Havant & Waterlooville 2 Eastleigh 2

30aug10
Conference South
Westleigh Park, Havant
att. 1020

I would have said after our first game that there’s no better way to record a first win of the campaign than to engulf the optimism of the new ambitious pups on the Conference South circuit (in this case, Dartford). I would have said that, had we been able to hold onto the lead we took into injury time.

Similarly, I would have said after this sixth game, that there is no better way to record a first win of the campaign than to vanquish our acrid, morally-barren local rivals, Eastleigh. Again, I would have said that, but…

Eleventh hour equalisers are breath-taking, no question. When it falls in your favour, that breath is taken by awe and delight. When it falls against, it is deflating, as though your breath has been apprehended, duffed up, locked in a car-boot and later forced to film a grainy video nervously detailing the terms of ransom. The difference between when draws feel like wins, and when they feel like defeats.




Six games in now then and we’ve had no win at all to speak of, and our two closest calls have been lost to 96th and 93rd minute sucker-punches. This has been particularly gutting as, on both occasions, our 2-1 leads have been obtained by absolutely magnificent strikes within the last ten minutes of regular time.

So, as I’ve stated, it’s enough to make one feel like an incorrectly tied balloon at the best of times, but when it comes at the hands of the local rivals, it’s like your inner balloon has careered off around the garden, as the air races from its nozzle, before coming to land eventually on your golden retriever’s first back-door expulsion of the morning. Still, I feel it is in the interests of science at this point, or my morale at any rate, to remind all concerned that Eastleigh have still only beaten us once in fifteen fixtures; 8 H&W wins and 6 draws make up the remainder.

Still, I’m not really interested in the Hampshire mini-league at this point, I’m interested in us fulfilling out potential and scaling the Conference South like a squirrel escaping heavy footsteps up the nearest tree. At least in this game we were able to claim our first goal from open play since that first game at Dartford. In the 28th minute of this niggly, physical game (as they tend to be against Ian Baird sides - we should know, we used to watch an Ian Baird side week-in-week-out before he decided to piss-off large down the road), Muzzy Tiryaki and Wes Fogden eventually managed to batter their way through a resolute and stick Eastleigh defence, like two spermatozoa using a tag team approach to penetrate the ovum.

With Eastleigh’s left –sided defenders drawn into this attritional battle, room was left for the ball to be threaded to Sammy Igoe, who was able to strike home a tidy, yet powerful finish that betrayed his many years in the pro game. Slightly less professionally, and clearly as the result of some early earache from the away end, he decided to celebrate by racing back down to their position behind our goal and cupping his left lug at them. Not quite the full Adebayor, but still enough to earn him a yellow card.

All was relatively rosy in the garden until in virtually the last second of the half, Bobby Hopkinson was penalised in the box for a foul on our ex-skipper Tom Jordan. To complete the former Hawks thumbing their noses at us aspect of this, Jamie Slabber stepped up to plant the spot-kick past Aaron Howe.

In the second half, we got more and more into the game, particularly after Manny Williams, still on a softly-softly return from injury, entered the field after 66 minutes. This added pressure was rewarded in the 82nd minute when Muzzy Tiryaki was fouled just outside the box. As the Eastleigh wall lined up, Ian Selley hopped about waving his arms in front of them, like a stranded country motorist attempting to flag down a passing van for a jump-start.

Amongst all this artificial confusion, Muz drove the ball right through the blockade, the ball striking the underside of the bar with some heft and bouncing into the back of the net. Handsome, as sentences involving the phrase “underside of the bar” usually indicate. Unless, of course, it comes as a reply to the question “where does the landlord in the Red Lion keep his crisps?”

However this glory was all too fleeting. Three minutes into injury time, and from a corner, Chris Holland rose tallest at the back post to head home Eastleigh’s equaliser. Deserved it might have been, and I might well have taken a point prior to kick off, as I would most weeks, but again to get so close in such circumstances is far more galling than it is agreeable.

Picture by Dave Haines

Neutral view: Twohundredpercent

Previously, on Dub Steps
03oct09: Havant & Waterlooville 2 Eastleigh 2
25apr09: Havant & Waterlooville 2 Eastleigh 2
29nov08: Eastleigh 2 Havant & Waterlooville 0
01apr08: Eastleigh 1 Havant & Waterlooville 1
22dec07: Havant & Waterlooville 1 Eastleigh 0
09apr07: Havant & Waterlooville 1 Eastleigh 1

Bromley 1 Havant & Waterlooville 0

24aug10
Conference South
Hayes Lane, Bromley
att. 525

Well. Err… Oooookaaaayyyy. Probably just as well I was keeping the expectations on the down-low then. Four games in. Two draws. Two defeats. Two points. Two penalty kicks being two-thirds of the goals we’ve thus far scored. Twentieth place in the table. Even keeping my excitement hemmed in, and with us being only 9.5% of the way through the season, is it greedy to suggest I’d have liked to have seen a little more by this point?

