Eastbourne Borough 1 v 1 Charlton Athletic XI

Saturday 22nd July 2023, Kick-off 15.00
Pre-Season Friendly
Priory Lane, Eastbourne

Admission: £5.00
Programme: None
Attendance: 2,800

I decided to stay local today, mostly due to yet another rail strike crippling services today, but it would also give me an opportunity to visit Priory Lane for the first time since the club was taken over by a seemingly very ambitious Simon Leslie over the summer. For me, it would also be interesting to see how a youthful team of Charlton would fare, albeit knowing that there would be few if any players close to breaking through to the first team in the immediate future, with the first team squad playing a fixture at Wealdstone today.

Leslie did not waste any time in transforming many aspects of Eastbourne Borough, almost immediately modernising the club's logo and branding, and various improvements have taken place around Priory Lane. On the path leading from the passing roads towards the clubhouse and turnstile, two black container units have been installed, one a takeaway coffee shop, and another a club shop offering an impressive and appealingly designed range of club merchandise. Inside the ground, two wooden huts have also been installed serving as bars. The rest of the ground is pretty much exactly the same as before. 

And the changes were not confined to off the pitch, with Leslie almost immediately dispensing with the services of manager of over three years Danny Bloor, and replaced him with Mark Beard, with the opinion being that Beard will bring a more modern approach to football management. The squad is now full-time, resulting in a huge turnover of players compared with last season's squad.

On an afternoon which started off overcast, but with driving rain arriving and persisting throughout the second half making playing conditions quite difficult, this was something of a game of two halves, with Eastbourne Borough impressing during the first half in particular, and they scored the opening goal on the eighth minute, Maltese U19 international Alfie Bridgman cutting in from the right before curling the ball from outside the penalty area into the top left hand corner. Charlton's youngsters came more into the game as the half wore on, with their best chance coming on 28 minutes, when Jason Adigun fired the ball low across goal, just evanding a tap in.

Charlton started the second half much more on the front foot, and eventually scored 62 minutes, when Tolu Ladapo was played in and from the byline, crossed the ball low and Henry Rylah tapped the ball home from a few yards out. The rest of the half remained entertaining to watch for a friendly, with both sides creating some chances to score again, but in the end there were no further goals, as I could look forward to being home much, much earlier than usual on a Saturday evening!