Sutton United 1 Havant & Waterlooville 3

12feb07
Conference South
Gander Green Lane, Sutton
att. 434

Despite the fact that the play-offs should be well within the capabilities of our side, we find ourselves a bit behind the pack. After two seasons being there or thereabouts at the top, even topping the Conference South for one sweet week almost exactly a year ago, we have hovered in the upper section of the lower half (now if that isn’t a glass half-full description) of the table for most of the last four months. One might point out the Cup stuff as being a league-game shunting distraction but the fact is we don’t have a ridiculous amount of games in hand to play Going For Gold-esque catch-up with and our away performances have been pretty shoddy for longer than is really credulous.

Still, things could be worse. We could be having a season like Sutton. Indeed, that’s kind of the reason I wanted to document this game, as I’m fairly certain that we’ll be in a different division to the U’s next year, their relegation seeming as nailed on as a man crucified for aggressive leprosy. Not that I’ve not been to Gander Green Lane before, but that was five years ago, when we played, and beat, them in the Trophy. Sutton were a lot more exotic in those days, them being Isthmian Premier and us being in the Southern League.

That game is best remembered for the performance our veteran reserve keeper, his athletic saves in adversity (first choice custodian Aaron Kerr having missed his train from Birmingham) cementing his reputation as a proper making-the-most-of-his-ability non-league cult hero. His rushes of blood, so regular that it’s a surprise he didn’t collapse more often, earned him the extended moniker ‘The Crazy World of Steve May’, not, I imagine, that Stevie himself was entirely happy about that.

Since the coming of the Conference South, I’ve missed all our games with Sutton. However, the southern half of the SmokeHawk branch tells me beforehand that we can usually expect to be nithered stiff and to take away a point. We’d have probably taken that before kick-off today which, considering Sutton’s position, goes to show just how dreadful our away form has been. Indeed, I had to look back through my records for the last time I had witnessed the Hawks win away in Connie South - November 2006: 1-0 at Hayes (yes, still just Hayes in them days) - and even that was a squeaky last-minute winner.

Mind you, the Saturday prior to the game, we’d exorcised one of our demons. For the last four seasons, our results against Cambridge City have been almost uniformly dreadful, but finally we managed to scrape a win, at home in front of over 2,000 people. Free entry for those with Liverpool ticket stubs helped, but apparently around half of those paid to get in, so perhaps we have finally made the local populous come and get amongst the West Leigh Park ‘it’. Indeed, pride does appear to be running high.

After the Cambridge win Charlie Henry, having come on as a substitute and barely figuring since his move from Dorchester (a combination of being cup-tied and a two-month injury complaint), came to we fans behind the goal and beat the badge on his chest like a horny g’rilla. Needless to say, we like a bit of passion and thus we very much like Charlie, especially considering Tom Jordan continues to appear in the local press saying he still wants to move to Eastleigh. Quite why he’s so desperate to rejoin the grumpy sunburnt egg currently at their helm it’s hard to imagine, but with cup-tyin’ now no longer a-pplyin’, he finds himself once again cast to the sidelines, despite excellent performances when called upon.

So, despite the weathered pessimism, we did still think we should make the most of our trip to Sutton, in every respect. After all, I think it’s fair to say that the general feeling among the Conference South is that Sutton would be missed if they were to drop back down into the Isthmian. Not for their football so much but more for their fans, who enliven Conference South terraces and web fora alike. Certainly they appear to be a bunch of hedonistic fun-time fans in the manner I think we aspire to be, and are, 95% of the time, and not a bunch of grizzly bunch of bitter nerks. The fans of Bromley and Carshalton might not agree with that point.

However, their regulars are quiet tonight, possibly silenced by their predicament. However in their place they have rather unfortunately been afflicted with a bunch of teenagers eager to antagonise. Most of their stuff is tired anti-fan gear, although at least with “2-1 and you fucked it up”, a reference that manages to take in our ‘squandering’ of that advantage against Liverpool, and that being the scoreline when Sutton were the last non-league side to defeat a top division team, in their case Coventry, in 1989, manages to be quite clever and depressingly puerile all at once. Fair play folks. Now f*** off, there’s good fellows.

