Aldershot Town FC
The EBB Stadium
High Street
Aldershot
GU11 1TW

Aldershot Town‘s crest is the most fiery in the country – depicting a phoenix rising from the flames (or, rather, debts), that had destroyed the old club in the town, Aldershot FC, in 1992.

Aldershot’s slightly scary mascot, The Phoenix.

Aldershot is at the north-eastern tip of Hampshire, bordering Surrey. The journey from Stroud is about 87 miles and takes about two hours by road via Swindon and Reading.

By Supporters Club Coach – this is by far the cheapest and easiest way to travel. For information about Away Travel, including precise details of pick-up locations – look here. For this match, the departure times are (subject to confirmation/change) Stonehouse Brunel Way – 11.00am, Sainsbury’s Dudbridge – 11.15am, The New Lawn – 11.30am.  

The prices for coach tickets to this match are as follows (Supporters’ Club members get a £3 discount): Adults £29, U-16 £17, U-11 £8

To book a seat with the supporter’s club discount, please call 0333 123 1889  on Monday, Thursday, or Friday at 11am to 2pm.  Please try to book early.

By Car – The Recreation Ground (also known as the EBB Stadium or ‘The Rec’) The EBB Stadium is close to Aldershot town centre at High Street, Aldershot, Hampshire – postcode for satnavs GU11 1TW.  The club say ‘parking is available in the town centre multi-storey car park on Wellington Avenue, which is a five-minute walk from the EBB Stadium’.

By Train – It is possible to take the train from Stroud to Aldershot and to return the same day.  Connecting services run approximately hourly, with two changes: one at Reading, with a second change being made either  at Ash or Ascot, or often slightly quicker, including a 10-minute signposted walk between North Camp and Ash Vale stations. The last train with connections back to Stroud (at Ash, Reading and Swindon)  leaves Aldershot at 8.40pm. Return fares cost about £43 for an adult.  The journey time is about 2 hours 20 minutes.  The station is only a five-to-ten minute walk away from the ground.

The EBB Stadium is also known as The Recreation Ground, or simply The Rec.  The ground has been Aldershot’s home since 1926.  The capacity is 7,100, including about 2,000 seats.

For Unsegregated games away supporters are housed in the South East Seating and should enter through Turnstile 4 from the High Street.

Visiting supporters for Segregated games or large away attendances will be located in the South East Corner of the Stadium and South East seats, situated in the South Stand.   This includes 212 covered seated places and a portion of open terrace extending around to the East Bank Terrace.

Despite the club having done significant work to improve facilities for away supporters, they apparently remain pretty basic. Refreshments are provided via a mobile catering unit, selling the usual fayre of Cheeseburgers, Jumbo Hot Dogs and Chips.

Admission Prices for 2025/26 (with “earlybird” discount – which ends at 10am on matchday – in brackets)

On the day, tickets are sold in the Club Shop (cash or card)

• Adults – £25 (£23)
• Military Personnel – £23 (£21)
• Senior (66 and over) – £23 (£21)
• Young Person (16-20) £23 (£21)
• Disabled £23 (£21)
• Junior (15 and under) £10 (£8)
• Under-11 Free (Free)
• Family (2 Adults + 3 15 and under) £52 (£48)

The average attendance in 2024/25 was 2,413.

Part of the west side of the Recreation Ground, which is often allocated to away supporters when full segregation is not in place.

The Shots finished 16th in the National League in 2024/25, with 14 wins and 57 points—marking their sixth bottom-half finish in the past seven seasons. The campaign was a letdown after their stronger showing in 2023/24, when they were placed eighth, but the disappointment was eased by a triumphant FA Trophy run. Aldershot lifted the silverware with a commanding 3–0 win over Spennymoor Town in the Wembley final, returning to Hampshire on a high

The team made a few signings over the summer, hoping to strengthen for the season ahead. Among them: defender Josh Brooking from Dorking Wanderers, wing-back Archy Taylor from Hampton & Richmond Borough, midfielder Jed Meerholz on loan from Bristol City, midfielder Ryan Hall from Dagenham & Redbridge, attacking midfielder Kiban Rai from Newport County, striker Kwame Thomas from Ebbsfleet Utd (who played on loan for the Shots last season), and striker Tristan Abrahams from Maidenhead Utd.

