Ruislip Manor 1 Biggleswade Town 2

17mar08
Spartan South Midlands League Premier Division
Grosvenor Vale, Ruislip
att. 53

Hobo in my pocket #25

Since this game, Wealdstone have taken over Grosvenor Vale and Ruislip have moved to Tokyngton. The Manor part of their name went with them, but not the Ruislip and, consequently, none of the fans, with Tokyngton declaring attendances of 4, 3, 2 and a possibly dog accompanied 1 so far this season.

Previously, on dubSteps
17mar08: Ruislip Manor 1 Biggleswade Town 2


from the Vanity Project archive (#21, March 2007)

Miss Odd Kid, Big Joan, Shuffle, Cruiser Chimps.
Hoxton Macbeth. 24feb07.

Ow-wow! AH! AH! Ooh-ooh (like owl). Whhhoooooooop! Agggggggghhhhhhhh! Cruiser Chimps then, an offshoot from two of Bearsuit so as to explore their more post-Melt Banana psychotic predilections. Which is kind of like ordering someone to complete the last ten hours of their community service order for arson by helping out an elderly and partially blind tobacconist with his annual stock-check. Feel their ramshackle, caustic burn. At one point they laugh amongst themselves to suggest one of them has made a glaring error. Not that you’d notice the difference. Cruiser Chimps prove to be an excellent palate-clearer for a distinctly eclectic club-night. Four acts with hardly a single thing in common. We like that.

Shuffle are fronted by two quite distinct vocalists. An under-used oriental lady and the main guy who appears to be going for that Mediterranean spiv look, his croon just the trick . Around them, the band are all dapper, halfway out of their suiting and booting, like a dinner-jazz band throwing off their stiff exoskeleton and giving themselves over to Pizzicato-funk. While the band sway, over to stage left, two guys stand, manipulating their samplers, and facing directly at the side wall, as though joined at the waist like table footballers, and jigging as though simultaneously and repeatedly poked on the join between arse and leg with the thin end of a broom. Amongst their crunch, their swing and their raised-eyebrow electronic cool, they perform a post-Deelite bohemian soul and, at their best, are utterly captivating.

Next up is the violent avant-hardcore of Big Joan. Their name gives a clue, nodding to ‘Trout Mask Replica’ levels of defiant experimentation. However this isn’t psychedelic desert free-jazz, instead it is a scientific, almost industrial kick to the chops. At their vocal helm is diminutive German Annette, lost beneath a large, high-ranking military cap, who does PJ Harvey deadpan/sultry, a Siouxsie warble distorted in one tune through a phone-line, and an occasional climb of the scale towards the operatic. Behind, the guitars and bass combine a jangle with a roar, the bass asking hard questions that the six-strings respond to with a push to the chest. They crash/shuttle/break/blast and finish with a piece that sees the bass pressed against speaker whilst the other three members crash at cymbals, the drum set and a tin bin sat at centre stage.

The night ends with a PA from Miss Odd Kid looking almost miniature, but far from overawed, alone on stage. Indeed, while her raps often veer towards the rhyming dictionary school of the uninspired (see the cumbersomely titled ‘Ooh Ahh I Lost My Bra, I Found Your Knickers In My Boyfriend’s Car’), the abrasive electro backing-tracks reveal an aggression, and a distinct lack of sugar coating. This council estate Kelis with the violent streak and the ‘I’ll pull you later’ t-shirt makes for a tough swallow, in both a positive and negative sense.

Horndean 1 VTFC 3

14mar09
Wessex League Premier Division
Five Heads Park, Horndean
att. 56

Years ago I gained a bit of a reputation when I travelled on foot to watch the Havant & Waterlooville youth team play away at Horndean on a dog-hot Sunday afternoon. Not so much a rep for being willing to walk ridiculously, unnecessarily long distances for little or no reason, it being the best part of a twelve mile round trip, but rather for being a bit of a dick. That was probably a fair assessment. If I’d left it at just the once. A second trip though, a second go has got to turn the madness into genius, like a second hit on the head clearing the amnesia of the first. Hasn’t it? Hello?

Well, put it this way, domestic duties with the olds meant that the Hawks away at Bath City was out of reach and, frankly, who doesn’t need to shed a little bit of the Christmas weight? Onwards then, through Gundymoor Wood, through Waterlooville and through Cowplain to Five Heads Park, a ramshackle ground with jovial old fellas on the turnstile, tea served in a proper mug and a selection of biscuits on a cracked plate awaiting the ‘directors’ in the dressing-rooms-adjacent shed. I’ve been slacking off the hobo life a bit of late and, I don’t mind telling you, it’s good to be back.