Even a goal in the ninth minute for Tony Taggart, heading in a Rocky Baptiste cross after beating defender Dean Sammut, [second pic from top] failed to silence them, and neither did Rocky’s typically unfussy penalty eleven minutes later, awarded for an Alan Bray handball. Not that I saw the infringement, I was on my way back from the gents at the time, passing Li’l Alfie Potter who, despite having returned to his Peterborough United employers, had come to say hello. Clearly the Hawk subs had not been expecting this, reacting to him popping his head through the port-hole by the side of their bench as though he’d actually announced himself by breaking through the dugout roof with an axe.

Despite a strong defensive performance overall, there was a brief but potentially crucial lapse just prior to half-time, conceding a penalty that Craig Dundas fired past Kevin Scriven. No chance to relax at half-time then, but when is there ever? However, the second half was only a few minutes old when Gary Elphick extended our lead with a typical defender’s set-piece header [above].

After that a few chances went to either side, but nothing really endangered the Hawk’s precious away victory, or the deflation of Sutton’s already well punctured morale. Another three points in the knapsack then, sure as eggs is eggs, and as sure as them eggs were suddenly raining over the back wall from outside the ground. Y’see, all we had to worry about on the terrace curve at the far end in the last half hour was a bunch of knobs chucking what was to be the basis of a medium sized breakfast omelette over the terrace wall.



The eggs landed several metres away from our group, but it caused a shuffle backwards to grip the wall like borstal kids being hosed down from close range, while some stalked out looking for the culprits. The nerks from the far end came round attempting to wash their hands not, it appeared, of incriminating yolk, but of the ‘outsiders’; the leader of their gang (wearing a bling earring so big you could plug a bath with it) awwight-ing his apologetic dismay in a manner most incompatible with his group’s first half efforts.

The final whistle went without, I’m pleased to say, our jackets being sullied by mushrooms, bacon, black pudding or anything else that’s usually found sizzling away on a greasy spoon hotplate. While we might miss coming to Sutton, we won’t miss the new duck-and-cover element of the matchday experience.

Links
Sutton United website
Havant & Waterlooville website

Ashington 1 Sunderland Nissan 2

19jan08
Northern League Division One
Portland Park, Ashington
att. 119

Ashington has quite the footballing pedigree. Sunderland stalwart Cec Irwin, Jackie Milburn, and more Charlton brothers than you can shake a tweed flat cap at (well, two) learnt their game, as cliché sees fit, in the streets and back alleys of the town. Wor Jackie remains in the high street to this day, in iron statue form between Woolies and the Carphone Warehouse. The statue captures him trapping the ball in the air; his hair, expression and poise making him look like Ralph Fiennes auditioning, with clipped Shakespearian grandeur, for the role of fifteenth zombie in a Merchant Ivory adaptation of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video.

Jackie turned out for Ashington in his time and it is the club itself which represents a further link between the town and the professional game. As part of the splitting of Football League Division 3 into regions North and South in 1921, Ashington rolled up with North Eastern League contemporaries, Darlington, Durham City and Hartlepools United as part of an intake of 20 new clubs. At this time Portland Park was upgraded so as to be capable of housing 20,000, half that number turning up for the first game, a 1-0 win over Grimsby Town.

Ashington were only to last for eight years in the Football League, York City being elected in their place in 1929. The final season was played out in front of crowds diminishing rapidly partly due to uninspiring onfield performances, but mostly as a result of the miners’ strike. Being a pit town, and with cash at a premium, a poorly performing football team would have been one of the easier sacrifices.

To look at Portland Park now, through the wide openings in the perimeter fencing where once there were slats, or from the terrace steps littered with broken glass and abstract pigeon art, its history would not be immediately clear. The outward facing bits covered in one-letter-per-A4-sheet adverts for prior games betray the fact that there is no worth in giving the ground any further love and attention; the home game against Seaham Red Star on February 15th (see links below) was to be the last.

It has been a long road to departure, the club having had to ward off the local council’s advances on Portland Park for nearly a decade and a half. Ashington were like a settled cave-dweller beating away a horde of angry itinerant bats with a big plank of the wood; that plank being the covenant put on the ground when the Duke of Portland bequeathed the site to the town and its people in 1907 for sporting and recreation use. A change in covenant law though allowed the council to get the land on compulsory purchase.

