Worcester City 2 Havant & Waterlooville 2

24jan09
Conference South
St Georges Lane, Worcester
att. 714

It is perhaps appropriate that we played Worcester this weekend, being that it was a year ago today that we played Liverpool in our biggest ever game, and now fifty years since Worcester played and beat them in theirs. With that in mind and as fond as we are of a big train trip, the extended London Branch pencilled this in as the Anfield anniversary beano some time ago. Sadly, it didn’t quite turn out as planned and thus the Hereford bound train out of Paddington contained but a solitary Hawk.

Now over the years I’ve soaked in any number of excuses tendered so as to avoid my unsightly company: emergency agreements to pet-sit; broken VCR’s combined with the sentence “you know how I hate to miss Groundforce”; and the invention of great Aunts, recently deceased. One of the expected duo blamed work fatigue thus also rubbing his workplace conscientiousness and eager toil in my idle, malingering mush. The other, however, excelled himself whilst on French slopes last week. His ski-pole became the sword upon which he threw himself to cause sufficient damage as to avoid the sufferance of a five hour round train trip with me. A lengthy experience I grant you, one which some have likened to “being shackled to a Beirut radiator”, so perhaps you can understand his desperate, injurious bombast.

Still, in company, or on my ikkle ownio, Worcester was always on my radar for many reasons. Firstly, their ground is big, old-fashioned and falling to bits, just the way I likes ‘em. Secondly, it may not be long for this world as a new stadium is planned. Thirdly, their geographical location means they are likely to flit back and forth between Conferences North and South depending on the locational make-up of the promoted and relegated catchment each summer, and so may be off the map again next season. Lastly, it’s a grand city and we’ve not been here since we last played them in the Southern League in 2003. It is always nice, of course, to take the nostalgia hit that comes with returning the scene of beanos past.

Back in October 2002, to celebrate our man Mr Ketchup’s birthday, we trained it to Worcester. In the Postal Order outside Foregate Street station, we all ordered a warm beer of the birthday boy’s choice, in an attempt to settle a long-standing argument between him and Ade, our defiant lager-lapping associate. Ade has rarely let a real ale pass beneath his nostrils without proclaiming “vile muck” in the most theatrical of his voices, and would sooner smite you hip and thigh than allow you to coerce him into a pub with the words “we’ve got to go in this one, it’s in the Good Beer Guide.”

Ever keen to test the limits of pub science, our party made our way through a pint of Summer Lightning each. Simon thought it was alright. I, as a very occasional drinker of certain real ales back then before giving it all up in favour of sweet sobriety, sipped cautiously at it and continued to do so, to see how many shades of green I could turn. Shaun took the Band-Aid-on-the-hairy-bits route and downed it sharpish to minimise the pain. Ade’s opinion remained unchanged; the ‘there’s bits of woodlice in that’ theory taking on extra vehemence, if anything.

We lost the game 2-1 but, still, it was a birthday party, and so back in the bar we drowned our sorrows. Midfield stalwart Neil Champion kindly got a round in by way of apology for his own-goal ‘winner’. We informed him that nothing was his fault, and continued to do so even after he’d handed his money over. Ade also decided that he had to let centre-half Gareth Hall know that he had been awesome in the only way he knew how, by planting a gentle kiss on the former Chelsea man’s cheek.

Of the journey home, we remember little, although Barry 2-Pints has often been cited for his shuffly dancing on the train station platform. On the train, we also had the added distraction of Hartlepool’s recently acquired striker Marcus Richardson sitting amongst our number. Being surrounded by ten tipsy gold-clad Hawks seemed to unsettle the big man a bit, but as I worked with a Pools fan back then, I felt it my duty to interrogate him. Ade, meanwhile, tried to coerce him into signing for us should the Hartlepool deal turn sour. As a point of information, Marcus has played for about four hundred clubs since but has yet to turn up on our welcome mat. Whether we pissed him off or not – he was a gent and happily shook our hands and wished us luck, before departing like a startled cat as the train doors opened at Reading.