Bits and pieces ground it might be but its centrepiece is most definitely the pitch. It slopes so much that those wishing to walk behind the goal at the far end of the ground tend to do so whilst edging along the fence like a disgraced banker on a window sill. If Horndean are struggling for coin, they could just tie a rope from cross bar to cross bar in the summer months and market it as a white-knuckle death slide.

As well as the tinpot ambience, I went to Horndean on the promise of goals, goals, goals, what with the home side currently occupying the second from bottom slot in the Wessex Premier with a goal difference of -56, whilst the visitors VTFC arrived displaying a +89 differential, and with two 8-0’s, two 7-1’s, four scores of 6 and of six of 5 (one of which, ahem, came against H&W in the Hampshire Senior Cup) in their back pocket. Fresh from reaching the Hampshire Senior Cup final for the first time since winning the very first one in 1888, VTFC are in a comfortable second place in the Wessex, with three games in hand of, although sixteen points behind, the as yet undefeated Poole Town who incidentally handed VT some of their own medicine back in December with a sound 5-1 beating.

VT’s roots are as a shipbuilders’ works team that began life as Woolston Works, morphing through Thornycrofts (Woolston) and Vosper Thornycroft in line with the parent company, eventually becoming VTFC in 2003. However, with money behind them, it is clear the ambition is to move up the pyramid, far beyond those early roots, particularly with some of the players they have on show, several having started life at Southampton. A number have recently played, and could still play, at a much higher level.

My Hawk chum Mr Ketchup, who has seen VT already this season, told me that despite the star names that I should expect a load of fat blokes, but fat blokes who know how to knock the ball around a bit. That might have oversold it a tad, but certainly Adam Caulfield, Kevin Gibbens and Ryan Ashford inhabit their playing shirts like cavity wall insulation, all of them turned out like the early developers in middle school PE whose mum’s haven’t been able to afford any new gear for a couple of summers.

Horndean’s side have a much more youthful and svelte appearance, although this is perhaps unsurprising when last summer their manager Matt Parr upped and left for Hayling United taking most of the team with him. As a result Horndean asked Hampshire League side Denmead & Purbrook to take over their operation. On top of this, Horndean were down a goalkeeper for this game through suspension and thus had to throw in 17 year old keeper Matt Fisher against VT’s offensive artillery for only his fifth senior game.

The likely onslaught began early with Gibbens having a header cleared off the line in the fourth minute. For a man who’s let the pies get the better of him since his days at Saints, Oxford and Eastleigh, he made plenty of running into the box from his central midfield position. However, Horndean clearly weren’t to be overawed and had a chance of their own four minutes later, as Louis Bell Jr. met Tor Spicer’s cross from the by-line with a cushion sidefoot that required a diving save from VT keeper Lee Webber.

Yet within a couple of minutes, the expected order was restored, as Ryan Ashford curled in a 25 yard free-kick through Fisher’s callow wrists and inside the far post. Almost implausibly, however, Horndean defied the league table to go virtually straight up the other end and equalise. Spicer broke behind the VT defence, drew Webber into committing himself early, skipped round him and tapped into the empty net from an acute angle.

Not that the restored parity lasted long, only another couple of minutes elapsing before Warren Hunt sashayed through, raced down on Fisher and clipped the ball home [see pic above]. Eight minutes later, moments after he’d had another header cleared off the line by Danny Audi, Gibbens found himself ideally placed in the box once more, but as the ball fell to him his fellow captain Robbie Warwick slid in to block. Unfortunately for Warwick his clearance crashed against his team-mate Barney Butwell’s legs and trickled in.

With the game barely a quarter gone, a cricket score seemed in the offing, VT looking good for a total of 471 for the loss of 6 and a declaration before tea, particularly given the fact that the slope would be theirs to exploit in the second half. Mind you, for all the Zulu-esque ‘from the hill at Five Heads we descend’ potential one must also remember that, for the fat lads, the one thing about hurtling down the tilt is the having to climb back up it again afterwards. After all with so many middle-heavy types in the Boatmen’s line-up, you could equally imagine the incline causing them to topple uncontrollably forwards and collect in a rather undignified heap on the bottom wall, unable to move until gathered up in the scoop of a bucket loader.