With the marauding, development-keen local government officials constantly circling, the ‘Keep Football in NE63’ campaign had been set up to raise awareness about the threat to Ashington’s footballing tradition. To have the rhetorical enquiry “how many other English towns can boast two World Cup winners?” in their argumentative arsenal was a pretty good start. As a result a new ground at Hirst Welfare should, finally, be forthcoming. The club will be wanting it sooner rather than later so as to keep up their earning power from functions, dos and discos. The weekend prior to this had seen a 70’s night featuring ABBA tribute Swede Dreams, an act who, going by their bill poster, pay homage to an ABBA that apparently featured Dave Lee Travis.

To make the most of their current 101 year old ground prior to being turfed out, and I imagine saving on ground-sharing costs, the majority of Ashington’s home fixtures have been switched where necessary to get them completed by the mid Feb cut off. Aside from a couple of rogue ‘home’ fixtures, most likely to be played at local rivals Bedlington Terriers, the remainder of the season will see them on the road. The nomadic lifestyle would be a daunting prospect for any side let alone one that hasn’t quite got going this season, the Colliers being in the bottom half of the table despite playing more fixtures than anyone else in the division.


Despite the fact it is now a pretty austere facility, their remains a clear affection for Portland Park amongst the Ashington hardcore. It is perhaps no surprise that a town with a history of mining and striking should know there way around sloganeering and signage. All around the ground, white washed mottos are daubed around the perimeter fencing, the words weaving around the wintery starkness of the bushes and trees that jut out like ribs on an emaciated cadaver. The phrases are all particularly folksy, heartfelt and often wilfully and brilliantly cumbersome. Phrases like “Portland Park, our home, 1907”, “Take me home, Station Road, it’s the place we belong” and, my favourite, “The Grand Old Duke of Portland, he had ten thousand men, he had a covenant on the ground, but the commie bastards stole it anyway.” Clearly there is still life in the body of the club; it’s just their house which is facing extinction.

It is quite poignant and appropriately old-worldly, particularly with a club old boy’s reunion in the bar later that evening, that this game should kick off just as distant church bells chime for 3pm. However, despite the nostalgic knees-up, Ashington 07/08 vintage cannot serve up a fitting victory. Sunderland Nissan had the first chance in the fourth minute, Gavin Cobden beating the offside and placing a shot past keeper Paul Simpson. However the ball rebounded off the post back into Simpson’s arms, Richard Hodgson following up with a sharp boot to the keeper’s back.

Only six minutes later the away side took the lead. After good build up play, David Wells’ cross to the far post was nodded back across goal by Neil Tarrant, Hodgson being on hand to stick a leg out and push the ball home like a billiard cue attempting a safety. This galvanised Ashington somewhat, as Lee McAndrew, looking like a lenticular picture of a young Glenn Cockerill and, err, an old Glenn Cockerill, depending on which angle you look at him, broke down the right not long after the restart. His cross was perfect but Michael Dickinson prodded his header over the bar. Dickinson was again put through a minute later but scooped his shot wildly over the bar. Not long after, on yet another break, Dickinson got on the end of a Justin Millican pass, only to see his shot cannon off the outside of the post.

Despite more Ashington pressure, there was no goal for them, but in the 36th minute there was another for Nissan. Hodgson delivered a corner to the back post, where unmarked Leon Ryan was on hand to thump a header home. It almost got worse as, four minutes before half time, Neil Tarrant rounded the over-committed Paul Simpson, but was drawn far enough wide that his lobbed shot sailed over the bar.

After the break, Simpson had to be on hand to make a double save as the Nissan strikers bore down, the second of which he palmed into this own face. Possibly sensing an exciting half, the local urchins began squeezing through the gaping holes in the perimeter fence. Within a couple of minutes though, they buttered up and slipped through again just as quickly, the ASDA across the road possibly looking good for some tea-time stealing’.

Just before the hour, Dickinson’s break through and his firm shot looked destined to rip out the top corner before Nissan’s keeper made a brilliant tip over. Soon after, Ashington made a substitution; in the t-shirt and no-vest north of England, they clearly don’t go in for wet, middle-class superstitious bullshit, or such is the statement made in sending on their number 13.

Struggling to get back in it, Ashington needed something miraculous and got it. Ross Atkinson went in for his circus high-wire act and performed a perfect circle with an overhead scissor-kick that looped over the keeper and inside the far post. It may well have been the best goal at Portland Park in 101 years and, as such, came with a loud collective gasp.

Ashington kept plugging away, but the equaliser never came and thus enabled Nissan to continue their assault on the summit of the Northern League, despite not having applied for promotion. Ashington meanwhile had to hope that the remaining two Portland Park fixtures would give them the opportunity to present an appropriate winning parting gift to their loyal fans.