Following a quick stop at Winchester’s Albion Tavern for a quick last orders, the last part of our journey saw two of our number, one male and one female depart the safety of our huddle to, err, ‘converse in depth’, elsewhere. Of course, this would have been great, if one of ‘em had not borrowed my shirt to wear for the day. No offence to either party, but burning did seem an option for when I got it home. In fact one suggestion, from Shaun, was that the ashes from said bonfire be kept in an urn and awarded at the end of each season for most drunken and embarrassing moment. However I’m not sure anything has topped that since, so the guilty parties can take some pleasure in knowing that the Ashes have been retained, possibly in perpetuity.

One thing we always noted on travels to Worcester was the size of the crowd, which was always pretty substantial in them old Southern League days, and also almost inconceivably consistent. 1004 attended in 2001, 1003 in 2002 and 1014 in 2003. However four hundred souls have disappeared in the last five years, without pandemic. Perhaps the fact that we’re playing them in cold January rather than warmer autumnal months when hopes remain high has something to do with it, as both they and we are skulking around the hindmost regions of the table and probably as equally resigned to this being an upper mid-table season at best.

Still, that’s the bleak view that looks at our recent nine-game unbeaten run and says, yeah, well, five of them have been draws that we probably should have won, and two of the wins were in the FA Trophy. On the plus side we are proving difficult to beat, when playing very well (as against Chelmsford at home last week) and even when we’re not (as in this Worcester game).

It wasn’t until about the 40th minute in each half that we began to play and it doesn’t take Alan Shearer to tell you, seconds after Alan Hansen has said much the same, that turning up for ten minutes each Saturday is not a winning tactic. On said minute we equalised Matt Dodd’s 14th minute opener, Gary Holloway stroking the ball home after a hectic goalmouth scramble. Steven Cook’s goal-line clearance earlier was also a vital moment.

We closed out the first half with renewed optimism but into the second half too many players carried their Z-game over, and it was no real surprise when Worcester scored, although it took Marco Addagio’s sublime strike careering over Nathan Ashmore’s head from some distance to re-establish their lead. Later it took a fantastic reaction save from Nath, continuing to deputise for Kevin Scriven who is now sidelined by injury, to stop the game flooding away. A couple of early stray kicks aside, Nathan visibly grew in confidence, claiming several excellent catches to add to that vital save.

All seemed a little hopeless, especially after the game entered added time. However from a corner, Jack Compton got the ball on the edge of the box, calmly stepped past a defensive body then unleashed a daisy cutter that eluded the many limbs present and rewarded us with a hitherto unlikely point. Yet despite the elation, one could not help but think that whilst last week we drew and deserved more, this week we took another point but deserved much less.

The Chelmsford game definitely felt like a corner properly turned, whereas this game felt like a nervously elongated parallel parking manoeuvre testing the patience of the driving instructor. Last week even the most negative thinkers were as aglow as a winter sun; this week the talk is likely to be of the falling back into bad habits. If the Hawks were a vehicle, I think at the minute we’d be a re-fabricated milk-float, in that we are a contraption that has started to deliver, but probably won’t be going at a furious pace any time soon. Perhaps next week’s Trophy game at home to Crawley will add a bit of a turbo boost, as our win at their place in the Cup did, albeit briefly, back in October.

Links:
Worcester City website
Havant & Waterlooville website

Charlton Athletic 2 Chelsea 4

22nov08
Premier Academy League Group A
Charlton Athletic training ground, New Eltham
att. 60 (approx.)

Regular readers who might have identified my politics, such as they are, as being of the liberal and moderate left, may be surprised to learn that I was once a card-carrying Red. Ok, a card-carrying Junior Red. Or, to be a little more accurate, a birthday-card receiving Junior Red, with said card signed by my ‘favourite player’**.

It was 1986, Falco were riding high in the charts with the first of their many, many hits; Chernobyl had spat out a distinctly “mmm, bit apocalyptic over Bill’s mums” looking cloud over Scandinavia; and Diego Maradona was about to give the English a cheeky one off the wrist. I was eight years old and just discovering the wonders of football for the first time. Prior to that, it had all been about beer and women. Either way I was pliable. With his own son not yet two, my uncle spotted an opportunity to mould me in his own image. If I did it right, eat my greens and all that game, I could grow up to be a big, strong Charlton Athletic fan.

