It was the culmination of a year-and-a-half of building, planning, crying, negotiating and hoping, but at the end of the day, would anybody turn up to the new look Oval Arena?
The faithful would be there, anxious to inspect the fruits of the club's labours, but it needed a showpiece, something to send a message.
Nobody needed to worry; a bumper crowd in the region of 400 were on hand to witness a pulsating Southern Combination League match as Shoreham were the visitors.
Nathan Crabb celebrated his 150th appearance for the club, but fellow celebrant Alfie Headland didn't get past warm-up for his 200th appearance as he pulled up injured.

The only thing in football that a manager cannot plan for is the opposition; in this case Anthony Storey had set his stall out with Ingram and Hopkinson feeding Ball and the returning Callum Barlow, looking for early impact.
Impact there was, but it was Shoreham keeper Elliott Dailly who provided it, time after time pulling off saves defying this level of football. It was in fact half-an-hour of non-stop resistance before Callum Barlow proved too much and made it 1-0. Crabb, Ball, Ingram and Hopkinson all tried to make it two, but were resisted by Dailly.
In the second half it was more of the same, the closest Broadbent in the United goal came to real action was when his crossbar was rattled by Howell. At the other end Barlowforced another sublime tip over, and Hopkinson was starting to celebrate a piledriver before that man appeared again to foil.

This was superb value for the crowd, and with ten minutes to go Barlow unleashed a fearsome volley that smashed the crossbar so hard that it's probably still wobbling! 1-0 it was then.

United move up to 12th, albeit with games in hand of all the other teams. On Tuesday they travel to Pagham in the RUR cup quarter finals before visiting Roffey Next Saturday.