Havant & Waterlooville 1 Welling United 0

26apr08
Conference South
West Leigh Park, Havant
att. 745

When one goes about a journalistic plan such as following a football team’s quest for promotion, it is with the intention of their being a blaze of glory to provide the narrative peak. When you report on a chip-pan fire, you want the kitchen aflame; sirens wailing; fire-fighters wielding axes and a hose you could crawl through. What you don’t want is someone quickly on hand to snuff it out with a damp tea-towel.

Whilst our play-off pan smouldered for some time, the last couple of months of the season, courtesy a number of lacklustre, weary performances, saw the ‘mid-table’ tea-towel gently lowered to snatch away our oxygen. Indeed, we have looked a little short of a proper lungful for a while now, and so our play-off bid ended not with a roar, but with a submissive rasp, like the very last droplet of air creeping from the nozzle of a whoopee cushion. If Weston-Super-Mare’s 96th minute equaliser at our place didn’t kill our hopes dead two days after the Bromley defeat, then our 3-0 thumping at home by relegation threatened Maidenhead last weekend most certainly did.

So, you tell a season-long story and hope for the happy ending or, if it is to be tragedy, then for it to occur with intensity and drama, as last year. Naturally, real life cannot always fit so snugly with the story you wish to tell. Besides, one man’s epic adventure is another’s laboured slog; for every gripping classic, there will be someone saying “geez, didn’t it go ooooon.

This season was different to last though, simply for the fact that last year we spent most of the campaign within the warm, reassuring arms of ol’ Mother play-off zone and were able to bat away our Conference South brethren as we competed for the comfort of her loving bosom. This year we managed to get a quick cuddle in September, but spent the rest of the time regressing to childhood, when we were all small, jumping up and down by her knees and tugging on her skirt, demanding attention but getting none. Clearly, we’d been wayward and mischievous in the eyes of lady league and have remained cold-shouldered for the rest of the season as a result.

Perhaps it’s because we spent several months ignoring her calls in for our bread-and-butter supper as we were too busy flirting with the FA Cup lass next door. Mind you considering that our knockout dream girl was giving out daily French, weekend tours beneath her jumper and, about every third Saturday, some crashing, athletic, physically implausible rufty behind her parents’ shed, I think we’d consider it to be all worth it. Sadly, come January, she went off with a bigger, fitter, rather more popular boy, but we’ll always have those winter months, and that’ll keep a smile on our faces for some years to come, I guarantee. Besides, we can always have our tea at the top table next year.

 Indeed, for all the talk of damp squibs and disappointment, it would be distinctly niggardly to suggest anything other than that this has been our best season ever. It’s just that we had our epic adventure as a side-dish rather than as part of our main course. Put simply, this team helped us achieve our dreams, of being one of the 1% of non-league sides that gets a moment in so bright a sun as an FA Cup Fourth Round tie at one of world’s biggest clubs. Yet, for us regulars, that wasn’t really the best of times, rather the tip of a very big iceberg. Watching us beat a Football League club for the first time, and away from home, in the 87th minute, was truly astonishing, as was fighting back to snatch a draw with Swansea at their place. Frankly, after this year’s League One champions (eighty-odd places above us in the pyramid) were torn ruthlessly asunder at a packed out West Leigh Park, leading 2-1 at Anfield just seemed part of the same collective hallucination.

So, time to give back a bit of thanks then and, clearly, I wasn’t the only one wanting to treat this otherwise largely meaningless end-of-season game as a celebration. Often, when the last game is at home, the trick is to treat it like an away game and burst into the pub roughly two seconds after the landlord has withdrawn his key from the lock, and so it was this year. In addition, the fact that m’learned Hawk chum Shaun was celebrating his 40th gave us an opportunity to sponsor the matchball on his behalf and get some wining and dining in the club prior to kick off. Shirt and tie, even with the addition of a scarf, is not my usual get-up for terrace singing and Hawkbop, but you gotta do these fings proper, like. We are the prawn sandwich brigade, and we claim our half-time tea and biscuits.

