Barely had my arse touched down on the seat in the pre-match pub before the gaggle around the table were demanding my views on which was the worst ground in our league. Chichester’s soulless 3G was thrown into the pot, as was Cray Wanderers’ exoctic sounding but distinctly unexotic Flamingo Park. Whitehawk’s ForeEnclosed Ground was riding higher than Reform in the polls, though.

Twelve years ago, I took a video of the debris, rubble and loose bits of scaffolding in the “temporary” stand the Lewes fans had occupied on a visit to Whitehawk.

We were later told it wasn’t meant to be open; the notoriously boisterous Rooks fans must have surged their way past the army of yellow-coated stewards. That temporary stand is still there, as is the one at the other end. They’ve tidied it up a bit.

Last season, of course, we visited Whitehawk on New Year’s Day, with both the Rooks fans and the key janglers huddled under the scaffolding, getting drenched in a monsoon. Well, I say “we”. I took one look out of my window and decided that pitch would never survive the rain, and so was smugly sat at home, cup of tea in hand, when the game was abandoned at half-time.

Yesterday, the game made it to be about 75 minutes before the lights went out. The floodlights had looked iffy from the moment they were switched on, the pitch covered in dark patches larger than the ones under my eyes on Boxing Day morning.

Some have speculated Whitehawk’s new “fanzone” at the far end of the ground may have tripped the lights, however I can exclusively reveal a preliminary investigation by The Supporters Club’s forensics team is pointing the finger at an overload caused by an excess of deep fat fryers in the kitchen. This burger alone required six fryers and a George Foreman grill, not to mention two defibrillators on standby:

Organisation was a shambles when the lights went out. No emergency lighting, no tannoy announcements, no stewards in sight. Instead, both sets of fans engaged in a singing contest illuminated by mobile phone torchlight, like a two-bob Robbie Williams concert.

After about ten minutes, there was finally a PA announcement, urging supporters to “fill their glasses” in the already over-crowded bar, the only part of the ground to still get a 40W trickle, while Dave and Steve fiddled with the fuse box. Five minutes later, it was the players who came out to announce the game was off. Whitehawk’s PA man must have still been in the queue at the bar.

And so for the second season running, we’ll go back on a dismally cold night in February, to a dismally cack ground, with a potato patch of a pitch running down a ski slope, and probably still lose 2-0, as we were when this one was abandoned. Non-League football, ladies and gentlemen.