Links
Ashington website
Sunderland Nissan website
Smid of the 100 Football Grounds Club at the last Portland Park game
Twohundredpercent discusses Ashington

When Saturday Comes #253

features a piece I've written about the Havant & Waterlooville FA Cup run, should you be interested. Writing something for WSC has been my one journalistic ambition, so naturally I'm very pleased! Cheers to the H&W players for allowing me to ride in on their coat tails in such an opportunistic fashion.

More details on issue #253 here.

Barkingside 1 Harwich & Parkstone 0

08oct07
Essex Senior Cup Round 2
Oakside Stadium, Barkingside
att. 49

Hobo in my pocket #13

Road to the Final
F: Chelmsford City 0 Southend United 1 [@ Roots Hall] (att. 2,995)
SF: Heybridge Swifts 3 Southend United 3 [3-4 pens] (att. 273)
5R: Concord Rangers 1 Southend United 2 (att. 230)
4R: Concord Rangers 4 Waltham Forest 3
3R: Barkingside 1 Concord Rangers 3
2R: Barkingside 1 Harwich & Parkstone 0

Latest 'A-Z of Football' entry on Cheer Up Alan Shearer
Click here to read 'J' (including Johnny Metgod, 'judas', Jossy's Giants, 'jumpers for goalposts', Matt Jansen and James Taylor)

Hayes & Yeading United 3 Havant & Waterlooville 1

02feb08
Conference South
Church Road, Hayes
att. 332

So, after bringing you the experience of knocking about Liverpool in daze that was probably only a couple of notches away from being a diabetic coma, the pragmatist within me needs to try and reset the parameters. So, welcome to West London. With apologies to Althea and Donna’s pop-reggae hit of the 70’s, see me in me Hayes and ‘Ding.

Not that one would describe Hayes as an Up-town, as such. Even the followers of Hayes don’t particularly like it much, their forums often attracting ‘…and that’s why I’m voting BNP’ style messages. Sadly, this type of attitude has also crept into their terrace chants on occasion and this, combined with their obsession with singing aggressively anti-oppo songs rather than pro-H&Y numbers, does little for the good name of their club, nor that of the more reasonable Church Road constituents whom will be relatively legion, but perhaps a little quieter.

To be honest, despite priding ourselves on being anti negative-songs support, it’s fair to say we lapse from time-to-time, but this usually comes only as the result of severe provocation. However, Hayes & Yeading appear to delight in proactive antagonism. Well, I say Hayes & Yeading, but I really mean the former as, since their merger last summer, their integration does not appear to have run particularly smoothly, support-wise anyway.

Word has it that, when visiting our place earlier in the season, some of their supporters were heard to remark that they wouldn’t be getting behind certain players in their side because they had come from the Yeading background. Certainly, the word ‘Yeading’ doesn’t seem to appear in any of their chants, possibly because Hayes were the more vocal support, but more likely that the hardcore element remains less than impressed with the union, even eight months on. These are, though, early days, and every merger will have its bumps in the road to traverse.

Based on this summary, you might wonder why anyone would want to go to Church Road to watch their football but, weirdly, I’d been disproportionately eager to attend this game. Well, for a start, the place is a proper old football ground; wide banks of concrete terracing curve around two sides, while a comparatively small stand peeps out over the player’s tunnel. A great pity then that the long-term plan is to move the club back to Yeading’s relatively frugal Warren, currently housing the H&Y reserves and youth sides.

Being back stood up at football (without being greeted by tuts from those behind) was also something to look forward to. While the rail-replacement-coach, excuse-me-driver-I-know-I’m-tall-but-my-knees-are-bleeding-profusely seating the previous weekend was all very nice, standing on steps, which can be back-heeled and kicked in moments of tension and frustration, was like Linus rediscovering his lost blanket, familiar and reassuring. Terracing was the ideal, soothing pair of comfy slippers to glide back into after our big weekender, havin’ it large in stiletto heels at the Anfield Road End.

We might have taken 6,000 last weekend, but it was just as good to once more be amongst a travelling group of about 80 or so, the regular faces of course, plus a few that appeared new to Conference South away-days, which bodes well. Sadly though, if I might return to punning heavily on the lyrics of ‘Uptown Top Ranking’, in being back to the strictly (grass)-roots, “no pop no style” was a pretty adequate summary, at least for the second half, when we looked not only not at the races, but as though we were deliberately steering well clear of the entire racecourse, like an anti-gambling zealot with a horse allergy.

