Via Cardiff

Eastleigh  2  Woking  0

National League

The question was loaded to a certain extent.

“Are you going anywhere near South Wales next Saturday?” asked Mrs H.

It wasn’t so much a question, in all fairness, it was more of a three line whip.

Mrs H’s brother, hereafter known as BIL (Brother In Law), was due to pick a car up from Cardiff, and given his tendency to avoid all things public transport where at all possible, I was seen as a clear candidate for a lift to Glamorgan.

If I’m honest, given his natural ability at DIY and my complete lack of any ability, which has saved us a fortune over the years, combined with numerous lifts to catch trains to Scotland, it was the least I could do. Besides, on the day we married, his first words to me when he shook my hand after the ceremony were “welcome to the mafia….”, yep, my card was well and truly marked!

In terms of football though, to link in with a trip to Cardiff, I had four Home Counties clubs, two South Coast, one West Yorkshire and one Somerset based club on my target list, the ideal scenario would have been the Somerset based option, but clearly it doesn’t work out like that and Larkhall Athletic were not at home!

So, if I left Belper at 7.30am, got to the West side of Cardiff by 10.30am, did a quick turnaround, avoided the rugby traffic, shot back across the M4, down the A34, and then the M3, I could be in Eastleigh for 1pm. And with that I could complete the National League top flight, having got it down to just one with the visit to Dover Athletic last weekend.

Eastleigh v Woking, yes, it was a plan and it was do-able. I didn’t need any traffic aggravation or bad weather to hinder it, but all things considered, I reckoned it was a good move on my part. Despite the length of time on the road, I was actually quite looking forward to the adventure. But then, I would look forward to lying on a bed of sharpened nails in preference to the full day of kitchen wall painting that was on the agenda for the following day. Five and a half hours one way seemed tame by comparison.

So, BIL was picked up along with Mrs BIL and off we toddled down the M42, M5 and M50 before embarking on a coffee stop just outside Ross-on-Wye. The traffic was light and even with the egg chasing the traffic around Cardiff on the M4 was no problem. We did choose to enter from the West rather than the East because of the congestion and road closures, and that worked a dream as we were soon sat outside a garage in Whitchurch.

Stood down from my duties, I was soon back on the M4 and over a blustery Severn Bridge into England. It was destination Eastleigh and the sun was shining! The M4 was very well behaved as Swindon passed by on the left, while the A34 Newbury by-pass served it’s purpose. Winchester was not the bottleneck I was previously used to, and even the closure of the M27 at the bottom of the M3 caused me no pain. In fact, the only aggravation I had was the last couple of miles, and that was purely down to my lack of research into road closures adjacent to the ground, which meant doing a loop back under the motorway and into the outskirts of Southampton.

Eastleigh Football Club is something of a story, allow me to elaborate.

Formerly known as Swaythling, under their new guise they spent the Eighties in the Hampshire League and the newly formed Wessex League, from where they won promotion to the Southern League in 2003. The clubs first season in the Southern League saw them finish high enough to earn a further promotion, this time to the top flight of the Isthmian League.

A third placed finish saw a further promotion to the Conference South, where they lost twice in the play-offs before eventually winning the title in the 2013-14 season.

Since then they have plied their trade in the top flight of non-league football, and have twice competed in the play-offs for a place in the Football League. They lost to Grimsby Town in 2014-15, while last season they were beaten by eventual winners Salford City.

The FA Cup has been good to them in recent seasons as well. Twice they’ve reached the Third Round Proper, losing to Bolton Wanderers in a replay and also to Brentford. This season they fell at the Second Round stage to Crewe Alexandra. 

This season to be fair has not been as successful as last seasons campaign, and going into the game against relatively close neighbours Woking (by National League standards), they sat not a million miles away from the relegation places.

Eastleigh have been fortunate in the sense that they have been backed financially, and alongside the success of the team they’ve built an impressive stadium, and not only that, they command average crowds of not too far short of 2,000. I would hazard a guess that the club is sustainable nowadays, and has an infrastructure to support them.

The ground is smart. Set in a large expanse between the M27 and the M3, the entrance road along Stoneham Lane is tight, but once in the car park you haven’t got to worry about finding a space even with the crowds they get. The main stand spans half the length of the pitch and offers an elevated view of proceedings, while opposite in the general direction of Southampton Airport is a covered terrace that spans runs the length of the touchline.

Behind the North goal is a two storey building that houses a bar and restaurant alongside the shop and some offices, with some covered terracing in front, while to the side is the Hangar Bar which is the clubs main social club. Behind the South goal is a large seated stand that is a recent construction, and this allows segregation when required, as it was against the visitors from Surrey.

All in all, an impressive stadium that meets Football League criteria, but, the pitch is not great. They’ve had some games called off this season, and in places it was heavily sanded. I can remember that the Bolton Wanderers FA Cup tie was almost called off a couple of seasons back now due to issues with the pitch, and given the recent weather, especially in the South, they’ve suffered more than most at this level.

The game was entertaining, but the first half was somewhat more engaging than the second period. Eastleigh, or the Spitfires as they are known, started on the front foot and took the lead in the tenth minute when Jack Payne scored with a superbly timed volley from a tight angle.

They got a second goal in the nineteenth minute when Tyrone Barnett powered home a header, and at that stage there was only one side in it.

The second half saw Woking have more possession of the ball, but to be honest, they didn’t seem to pose too much of a threat on the Eastleigh goal, and in the end it was the hosts that saw the game out to gain a vital three points.

Despite being held in the car park for safety reasons at the final whistle, while pedestrians cleared the area, a very easy journey back from a traffic perspective saw me back home for 7.45pm. So in all, eight hours on the road, but a day that ran like clockwork.

I wonder if BIL fancies painting our kitchen, only I could do with a lie in………….