All was not well, but it ends well.
A brief review of Havant & Waterlooville's 2009/10 Conference South season
My posting prior to the final game dealt largely with the coming week’s ifs. This missive must in part deal with the what-ifs. We finished the season in 6th place, one place and just one point outside of the play-offs. We have no recourse to a recount; a 42-game season allows you to finish exactly where you deserve to be.
Over the months October to January we were certainly one of the worst teams in the division, while in the first month and the last month we were one of the best, if not THE best in terms of the final three weeks (although it's fair to say Woking returned to form as well and they actually made the play-offs - we scored bagloadsa goals though so I'm still claiming it). The statistic that matters though is that, over the season in its totality, we have been the sixth best team and thus, for us, no extras and no prizes.
If one is inclined to ponder negatively, one wonders what might have been had we shown anything related to this form in those long winter months. To be honest, it didn’t even have to be related to it, being on nodding terms with it after once reaching for the same newspaper in the local Spar would have done.
Even then, even with that extended period of mucky misery remaining intact you wonder, what if? What if we hadn’t been reduced to nine-men at Welling, or that those nine-men had nicked the point that their performance deserved? What if we hadn’t been as poor in the second half against Eastleigh at home, as we had been excellent in the first half, and thus managed to hold onto our 2-0 half-time lead? What if when we battered Bath City away and Hampton & Richmond Borough at home that we had come away with more than a point each time.
However, this is not the time to accentuate the negative. The time for that was after the big season low – a 4-0 defeat away at Dover which left us 16th in mid January. Thankfully this nadir was also the axis upon which our season turned. Since that trough, we played 21 league games, lost 3, drew 5, and won 13. As a side point, it is a testament to Newport County’s dominance this year that even if we had matched that in the first half of the campaign we would still have only finished second.
So we might talk of efforts being in vain but it has not been for nothing by any stretch. These have been times of restored pride and increasingly great entertainment that has recalled some of the good-time vibes of large parts of the 3 full seasons of Mick Jenkins and Liam Daish’s joint reign.
Our final five games saw us win 15 points and score 20 goals. We put four goals past the runaway champions and five past the team finishing third. The last month has been both wonderful and pretty dumbfounding.
Given that 16th position in the bleak midwinter, with memories of last year’s dreadfulness still all too clear, our best hopes then would have been to watch dull mid-table 0-0’s to see out the season. We genuinly did not know where the next win was coming from. Instead, our players did not acquiesce to a long soul-sapping run-in and, as such, we’ve had a chaotic, scarcely believable run of results that, to a certain extent, have felt like echoes of that cup run.
At the end of our final game, manager Shaun Gale’s name was sung. I’ll be honest with you, that particular chant had been sitting on the shelf for so long, we had to have at it with the Brasso first. Whilst he has his faults and the vast majority of supporters would have happily seen him in the dole queue back in January, me included, there is an increasing sense that he is genuinely learning from his mistakes and growing in the role that, as we’ve said before (with genuine admiration that won't dissipate, whatever happens in the future), is clearly more than just another football job to him.
The signing of Ian Selley was certainly a major catalyst in settling our midfield down, as was the departure of Luke Nightingale whose body language was a living embodiment of the ennui that had enveloped the club like a brown fug. He had never settled and it was right that he should be allowed to rediscover his talent elsewhere.
Uncertainty surrounds the position of young midfielder Bobby Hopkinson with AFC Wimbledon sniffing around him like a cat with head cold but if we could somehow keep him, I'd certainly regard it is as a major coup. To me, it would be a sign that ambitious young players want to play for a once again progressive club with a good atmosphere settled upon it, rather than signing up been-there-done-thats who just appear to treat us as a giant ATM.
That scorn, I should add, does not apply to our captain Ian Simpemba who has come through the buy-'em-all-from-Lewes era with his head held high. He is too proud a man to go through the motions and certainly leads by example. That he has signed up for a further two years is, therefore, excellent news. Indeed, we seem to have an embarrassment of riches in defence. Two proper full-backs (a rare luxury at our club) who have grown in stature as the season has jogged on and five centre-halves that can be relied upon. This might be too many really but injuries have dictated that it was probably just as well this year.