However neither scenario occurred, with VT feeling that, all things considered, they’d done enough for now and could save themselves for the rest of the run-in. However they certainly weren’t chanceless with Paul Sales and Barry Mason bringing terrific saves from the young and increasingly confident young Horndean keeper. Sales is certainly playing beneath himself at VT, although at 35 probably wants an easier life after spells at Salisbury and Eastleigh. Yet he’s still in good shape, particularly by comparison to the company he now keeps, and remains an excellent target man, and one with a great touch. He may look like Jamiroquai and have the hair of a Shetland pony but you can’t have everything, particularly at this level.

VT may be needing snookers in terms of overhauling Poole Town but they’ll not give up, as they won’t want a second place finish for the second year in a row, watching the team above them ascend to the Southern League once again, with no play-offs at this level to assuage their frustration.

Just before the end of the game the tannoy burst into life for the final time, announcing itself, as it had on each occasion, with the sort of call signal which might ordinarily be followed by a young Ruth Madoc purring the words “morning campers” and announcing the imminent start of the children’s pop drinking contest. In actual fact the message is short, simple and repeated for clarity, “please return all mugs to the tea bar, please return all mugs to the tea bar.”

I’ve missed this.

Links
Horndean website
VTFC website

Djurgarden 5 Lulea 2

12feb09
Swedish Elitserien
Hovet Stadium, Stockholm
att. 6,834

Something new from someone new, to dubSteppery anyway. My fellow Hawk London Brancher Adam takes up the pen this week. It’s a good ‘un. Enjoy.

So, having been, to all intents and purposes, loitering on the Dubsteps bench for the past few years, it’s finally time to peel off the tracksuit and make my 1st team debut. Obviously, in an ideal world, this would be on a subject I actually know something about. However, as your regular correspondent so ably deals with the 3 main distractions in my life (live music, cricket and the continuing soap opera goings on down at West Leigh Park) I felt I should turn my attentions elsewhere for fear of not making the editors cut. As previous guest pieces have covered topics as diverse as sumo, football in Costa Rica and, erm, crazy golf tournaments in Jersey, the opportunity to cover a random ice hockey game in Stockholm seemed too good to turn down.

Ah yes, ice hockey. Consulting my mental reference card on the subject prior to the game, all that sprang to mind was “fighting”, “some fella named Gretzky”, “wacky scoreboards”, “that Playstation game my mate owns”, “biggest trophy in sport (the Stanley Cup)” and, naturally, “fighting”. Normally I’m not one to turn up to random events, however, as I was in Stockholm on business and with a free evening to myself, the choice appeared to be between watching grown men beat each other to a pulp or beating myself off in a lonely hotel room on my company expense account. Naturally, I chose the former. Some research on net showed that one of Stockholm’s 3 teams was taking to the ice that evening, and playing at a new arena just outside the centre of town – the Ericsson Globe. Having negotiated my way to the arena by using the usual trick of speaking very s.l.o.w.l.y. when talking to foreigners only to find they speak impeccable English I rocked up at the arena shortly before game time, ran the gauntlet of touts and secured myself a ticket in the corner section from the handily placed local Ticketmaster office.

It was at this point it became apparent that, rather than playing in the Globe itself, Djurgarden actually play in the “Hovet” arena next door. It seems that the original intention was that they would move to the 15,000 capacity concert arena, but that rather than play in a brand new half full stadium, they have returned to their own home alongside the football stadium and the concert arena. The Hovet stadium itself is a reasonably tidy facility, although hard to distinguish from, say, Wembley Arena if the floor was covered with ice. Settling into my seat I tried to glean what information I could from my handy free pamphlet. The form guide seemed to indicate it would be a close run thing. Although prior to the game Djurgarden were struggling in10th place of 12 teams, with Lulea still just in contention in 5th, further inspection indicated that Djurgarden had won both their home games against Lulea this season, and that Lulea’s high league position was entirely built upon their home form (2nd of the 12 teams looking purely at home games). Having established that players with the suffix of “sson” were likely to be the ones to keep an eye on I sat back ready for the opening period of the 3.