 Once back outside, behind the goal with the proles, the warm weather certainly made for sunny dispositions all round and as the valedictory drinkage began to seep up to the synapses, we began the singing, and barely let up for the ninety minutes, which isn’t the usual way it works at home, to be honest. Although we don’t usually go in for anti- stuff, Eastleigh have become the exception to the rule, with some ‘sit down if you hate Eastleigh’ seeing many a Hawk bum plunge in the direction of the terrace steps [see pic above].

In addition, our tune-meister general, Ade, had added a few new verses to his call-and-response military marching song [hot-off-the-press lyric sheet being peered at by Ade through severely lager-impinged vision pictured below] so as to reference our friends from up the road, a couple of which being…

“I don’t know, but it’s been said
‘Ian Baird has a handsome head’
Well I don’t know what films you’ve seen
he looks like Shrek but he ain’t green”

Several versions of this have cropped up at games over the years, with the lines shifting to reflect current staff and our main rivals of the time. First version I heard was at my first ever Hawk away game back in 1999, when we played at Rushden & Diamonds in the FA Trophy and I can still remember some of the lines even now, bits about Banjo [Ben] Price tackling like a Stanley Knife and, my particular favourite,

“Have a look at Liam Daish
spreads your nose across your face”

…plus there’s one line from a version which I don’t remember personally, but have been told of since…

“waiting for FA synopsis
vis-à-vis BJ's proboscis”

…which, frankly, should be referenced in all good football history books. You can keep your ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’!

 Ah, memories! I feel like I’ve been a Hawk-fan for long enough now to justify a little nostalgia. It doesn’t really work in the short-term after all - “ahhh lads, lads, d’you remember that time we all sang ‘Give us an ‘Aiiitch…’ at Bromley?” “Err, yes Skif. That was a fortnight ago.” One thing that is for sure, when it comes to discussing old times in pubs and club bars in the future, we’ll be referencing this season a lot.

Aye, it’s been a good ‘un, and we made our own fun to see it out in style, singing like it was a tense thriller, when nothing could be further from the truth. As an end-of-season game between two sides shielded both from relegation and promotion angst, it was largely the stuff of cliché, and it took Mo Harkin’s crisp edge-of-the-box shot cannoning off the bar to remind us that there was actually a game of football going on out there, amidst all the close-harmony singing. Our focus was largely on our bench, trying to goad our staff into a reaction. Even our physio, Grace, got a request to “give us a wave”.

Perhaps it was the knowledge that we were all peering over that put off our fitness coach Adi Aymes when he tried to collect the ball as it headed out for a throw-in, in the direction of our dugout. Misjudging the bounce, it missed his big hands and hit him squarely upside the chin. Admittedly he has a jaw-line you could chop lumber with, and so it probably didn’t throw him too much but, hey, someone copping a light one in their heavy-duty mush is always funny ain’t it? It entertained on several levels though, after all his failure to catch a ball as it bounced near his ankles, given his past life as a Hampshire wicketkeeper regularly touted as an England prospect, made it all the more amusing.

Indeed, for all the lack of edge in the game, when we finally did score, Charlie Henry deftly finding the gap between Welling keeper Jamie Turner and his near post from just outside the box with a fantastic pinpoint shot, we erupted. There we were jumping up and down and cuddling, celebrating like he’d scored a Cup Final winner, donated a grand to our beer fund and rescued a kitten from a burning treehouse all in the space of about, I don’t know, a minute. Well, why not, we were collectively, and without exception, in a good mood despite recent disappointment. Even when Rocky had a penalty saved two minutes prior to Charlie’s goal, it didn’t throw us a great deal. Well, if you’re going to miss a penalty at any time, and all that. To have something to properly celebrate is the ideal though and Charlie seemed quite happy about it too, going into one of his spectacular celebratory somersaults.

