Perspective

Elton Vale  4  Moorside Rangers  2

Manchester Football League – First Division

It’s really hard to get my head around the fact I may well have just watched my last football game of the season, in March!

I may be wrong, and I hope I’m wrong, but in reality, unless the relenting leagues continue with their stance going into the midweek and next weekend, I’m afraid that could well be it.

Look, enough has been said, and, will continue to be said about who’s right and who’s wrong in this, but my view is simple. I don’t think the FA have been strong enough, by passing responsibility onto leagues to make decisions, but then again, if the league does decide to play having made an informed decision, then clubs should do so. 

The trouble by then allowing clubs to cancel games on health grounds turns it into a farce. I’m not saying a club would take advantage of the situation, but it did seem bizarre on Friday that a National League club announced, just around the time the competition was declaring games on, that they had four members of staff self-isolating, and they wanted the game they were playing in that evening calling off? More clubs followed suit and that is well documented.

Financial, that’s what it all boils down to. The National League and the Northern Premier League in my view have been put under pressure by certain clubs to allow games to take place, threatened maybe, whereby someone was going to have to pick up the tab for their contract players at a time when they were not getting any revenue. South Shields v FC United of Manchester for example, attracted over 3,000 on Saturday, and had the league called it off, I can imagine the conversations that would have taken place……

Anyway, it is what it is, us mere spectators and lovers of the game had got a very small window where we could make a choice, and I suspect the bulk of us did make the choice to attend a game, raised attendances across non-league football would suggest that. Was I not going to attend football on Saturday, on health grounds? No chance, if I could find a game I was going, and let’s be honest, Government advice is not suggesting, at this stage, we should do anything differently, sport in general has made that decision contrary to the health and science professionals.

So, had it all gone to plan, on Friday night I would have been in the North of Ireland, watching Derry City play Sligo Rovers, and then on Saturday I was going to be in Belfast watching Dundela take on Portadown. I chose on Thursday to cancel my trip because the games were called off, so it meant a Plan B.

The Manchester League and the Cheshire League’s were playing, and it did seem that unlike the more senior leagues, where the self isolation situation was then getting games called off despite it being ‘game on’, they were cracking on regardless. Maybe COVID 19 doesn’t impact below Step 6, but anyway……?

I had a few choices, but decided to plump for Elton Vale who were riding high in the First Division and looking a good bet for promotion to the top flight. By the time I made my decision I was a bit tight for time and didn’t arrive at the West of Bury location until fifteen minutes before kick off.

A team called Elton Fold joined the Manchester League in 1995, and by 2002 they had changed their name to Elton Vale. Over the years they’ve jumped between the leagues top two divisions, and as I say, this time around they look a good bet for getting back to the top flight, if of course we actually finish the season.

The ground is smart and tidy. Located down Elton Vale Road, the entrance to Elton Vale Sports Club takes you past the cricket ground on the right, and then just as the car park opens out in front of you, the large clubhouse is on the right hand side, with tennis courts set behind it.

The football pitch is at the end of the complex and sits on a plateau. It’s fully railed off with dugouts on either side, while the playing surface was in superb condition despite the heavy overnight rain. The areas around the pitch though were waterlogged, and you didn’t have to stand for long before you started to sink!

The clubhouse incorporated the dressing rooms, while the bar area was quite busy, with plenty of banter and gallows humour around the current crisis that engulfs the World.

I’m not sure how many Elton Vale get watching them every week, but I would have estimated the crowd was around the fifty mark, and that may well have been slightly higher than normal. Those that did turn up on a cold and wet day were treated to a very entertaining game of football.

The mid-table visitors took the lead in the first half, and for a period the high flying hosts were all at sea and could easily have conceded a second goal. However, Vale regained their composure and by half time they had flipped the score line on it’s head and went in with a 2-1 lead.

Vale got a third early in the second period but then Moorside rallied and pulled a goal back, putting the hosts under pressure, but a clear penalty for Vale last in the game sealed the points and saw them jump to the top of the table. For the record, Jack Alderson netted a brace for the hosts, while Adam Plimley and Declan Guy also netted. The Moorside goals came via Callum McNichol and Lewis Russell.