Thus I was enrolled, and became a Junior Red. Better than being a Junior Addick I suppose, Charlton having had several nicknames over the years. Junior Valiant wouldn’t have been so bad, but not strictly accurate at that time, what with the Valley being more house of weeds than theatre of dreams in the mid-80s. As such the first football match I ever attended was at Selhurst Park, with Charlton hosting Liverpool, the then league champions. It finished 0-0, setting me up nicely for a lifetime of disappointing football.

With a club at its lowest ebb off the field and no ground of its own, it’s perhaps not surprising I didn’t take to it. The club being based about seventy miles from one’s house could also be described as a bit of a sticking point for an eight year old. It’s probably just as well it didn’t really happen for me and the Charltons as my uncle eventually grew disillusioned with it all himself, and now watches Dartford, VCD Athletic and Kentish football in general. Still, however brief it was, my year as a Junior Red was my first football affiliation. After that I was a Junior Saint, then a Saint, all too briefly a human, then a Hawk.

Still, I’ve looked out for Charlton’s results for twenty-two years now, and as I’ve not seen a Charlton side in action since February 1999 when I accompanied a Wimbledon fan to the freshly spruced-up Valley, I felt it was about time I looked in. With the cost of Championship football being prohibitive to the only-vaguely-interested, it was thus time to dip into the uncharted waters of the Premier Academy League. What better way to spend a bitter Saturday morning in November than to check out the stars of tomorrow, playing alongside the League Two doggers of tomorrow and the alcoholic drop-outs of the morning after? Mmm, fair enough, but it’s a free in, so screw it…

Charlton’s training ground, situated right next to Millwall’s, is an unassuming place with three pitches and a small pavilion in which the home side get changed. The away side however are stationed elsewhere. I imagine young players signing up for Chelsea daydream more about the money, the glamour, the women and less about having to get dressed in a Portakabin.

Not that their development isn’t well looked after, being educated and trained under the auspices of one of world football’s biggest clubs. On the touchline, they have a professional camera recording the action, possibly for Chelsea TV, while behind that is a bloke cranking up the pole on a further periscopic tripod camera. I’m guessing, given it was attached to a lap-top, that this was something to do with ProZone, but you don’t tend to expect such whizzy e-technologies to require someone to have to wind anything up, particularly when they’re clack-clacking like a 1920’s car enthusiast trying to get the motor running on his Model A Ford.

On the opposite side of the pitch betraying Charlton’s slightly less cash-rich infrastructure is their cameraman, perched like a tennis umpire with a hand-held they probably got in the Argos sale. Despite all this we shouldn’t forget that these are kids, and should be treated as such, the referee reacting to one use of the word “f***” by a Charlton nipper by saying “language” with all the patriarchal hoitiness of William Moore in ‘Sorry!’

There was no discernable gulf in class early on in the game, and Charlton even took an early lead in the seventh minute courtesy of striker, and celebrated fish wrangler, Tamer Tuna, who capitalised on Jeffrey Bruma’s slip to steal in and slot past keeper Niclas Heimann. This caused Chelsea to up their game and fifteen minutes later they had their equaliser, Jacobo Sala curling in a handsome free-kick that keeper Harry Lee tipped onto the bar. Unfortunately for him, Jacob Mellis followed up to finish whilst Lee was still cascading to the floor.

Looking over my shoulder briefly, I noticed that two pitches over, another Charlton/Chelsea youth game was taking place, I assume for a younger age-group but, confused momentarily by the small vs. far away issue, it could well have been a burp of parallel reality caught in a pocket of time. Mmm, think I may have watched too much Red Dwarf in my teens. And Father Ted.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the definitely real world anyway, Chelsea took the lead on the stroke of half-time, Fabio Burini getting behind the Charlton back four and crashing into the roof of the net before getting his hair ruffled by virtually all of his outfield team-mates, who all clearly believe it to still be the 50’s.

On returning from the tea-bar in the car-park for the second half, I absent-mindedly took a short cut across the middle pitch. To my right I heard some commotion and looked to see what it was but couldn’t discern. After about three shouts it was becoming clear that it was “get off the pitch”. However I looked to my left and their appeared to be others crossing the turf who weren’t moving so I assumed a random kid or parent had wandered into the confines of the under-14’s game.

