Last night’s AFC Croydon Athletic under-18s game against Corinthian Casuals at Mayfield Stadium was forced to delay its kick-off – there was a hedgehog on the pitch!
Pitch invader: football fans were charmed by their unexpected visitor at the Mayfield Stadium last night
The Mayfield at Thornton Heath is surrounded by open ground, havens for wildlife, as it sits between Croydon Cemetary and Mitcham Common.
The club, part-owned by Stormzy and former Palace star Wilfried Zaha, has been in contact with the Mitcham Hedgehog Project for some time and had already agreed to install footprint tunnels and detection cameras to monitor any hedgehog activity.
Kick-off time last night in the under-18s Combined Counties League match was supposed to be 7.30pm, until someone spotted a prickly invader in the Lane End goalmouth.
Given the number of worm casts routinely found on the pitch, maybe this should not be a surprise. The pitch must offer a glorious feast for any hungry hedgehog.
“Probably the little chap was not expecting a night-time match under the floodlights, but he scurried away unharmed onto the safety of adjacent fields which are used for junior football on Sundays,” a club official told Inside Croydon.
Hedgehogs, once common across the country, are now under serious threat, thought to be the victims of lost hedgerow habitat, and gardeners’ slug pellets.
But hedgehogs have been spotted on the allotments close to the Mayfield Stadium, so finding them on the football pitch ought not to be a complete surprise. Catching sight of one of these now elusive creatures certainly delighted some of those who had turned up for the game.
A Croydon Athletic spokesperson refused to confirm whether the club was now considering changing their teams’ nickname from “The Rams” to “The Hogs”.
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