It was so weird driving back, no Sport on Five, no Classified Football Results, nothing. Selfishly, my thoughts turned to midweek, and next Saturday, would I be watching football? Can I make plans, can I look forward to the run in to the season? I have to be realistic and say ‘no’, and I know the health of the population is more important than any football match, of course it is and I get that, but at the same time, a big part of me feels very empty, and almost cheated. Surely it simply cannot end now, it would be like reading a book and then finding someone has ripped the last chapter out, it’s like someone taping over the final scenes of a film.

Null and void? Does that mean that what’s gone before is wiped from the record books? Did that amazing day watching Belper Town at Notts County in the FA Cup not happen? Did those Champions League games in Dortmund and Leverkusen not exist. Have I not completed the 92 after all?

Of course, they happened, and of course they will remain in the records, but the fact is, they may have all been for nothing, but that is no one’s fault.

It’s unprecedented, and in a couple of days we will know more, but right now, let’s just reflect on those chilling words of our Prime Minister on Thursday evening.

“Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”

Maybe we all need a sense of perspective, even selfish old me, and maybe the FA will grow a pair on Monday and make a big decision, either way, because that's why they run the game, from top to bottom, to make big decisions. Don't pass the buck to the volunteers, that's simply not fair to ask people far less qualified and informed to make decisions that could impact upon lives.

That said, if anything is on, I'll be going............ 

68 Guns

Havant & Waterlooville  2  Hampton & Richmond Borough  0

National League South

It was by a strange twist of irony that I should complete both the 92 Football League grounds, and the 68 National League grounds, in Portsmouth.

It was just over a year ago when I finally earned myself the coveted tie and certificate, watching Pompey take on Peterborough United in a memorable Checkatrade Trophy game at Fratton Park.

I decided at the start of this season that I’d try and polish off the half dozen or so in the National League, but to be fair, three trips to Kent and two to Hampshire were going to be tiring efforts, until of course I stumbled upon the wonder that is the Megabus train scam!

Having tried it out for the recent trip to Dover, letting the train take the strain, I decided to go for it again, but only after I discovered that you could buy an advance London to Havant ticket for just £11, as long as you didn’t mind the Southern Railways rattler.

So, for the princely sum of a mere £43, I could get to the South coast, which was certainly cheaper and much more relaxing than driving. It meant the usual 5am alarm call and then the 5.55am bus from the centre of Belper into Derby, before jumping on what is effectively a football special that gets you into London just before 9am.

Last time around we had Sheffield United fans on the way to Millwall, this time it was Wednesday going to Brentford. They were teenagers, and bloody annoying with it, I saw a video of them posted on social media later in the day as they were stumbling around on the streets of the capital. I don’t like Wednesday at the best of times, at least they got a 5-0 thrashing to make their day, assuming of course any of them actually made it to Griffin Park?

Once in St Pancras it was a short tube journey down to Victoria, before the 10am train departed. A wee latch lifter was taken in the Victoria Wetherspoons, and it was during this moment of imbibement that I noticed Havant & Waterlooville tweeted that a precautionary pitch inspection had passed. My plan B was always the game on plastic at Horsham, but thankfully it was not needed.

I’ve never travelled on the line from London to Portsmouth, but for the uninitiated it goes via Clapham Junction and East Croydon before dumping the holidaymakers and suitcases at Gatwick Airport. It then goes on through Three Bridges (what a night I had with Steve at Three Bridges many years back, but that’s a long story for another time!) and Crawley before landing in Horsham.

The train splits at Horsham, the front four coaches head to Portsmouth, the rest go to Bognor Regis. I managed to get into the right bit and soon we were going through Arundel before making our final stop prior to Havant, at Chichester.

It was just before mid-day so I decided to walk North from the station in Havant to the proximity of the ground. I’d done some research on the ‘Football Ground Guide’ website and a pub called The Heron had been stated as a good choice for a pre-match snifter. The ground is about a mile from the station, whereas the pub sits on the main road a couple of minutes away. It was fine, it did the job, and they also sold KP Dry Roasted, the only nut worth buying in my humble opinion. As Sadio Mane was scoring the winner for Liverpool, I made my way over the road to Westleigh Park, and the impressive pub / clubhouse ‘The Westleigh’ where it was very busy pre-match.