Once I’d made it across, as people were being shooed more directly off the middle pitch, it became clear that the shout had been directed at me. Naturally, I was quite embarrassed, suddenly realising, whoops, that probably wasn't good form was it? At this point I turned around to see a guy in a Charlton jacket marching in my direction. He came up and seethed “I asked you three times. Don’t ignore me, and don’t walk on the pitch.” I defended myself on the ignorance issue but he was having none of it, turning on his heel with a sniff and steaming straight back to the under-14’s game. Across the middle pitch. The very same pitch he had traversed to administer the bollocking.

Anyhow, live and learn eh? Although the Valiant Youth didn’t seem to, going further behind within five minutes of the restart. Frank Nouble curled in a shot, Lee palming it down at full stretch but only onto the boot of Sala, the ball crawling into the corner of the net like a dawdling john. Nouble was quite the hefty presence all game, being taller and more developed than his peers. Charlton, similarly, had a single grew-a-beard-at-12 colossus in their line up, in their case Yado Mambo, or 'Hey!' as he is known to the Rosemary Clooney fans in his social group. Taking a panoramic view of the action, both Mambo and Nouble were crashing about like baby rhinos in a kitten parade.

Nouble was involved in Chelsea’s fourth goal as well, clattering through the frozen Charlton mob before eventually getting blocked. The ball span out to Daniel Philliskirk who hit a long-range shot off the top of his boot that curled out of Lee’s reach and into the far corner. Charlton, though, did not collapse and pulled one back six minutes later, as Chris Solly, ‘Meso’ to the more casually racist of his friends, broke effortlessly through Chelsea’s otherwise firm defence, piercing Heimann’s resistance with prodigious maturity.

However, 4-2 it finished and I made my way out of the ground via only the most unhallowed of turf. Still, I imagine, with a 5-2 home defeat and Alan Pardew’s sacking occurring for Charlton’s senior side later that afternoon, straightening the blades of grass I tilted beneath my tread will have given the Sparrows Lane ground staff summin' to do to take their minds of it all.

Thus I am a hero.

**Mark Aizelwood? Jim Melrose? Peter Shirtliff? Bob Bolder? I can’t remember exactly, but I imagine I wouldn’t have liked to play favourites. Mainly cos at the point of conscription, I wouldn’t have known a Charlton player if they’d booted me in my middle-school mush.

Havant & Waterlooville 1 Chelmsford City 1

17jan09
Conference South
Westleigh Park, Havant
att. 921

Back near the turn of the century, when we used to arrive on the field with the goal-hungry triple threat of Tim Hambley, Paul Wood and James Taylor, we Hawks used to purr. In fact we did more than that, we used to give off a swagger, a collective hubris that used to arrive in the form of a Guantanamera’d “score in a minute, we’re gonna score in a minute”. We’ve not sung that for a good while now, probably because it’s a long time since we put sustained pressure on an opposition goal. Well, that combined with a more realistic lack of conviction we have these days.

However we might be able to use the tune again. These days though it would the slightly less scan-correct “Pen in a minute, gonna get a pen in a minute” as prior to this weekend’s game we had been awarded penalty-kicks in our previous five fixtures, four of which were scored (one by the acting goalkeeper) and one which struck a post. For this game we upped the ante even further, being awarded two in the first half. With regular taker (and that said gloveman pro tem) Jamie Collins recovering from an exploratory heart operation, Luke Nightingale was entrusted with both as he was, successfully, at Lewes in the Trophy last Tuesday.

The first was pitched so perfectly it might as well have been taken by a tuning fork. No goalkeeper in the world, nor even the most athletic of octopuses, is going to claw one that’s put into the very top corner, but Luke squeezed it within the right angle, and thus we went into a 12th minute lead against a side currently sitting atop our league. However it was only to last two minutes as Spencer Knight’s free kick sailed from nigh on the half way line over all defensive and attacking bonces and straight into the far corner, our young keeper Nathan Ashmore seeming to believe himself in the middle of a modelling assignment for a life-drawing class. He’d been captured trousers down either way.

