Written by Max
Ground #84
Saturday 24th October 2026
EFL League 2
Chesterfield 5-1 Crewe Alexandra
Attendance: 7,985
Entry: £27
Chesterfield were formed in 1866, starting life as Chesterfield Town and playing in the local Sheffield and Hallam football league. In 1920 the club changed to their current name by dropping the town suffix and became founder members of the Third division the same year.
In 1997 the club reached the FA Cup semi final whilst in the third tier. In 2010 the club moved from their historic town centre Saltergate home into their new ground and just one year later won their only national trophy to date winning the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy at Wembley.
The club have spent the majority of their existence bouncing between league 1 and 2, but after suffering back to back relegations the club found themselves playing non league football for the first time in almost 100 years in 2018. After 6 years in the fifth tier the spireites, named after the famous crooked spire on the towns parish church, finally won promotion back to league 2 where they have remained ever since.
Today we were in the away end as Crewe took on the spireites in what looked ahead of kick off to be a competitive top of the table clash.
Before the game a minutes silence was observed as this is Chesterfield’s nearest home game to remembrance Sunday. The silence was impeccably observed by all although the heavy rain clattering on the roof of the stand made it one of the loudest silences I’ve been part of!
I mentioned to Emma the fact the Crewe players decided to wear coats during this and thought this was a good tactic to stay warm and perhaps we could catch Chesterfield cold in the early minutes of the game……
Well I couldn’t have been more wrong! Crewe kicked off with their usual baffling tactic of booting the ball upfield and out for a throw in. From the resulting throw in we then didn’t win the ball back until keeper Tom Booth was picking the ball out of his net as Chesterfield took the lead in under 3 minutes.
As if it wasn’t bad enough, Crewe decided to go with exactly the same kick off routine from the restart yet again gifting the ball to the hosts. Once again we struggled to win back possession and before we knew it the lead had been doubled.
The Alex were really struggling to get any meaningful possession and were giving the ball away almost as soon as they’d won it back. On 19 minutes Chesterfield got their 3rd as a cross from deep was headed in unmarked at the back post.
Chesterfield looked dangerous whenever they came forward and although they didn’t need any help, they got some as the Crewe keeper passed the ball straight to the winger who couldn’t believe his luck as he cut inside and crossed the ball in. To make things worse the ball was bundled into his own net by Crewe defender Josh Stephenson. 4-0.
At this point a large amount of away supporters headed for the exits and who can blame them. This was fast becoming one of the worst 45 minutes of football any of them had seen from their side.
But wait…..it got worse. In added time at the end of the first period a corner was cleared away. As the ball made its way back out to the taker a looping cross beat everyone, including the keeper into the top corner to make it 5.
Yes you read that right….5-0 at half time!
As the players sprinted off the pitch and down the tunnel, seemingly the fastest any of them had run all afternoon, we had seen enough and decided to get out of the cold and back into the pub.
I have never left a game early before and this wasn’t a decision I took lightly, but the players on the pitch didn’t deserve our support after that utter embarrassing display.
Crewe did pull a goal back in the second half, but as we weren’t in the ground I unfortunately can’t tell you if it was a good finish or not! Looking at the stats after the game it looks as though we made the right choice though as we ended the game having had 3 shots on goal across the 90 minutes. And when you concede 5 goals that’s obviously nowhere near good enough to even attempt a fight back.
I even debated not writing this review, and I haven’t enjoyed relieving the 45 minutes we did spend in the ground even as I write this 48 hours later! It was one of those performances that make you question why you bother travelling the country spending 100s of pounds when the team put in a performance like that.
Anyway, on a more positive note, I have always gone by the adage of not letting the 90 minutes on the pitch spoil a good away day, and this was a perfect example of this. We both really enjoyed our day in Chesterfield, apart from the 45 minutes between 3pm and 3:45, and you can see how we rated the day and the ground below:
Location: 6/10
The ground is located around a 30 minute walk from the town centre and train station. On a miserable stormy day it was pretty bleak walking to and from the ground but the walk was broken up nicely by a number of pubs on Sheffield Road en route to the ground. On a better day this would create a great pre match pub crawl with many great pubs in the town centre itself too. Alot of these we advertised as ‘home fans only’ but we had no problem getting into any of these as we were both wearing neutral clothing.
Kit: 6/10
Chesterfield’s kit this season consists of a dark blue shirt with white shorts and blue socks. The sponsor fits in nicely and it is a smart shirt, if not the most exciting design we have ever seen.
We took this photo in the club shop before the game, sadly the cap is not included in the matchday attire!
Facilities: 6/10
The away end at the SMH Group Stadium is to one side of the East stand. Once through the electronic turnstiles we were through into a modern but pretty generic concourse area. As we were there early there was plenty of space and we found an area with a shelf to put our food and drink on. As kick off approached the area got alot busier with over 700 Crewe fans crammed into the area.
As is becoming very common at grounds in the football league, the club has a makeshift ‘fan zone’ in the car park. This wasn’t the best version of this we have come across and it looked pretty depressing in the miserable weather.
Look: 7/10
The SMH Group stadium, is a modern all seater stadium with a capacity of 10,600 which was built in 2010, replacing their town centre Saltergate ground which had been their home since 1871!
The new ground consists of 4 similarly sized stands which all house between 2,000 and 3,000 supporters.
An interesting aspect to the design of the ground is the curved roof on the 2 stands along the sides of the pitch including the East Stand where the away fans are housed. Opposite this is the aptly named West Stand which is home to the changing rooms, dugouts and hospitality boxes.
Similarly to Rotherham’s New York Stadium, we liked the fact that the ground was a good size for the amount of fans in attendance which is often not the case in lower league grounds. It was great to see the majority of the ground filled with just the front few rows unoccupied as fans made sure they stayed dry!
Food and Drink: 5/10
We arrived at the ground around an hour before kick off and headed straight to the food kiosk. We were expecting the usual generic selection of pukka pies but we were interested to see a brand of pies we hadn’t seen before, ‘Jacksons’. I went for a steak and ale pie which was £6. The pie arrived and was covered in peppercorns and I expected good things. Unfortunately the pie was massively over cooked making the pastry very chewy and the inside, although crammed with meat, incredibly dry. Such a shame as on another day I assume this could be a great pie, but on this occasion I think I would rather have had a pukka pie!
There was a decent selection of draught beer as well as an unusually varied amount of spirit mixers in cans. I went for a pint of madri for £7 while Emma had a bottle of Dr Pepper, smiv would be proud!
TOTAL SCORE: 30/50
In all my years of watching football I’ve never left a game early, but I’ve also never seen such an embarrassing 45 minute performance. It was cold, windy and rainy and the warm cosy pub seemed like a much better use of our afternoon.
Luckily we didn’t let the abject Crewe performance affect our day and we had a great time pub crawling our way back to the train station including some great live music in the St Helens Inn.
If you would like to see where this places Chesterfield in our Football League leader board click here: THE 92
If you’d like the non-league grounds we have visited click here: NON LEAGUE