With the hardcore fans in good voice situated off to my left behind the opposition net for periods 1 and 3, I was encouraged by the fact that the songs all seemed somewhat familiar to me, as they were all largely adopted from the English football terraces (although I suppose it’s possibly the fans of Man U, Liverpool et al could all be eagerly watching Swedish ice hockey for new material) and therefore were largely of a variation on my own beloved Hawk dittys. Although totally unintelligible, bar the version of “Djur-gar-den” to the tune of “Here We Go”, all of my old favourites were there “We’re gonna score in a minute”, “Follow, follow, follow”, and my own particular favourite “Wooooah, Timmy, Timmy. Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy Pettersson” which was remarkably similar sounding to the Hawk anthem to our former midfield maestro Timmy Hambley.

The opening minutes of the game were largely dominated by the away team who enjoyed a period of sustained pressure, however, Djurgarden, obviously spurred on by the opportunity to impress the visiting DubStep jury raised their game and drew first blood through Kristofer Ottosson who had a simple tap in to take the home team into the lead. It also helped to vindicate my policy of keenly watching the “sson’s”. A second goal for Djurgarden through Henrik Eriksson followed shortly after, thanks to a fabulously determined run (or perhaps “skate”) from his own half. A rout seemed to be on the cards when after only 9 minutes of the 20 minute period, my own personal favourite Timmy Pettersson dribbled through the Lulea defence to make it 3-0. Clearly Djurgarden were a team where I would understand the ethos, with moments of brillance shining in amongst some absolute dross. I had clearly caught them on a good day.

The 2 minute sin-bin periods for “minor infractions” brought about elements of entertaining partisan support, where if the home team made it through a period with their player in the sin-bin without conceding a resounding standing ovation was given. If the opposition player was in the sin-bin then the crowd rallied round the home team in an effort to urge them to take advantage of their man advantage. As a neutral bystander, the sin-bin period seemed to largely resemble a cup tie between a lower league team and a Premiership team with one side dominating possession and the other taking any opportunity to welly the puck as far away from their net as possible.

As the period drew to a close, Djurgarden extended their lead even further with a Robin Figren goal taking the score to 4-0 at the end of period 1. At this point I was somewhat surprised to discover that the break between periods consisted of 16 minutes. With the regular rolling substitutions through the 20 minutes, and the gentle nature of ice-skating it seemed odd that such a long break was required. However, I did use the intervening period to purchase an “authentic” woolly hat and a cup of coffee so maybe it’s all a sneaky ploy to encourage additional purchasing.

At the start of the second period, it certainly looked like the Lulea team had been given the proverbial hairdryer treatment as they came out with much greater intent. The pressure paid off with a goal after only 3 minutes of the second period to reduce the deficit to 3. Attempting to follow the comings and goings of the players, who swap over at regular intervals, and are obviously all clad in similar looking safety gear, made it very difficult to establish who was playing well and who was having a stinker. Aside from the “similar sounding name to Hawk legends” emotional link to Timmy Pettersson the name that kept cropping up amongst the group of lads sat in front of me was “Falk”. After a while it became clear that he inspired a similar level of devotion and affection that legendary players in any kind of sport team do. Any time he got near the puck, a little indulgent chortle of “ahhh, Falk” indicated that it was exactly the kind of interception you would expect him to make and that it was never in any kind of doubt that he would snuff out the danger. Post-game research indicated that he was indeed the elder statesman of the team, having captained them for 5 season in the late-90’s, early 2000’s and he was still a first-team regular having missed only 2 games out of 47 up to this point. Despite the continuing Lulea pressure, they were unable to make any further inroads and midway through the half, Djurgarden were able to re-establish their 4 goal cushion.

After another extended rest for the players (and a chance for me to investigate the mascot of the Djurgarden team – possible nickname “The Mutant Badgers”?) the players came out for the 3rd period. The players warm-up routine reminded me of a municipal rink back home with everyone skating around in the same direction whilst Europop of indeterminate origin blasted out of the speakers. At this point it wouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest to hear a 14 year old girl screech “Leave, it Gary, he ain’t worth it”.


During the 3rd period, Djurgarden seemed happy to protect their lead, but conceding just 1minute in certainly seemed to make the home supporters nervous. As the clock ticked down, Lulea continued to harry and press in an effort to drag themselves back into the game, but were ultimately unable to make further in-roads into the Djurgarden 4-goal lead. Having been spoilt with 4 goals in the first half, I was beginning to get a little restless, but, late on in the game, I finally got what I’d turned up for. Having been slammed into the boards, home team player David Printz finally decided he’d had enough and decided to get his own back by repeatedly smashing his stick over the head of a Lulea player. Bizarrely, this action resulted in exactly the same penalty as seemingly much more minor misdemeanours, a 2 minute sit-down in the sin-bin. Maybe only if a player succeeds in the drawing of blood results in a longer punishment. Djurgarden rode out the 1-man disadvantage and costed home to a celebratory, if random chorus of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”.