Westleigh Park has been modernised over recent years, and is now an impressive stadium. A seated stand sits on the half way line, with the letters HWFC picked out in the yellow and blue seats. To the right of the stand is an area of covered terracing, and as we move round in an anti-clockwise direction, more covered terracing sits behind the South goal.

Further shallower covered terracing extends all the way along the East side of the ground while behind the North goal is once again, more covered terracing. The pitch has a slight slope from North to South, and in places it was well sanded, but certainly playable.

Sat second in the table, crowds are good at Westleigh Park, an average of just under 1400 is the third highest in the league, with only Maidstone United and Dulwich Hamlet getting more. 1347 pitched up today, for the battle between two sides that when the team names were put together, was undoubtedly the game with most letters in it, in all levels of football in the Country!

Havant were relegated from the National League top flight last season having finished next to bottom in their one and only season at Step One. Wealdstone will take some stopping this time around, but you would have to fancy Havant’s chances in what is surely going to be a Play-Off season.

The clubs history is an interesting one, they were formed in 1998 when Havant Town and Waterlooville merged. Both sides were Southern League Southern Division sides, with the ground at Havant being chosen as the clubs base, and in season one the merger clearly paid off with the club being promoted to the Premier Division.

They joined the Conference South upon it’s formation in 2004, and there they remained until 2016 when they were surprisingly relegated to the Isthmian League, surprising in the sense that the season before they had lost to Boreham Wood in the Play Offs.

The Isthmian was won at the first attempt, and then the following season they won the National League South, and with it came the coveted promotion.

Havant’s cup record is worth noting. Twice they’ve made the FA Trophy semi-finals, losing to Tamworth in 2003, and somewhat inexplicably to neighbours and rivals Gosport Borough in 2014.  However, they are most famous for their FA Cup exploits, notably in the 2007-08 season when victories at York City and Notts County set up a Third Round tie with Swansea City. The game in Wales ended 1-1 with Havant winning the replay in front of the TV cameras 4-2. The Fourth Round saw them earn a trip to Anfield to take on Liverpool, it finished 5-2 to the Reds, but the result didn’t matter, it was all about the occasion and the financial windfall.

The first half was a poor spectacle to be fair. Hampton sat just outside the play-off zone and were proving a tough nut to crack, but that all changed as the game moved into it’s final stages.

It took until the 77^th minute but local hero Wes Fogden opened the scoring from the edge of the box, before Jonah Ayunga finished very coolly in the 88^th minute after he was put through on goal.

It was probably the right outcome on balance, but Hampton, backed by a coachload of noisy supporters, gave it a right good go. Havant look a play off certainty, Hampton you would say have a chance, but it’s tight.

I had a wander back into the centre of Havant after the game and had a pint at the local Spoons. Havant sits North East of Portsmouth, hemmed in between the A3 and the A27, while Waterlooville is the neighbouring town to the North West of Havant. The town centre itself is quite small and compact, but the footprint of the town is quite large.

The 1755 train back to Victoria wasn’t especially busy as darkness descended over the South of England, and by the time I’d made it though London and up to St Pancras, I was in good time for the train back to Derby. The connection in Derby to Belper is a tight one, but I made it just in time to be able to stumble into the pub to meet Mrs H and her pals before last knockings at the bar.

A great day out, and a champagne job to boot, so, what’s next on the hit list I wonder, whatever it may, the odds on it being completed in the general vicinity of Portsmouth?  

Sociology

Dorking Wanderers  3  Slough Town   5

National League South

In a week where my old Keele University sociology course colleague, Priti Patel, was hitting the headlines again due to her alleged archaic management style, it seemed somewhat apt that I decided to visit a place where one of the first people I met while at University came from.

Lucy was in my sociology group as well, in fact I dug out a recent team photo and the two of us were stood together on the back row, Ms Patel is nearer the front, as was her way. Lucy was from the Surrey town of Dorking, and clearly Dorking was a place where the children didn’t qualify for a student grant, the parents were too wealthy!