If a 1-0 win to close things out wasn’t enough to keep us jaunty, then the news coming through that Eastleigh had succumbed to a 4-1 defeat at Thurrock and thus, despite being in situ for several months, would miss out on the play-offs at the eleventh hour, most certainly was. The Beasts finished with a record of nineteen wins, ten draws and thirteen defeats, as did we, although despite us being better defensively, their goals scored record allows them to finish in sixth to our seventh. Still, their modus operandi did not see them prevail, and we can (albeit pettily) take that as our moral reward.

So, like I say, there really isn’t much to feel low about, and if the cup run cash is spent wisely, we must surely be amongst the favourites to win the whole show next year. Looking back to my final H&W piece of last season, the last line was certainly prophetic, albeit a little vague in its forecast. Being a fan of omens an’ all, and not wishing to alter a winning formula, I think it would be wise to close out 2007/08 in the same way. As such: “next year will be another to remember.”

Links
Havant & Waterlooville website
Welling United website

17feb08
Havant & Waterlooville FC civic reception
outside Civic Offices, Havant

Another shot of worldwide wanderer Adrian, this time with Kevin 'Safe Hands' Scriven at the Sunday afternoon do for the Hawk Cup heroes.

Adrian will return to action on this site in a couple of weeks with a piece from his recent MLS tickle to Chicago Fire.

Previously, on Hobo Tread
Adrian meets Alfredo di Pottero

Hobo in my pocket #16

Bromley 2 Havant & Waterlooville 1

12apr08
Conference South
Hayes Lane (Courage Stadium), Bromley
att. 603

In my piece following the draw against the Cads, Varlets and Wicked Rogues XI, I will admit that the tone of my concluding remarks, regarding our play-off-hopes, was probably one of mild pessimism. This wasn’t down to me having glanced at the league table, and seen us five places from the play-offs with the thought of an away game at fellow ‘off chasers Newport County to come. Nor was it because I’d been intensely mulling over our, in-every-sense, wet performance at St Albans City. No, I was simply playing my own game of tactical superstitiousness.

Where has belief ever got me? I believed last season and we fell at the final hurdle. Whereas for this year’s cup run, each round was approached with a resignation, on my part, that this would be as good as it got. And thus we thrilled the nation. You’ll ascertain from this how vital a cog in the H&W machine I clearly am. Alright so none of our players could pick ‘Skif’ out of a line-up involving me, four Belisha beacons and a collapsed Wendy House, but, nonetheless, if we go up this season it will all be because of me. Me, the man who heroically maintained disbelief. There I said it.

However my stoic, gallant negativity took quite a significant blow during the aforementioned game away at Newport. Okay, so we’d followed up the Eastleigh draw with a 2-0 win at home to Sutton, but that was to be expected. Sutton’s relegation, at kick off, was like a student flat in need of a tidy but with a mollycoddling mother standing by with the marigolds i.e. it was guaranteed to be done and dusted by the end – not even a win would have saved them. I won’t bore you with the maths of that.

In theory then, we could take no real pleasure in it, as it was rather like shooting fish in a glove compartment. Of course, while we might have expected these three points to come easy, they still had to be won to prevent all the play-off-chasing air from gusting straight out of our heavy-weather promotion tyres. However, given that the mathematicians behind our goal (who have been working away into the early hours of many a school-day morning attempting to weld best-case-scenarios firmly onto coming events) had already chalked this one into their equations as a home banker, it still meant the hard work was still to do.

The theme coming through was that we didn’t have to win all of our remaining five games to remain in contention of fourth or fifth place which, when facing Newport and Bromley away from home within a four day period, was certainly a relaxant. Given that Newport County were also gunning for a spot and, prior to the game, both a point ahead and a game behind us, this was the fixture, of those remaining, that we thought would have to be our loss-leader. However we went there, benefited from a Paul Cochlin own goal then defended stoutly under heavy pressure for over an hour to come home with a one-nil win; a victory that meant a return to the abacuses, and a wavering of the Skiffoid cynicism. I began to believe. Frankly, I was devastated.

