Jersey League XI 1 Havant & Waterlooville 1

19jul08
Pre-season friendly
Springfield, St. Helier
att. 100 (approx.)

Jersey tour feature part two
(part one here)

The Thursday/Saturday combo meant Friday was freed up for some hardcore, hell-for-leather, what-goes-on-tour-stays-on-tour, boys-Friday-night-on-the-town action. Thus two rounds of adventure golf, a 99 cone, a gentle stroll round the Jersey War Tunnels, and a swiftly aborted attempt to traverse the increasingly ocean-licked causeway over to Elizabeth Castle it was. Believe me, we London Branch boys know our way round ‘avin’ it large.

In a random curry house stumbled upon later however it appeared we were the talk of the town, well I say we, “Havant & Waterlooville” being mentioned on at least two tables around us, and its not as though we were wearing anything to identify ourselves as Total Hawkmob to trigger any discussions. Indeed, considering both the BBC and ITV local news programmes for the Islands saw fit to show highlights from the Thursday night game, it appeared we were big news in some respects, if not others.

Certainly it’s not like the starriness of our attraction brought many locals through the gates, even if an extra four Hawks turned up to take the away support into double figures. Despite the coverage on the telly and in the Jersey Evening Post, there appeared to be no other mention that there was a game on anywhere, no posters, nuffin, not even at the stadium. If people had known it was a free in for both games, they might have popped down but then again, we’re not exactly the Harlem Globetrotters, with or without Adi Aymes in midfield.

Nonetheless, there was security on the gates for Saturday’s fixture, even if it didn’t appear they were taking money. Having got to the ground an hour early, we could easily stroll in anyway and proceed to interrupt a seven year old’s birthday party that was taking place in the bar. Indeed, there aren’t many grounds I’ve been to with the Hawks that have a local common-esque playground in one corner. However some kids beat me to it, thus preventing me adding “watched Hawks from a see-saw” to the list. Not that there is a list. That would be a little weird, albeit perfectly in keeping. Instead we loafed beneath the sun, weirding out the players by staring at them as they underwent their warm-up exercises under Galey’s command right in front of our once-again-commandeered knoll.

Word had it that the Thursday night opposition would be the slightly easier of the two, as the National XI could only pick Jersey-born players, whereas Saturday’s League XI could pick from anyone playing football on the Island. Some suggested it was be a fairly similar side, while media reports went further to suggest it was more or less exactly the same. It at least enabled another run out for David Le Roux, seemingly nicknamed Danny by his team-mates. At no point though did he respond to their pass-requesting cries of “Danny! Danny!” by shouting “wotcher mates” and breaking into a high-camp version of “I Am What I Am.” More is the pity.

After trying out 3-5-2 on Thursday we began with a more familiar 4-4-2 line-up for the Saturday game but looked a little lethargic suggesting either that they’d had it even larger than the London Branch, if that were possible, on the Friday night, or that they were merely trying to get through it with the promise of more beers and a Ruby to come. As a result it was Jersey who took the lead just before half-time, Barry Beatson hammering a corner past our keeper Kevin Scriven, now a vision in green after trying out his new bubblegum-flavoured-Panda-Pop coloured outfit on the Thursday.

After half-time, we looked a little more at it, but it took the introduction of our big new defender Guy Butters on the hour to level things up, the chunky veteran tilting on his axis like a rusty swing-bridge within seconds of coming on and firing home after a Brett Poate corner and the subsequent goalmouth scramble. The BBC Jersey site suggested, whilst coming on a bit Officer Crabtree, that the goal was the responsibility of “former Tottenham and Brighton professional Guy Bitters.” Mind you we can’t say anything, some of us are committed to pronouncing our new man’s first name in the French style, despite the fact he comes from Hillingdon.

After that chances came at both ends with our claims for moral goalage arguable slightly stronger, however Craig Watkins and Luke Nightingale were proving as wasteful as we fear they may be in the season proper. Luke in particular is very much a man in need of some onion-baggage, especially given the fact he’s one of the rare players we’ve actually paid a transfer fee for.

Believe me, in his displays last season, he could have scored from six yards into an empty net, having leap-frogged two dodos attacking a pantomime horse en route, and people would still have been saying “Well, I never thought I’d see that. Luke Nightingale hitting the target.”