Travelling back on the tube on the way back to the hotel, I reflected on an entertaining evening. In a similar way to games of baseball I’ve caught in the US, the added live element of the partisan home support makes up for the complete lack of knowledge or emotion that I would normally experience when following a team. Although, unlikely to be a sport I will follow devoutly on TV in the future, it is certainly fast-paced and action-packed which make it ideal for a complete neutral with no idea of the nuances of what is actually going on.

POST GAME FOLLOW UP :

Having drawn and won the following 2 games, Djurgarden managed to pull themselves into contention for the playoffs, but failed to win in their final 5 games of the season, ultimately ending up in 10th place, 4 points clear of the relegation play-off. Lulea finished 5th comfortably in the playoff spots, where their opening opponents are Frolunda who they face in a best of 5 series.

Adam Cole

Havant & Waterlooville 3 Bishop's Stortford 0

09mar09
Conference South
West Leigh Park, Havant
att. 572

We’re used to taking the rough with the smooth. We are football supporters, it’s how we roll. However, just like all the food in the future (I say speaking in 1971 about the year 2000) will be in compacted tablet form, we have combined all the elements this week into a short elixir that, when necked, starts with a bitter taste that’ll make you wince a bit, then follows that sharp hit with a wave of unexpected pleasure. This is the story of our last 72 hours. Less than, actually.

On Saturday, we contrived to somehow get a lead (Craig Watkins strike was to be admired for its method and the fact it was our only chance in the entire game) but performed woefully in the second half and allowed Welling to come from behind for a deserved win. On the final whistle chants of “what a load of rubbish” were heard, whilst our assistant manager Charlie Oatway decided to hurl some pointed verbal abuse back in the direction of our support. I’d headed off to the station by this point but it all sounded rather unsavoury, a little unnecessary and certainly not cricket. Cads, bounders, I say how frightfuls and such.

It could be argued that Shaun Gale has survived this long in a disappointing season partly through being an approachable and likeable chap as well as being a through-and-through clubman who has become part of the furniture in his nine years with us. Charlie Oatway doesn’t have nearly the same amount of goodwill, and as such peppering his post-match chit-chat with fourteen f**ks, three tw*ts and a b*ll*ck-chops is probably not the ideal way to keep our hardcore away following on-side.

A nadir it may have been, but at least it may guarantee that, in the event of Shaun Gale leaving, we won’t get the usual method of succession planning, in that the first bloke who turns up in the car park gets the job. Who knows though, cos if the responding performance tonight against Bishop’s Stortford is a marker for the rest of the season, we may not have to worry about the top man’s position after all.

As a way of saying sorry for the performance against Welling, the Hawks wrapped up some ‘actually-playing-some-football’ in a lovely gift basket, all ribbons and everyfing. Just goes to show that they can do it, as it usually takes a better standard of opposition to bring this out of ‘em, but Bishop’s Stortford were nothing of that sort tonight. They’re the kind of outfit we’ve usually drawn 2-2 with, or lost 1-0 to, so an emphatic 3-0 home win is great cause for celebration.

Paul Hinshelwood has been a revelation at right back, while Wes Fogden, starting tonight in his favoured bombing-on centre-midfield role for the first time for us, dictated much of the improved play on show. Bonsai winger Robbie Martin also grows in metaphorical stature with each game, and Craig Watkins is becoming the clinical finisher we, to be honest, never thought he would be. He’s really grown from being a bit-part option to the first striking name on the team-sheet every week, and deservedly so.

Craig’s opener tonight was crisply taken, capitalising on a weak eyebrows flick-back by the Bish’s Paul Goodacre, showing more bottle than keeper Nicky Eyre in chasing the 50/50 and hammering it into the back of the net. Not long after, Matt Gray made the most of his God-given, and partly clippers-given, bald to delicately skid the ball off his swede into the corner of the net from Brett Poate’s pinpoint cross. With eight minutes remaining, Wes Fogden capped his display with a handsome run and long-range finish.