Replacing Kevin Scriven, suspended after being sent off against Bognor, Nathan sent several of his goal-kicks astray and a great many of his high claims took a bounce off the turf before being controlled. However to come in against the league leaders with precious little action all season, rarely featuring on the bench and with no reserve team to hone himself having left the comfier confines of our Academy, was always going to be a big ask.

Following the manner of their equaliser we anticipated a lot of speculative long shots designed to test Nath’s callow paws, but after one which dipped just high and wide, it was our mob that took the initiative. Perhaps the presence of an inexperienced keeper whose confidence had just taken a knock focused the mind of everyone else, but we descended, attacked and dug in where necessary, league debut makers Steve Cook (on loan from Brighton, at right back) and Paul Hinshelwood (signed from Bognor after our Christmas games and Mick Jenkins’ subsequent resignation, in centre midfield) slotting in more than comfortably.

In fact, everyone played well, particularly Gary Elphick and Charlie Henry. Indeed, Charlie is really showing off his talent of late, every time he gets the ball there is the excitement, not really seen since the days of the aforementioned Woody jinking up and down the right flank, that “mmm, something could happen here”. Charlie started the season well, scoring four brilliant goals in the first seven games of the season.

After a second 25-yard strike in successive games at Thurrock back in late August he was christened Charlie Thunderboots by our man Barry behind the goal, although drink having been taken, this came out of Baz’s mouth as Tharley Chunderboots on its second outing. As that sounded like a posh kid fresh into Oxbridge who can’t handle his snakebite, or possibly a character in a Two Ronnies serialised sketch (Tharley Chunderboots and Piggy Malone in…) then we’d probably have opted to stick with the former. However Charlie then had a long injury lay off and is only really now coming back to full fitness.

Before the closure of the first half we had hit the bar and Luke had found keeper Danny Gay’s hands with his second penalty. The second half was genuinely tense end-to-end stuff but neither side was able to break the deadlock. If, rather than having a golden goal competition, we did a golden ‘general-standard-of-the-play’, then this would have been the one where the pint glass full of pound coins went to whoever pulled the folded piece of paper reading ‘mmm, a good advert for Conference South football there’ from the tombola of non-league clichés.

On this evidence, we’re looking much tighter a unit than has previously been the case this season and performances of this nature will be much more welcome. Perhaps playing against Chelmsford brings the best out of us as, arguably, our two best league performances this season have come against them. Or perhaps this is the famous ‘gelling’ we’ve all been hearing so much about. Let’s hope so, as it’s taken its sweet time in turning up at West Leigh Park.

Winchester City 0 AFC Totton 0

27dec08
Southern League Division One South & West
The Denplan City Ground, Winchester
att. 365

The Hootenanny Quandary. You know what I mean. It starts in mid-December as we desperately weigh up the agony of the remaining choices to decide on something – anything – to do on New Year’s Eve. Why do we do this? Simple, it is so that we don’t suffer the ignominy of being stuck at home with a microwave stroganoff, acquiescing to the settee and seeing in another year in the company of Jools Holland.

Now I like music, and have enthusiastically catholic tastes, but I find myself a little weary of the Jools festive format these days. There will be the gnarly bluesman with two guitar strings and even fewer teeth that everyone will decide they’ve always loved come January 2nd when Tesco take delivery (out of, like y'know, nowhere) of a job lot of albums and chuck ‘em on the shelves at loss leader prices.

Then there’ll be the fly-away-haired band usually to be found swaggering around the backstreets of Shoreditch who presumably, immediately prior to the show, have been held upside down over the urinals by Jools’ gang of toughs until their sneery cynicism towards jamming in-the-round and the incorporation of a boogie-woogie element into their angular math-rock sound has miraculously faded away. Then Adrian Edmonson and Lenny Henry will be pictured in amongst the celebrity crowd both wearing faces that have fallen into a trying-to-remember-when-I-was-last-funny pensive droop.

Still, there’s me saying all this but, to be honest, I was at home with m’ladyfriend this New Years Eve with a curry and a DVD (resisting the temptation to flick onto BBC2 after 11pm just to “see who’s he got on this year”) as I had been for the previous three years. So why, you might ask, have I ripped into eclectic music programming as part of this article?