Gary Elphick, finally free of his cup-tied shackles, could return, but into a new three man central-defensive unit with Neil Sharp and Tom Jordan, whilst Wycombe loanee Steven Gregory could make his debut proper, following the Thurrock abandonment, in midfield. However, we were without both our FA Cup goal heroes from the previous week, both plucked from above as reward for their efforts. Alfie Potter was instantly recalled by Peterborough to fight for his place in their first team whilst, more unexpectedly, Richard Pacquette received a call up to the Dominica squad for their World Cup qualifier against Barbados.

Not many loanees will leave their temporary home with the kind of grand repute Alfie now has, some ranking him as one of the all time H&’Dub greats. Alfie, in turn, reacted to his recall like an over-pampered Valley girl throwing a tantrum at their 17th birthday party when their present turns out to be a convertible in the wrong shade of baby blue. In this context, and this alone, this is a good thing. I had mentioned before about Alfie’s exemplary attitude for a young footballer being asked to slum it with the semi-pros, but phrases like “I’ve had the time of my life” take his reputation beyond prior precedent. Whether or not he added “…no, I've never felt this way before” went unrecorded. Personally, I think all departing players and staff should be forced into song before they drive off. Indeed, some of the bad blood that followed Ian Baird out of the door may have been assuaged had he only thought to break into a sweaty, tongue-waggling version of ‘Lip Up Fatty’ on the boardroom table before pissing off, but I guess now we’ll never know.

Anyway back to someone we still like a lot. Obviously pleased to be offered a chance to prove himself in League football, Alfie was nevertheless apparently “gutted” to be leaving us, keen to be part of what we all hope to be a late push for the play-offs. However, without his energy and invention, this may be one dream we don’t get to realise this year. Maybe we shouldn’t be greedy, considering, but our away form in the league defies belief, as did our away form in the cup, but in a very different way.

Whilst we can clearly keep it firm and athletic for those big cup games and for the majority of home league games, it now appears we need to employ some kind of pre-away-day fluffer to ensure the team remains pointed, perky and ready for action when on the road. Our 24 minutes at Thurrock and this game both proved we can do some good stuff away, but only apparently for the first period.

With Rocky rested and Big Rich deciding international football in the Caribbean was more attractive than coming to West London, Jamie Slabber and Craig Watkins began the game up front. Craig was keeping up his impressive recent form when given a chance, regularly beating the leggy Hayes & Yeading defence, but consistently being let down by his final touch. H&Y however caught us with a sucker punch in first half stoppage time. Justin Gregory conceded a free kick for handball, which Josh Scott was able to place past the wall and keeper Kevin Scriven.

Against the overall run of play certainly, but rather than use this as a catalyst for a second half display of purpose, the H&W will, so evident in recent games, suddenly came down with man-flu. We thus collapsed to a three-goal deficit before the hour, James Mulley and Kieran Knight getting the goals. Yes, we scored, but even then it was the 90th minute and sub Mo Harkin needed two goes at it. Bumps, crashing to earth, all of that stuff. Big back-to-school feeling. The bringing-in-board-games and mufti of those mid-September days before the cup run began and we were, albeit briefly, third seems a very long time ago.

Now fourteenth, it really is back to the white board, but we’re essentially starting again in a new school. The catch-up fixtures represent our chance to sidle up quickly to the popular group that hang around behind the play-off bike-sheds, before the mid-table bullies get to tweak our nipples or, even more scarily, the relegation haunted kids convince us that chewing our hair and looking pale is the way to go.

Prior to the game, Hayes & Yeading had given our players a guard of honour as they came out, whilst ‘Under the Moon of Love’ was piped through their tannoy. A very gracious acknowledgement of the service we have apparently done for non-league football as a whole with our Cup exploits. M’Hawk chum Simon did however suggest that this might be a subtle manoeuvre on their part to keep our heads in the Cup clouds, while they went about their stuff on terra-firma. If so, it was tactical machination that we couldn’t better.

Hopefully this will be the final aberration, and league-game focus will dribble back in like a barium enema into a digestive tract, highlighting problems and making the appropriate solutions abundantly clear.

Links
Hayes & Yeading United website
Havant & Waterlooville website
Alfie Potter interview
Guardian report