Positives from the campaign thus far? Well, umm, the fresh-faced academy lads that have come in, Craig Robson and Harvey Whyte, have looked promising. Apart from that, well…, urrr…, oh yeah, we’ve got a new flag for behind the goal.

The new banner celebrates our striker Mustafa Tiryaki’s Turkish background and heritage. I defy anyone to think of a better method to pay tribute to a hero, to gratefully offer a token of the high esteem in which they are held, than to deface their national flag. Mind you, he seemed pretty pleased when it was waved at him. ‘Muzzy: Pure Turkish Delight’.

So, at least we have confectionary based references on our bunting to keep us buoyant as we await our first win and, to be honest, tonight’s second half aside, performances have not been that dreadful as to suggest we’re going to have to wait too long a time for it. We just need to re-discover our confidence in front of goal. However this last 45 was very much like the dark days of last season, with the players taking the opposition’s first goal as an opportunity to give up more ghost than a retiring exorcist.

A feature of our remarkable, ridiculous, scrumptious turnaround last season was a re-assertion of control across the midfield. Ian Selley’s signing was a big part of that and perhaps it is significant that he wasn’t in the side for this game. Indeed, it was his replacement Craig Robson’s loss of possession just outside the Bromley box that ultimately led to their winner. However this is to be too harsh on the lad who, as suggested earlier, put in a very tidy shift for one so young.

Indeed, if blame for such a poor performance has to be pointed anywhere, there were many more deserving in our five-man midfield than Craig. Sammy Igoe still appears to be getting the measure of life outside the Football League and has yet to impose his qualities on Conference South opposition. I’m sure this will come, and hopefully soon.



Wes Fogden is always capable of something special, and indeed our only goal not from the spot thus far was a typically presumptuous 25-yarder from our Wesley. However, in this game, he frequently went missing from play, to the point where we might have believed he had sunk into the turf, face up, with only the tip of his nose on show. Mind you, with his belting, brazen schnoz, that would still mean about ten foot of turf and soils would have to be shifted to pull him out and back into the game.

Whilst some were wanting for effort, the evening’s most noticably poor performance belonged to Bobby Hopkinson who just couldn't get anything he tried to work out. His mistimed passing and tackling seemed to be that of a man with a contact lens missing from his bad eye, and a magnifying glass glued to his good one. When it came to attempted clearances, he was swinging and missing so often, his right leg was starting to resemble Ray Charles’ 3-wood.

I would like to think there would be a reaction this when we go to bottom-of-the-table Dorchester on Saturday. Yet, of course, they will be looking to kick-start their season every bit as much as us. It’s going to be a battle, and we’ll need more gumption than was shown in the second half here, that much is clear.

Previously, on dubSteps
14apr08: Bromley 2 Havant & Waterlooville 1

Dartford 2 Havant & Waterlooville 2

14aug10
Conference South
Princes Park, Dartford
att. 1,302

A new season brings with it the need to rummage around in the cupboard and dust off a few items ready for the coming campaign. In my case that would be my Saturday afternoon must haves i.e. replica shirt, scarf and the use of the phrase “I’d rip your arm off for a point right now.”

This phrase made its appearance most weeks last season, to the point of a custom-made t-shirt being considered so that I just might turn up on the terrace and point at its insignia rather than waste my breath ahead of performances that, up to late January, ranged only from poor to dreadful.

However, Shaun Gale survived this continuation of the previous season’s doldrums and oversaw a startling turnaround that took us from relegation angst to finishing one place and a single point away from the play-offs in only three months. The combination of these performances along with the fact that we kept pretty much the entire squad together over the summer, meant giddiness was able to jimmy itself in through the small bathroom window of my expectation; a window I could have sworn I painted shut for my own good a couple of seasons back.

Attempts to forcibly remove my overexcitement and restore the usual judicious and realistic order weren’t helped when we announced the signing of Sammy Igoe; a former Portsmouth, Reading and Swindon player that turned down offers from clubs in higher divisions as he didn’t want to up his roots from the south’s nutritious soils. With him joining a European Cup Winners Cup medal holder (Ian Selley, ex-Arsenal) and two handsomely bright young things (Bobby Hopkinson and Wes Fogden) in midfield, I must admit I went a little Starship on it, in that it seemed, to me, that nothing was, ahem, gonna stop us now.