Not expected, but most welcome, the sort of thing we might have expected to be seeing more regularly at the start of the season. This confidence-boosting win has come at just the right time too what with a vital three games. First up we travel to a Bath City side on such a slide that they even lost to Fisher Athletic tonight, which even a team of breathless voles with a goose in goal would struggle to do. Then we play two of the three teams currently between that final relegation spot and ourselves, now in 17th; Dorchester away in mid-week then Thurrock at home. By Saturday week, all our immediate, more pressing problems could be over. Let’s hope so.

Links
Havant & Waterlooville website
Bishop's Stortford website

Err, Shep's shed?

Previously, on Dub Steps
16feb08: Shepshed Dynamo 2 Cammell Laird 3

Hobo in my pocket #24


From the Vanity Project archive (VP18, May 2006)

Shitdisco.
Liverpool Barfly Loft. 16mar06.

Immediately the beats are sharp, the vocals as staccato as the rhythms. Shitdisco perform high power new-wave post-funk combining two basses and guitar as sophisticatedly waspish as a Kenneth Williams rejoinder. Two members share the lead vocal duties, and both take it in turns to occupy themselves during instrumental breaks by standing tall upon the bass-drum. They can be a happy-hardcore style shot in the arm to post-punk and pre-surf, they are a burst, a happening splurge a rumblin' set-to that fills as many faces as dancefloors. The sound is impressively eager, irrepressible even, forcing muscles into less of a jerk and more a rolling oscillation, ‘I Know Kung Fu' inspiring a particular burst of energy among the small but appreciative Barfly punterage. There’s barely a let up in the BPM, even their ballad soon morphs into something to keep the ankles supple. They fly about, barely contained, one of the bassists causing an amp stack to topple as he does. “We’re usually more shambolic than this...we run a tight ship" says the guitarist adding, with impeccable timing, “We’re Shitdisco by the way, that should be obvious."

Havant & Waterlooville 2 Team Bath 1

02mar09
Conference South
Westleigh Park, Havant
att. 545

Well, after an uncharacteristically curmudgeonly response to what was a hard-earned point against a good side, how might I react to a win; a precious, beautiful, shiny win? At half time I would have assumed, much as I did after Saturday’s performance, that goals are going to be really hard to come by as we once again looked pretty poor going forward. This is a bit of a worry when we are at the stage of needing wins now, and not relying on the scraping of draws amidst the odd defeat.

However, when you’re in a hole you need plenty of strength in your arms and the adrenaline pumping to clamber out, and despite not looking in particularly good form on Saturday or last night, we’re getting amongst it, not giving up the ghost. Our side don’t appear to be playing to their strengths but are at least playing with a collective strength of will, and it is that which has earned us four points in three days.

Mind you we’ve benefited from a lot of penalties this season, as was the case with the winner last night, and I’d certainly like to see more goals coming from open play. On the bright side though, Craig Watkins seems to have been whittling away at his finishing with a bowie knife appearing, as it does, sharper as each week passes. As against Crawley in the Trophy, his shot for the opener tonight was pinpoint and immaculate.

An equaliser was conceded six minutes later (to the eerie sound of silence, Team Bath’s support not being known for their vocal support or, indeed, existing) but we can take heart in the fact we didn’t wilt nor settle for another point. The penalty may have come amidst no appeals from the terraces but eagle-eyed types were suggesting the ref had warned Sami El-Abd to keep his hands of Ian Simpemba at a free-kick and when he failed to heed the head’s up, he suffered the whistle and point.

Another calm finish from Luke Nightingale from the spot followed. He now has six goals for the season and five of them have come in this manner. Jamie Collins, substituted earlier, has scored eight this season, and six of them have been penalties, so like I say we’ve had plenty of clumsy defenders and eagle-eyed refs (and maybe the odd bat-eyed ref) helping us along.

If any defenders playing for Welling United, Bishop’s Stortford, Dorchester Town, Bath City, Hampton & Richmond Borough, Thurrock, Fisher Athletic, Maidenhead United, Basingstoke Town or Eastleigh are reading this, or indeed any genial refs already dreaming of their summer holidays, then please be assured than contribution you can make will be welcome. Cheers.

Havant & Waterlooville 0 AFC Wimbledon 0

28feb09
Conference South
West Leigh Park, Havant
att. 1,756

[I did intend to have some pictures here, and some were taken that, whilst not brilliant, gave a flavour of the larger than usual crowd. However, I managed to delete them before downloading. You’re probably thinking “he’s a bit of a knob”, and you are right to think this. Dave Haines was there as usual though and I reckon this one's very good]

“You don’t turn your nose up at a point against the run away league leaders” Shaun Gale told the Non-League Paper after this game. Perhaps so but despite my uniform default to positives-truffling after a game, and having expect so so much less prior to, I somehow feel a little glum.