Well, it has been partly due to the fact this game in the Southern League Division One Scarf & Vest represents the end of my footballing year (58 games and 1 abandonment in it as it goes; my 2002 record of 72 remaining intact) and thus came the choices of how to see it out, which I shall come to. It’s also partly due to this game being of the too-much-Christmas-pudding/nothing-to-see-here seasonal snoozer variety. As the old saying goes, in the absence of anything resembling exciting football then, hey, the chirpy pianist is gonna get it.

So, given that United Services Portsmouth vs AFC Portchester was a much easier-to-get-to alternative*, why say goodbye to 2008 at Winchester? Well, our friend in ‘Stepping, Mr Ben, came across Totton on his travels at Didcot a couple of months ago, and reminded me of the presence in the Stags’ squad of one James Taylor, a proper Havant & Waterlooville legend (about whom I once eulogised on the Cheer Up Alan Shearer site). Some ex-players inspire this kind of interest. You’ll not see us organising a mini-bus for a trip up to Sheffield FC to see Vil Powell for example, but then again Vil managed 2 goals in a big 4 appearances, meaning Jimmy Taylor beats him by 136 and 293 respectively. 1 in 2 goal ratios are all very well Vil, but we like proper quantity (quality quantity, if you like) and, preferably, for players to stick around for longer than a fortnight.

So, we came to see Super Jim then, and we could throw in Hawk Cup hero Phil Warner for good measure as he has also been playing a little beneath himself, if that's not disgracefully patronising, for Totton. One imagines the Stags are offering significant foldin’ money, by comparison, for this level if those two (amongst others) are happy to drop down. Of course, considering we’ve made a special trip out, neither Jim or Phil were in the starting line-up, nor were they on the bench.

Presumably with Totton at the tip of the Scarf & Vest, and Winchester holding up the rest like an ageing Atlas down at the base, the Stags were travelling light and had clearly forgot to pack a couple of bits. Actually it turned out Phil’s susceptibility to injury is troubling him again, out for a second time this season with a hamstring strain, while Super Jim was suspended, presumably for bookings accumulated for whining on and on at refs, certainly if his many years with us are anything to go by.

Totton and Winchester have had significant success in the last few years with both having reached the FA Vase final, Winchester beating AFC Sudbury in 2004 and Totton losing to Truro at Wembley in 2007. City merged with/absorbed Winchester Castle in 2001, were promoted out of the Hampshire League in 2003 and won the Wessex League twice before finally being able to make the step up to the Southern League in 2006. AFC Totton followed them into the Scarf & Vest two years later and are currently rather enjoying their first season, going into the New Year feeling confident about back-to-back promotions.

However despite this pedigree, the entertainment on the field was sparse. Nonetheless Totton’s supporters, flushed with success, kept up the singing, both behind the goal and, rather gracelessly, in the clubhouse with tunes like “we’ll never come here again.” Given Totton’s rapid rise, and the probable reasons for it, they would do well to heed the lessons of clubs like Cammell Laird who are now forced to field an amateur squad after four near-successive promotions from the West Cheshire League to the Northern Premier. Play it cool, chaps, is the advice. Mind you, a chant late in the game of “we’re shit and we’re top of the league” suggests they’re not so giddy that they can’t see a poor performance when they see one.

Not that Winchester offered much to excite the four teenagers behind the goal they were attacking, one of whom appeared to be, rather forlornly, tapping out the rhythm to Christine Aguilera’s version of ‘Car Wash’ on his drum. Totton were by far the winners in terms of possession, but neither goalkeeper had much to help them keep the bitter cold at bay.

On the touchline, all we had to keep us warm was the tepid, fetid coffee that we’d queued all the way through half-time for, only to have to wait a further ten for the urn to boil up again. Still, if one considered the coffee as installation art that represented the greying attributes of the football on display then, well, it was perfect.

*Final score from the Victory Stadium...
United Services Portsmouth 7 (seven) AFC Portchester 0.

Sigh.