Having jumped up four places in one night, we were now within goosing distance of Bishops Stortford in 5th place and our first return to the play-off zone since mid-September. Clearly one should try to repress positive thoughts, drive them deep down inside, as what was given with one hand, was soon taken away with another. In this case it was Bromley’s hand, thrusting a big old stick between our spokes.

 Having taken the lead in the third minute, Rocky Baptiste levering in a shot from the edge of the box into the top corner, we largely coasted the first half an hour. Behind the goal we had not a care in the world, even finding time to knock out a full, epic “Give as an H...AIIIIIITCH...” which, given there were a couple of false starts as we struggled to remember how to spell it (it is very long, people), pretty much took us up to half time. After the half-hour (and roughly the "L...EEEEEEELLL") mark though, Bromley began to look a bit more dangerous, but we appeared to be weathering their attacks in solid enough fashion.

In the second half, rather than come out with renewed energy, we left our confidence on the physio table. This was odd given that, after Wednesday night’s inspired work, it shouldn’t have been in need of any therapeutic attention anyway. As the half wore on, the more leggy we appeared; usually inspirational captain Jamie Collins looked as lost as a toddler absent-mindedly left behind in an underground car park after a long shopping trip. As such it wasn’t a shock that Bromley were able to draw level on the hour, Omari Coleman scoring with a brilliantly placed header, nor that they should take the lead eleven minutes later through Danny Hockton’s crisp shot.

 In my Eastleigh reportage-come-bitchfest I mentioned the parallels with last season’s run-in, in that one-all draws were continuing to be popular away from home in the spring. This very weekend last season that sequence was interrupted by a 2-1 defeat away to a side whose promotion ambitions were over. Said defeat caused frustration behind the goal which then affected sensitivities and increased tensions, boiling over into stand-up rows and such. For 2007, now read 2008, as 2-1 it finished amidst less then comfy silence on the terrace.

When people care passionately about something, this is perhaps to be expected, but one would hope that our season doesn’t peter out in such an atmosphere particularly when you consider that, whether we make the play-offs or not, this has been our finest season to date. However, those who continue to re-evaluate our karmic equity will tell you that we remain a whole point in credit, assuming you accept the view from a week ago that we could happily draw both these last away games if we then went on to win our final three, all at home.

As two of those games involve sides scrapping against relegation, they will not be easy rides against teams dreaming of string vests, knotted hankies and a sturdy deckchair. However good our form is, I can only feel gloomy at our prospects of tucking in late-doors. And in that one strategic sentence I have guaranteed us glory. Although if anyone’s asking, of course [winks and taps side of nose twice], I haven’t.

Schtum?

Handsome.

Links
Bromley website
Havant & Waterlooville website

Eastleigh 1 Havant & Waterlooville 1

01apr08
Conference South
Ten Acres (Silverlake Stadium), Eastleigh
att. 1,255

Like the titular character in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Australian cricketers are quite fond of an old sledge. This we know. We also suspect that while they can dish it out, they’re not so keen to take it. There is a story that stroppy, but frustratingly good, bowler Glenn McGrath once tried to get under the skin of West Indian Ramnaresh Sarwan by asking “So, what does Brian Lara’s dick taste like,” to which Sarwan apparently replied “I don’t know, why don’t you ask your wife?” Glenda was not pleased; giving out the jabs there, but proving to be a chinless wonder when the punches came back. It would appear that Eastleigh FC have a man of similar character.

As reported on these pages, during the first grudge match between the sides, following Eastleigh’s capture of the grumpy eraser-headed Ian Baird; the sicknote-scribbling Matt Gray; the crab-eyed Gareth Howells and the, err, knobwad Fitzroy Simpson, the latter decided to goad his former fans (I use the term loosely as I, and many others, always thought he was a coasting waster) with a t-shirt that referred to the on-going Tom Jordan transfer saga between the two clubs. “See you soon Tom – EFC” said Fitz’s t-shirt. However, here we are five months later and Tom remains an H&W player, albeit only in a contractual sense, despite being on the receiving end of more tap-ups than a bidet warehouse. Let me bring you back up to speed.