Perhaps it was because of my imagining, at the start of this season, that this game would have a significant bearing on us departing from this division next season. To a certain extent it does, but not in the way we’d imagined. This weekend saw our team, the one we believed would challenge for the title, against the team that are looking as though they will actually win it, and the gulf between them at the top, and us in 19th, was all too evident. Their touch, their passing, their understanding - all were far superior despite the fact that they were clearly not pulling out all the stops here. If they can rediscover their ruthlessness and hold off the challenge of Hampton & Richmond’s bunch of toughs, they will certainly be worthy champions.

However, with Alan Devonshire’s ampersanded mob putting on a gallop, AFC fans are, rightly, not resting on any laurels just yet. Hampton have cantered past a Chelmsford side (whose balloon, if not burst, certainly has a tiny pinhole in it causing it to begin that long atonal whiney deflation) and have the momentum to challenge AFC. As such many will have left West Leigh Park and headed back to South London cursing their inability to finish us off as, frankly, I doubt we’d have scored if we’d made the first ad break in Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway the agreed cut off point.

Although perhaps I am being too unkind given that I had anticipated a thorough working over prior to kick off, and as such this was a result if not beyond my wildest dreams, then certainly contained somewhere within the one where I am chased repeatedly around Swindon’s magic roundabout by Raymond Burr riding a mauve gazelle.

After taking a three goal cosh to the back of our collective skull at Kingsmeadow back in October, I expected little better, if not a little worse from today’s game. Others were more positive, but even then of the “any points today will be a real bonus” variety. Yet a seemingly popular opinion amongst the AFC Wimbledon support in the build up was that they would be held to a draw. Perhaps the fact we usually raise it for the bigger games and with an extra thousand people in the ground today, most of whom had come with the Dons, lulled them into a sense of insecurity and, as it turned out, not a false one.

So, we can criticise the aimlessness of our passing and the fact that, at times, our players appear to have such little awareness of each other, you might assume they’ve all been given x-ray vision and yet, at the same time, encased in lead. However one cannot fault their application and willingness to battle and, in this respect, Paul Hinshelwood, Gary Elphick and Jay Gasson get the dubSteps cap doffed repeatedly.

Gary Elphick always gets nuff props from this site of course, and not just because of the fact we part-sponsor his get-up; he is the epitome of total commitment. This was particularly the case today, given that he had to have his head bandaged three times, like a scratched DVD of Terry Butcher playing against Sweden in 1989 (albeit with slightly less gore). He also got through four shirts, numbers #5, #18, #19 and a blank one which meant he could not only re-take his place on the field, but also act as a surrogate for any of the letters in Scrabble.

The re-bandaging occurred as his dressings kept pinging off after big headers, the first time another red-spattered substance dropped to the floor as he trotted off. Most likely it was a piece of gauze although for a second or two it looked as though he might have left some of his skin behind. They’ve always said that about him though, wherever he’s gone, “Aye, some’ll run through walls for the cause. That Elphick though, e’ll rip half his face off for ya”. As he got up from the challenge, we noticed that Nicolas Cage had suddenly replaced him at centre-half.

It was the day for that kind of effort though as AFC have not exactly been quiet in terms of goals. For a start, they have Jon Main who couldn’t be more red hot up front if his nipples were on fire. Thirty he’s already got in the league this season, but added no more today, and he was replaced with thirteen minutes remaining. Several Dons did miss solid chances; Leberl, Davis, Godfrey, his sister Dolly, all going close, but not as close as they perhaps should have done.

Some of the AFC fans joining me on the train back to London certainly appeared impressed with Gary’s wholehearted showing, but clearly felt they should have taken all three points. We Hawk fans on the other hand will probably feel two things, happy with the point considering our expectations but also feeling that nothing was shown in midfield or up front that suggests the goals we will need [cliché warning] in the fourteen cup finals we have to play in the next two months [you were warned] are in any way guaranteed.

Previously, on dubSteps
21oct08: AFC Wimbledon 3 Havant & Waterlooville 0

Links
Havant & Waterlooville website
AFC Wimbledon website
Twohundredpercent report on the game