Links
Winchester City website
AFC Totton website

Havant & Waterlooville 2 Bognor Regis Town 2

01jan09
Conference South
West Leigh Park, Havant
att. 971

All photographs in this report are by Dave Haines – a man who has a proper camera and, very clearly, knows how to use it

Well, I’m pissed off. Why? Well, frankly, I’m sick of the world’s insistence on these new years that turn up having to follow each other in strict sequence. I quite fancied a bit of 3648 action, perhaps followed by a light dusting of 4 B.C. Perhaps that’s a little too much to ask. Not to worry, I’ll accept anything single digit, even Anno Domini, I’m not that fussy. Still, whatever you wish to call this year, and there is a strong rumour abounding that it is, in fact, 2009, there is no doubting that it retains its box-fresh tang. For now.

What are we to make of this march of time though? Poignant alternative rock types Death Cab For Cutie opened their 2004 album ‘Transatlanticism’ with the words “So this is the new year, and I don’t feel any different” and you can understand where they were coming from. Come January 1st and day follows night just as it did 24 hours previously (albeit heralded with a scanter amount of fireworks). Mind you, considering that by the third track of that same record Death Cab were waxing ostentatious on why glove compartments should not be so named, perhaps we would do better to slalom past their overly contemplative counsel.

However, all that said, now that it is a new year, I’m not sure if I do feel any different. In the sense that I really don’t know what to make of our club, specifically the team and management, as has been pretty much the case since August of, what is now, last year. Certainly, after three straights wins with ten goals scored against two conceded, one might reasonably be in a spiffy mood, but events of the prior few months have made us more wary of being recklessly effusive in our praise.

On the evidence of today’s first half, we have been wise to remain sceptical and guarded, cos after three games of turning up and doing stuff, we had clearly decided to phone this one in on the basis of feeling we could coast into 2009 on the coat-tails of Boxing Day’s performance. As such, despite a turn for the upbeat, we retain the right to question the management, but also to bow contritely when we speak too soon.

For instance the past fortnight saw some joshing on our forum about our club continuing to treat Brighton & Hove Albion like a cinema pick n’ mix display. A great many of our loan signings this season have come from the younger end of the Seagulls squad, mostly due to the fact that our assistant manager Charlie Oatway day jobs as a Community Officer down at the Withdean.

I remember when I was younger my great uncle used to visit every now and then and on departure would always shake my hand in such a way that a surreptitious fiver would be deposited in it. I can only imagine that after Micky Adams wished him a manly ‘Happy New Year’, Charlie walked off towards his car only to look down and discover a couple of sleeping youth team players nestled in his palm.

However, despite our increasing distrust of the club’s east-facing transfer policy, one of the latest down the pipe, Jack Compton, looks like he might have a little something about him, and was particularly good after coming on as sub in the Boxing Day hose-down. Starting this New Year’s Day fixture in place of an ill Steven Walker, he didn’t look quite as effective but grew as the game went on, a description that rather understatedly befits every single Hawk on show.

Not that it was difficult for them to get better as the game wore on, as the first half display was, as suggested, Christ!-is-it-November-again-already? in standard. Surely the dark days can’t have returned so soon, we thought, yet our entire starting XI looked as though they had had to be roused from the same ditch two hours before kick off having celebrated the hasty retreat of 2008 with rather too much gusto. That said the Bognor fans appeared happy to admit their opener, a penalty, was rather fortunate. However, given our equalising spot-kick on Boxing Day was softer than a shy embrace with Bagpuss, we should probably temper our umbrage.

The word is that Kevin Scriven had made a perfectly good save at the feet of James Fraser, but as the latter had gone over him like tumbleweed down a hillock, the ref pointed to the spot and showed a yellow card to Scrivs. Former Hawk Sam Pearce drilled in the penalty to the obvious delight of the Bognor turnout who, given their circumstances, were certainly generous in number. Mind you the same applied to our crowd, returning no doubt believing themselves to be on a promise for another festive feast, in goal terms.

Goals they got but it was the Bognor mob who were next to be thrilled amidst the chill. A minute prior to half-time, Louis Castles scored a goal that was possibly the equal of Richard Pacquette’s for us in the corresponding fixture two seasons ago, a dipping shot from outside the box that would cast any keeper as the fool. Magnificent, not that I can delight in these things.