Certainly, we can feel quite confident about our defence, but our attacking options still look a little undercooked. I guess that’s what these games are for though and Luke can miss as many as he likes on a jolly, as long as he can make it count when one-on-one with Paul Bastock at St Albans City on the first day of the season.

Indeed that will be the next H&W action that DubSteps will bring to you, the remaining friendlies certainly lacking in locational intrigue. Hopefully by then we may have a better idea if this is a side we genuinely can believe in as potential title winners.

Links
Jersey FA website
Havant & Waterlooville website
Springfield panorama
BBC Jersey report

Jersey National XI 0 Havant & Waterlooville 4

17jul08
Pre-season friendly
Springfield, St. Helier
att. 180 (approx.)

Someone once told me that they had a friend who was a planespotter, and the reason that they had taken up this hobby was that they had simply run out of trains to spot. As going that extra mile for your interests goes, this would be the rigor mortis of hardcore, and we doff a hearty cap to that. After all, who am I to deride? Thanks to the Cup run to every which way last year, the Hawkmob London Branch are in danger of soon running out of major London rail stations from which to depart for games. Just need Cannon Street and Marylebone now for a royal flush. If this were a game of strip poker, someone’s south terminus would soon be feeling the breeze of defeat.

Happilly, of course, it isn’t. However it has made me think about the variety of methods in which I have got to H&W away games over the years: cars, of course; on foot; buses (both mini- and timetabled); coaches (National Express and Supporters Club); trains of many colours; taxis; and a catamaran (twice). Then, of course, there was the time we turned up at Tamworth on a Wednesday night in April during some particularly fierce fixture congestion with just four fans. When we had come on a skateboard, apparently.

Of course, there is one method we haven’t yet tried, and I don’t mean descending on Eastleigh with a fleet of Segways, either. We’ve been singing for years about the Hawks “flying high, up in the sky” whilst clutched tight to terra-firma by lovely old gravity. Finally we have spread our wings and taken to the air, courtesy a pre-season tour to Jersey.

I have oft used my web mouthpiece, this y’er websoite, to decry the pre-season friendly as a concept for its innate insipidness. However stick a couple of ‘em on a handsome rock off the coast of France and I’ll be there quicker than my inner accountant can say “mmm, can you really justify the cost of all this?” Which caused a problem in itself. The dust had barely settled on the H&Dub homepage following the publication of some pre-season dates when the London Branch were booking flights and such. Probably should have read the bit beneath about dates being subject to change really. It’s like my great aunt used to say – “Skiffoid, always read the regular sized print, you acrid berk”. Gawd bless her.

Nothing was then confirmed for another couple of months, the plan to play a French league side in St. Peter on the Saturday proving a sticking point. It was then suggested that the Saturday kick off would be put back to the evening. Not ideal for a couple of London idiots who’d rock solid booked a flight back tight to the final whistle at 18:00.

Eventually our club sec, probably sick of my hinting (or rather badgering in the manner of Veruca Salt campaigning for her very own golden egg-laying goose), wangled a 14:30 start albeit not now against anyone French at the airport adjacent St. Peter FC ground, but a second game in St Helier. Still, Jersey isn’t exactly a huge land mass, all would be well – no need to change a thing. Probably didn’t need my agitated-man-on-sinking-cruise-ship routine through the best part of the summer after all.

Still, after all that anxiety, necessary or not, to finally arrive in Jersey on schedule was such a blessed relief it took some restraint to stop myself tonguing the runway like an epileptic Pope with a tarmac fetish. We’s got our beano going oooonnnn!

However, arriving at Springfield Stadium for the first time, it was pretty clear that most of our support had been a bit more pragmatic about the whole thing and stayed at home saving their money for less expensive, more competitive action later on. I don’t have a lot of money, but I have even less sense, thus I’m here. I don’t think, therefore I am (sat on a grassy knoll that passes for terracing).

Springfield, as mentioned, is Jersey’s national stadium but has a public park and fitness centre within its boundaries and so, while fairly rudimentary save for a relatively gigantic main stand, the general leafy- and greenness makes for a pretty comfortable location for those who wish to combine their football with a little light sun-basking. Hawks on holidays: knees out, knotted hankie on. Bring on the leisure.