Tom had a pretty weird couple of months through December and January. After coming out in the press demanding to leave for Eastleigh he was forced to the sidelines and was even on the end of a “Jordan, Jordan, what’s the score” chant from our supporters after we’d beaten the team of his dreams three weeks later. However, within a fortnight, he found himself back in the side thanks to the long line of the injured and the cup-tied. He scored the game-sealing goal against Swansea at home in the FA Cup of course, but his first start in front of the home supporters that had voiced their clear disapproval in December came against St Albans City the previous Saturday.

It’s certainly rare for a centre half to score his sides first two goals in any game, but under these circumstances it was just bizarre, even before you consider that the second effort was no set-piece-centre-half-big-‘eader gambit, but a shot from the edge of the box using the outside of his foot. If it had been Cristiano Ronaldo scoring it, Ronnie would certainly have considered going on one of his ‘I really can’t believe how great I am. And I am’ Marco Tardelli-esque celebrations straight afterwards.

After his first goal (byline-cross-centre-half-big-‘eader) Tom didn’t know quite how to celebrate, leaping up as though to punch the air but halting as though having himself been the recipient of a punch in the face half way up. However, the silence he was expecting was not forthcoming. A decent smattering of applause, albeit from a crowd that murmured like a swamp afterward, and a smattering back, and all was moving in the right direction for the otherwise shaky Jordan/Hawkmob love affair. And then he had to go and spoilt it all by saying something stupid like “I love Eastleigh” or, at least, “I still want to go there” later adding “and I’ll happily miss playing at Anfield to do so,” like this made it noble and not hat-stand mad.

Anyway, following the end of the cup stuff and the return of Gary Elphick to the equation, Tom has returned to the stands, occasionally being ‘coaxed’ into comment by the local press, and sometimes sending his Dad, Dour Joe, to fight his battles for him, reporting us to the PFA at one point, I’m told. The PFA apparently found us perfectly within our rights to demand a fair price for a contracted (and regularly paid) player, a price that Eastleigh were unwilling to pay, preferring just to unsettle the player to the point where his position became untenable. Doesn’t mean we’ll be giving him away for pennies though. Whether we’re shooting ourselves in the foot with this policy remains to be seen, but one mustn’t give in to bullying types. Nor squinny Daddy’s-boys.

So, anyway, back to Fitz’s t-shirt. One of my H&’Dub colleagues, McMalc, had known Fitz well enough during his time with us to banter with him, sometimes even by text. So, with mockery in mind, albeit with more than a touch of point-making attached to it, McMalc went to show Fitz his newly defaced t-shirt; his reading “Where’s your Tom, Fitz?” On seeing this, Fitzroy apparently chucked the toys out of his pram so fast it was like watching a stricken hot-air balloonist discharging ballast. Fights in car parks were reportedly offered by our erstwhile touchline ambler, tooled-up only in the sense that he himself was there.

This is not to say that all of Eastleigh’s hangers-on espouse the classlessness of the nouveau riche, although we can confirm that one of their goalkeeping coaches does. Not lovely old Wayne Shaw, who played a good number of games for Eastleigh in the Conference South despite being profit-eater-in-chief at his ice-cream firm and, as a result, being built like the bolder in ‘Raiders Of The Lost Ark’. We like him. Sadly, I refer to one of our former charges, Gareth Howells, who broke the golden rule for pro and semi-pro players and staff in leaving a bitchy comment on a fans message board.

We had a thread on the H&W board referring to a question and answer forum the club were hosting for fans to quiz manager Shaun Gale. This was advertised as ‘An Evening With Galey’ which did suggest that our gaffer was going to be turning out in a pink ruffled shirt to tell a few bawdy gags before crooning through “Galey’s Golden Hour – some tunes we all know.” Which, frankly, I’d have paid very good money for. However being that it was just his unplugged and acoustic Q&A set, the comment left by ‘cat’ was that those attending should “take a pillow and duvet.” He’d have gotten away with it too had it not been for that pesky forum administrator, who was well aware of what email address had been used to sign up for the ‘cat’ forum account. Busted!

