
Barton Rovers
0

Hashtag United
3
20th Aug 22
Sharpenhoe Road
Round Trip: 18 miles
Ticket: £8.00
Food Rating: 8.5
Att: 201
Guess the crowd: Phil H
Having comfortably dispatched Arlesey Town in the replay, it was back to Sharpenhoe Road for the Preliminary Round match against Hashtag United on another hot sunny Bedfordshire Saturday afternoon.
Who are Hashtag you will no doubt be asking, and quite rightly so as they have only been in existence 6 years, founded 2016 by the You Tube creator Spencer Owen. From playing charity and exhibition matches, they joined the 10th Tier Eastern Senior League Div 1 in 2018 and quickly rose to the 8th Tier Isthmian League Div 1., ironically the same tier as our Barton Rovers who were formed 118 years earlier in the reign of Queen Victoria!
Putting aside the historical relativity and ignoring the internet film cameras on both sides of the touchline live steaming the game with commentary to a social media audience, we were full of anticipation to see Rovers off to a good start but that was short lived thanks to Hashtags’ Toby Aromolaran.

Not only was Toby runner up in the final of the 2021 TV reality show Love Island, but was scoring after only 6 minutes and when Pedro Carvalho converted a penalty on 20 minutes it wasn’t looking good for Rovers. Then as we were making our way round the ground to the half time refreshments, up popped Alex Teniola to add a third for the Tags bang on 45 minutes.
With a 0-3 half-time surely there must be something to smile about, and sure enough after a complete absence of any fan food at our last round visit to Sharpenhoe Rd, there was the excellent Chicken George operating from a mobile unit serving up a quite remarkable, cooked to order fully loaded chicken burger with fries which we averaged out as an 8.5 out of 10!

Fears of a complete rout in the second half never materialised as Barton held their own for the second 45 minutes with some strong defending and despite the score-line there was much spirited fierce tackling right up to the final whistle which in the end earned both sides well -deserved applause from the 200 plus support.
So here we had to leave our first club Barton, who at least pocketed £450 consolation as losers, and change our allegiance to Hashtag, following them in two weeks’ time into the 1st Qualifying Round £1,441 richer; Hashtag that is not us, although just think how many Chicken George dishes we could buy with that!