Hemel’s case was that one of the objections raised by the ground graders concerned the aesthetic quality of the improvements carried out. One had visions of Oscar Wilde type fops wandering around the ground casting aspersions about the lack of carnations in the pitch side flower bed, or bemoaning the fact that the over ornate Greco-Roman columns at the covered end were unnecessarily vulgar. At the beginning of the current season GROUNDTASTIC took a trip to Hemel Hempstead to find out for itself whether the West Herts