Today I'm going back 11 years to 2011 and York City's National League visit to Nene Park, the new home stadium of Kettering Town. The game was attended by 1,595. Kettering were in all sorts of trouble financially and had lost access to their former Rockingham Road home earlier in 2011. As a result, they agreed to move into Nene Park, the vacated former home of recently-dissolved near-neighbours and rivals Rushden & Diamonds FC. This solution was far from satisfactory to Kettering supporters however as Nene Park was ten miles away from Kettering in the town of Irthlingborough and things were about to get even worse for the Poppies with administration just around the corner. Indeed, before the season was out, Town were on the move again, this time to Steel Park, Corby having been unceremoniously kicked out of Nene Park. Today the club can be found, still not in Kettering itself, in Burton Latimer, a village about four miles from Kettering on the other side of the busy A14.
Kettering were never really in the featured game with City going four-up well before half time and the goals coming from Andre Boucaud (20th minute), Jason Walker (21 and 31) and Adriano Moke (39). Kettering finally got their act together to score their token effort just before half time through Leon McKenzie. After City's first-half blowout it wasn't terribly surprising that they took their foot off the gas after the break and ended up scoring just once more in added time via Danny Pilkington, one of just two goals that he scored for the club. What a night! Finishing Kettering Town 1 York City 5 I'd say that you don't get many such stonking away victories following York in my experience!.
To rub salt into Kettering's wounds, two days later York returned to sign Kettering substitute Jon Challinor and would also sign Kettering's programme cover star striker Moses Ashikodi before the season was out. Former Millwall, Watford and Rangers player Ashikodi never really settled at York and ended up playing just eleven games for the club scoring just a single goal before moving on to Ebbsfleet United. I'm not sure what it says about Ashikodi that he never seemed to settle anywhere and in a club career of 164 games (40 goals), the clubs for whom he made the most appearances were Kettering and Ebbsfleet (and that was just 23 games for each). Challinor on the other hand always seemed to be popular with fans and team mates alike. Challinor made 73 appearances for York (3 goals) and was a key part of City's 2012 Promotion winning side. According to Wikipedia, Challinor made 811 club appearances in total scoring 98 goals but this crucially excludes appearances made in season 2019/20 (30 appearances and 2 goals) because, due to Covid19, the results that season were expunged from the records. How dare Covid19 deny Challinor his century of goals? I disagree that such appearances should be excluded from the records. I certainly intend to count matches that I attended that were subsequently null and voided!
Season 2011/12 was to prove to be a red letter season for the Minstermen and, perhaps, the manner of this early season drubbing for the Poppies was a sign of things to come? York ended the season in 4th place, qualifying for the end of season Play-Offs which would end at Wembley with a glorious win over Luton Town. Poor Kettering finished the season bottom of the table and were relegated two division into the Southern League Premier having resigned from the Football Conference.
CRB Match No. 1833
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