The Shots have had a difficult start to the 2025/26 season, and in late October were hovering perilously close to the relegation zone, being kept from it only by superior goal difference. Probably the highlight of their season so far was a 5-1 victory over Solihull Moors in August, but otherwise stand-out results are hard to find.  It is perhaps not surprising then that manager Tommy Widdrington, with the Shots since April 2023, and having led them to victory in the FA Trophy last season, chose to step down in mid-October. His replacement, appointed shortly afterwards, is John Coleman, who will be looking to improve performance for the remainder of the season and to save the Shots from the drop.

Shots’ manager John Coleman.

John Coleman is almost certainly the only current National League team manager to have had a bar named after him – “Coleys“, attached to the stadium of Accrington Stanley. Given that the man spent the best part of a quarter-of-a-century managing that team (23 years, with a two-year gap in the middle), during which time he led them for 1,098 games, bringing the team up from the Northern Premier League First Division up to the giddy heights of League One, one might think this type of reward, or memorial, is a fitting one.

As a player, Coleman, who hails from Kirkby (the second ‘k’ is silent) on Merseyside, played for at least 11 non-league teams, all of them scattered around the north-west of England, and including Southport, the now defunct Runcorn and Macclesfield Town, Morecambe and Ashton Utd (where he was a player-manager). He gained a reputation for being a prolific goal-scorer.

His appointment as manager at Accrington Stanley in 1999 proved the start of a long relationship with the club. His departure to Rochdale in 2012 was controversial, but his stay there only lasted a year. Following his dismissal from the Dale, Coleman expressed an interest in coming to FGR to succeed Dave Hockaday but this did not come to be. After a couple of months in Ireland with Sligo Rovers, Coleman returned to Lancashare to again take charge of Accy Stanley, this time getting them up into League One.  As the club struggled in the 2023/24 season, having been relegated to League Two the previous year, Coleman was sacked. He then had a short but unsuccessful spell in charge of Gillingham, before returning to Ireland to manage Waterford, again without much success.

He was appointed as manager of Aldershot Town on 24 October 2025.

The history of Aldershot Town is relatively short, with the club being formed only in 1992, out of the ashes of Aldershot FC. That March, the club had become the first Football League club to go out of business during a season since Accrington Stanley 30 years before. Its record expunged, a phoenix club was formed taking the name Aldershot Town, reviving the suffix that had been dropped in 1932. The new club, which inherited the characterful Recreation Ground from its predecessor, was placed five divisions lower in Isthmian League Division Three. Two successive promotions followed, and in 2002/03 they were finally promoted to the Conference – where their first game was against none other than the revived Accrington Stanley.

Eventually, in 2008, the club was promoted to the Football League. Their second season there was the most successful, reaching the semi-finals of the League Two promotion play-offs, only to be knocked out by Rotherham Utd. However, in 2013, after five seasons in the fourth tier, they were relegated back to the fifth tier, where they have been ever since. Despite featuring unsuccessfully in the National League play-offs in 2016/17 and 2017/18, in subsequent seasons they have mostly bumped around the lower reaches of the league, with the one exception being an eighth-place finish in 2023/24. One recent high point, though, was winning the FA Trophy in 2024/25. Following a semi-final defeat of local rivals Woking, Aldershot Town triumphed in the final at Wembley, beating Spennymoor Town 3-0.

Aldershot is in the top right-hand corner of Hampshire.  It has a population of 37,000 but, together with Farnborough and Camberley, is part of a much bigger urban area.

It may have been alder trees that contributed to the town’s name but it was becoming the home to the British Army that propelled it from a village into a Victorian town.  In 2014 it was the largest army camp in the country with 20% of the British Army based there.  Nowadays, Aldershot Military Town is a garrison town located between Aldershot and North Camp (near Farnborough).

Martin Freeman (The Office, Sherlock, The Hobbit) is one of Aldershot’s most famous sons. His less well-known brother, Tim Freeman, briefly had a pop music career in the act Frazier Chorus, who, among other moments of mild beauty, put out the most polite interpretation of the Sex Pistols’ song “Anarchy In The UK” imaginable.