Indeed, young Ryan Woodford was an absolute revalation at the start of the season and had he not succumbed to niggly long-term injury over the winter, would have been pushing Wes Fogden all the way for the Player of the Year trinket. At the time of his injury he was the clear front runner in my view. Sam Pearce, re-signed at the start of the season after having began his career in our old youth team in the early-to-mid-noughties, has also shown such maturity that one imagines his temples are starting to grey and he's about to develop a fondness for real ale and televised snooker.
As stated elsewhere Wes Fogden has just got better and better as the season has gone on. Tricksy midfielders signed after performing well against us tend to have something wrong with them, whether they be injury-prone (Charlie Henry and Robbie Martin) or just dreadful (Ivan Forbes), but Wes continues to get better and better. When he gets the ball, you feel confident things ware going to happen, much like in the old days when we had the aging but astonishing Paul Wood in our side. As such Wes has daddied the Supporter's monthly trophy in recent months to the point of suggesting that his is the only name the engraver knows how to spell.
Elsewhere in midfield Stevie Walker shows flashes of excellence, but could be more consistent, whilst Paul Hinshelwood provides good back-up from the bench. I don't believe however that we need to request the services of Luke Medley on loan from Barnet next year, as he always gave the impression that all this was beneath him.
Up front, if Manny Williams can rediscover his fitness, his electric early-season form may well also return. Thankfully, when Manny wasn't quite up to those early standards later in the season, Mustafa Tiryaki was able to raise his game and pick up the slack. Their partnership is developing, and Academy lad Liam Sewell is certainly worth keeping an eye on, in case injuries and Muzzy's inevitable suspensions start to bite. Maybe another striker wouldn't go amiss, but Steve Hutchings, signed from Bournemouth last summer, is still relatively untried.
In goal, one would hope that Aaron Howe has learnt from his little fist-based brain-fart at Basingstoke, whilst young back-up keeper Nathan Ashmore increasingly looks the part after stepping up from the Academy.
So, if we can keep the majority of this current team together, and Shaun doesn’t start tinkering too much with it, maybe we can take the momentum and confidence into the next campaign and if the side we put out can express themselves with the same desire and élan as has been seen recently, their clear abilities will shine, we will be entertained and, who knows, greater successes may well be within reach.
Have a great summer.
My posting prior to the final game dealt largely with the coming week’s ifs. This missive must in part deal with the what-ifs. We finished the season in 6th place, one place and just one point outside of the play-offs. We have no recourse to a recount; a 42-game season allows you to finish exactly where you deserve to be.
Over the months October to January we were certainly one of the worst teams in the division, while in the first month and the last month we were one of the best, if not THE best in terms of the final three weeks (although it's fair to say Woking returned to form as well and they actually made the play-offs - we scored bagloadsa goals though so I'm still claiming it). The statistic that matters though is that, over the season in its totality, we have been the sixth best team and thus, for us, no extras and no prizes.
If one is inclined to ponder negatively, one wonders what might have been had we shown anything related to this form in those long winter months. To be honest, it didn’t even have to be related to it, being on nodding terms with it after once reaching for the same newspaper in the local Spar would have done.
Even then, even with that extended period of mucky misery remaining intact you wonder, what if? What if we hadn’t been reduced to nine-men at Welling, or that those nine-men had nicked the point that their performance deserved? What if we hadn’t been as poor in the second half against Eastleigh at home, as we had been excellent in the first half, and thus managed to hold onto our 2-0 half-time lead? What if when we battered Bath City away and Hampton & Richmond Borough at home that we had come away with more than a point each time.
However, this is not the time to accentuate the negative. The time for that was after the big season low – a 4-0 defeat away at Dover which left us 16th in mid January. Thankfully this nadir was also the axis upon which our season turned. Since that trough, we played 21 league games, lost 3, drew 5, and won 13. As a side point, it is a testament to Newport County’s dominance this year that even if we had matched that in the first half of the campaign we would still have only finished second.
So we might talk of efforts being in vain but it has not been for nothing by any stretch. These have been times of restored pride and increasingly great entertainment that has recalled some of the good-time vibes of large parts of the 3 full seasons of Mick Jenkins and Liam Daish’s joint reign.
Our final five games saw us win 15 points and score 20 goals. We put four goals past the runaway champions and five past the team finishing third. The last month has been both wonderful and pretty dumbfounding.