So, half-time and two goals in deficit to the league’s rock-bottom club; a club who today, due to Chris Tardif’s bout of flu, were forced to field a goalkeeper, Robert French, signed very very last minute on loan from Ebbsfleet United. Such an emergency case was it, I imagine Mick Jenkins had to break a glass box on the wall with his elbow to get at him. Although going that extra mile to don the hi-viz vest and advise people not to use the lifts probably wasn’t entirely necessary.

Needless to say, there was much grumbling about ‘application’ and ‘commitment’ at half-time. We wanted a little pizzazz, a little excitement to warm our icy cockles and, eventually, we got it, although certainly not to the extent of our best case scenario coming to fruition. Eight minutes into the second half, we got a goal back through Gary Elphick doing what he does best, getting his hard head behind a Charlie Henry cross and guiding it past Robert French.

Ten minutes later, however, it looked as though all our efforts would be for nought, as Kevin Scriven found himself tunnelled for a second yellow card. In a new move that he seems quite keen on perfecting and, who knows, someday he may well do, he came hairing out of his area after Stefan Gaisie had beaten Brett Poate, but caught the striker’s legs as Gaisie attempted a second circumnavigation.

With our reserve keeper, and Pot Noodle enthusiast, Nathan Ashmore not amongst the benched names, captain Jamie Collins decided he should once again be the one to face the music. However Bognor’s symphony was fairly tranquil and JC dealt fairly comfortably with Sam Pearce’s resulting free-kick and also claimed a subsequent corner above his head like a career custodian. These were the rare sparks of life in Bognor’s stangely muted body as, pleasingly, we responded to the one-man deficit and lack of a recognised keeper by raining down fiery vengeance upon the Bognor goal.

Fifteen minutes prior to the scheduled end, Reuben French brought down Charlie Henry in the box and the Car Park End penalty spot was once again pointed at like a bearded lady in a supermarket. As the player’s convened a haphazard EGM to decide whom should take the kick, our skipper stepped up, striding from his goal-line with a purposeful gait like a zombie who’s gone weeks without any brain in his lunchbox. We confident types behind the goal began attempting to reason with his bravery and keenness by all shouting and gesturing back over his shoulder like an army of angry mums suggesting that he remove himself to his room without any further claim on supper.

Ignoring our all too apparent fear, JC, wearing the freshly-on baggy green shirt that was still humming Scrivs’ shame, wrestled the ball from Brett Poate and placed it on the spot. Having crashed the ball against the post from this very position not two weeks ago you might expect doubt but, quite clearly, Jamie Collins is a man with two mammoth spheres in his underbag. Robert French went the wrong way, and we were level. Captaincy may not have the same importance in football as it does in cricket, but Jamie Collins clearly takes the notion of wearing additional responsibility very seriously, and that’s why we love him.

After that the ball rarely left the Bognor half, and chance followed chance followed sitter followed chance, Craig Watkins and Luke Nightingale missing the best of them. Indeed we should have had a second penalty, Rueben French swatting away one shot robustly rather like one does when playing swingball having misplaced the rackets. Any number of equally worthy handball shouts followed as the ball was fired repeatedly into the box.

Clearly seeing the benefit of playing with ten men, Reuben French then threw himself on the sword of a second yellow card. Yet, despite this, we continued to press on through six minutes of agonising injury time, adopting a far more attacking mindset than our friends from Sussex. However their new friend in the gloves made some vital saves whilst one cross-shot was brilliantly cleared over from a seemingly impossible angle beneath the bar by a desperate Bognor forehead.

When the final whistle blew it was difficult to know how to feel aside from relieved that no towel was thrown despite being two goal in arrears at half-time and our keeper mislaying himself with some time still to play. Yet, if we are to really believe that we can start climbing the table we need to see performances that consign the lethargy of the first half to the landfill.

Previously, on dubSteps
26dec08: Bognor Regis Town 1 Havant & Waterlooville 5
29sep07: Bognor Regis Town 1 Havant & Waterlooville 2
26dec05: Bognor Regis Town 0 Havant & Waterlooville 1

Links:
Havant & Waterlooville website
Bognor Regis Town website

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Spreading the word at Portland Park, the now former home of Ashington

Previously, on Dub Steps
19jan08: Ashington 1 Sunderland Nissan 2

Hobo in my pocket #22

Thanks for reading in 2008, have a great 2009.