So you’ll have to excuse the six of us supporters present for not getting amongst the singing action. We might be here for the football but spiritually we’re asleep under a palm tree with a Dean Koontz novel perched on our face. Not to say that the opening game, against the National Rep XI, was without entertainment. It gave Shaun Gale a chance to experiment with a 3-5-2, us lot to have a proper look at our red hot new signings and, after twenty-five minutes of looking distinctly second best, a few goals by way of souvenir. First up was Gary Elphick with a dink off the freshly London Branch-sponsored bonce, followed twelve minutes later by Jamie Slabber sliding home a Craig Watkins cross at the far post. On the stroke of half-time Craig added a third, lifting the ball over keeper Craig Fletcher and tickling it slowly off the far post.

The second half was a much more even contest, illuminated by Slabs turning expertly in the box and lifting it over the keeper for our fourth and final on 57 minutes. With the game won, and the entertainment factor of seeing a Jay Conroy tackle taking out a linesman long past, we felt relaxed enough to introduce our fitness coach and stadium manager, 44 year old former Hampshire wicketkeeper Adrian Aymes, into midfield for a ten minute cameo. We wondered if our hosts might consider this to be us taking the piss a bit, until we found out that the Jersey squad for Saturday was to include Pat Symcox, Eddie Hemmings and the reanimated corpse of K.S. Ranjitsinjhi. Fairs fair n’ everything.

Mind you, to be a little nicer to him, Adi could well have been a pro footballer had cricket not taken over and it’s not like we were raffling off bench places to the drunks in the West Leigh Park social club. I remember watching Accrington Stanley playing a friendly at Harrogate Railway when I was stationed in Leeds and their gaffer John Coleman brought himself on for twenty minutes despite looking like a beer barrel on a piano stool. You certainly couldn’t accuse our fitness coach of not walking it like he talks it.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, we booed him on anyway. Money really can't buy committed support like ours.

Jersey tour part 2 - click here

Links
Jersey FA website
Havant & Waterlooville website
Springfield panorama
BBC Jersey report

East Preston 0 Havant & Waterlooville 1

08jul08
Pre-season friendly
Roundstone Recreation Ground, East Preston
att. 140 (approx.)

So that’s it for the close season then. You may not have noticed we’d had one; football having been funnelled into our eyeballs pretty much non-stop since I reported from H&W’s low octane season denouement. From the Portsmouth/Cardiff final, where our chums down the road stole our FA Cup thunder somewhat, through the seemingly endless series of Football League play-offs, to Euro 2008 which ruined the summer for the more nationalistically-focused England fans, particularly those who like to set their watch by Coronation Street.

That’s it now though. You’ve had your ‘break’, and we’re back into the domestic stuff. July: a month for lying on a towel in Magaluf reading transfer speculation in a day-old copy of The Sun. Except not for everyone; those of us who don’t enjoy Magaluf, The Sun or towels, and really care not a jot which ‘Madagascan Michael Owen’ is supposedly going to pitch up at Wigan, have to rely on the delights of pre-season.

Pre-season ‘campaigns’ seem to get longer and longer, interminably approaching the opening game of the season proper like a nervous slug attempting a ski-jump on a sticky ramp. Pre-season friendlies are, after all, the enemy of exhilaration. Friendlies look at giddy thrills through tired pill-box eyes, grunt and then roll over, wrapping themselves up in all the duvet as they do so.

So, in the face of an entertainment hostile to the very concept of entertainment, one has to make one’s own adventure and, thus, containing the early July stroller in an obscure Sussex County League location at least gives it an element of exotica.

The first friendly of the season is always fairly good though, as it allows everyone to re-group, not just the team (although there’s been plenty of traffic in and out, so its more like a particularly athletic form of speed-dating for them) but for us supporters. During the course of the season you spend an awful lot of time in the company of your fellow fans so, come the end of the season, we need that couple of months off to recharge our social batteries.

In a way pre-season is a good rehearsal for us too. If we started the season instantly with a big beano to Worcester City, we might well collapse prior to kick-off, but we can ramp it up too, with some balmy summer evenings, light drinking and the beginnings of excited chatter as to our prospects for the coming season.

That chatter was paramount; the hellos and how-ya-bins essentially our focus, and around it a game of football broke out, but not much of one. These games are always glorified training sessions and while its good to get a sneaky look at new signings, eager trialists and the Academy yoof getting a rare chance to mix it with the ol’ ‘yins, it is hard to prevent your attention from straying. As a result, I missed the only goal of the game (scored by trialist Danny Edwards – I used to work with a Danny Edwards who was fairly nifty at football – it couldn’t be, could it?) by remaining in the bar slightly too long after half time, as my compadres and I chewed the fat like committed carnivores happy to substitute their gum for gristle.