Given that 16th position in the bleak midwinter, with memories of last year’s dreadfulness still all too clear, our best hopes then would have been to watch dull mid-table 0-0’s to see out the season. We genuinly did not know where the next win was coming from. Instead, our players did not acquiesce to a long soul-sapping run-in and, as such, we’ve had a chaotic, scarcely believable run of results that, to a certain extent, have felt like echoes of that cup run.
At the end of our final game, manager Shaun Gale’s name was sung. I’ll be honest with you, that particular chant had been sitting on the shelf for so long, we had to have at it with the Brasso first. Whilst he has his faults and the vast majority of supporters would have happily seen him in the dole queue back in January, me included, there is an increasing sense that he is genuinely learning from his mistakes and growing in the role that, as we’ve said before (with genuine admiration that won't dissipate, whatever happens in the future), is clearly more than just another football job to him.
The signing of Ian Selley was certainly a major catalyst in settling our midfield down, as was the departure of Luke Nightingale whose body language was a living embodiment of the ennui that had enveloped the club like a brown fug. He had never settled and it was right that he should be allowed to rediscover his talent elsewhere.
Uncertainty surrounds the position of young midfielder Bobby Hopkinson with AFC Wimbledon sniffing around him like a cat with head cold but if we could somehow keep him, I'd certainly regard it is as a major coup. To me, it would be a sign that ambitious young players want to play for a once again progressive club with a good atmosphere settled upon it, rather than signing up been-there-done-thats who just appear to treat us as a giant ATM.
That scorn, I should add, does not apply to our captain Ian Simpemba who has come through the buy-'em-all-from-Lewes era with his head held high. He is too proud a man to go through the motions and certainly leads by example. That he has signed up for a further two years is, therefore, excellent news. Indeed, we seem to have an embarrassment of riches in defence. Two proper full-backs (a rare luxury at our club) who have grown in stature as the season has jogged on and five centre-halves that can be relied upon. This might be too many really but injuries have dictated that it was probably just as well this year.
Indeed, young Ryan Woodford was an absolute revalation at the start of the season and had he not succumbed to niggly long-term injury over the winter, would have been pushing Wes Fogden all the way for the Player of the Year trinket. At the time of his injury he was the clear front runner in my view. Sam Pearce, re-signed at the start of the season after having began his career in our old youth team in the early-to-mid-noughties, has also shown such maturity that one imagines his temples are starting to grey and he's about to develop a fondness for real ale and televised snooker.
As stated elsewhere Wes Fogden has just got better and better as the season has gone on. Tricksy midfielders signed after performing well against us tend to have something wrong with them, whether they be injury-prone (Charlie Henry and Robbie Martin) or just dreadful (Ivan Forbes), but Wes continues to get better and better. When he gets the ball, you feel confident things ware going to happen, much like in the old days when we had the aging but astonishing Paul Wood in our side. As such Wes has daddied the Supporter's monthly trophy in recent months to the point of suggesting that his is the only name the engraver knows how to spell.
Elsewhere in midfield Stevie Walker shows flashes of excellence, but could be more consistent, whilst Paul Hinshelwood provides good back-up from the bench. I don't believe however that we need to request the services of Luke Medley on loan from Barnet next year, as he always gave the impression that all this was beneath him.
Up front, if Manny Williams can rediscover his fitness, his electric early-season form may well also return. Thankfully, when Manny wasn't quite up to those early standards later in the season, Mustafa Tiryaki was able to raise his game and pick up the slack. Their partnership is developing, and Academy lad Liam Sewell is certainly worth keeping an eye on, in case injuries and Muzzy's inevitable suspensions start to bite. Maybe another striker wouldn't go amiss, but Steve Hutchings, signed from Bournemouth last summer, is still relatively untried.
In goal, one would hope that Aaron Howe has learnt from his little fist-based brain-fart at Basingstoke, whilst young back-up keeper Nathan Ashmore increasingly looks the part after stepping up from the Academy.
So, if we can keep the majority of this current team together, and Shaun doesn’t start tinkering too much with it, maybe we can take the momentum and confidence into the next campaign and if the side we put out can express themselves with the same desire and élan as has been seen recently, their clear abilities will shine, we will be entertained and, who knows, greater successes may well be within reach.
Have a great summer.
posted by skif at 12:01 AM
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