Further slaps upside the chops of rationality came during our performances in a pre-season tournament held in the west country where we tore a hole in Championship side Doncaster Rovers the size of five goals without reply. It was a very strong side that they’d put out for the game but, given the amount of protest amongst the League clubs in the tournament about the fact they could only use three subs per game, we might concede that they might not have given the occasion the full wallop.

We lost to 2-1 to Shrewsbury Town in a tight semi-final but as they, like Doncaster, couldn’t really be arsed with it, it was left to us to face Premiership side Blackpool in a friendly the next day in lieu of a final, the tangerine troops having been awarded the competition’s trophy by default. We took a 2-0 lead over Ian Holloway’s men but eventually lost 3-2. Still, a week very well spent it appeared.

However as we got closer to the season beginning, with an emergency loan keeper required last minute thanks to suspensions and thumb dislocations on the part of our incumbents, and with our squad looking possibly a little light, a level-head managed to just about subdue the giddy.

Injuries, and the avoidance of, may be a big factor in our successes and failures this year. For instance, Manny Williams was astonishing at the start of last year, scoring eleven goals in our first ten games. However, after that, he spent a large part of the campaign, and the entire close season, with his arm down the back of the sofa trying to locate his mislaid fitness. It appears that, like a dusty penny lost in the lining of a fur-lined hooded anorak, that whenever he manages to stretch and get a fingertip on it, he only succeeds in pushing it further away. You could say exactly the same of young centre-half Ryan Woodford, whilst midfield terrier Shaun Wilkinson playing career remains in the balance after a badly broken ankle.

So, with that in mind, the fact we’d won only 2 of the 12 opening fixtures we’ve had since the club’s formation in 1998 and Dartford’s status as a potential title-winner having romped the Isthmian League last year, you can perhaps understand why, despite all the positive aspects of the recent months, I’d decided to bring the “…take a point…” phrase out of an all too brief retirement.

Yet, as they say, be careful what you wish for, as you just might get it. While a point was an agreeable return from our endeavours at Princes Park, for a few short minutes it looked as though the entire contents of the opening day’s biscuit tin would be ours.

Not that it looked this way at all after twenty-six minutes. At this point, Dartford were one goal up and we appeared a bit dazed to the fact that the season had actually started. From that point on, we were the better side and yet it required a soft penalty, for a high-on-the-arm hand-ball, on the stroke of half time to bring us back on level terms. Bobby Hopkinson stepped up, sent keeper Andrew Young the wrong way and celebrated by standing stock still whilst peacock-feathering his palms towards us (see below); a hubristic shrug which said simply, “yeah, that’s right, that’s what the Hopkinson can do for you people.”

In the second half we once again took a while to get going but after that we began to pile on the pressure, most notably when an audacious cross-cum-shot from Muzzy Tiryaki hit the bar. Indeed, Muzzy was incredible throughout the game, holding the ball up as the lone front man brilliantly. His relentless work-rate was particularly note-worthy for a man currently observing Ramadan and thus probably rumbling heavy in the tum-tum given the absence of a lunchtime Twix. So, Bobby or Muz for man of the match, for me anyway.

Over the course of last season, you could usually pick Wes Fogden as being our man of the match even before kick-off, but he couldn’t have it today because, owing to a knock in pre-season, he only came off the bench mid-way through the second half. However in the absence of that accolade he decided, instead, to throw an early hat into the goal-of-the-season ring, curling in a shot from about 25 yards out with three minutes left on the clock; a shot so peachy and potent you could have wrung a magnum’s worth of Archers schnapps out of it.

Wes, not to mention Bobby, Muzzy and Ian Simpemba, are clearly looking to start this season as they finished the last, all putting in excellent performances. Perhaps Sammy Igoe and Steve Ramsay (the player you may remember from these pages as Steve Walker, until his visit to the deed-poll office this summer) could have shown a little more, but these are early days and we are clearly not entirely comfortable with a 4-5-1 formation just yet. Fingers crossed Manny’s return will be swift, and without caveat.

Yet, however well we play in games this season, points will be dropped and mistakes will be made, and so it was until the sixth minute of injury time when Danny Harris was felled in the box allowing Ryan Hayes to stroke the equaliser past our eleventh-hour loan keeper Richard Martin who, it should be said, had a pretty assured game.

So, a good result, even if in galling circumstances. Keeping the giddy bound-and-gagged in a basement somewhere will probably remain the default position for a bit, but this was very encouraging stuff for the season ahead.