You know though, we always knew how it was going to be. This was, after all, a friendly arranged so that our assistant manager Charlie Oatway could begin his on-field rehabilitation by kicking his son, East Preston’s Charlie Jr., around a pitch for a half. Perhaps Jr. hadn’t been doing his fair share of the chores, or had been lippy to his Ma at breakfast. While some kids get grounded, or have their iPod confiscated for a week, Charlie Oatway Jr. has, instead, to deal with the possibility of his old man leaping in studs up and breaking his shiny new birthday shin-guards. That’ll learn him.

So, not a scintillator then, but its always worth it, of course. It might be a long old way to come from London to deepest Sussex for an uncompetitive game, especially missing the sole highlight but, y’know, screw it, its all part of the process of training up the concentration for the undoubtedly intense season to come.

Links
East Preston website
Havant & Waterlooville website

Farleigh Rovers 1 Horley Town 1

15may07
Combined Counties League Division One
Parsonage Field, Warlingham
att. 55 (approx.)

Hobo in my pocket #20



>>from our friends in Norway (Fjordball)

"He might have the work-rate of Nicolas Anelka on weed, he might turn slower than Jupiter, but the man is a bloody genius none the less"

Read about Fredrikstad's fat, rahnd, werf a milwion pahnd cult hero, Raymond Kvisvik here.



>>from the Art of Noise archive

Billy Childish & the Musicians of the British Empire.
Dalston Barden’s Boudoir. 29mar08.

I have some history in the garage sphere. I used to do a record and merch stall at gigs for Portsmouth’s The Green Hornets. There I was behind me table loaded with mono LPs, with the quiff and crushed velvet knee-length jacket to go with it. It’s not a genre I’m an expert about though - I know what Toe Rag Studios is and what it represents, but that’s about it – but it’s a music that gets my knees a-movin’, whether tickled by crushed velvet or not.

I like the energy of garage; I like the fact that it’s coarse and rugged, but more often than not performed by musicians who espouse a distinct sartorial élan. All the garage rock n’ rollers I’ve ever known have always been pretty well turned out. However waistcoats, flamboyant silk shirts and shiny shoes will always be trumped by military uniforms, braces and the kind of handlebar moustache a family of six could hang their washing from.

So, with me, Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire hit the ground running (most likely with imitation bayonets). Billy, of course, is a bit of an everyman: part of the Medway scene; a poet; a painter; a founder member of the Stuckism art movement; and an author of several volumes of poetry and autobiography. On top of this, he has recorded more than a hundred LPs in a variety of guises; Thee Milkshakes, Thee Headcoats and Wild Billy Childish & The Friends of the Buff Medways Fanciers Association (aka The Buff Medways) being, arguably, the most well known.

More salaciously his name appeared prominently in Tracey Emin’s tent. Furthermore, in recent years, he has been lauded by, and fallen out with, the White Stripes, while he also turned down an offer to appear in the 2006 Celebrity Big Brother house. All this info is a bit gossip rag though and Childish is more representative of a Fugazi-esque work ethic – getting down to business without all the exploitative add ons. His website states firmly “I do not like fashion culture.”

“Welcome to our Stoke Newington re’ersal” he says by way of greeting tonight, later adding, “What other bands would let you come to their re’ersal…and charge you ten quid for the privilege?” As it goes, it’s only seven sheets yer in, representing particularly good value, what with the Flaming Stars providing sturdy, and suave, support.

Buff Medways tune Dawn Said, recent BC&TMOTBE LP title track Christmas 1979 and the grizzled gospel of an a capella John the Revelator are the stand-outs in a vivid, stout and sweaty set, but it appears not everyone is satisfied, one heckle requesting that the guitars be turned up; “What? That’s like asking Beethoven to turn up his Moog” is Billy’s swift riposte.

While you might not get unexpected tangents or substantial changes of pace from Billy’s guitar, Nurse Julie’s bass or Wolf Howard’s drums, they stir in all the ingredients you need for an absorbing and distinguished garage set. As Billy himself said early in the evening, “nothing wrong wiv a bit of drums an’ racket.”