Still, we can only offer our pity. This was, after all, coming from a man with a face like a twitcher’s hide. I guarantee, you look into that deep, dark recess in the middle of his mush there, between his forehead and his gob, and you’ll find a number of bearded, freshly retired birdwatchers peering back at you through binoculars, hoping that you were going to be a white-throated needletail. Honestly his eye-sockets are so deep-set in his skull, it’s frightening. I imagine, though, that he sees the world just as I do. If I happened to be looking at it through a couple of toilet roll tubes.

So, needless to say, this game’s fire didn’t need much extra stoking and, as such, a big crowd rocked up to have a look. Eastleigh are famous for embellishing their crowds, often declaring hundreds of sponsors tickets they’ve handed out (but which haven’t been taken up) but their call of 1,255 seemed about right, of which at least a quarter were following the Hawks. All this made for a pulsating atmosphere which never over-heated in an unsavoury way.

The problem with Ten Acres is that it was, until fairly recently, hosting Wessex League football, and although a lot of work has been done since I was last here (in 2002 watching them playing AFC Totton in the Hampshire Senior Cup, a night which saw one of Matthew Le Tissier’s handful of post-retirement appearances for them), the far side and the ends are not currently built for comfort. Behind one goal is a pre-fabricated set of seats that, frankly, are never going to be sat in, while the flat standing along one side (the cover provided several yards back from the barrier) feels like it dips backwards so that if you’re three-deep, you can barely see a thing - unless you commandeer some space on a bench of course (see pic). It’s much the same behind the car-park end goal, where I spent most of the first half on tip-toe, despite being 6’4”.

That complaint aside, the ground at least bore witness to a pretty decent game of ebb-and-flow football between two teams determined to give no quarter. It remained scoreless at half-time despite good chances for both sides. It looked as though neither side’s defences were going to be breached at all, that was until the 76th minute. Recently arrived substitute Gavin McCallum sprinted into the box and levelled a pin-point cross for Rocky to head home from close-range. The whole thing in wonderful slo-mo. Perfect, and thus bedlam, as you’ll spot from another set of blurry pics.

However it wasn’t to last long, their equaliser coming with seven minutes left. A dawdling Rocky found himself dispossessed, and the ball was swiftly despatched to the box where Paul Sales was on hand to crack a shot past Kevin Scriven. Thus the points were shared, but we can at least point out that Eastleigh have still yet to claim a victory against us in nine attempts.

Yet the truth of the matter is that while we’ve shaded the battles, it looks as though Eastleigh may win the war. It will take an astonishing collapse for them not to be involved in the play-offs, whereas this dropping of two points may well now make the ask too big for us. Not that we can really pinpoint this game as the pivotal result. Losing 1-0 at St. Albans, who are scrapping away in the relegation mix, the previous Saturday was much more disappointing. Against Eastleigh, we thought we shaded it; they thought they did. Read between those lines and you’ll probably gather that this was as fair a result as they come. To think more positively, the season is not over and more of the same commitment in the remaining six games combined with a touch more accuracy from the shooting boots and we could sneak in there at the last. Away games at Bromley and Newport County in the coming week will be the acid test

If one image will stay with us from the evening, it is perhaps the reactions within the Eastleigh dug-out after their equaliser. Ian Baird, his pink head looking like the inside of a steam-ironed scrotum, came bounding out like his team had won the league. However we should perhaps find that understandable considering we Hawks have spent the last few months deriding his moral fortitude as lacking, his leadership style as flawed and his scalp as looking like a back-to-front ball-bag.

Latest Hobo music review
Billy Childish & The Musicians Of The British Empire.
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Previously, on Dub Steps
22dec07: Havant & Waterlooville 1 Eastleigh 0
09apr07: Havant & Waterlooville 1 Eastleigh 1

Links
Eastleigh website
Havant & Waterlooville website