Albion Rovers 2 Berwick Rangers 2

07aug10
Scottish League Division Three
Cliftonhill, Coatbridge
att. 369

Over the years, many have pondered as to the exact point in a career at which footballers must shrug their shoulders and concede their dreams of glory and stardom have slipped them by. For me, it would be if I was to find myself jogging around the lower rungs of the Scottish Football League whilst dressed, in the main, as a biscuit.

A fanciful notion, on the face of it, but it was this very fate that met Albion Rovers’ 1983/84 squad when, following a sponsorship deal with local confectioners Tunnocks, the club’s yellow and red livery was tilted to make the players look exactly like their benefactor’s famous Caramel wafer.

That commercial tie-in has long since gone, for which the current players might be thankful, but I’m sure the Albion board, given their plans to move away from their dilapidated Cliftonhill stadium, would happily dress their charges as a shimmering mint green Viscount XI if it meant a bit more bunse in the brick fund.

Money, though, remains tight. With Rangers and Celtic only ten miles away, and Coatbridge having a significant population coming from a background of large-scale Irish immigration, it is perhaps unsurprising that The Wee Rovers have struggled to attract large crowds and have remained in the fourth tier of Scottish football since that tier was created in 1994.

Arriving in Coatbridge from the bustle of Edinburgh on an opening Festival weekend, I was looking to escape the tumult created by a phalanx of honking bag-pipers pumping out their BLAAAAAH in unison up by the castle. However the relative sanctity of the smaller town was soon shattered by a lone piper greeting the arrival of a bride at her wedding ceremony. No sooner had she passed into the church though, the noise came to a mercifully swift halt, whilst the two caged doves hung in white cages from heart shaped stands were removed from the vestibule, and left outside to enjoy the Scottish climate (in this case, a light shower). Not exactly the glamorous career that these doves sign up for, I’d imagine.

This aside, Coatbridge seemed on down-time, with the quiet only pricked by the passing of cars, many of which appeared to be joining those already settled collectively adjacent to the town’s bingo warehouse. The lack of bustle could, I guess, lend some succour to “the most dismal [town] in Scotland” tag that Coatbridge was ‘awarded’ by Prospect architecture magazine in 2007. Let us not forget the great things that have come out of the town though: Tannoy public address systems; the iron that armour-plated British ships fighting the Crimean war; and, of course, the 1987 Top 10 hit Labour Of Love by Hue & Cry.

Inside Cliftonhill, the Tannoy system appeared to be working fine, but would have benefited from someone keeping an eye on the playlist, as an Irn Bru advert detailing ‘The Ginger Boot’ competition for Football League players was rotated about eight times in succession. “The rules: score, score and score again, but only league goals count so there’s no point pinging in a hat-trick against Drumnadrochit University” is now a sentence embossed upon my brain like a farmer’s initials on a cows bum-cheek.

The ground itself is now as good as one sided with the deep far-side terracing being allowed to collect weeds rather than feet. Behind the goals are merely mounds of grass and nettles, into which one of the home players was able to take a pre-match piss whilst lackadaisically attempting to retrieve a lost practice ball.

The opening exchanges of the game, and thus the league season, were rather beige, aside from a 25-yarder from Rovers’ striker Paul McLeod which beat Berwick keeper Ian McCaldon but hit the outside of the post, not with a ping or a thud, but with the sound of a stout gentleman taking a stiff punch to the belly.

It was on the half hour that the home side took the lead through McLeod, who capitalised on Alan Benton’s hefty welt being left by both McCaldon and defender Craig O’Reilly to tap home. However, within three minutes Berwick were able to equalise when Ciaran Donnelly’s backward flick went straight to Kevin Gordon on his winning gamble of a run, who then turned and shinned in.

In the second half the home side began to dominate proceedings. However their defenders had to remain alert. As one massive clearance disappeared over the main stand, one home fan, seemingly confused as to the appropriate Peter Kay catchphrase for the occasion, bellowed “Garlic Bread!” Another bloke in the ‘eccentric section’ of the main stand seats then began to sing “and it’s Albion Rovers…” in a slow, club singer drawl.

After a sustained period of pressure, Albion took the lead again with eleven minutes to go, substitute Iain Smith being put through and slotting calmly home despite attention from two defenders. This led to the first and only outbreak of communal singing from the scarf wearers collected around the tunnel, “A-R, A-R-F, A-R-F-C, OK!”

Yet, for all their hard work, Rovers once more couldn’t hold onto their lead for long. Five minutes from time, after repeated failure on the part of the home side’s defence in their attempts to clear, Paul Currie was able to side-foot home off the inside of the post to earn Berwick a point.