I’ve not seen Lucy since Belper Town played away in the FA Vase semi-final at Oxford City in March 1995. She was studying for a Masters at Oxford University and the hotel we were using for a pre-match lunch was literally minutes round the corner from her digs. We kind of lost touch after that, and other than a very brief exchange on LinkedIn about ten years ago, contact is non-existent.

While not at Ms Patel levels, she does now work in a very senior position in the Education system, which actually begs the question as to what went wrong with myself. We’ve got a Home Secretary (or at least for the time being), we’ve got someone who can close a school down with the press of a send button on an email, and then we’ve got me, but I was never one for conformity or following the prescribed pathway.

Plus, I went to school in Alfreton, I take being alive and not having served a prison term as being a bonus!

Anyway, I’ve never set foot in Dorking in my life. We did plan to meet up, but when push came to shove it just seemed a touch too far round the M25 for me to drive down, so it simply didn’t happen. But, when Dorking Wanderers won the Isthmian League last season and with it won promotion to the National League South, it was the excuse I needed, because at some point in 2019-20, for one day only, I was going to head round the outskirts of Leatherhead and into the town that normal money simply cannot buy a part of!

I did think about going on the train, but that didn’t materialise, however what I did do was save it for when the weather was less than favourable, which in effect is all of 2020 so far and a large part of the final quarter of 2019!

What’s the story around football in Dorking then?

A club called Dorking FC joined the Corinthian League in 1956, before transferring to the Athenian League in 1963. In 1974 they merged with Guildford City to form Guildford & Dorking United, it subsequently went pear shaped.

In 1978 a club called Dorking Town joined the Athenian League from the Surrey Senior League, and in 1983, after being promoted to the Isthmian League, they dropped the ‘Town’ from their name.

They bumbled along, moving between the various divisions of the Isthmian League until 2006 when they were relegated to the Combined Counties League. The Isthmian period saw the club reach the First Round Proper of the FA Cup in 1992-93, losing 3-2 at home to Peter Shilton’s Plymouth Argyle.

By 2017, Dorking FC had vanished, resigning from the CoCo, but a club called Dorking Wanderers joined the Sussex County League in 2007 having been promoted from the West Sussex League. This new club moved up through the Sussex ranks before winning promotion to the Isthmian League in 2015, therefore taking over the mantle of the senior club in the town. Success continued, and after losing a Play-Off to Faversham Town, they went one better in 2016-17 and beat Corinthian Casuals in the Final.

Last season they won the Premier Division of the Isthmian and now find themselves in the National League.

Wanderers always played just to the North of the town in a village called Westhumble. But when the Surrey Football Association took it upon themselves to develop the now derelict Meadowbank ground in the centre of town that Dorking FC had used, it was a great opportunity for the club to move into a purpose built and perfectly located home for an up and coming outfit.

Meadowbank is quite literally on the High Street in Dorking. You enter the town from the North, pass the railway stations on the left and do a right at the roundabout. The High Street is full of shops that are neither budget or charity, but about quarter of a mile down you do a right and this road takes you to a multi-story car park. Parking at the ground is not possible, so unless you want to drive around and find some seemingly non-existent street parking, you may as well go to the aforementioned.

The beauty of the aforementioned is that when you walk out of the pedestrian exit, you are no more than thirty yards from the turnstiles. I was quite early, but it was a hive of activity even though it was two hours before kick off.

It’s a very shiny new facility, with dual branding in terms of the football club and the Surrey FA. A large FA facility sits in the Eastern corner of the South side, while adjacent to it is the dressing room and clubhouse facility spread over two storey’s. The clubhouse is very nice, serving meals and lager at a mere £3.90 a pint!

Beyond this is a smart grandstand, while further down the South side to the West end of the ground is an area of Atcost style terracing, more on that later.

The West side and the North side are hard standing only, while the East end is inaccessible as building work of some sort goes on. I assume it is more covered accommodation as the ground certainly needs it.

It’s a very nice ground though, in a nice setting, I did like it, but, in it’s current format, it has it’s issues when a big crowd is in situ, as it was today. 778 pitched up, but it looked and felt like more, with around 150 of them having travelled down the M4 and round the M25.

Both sides sat in the play-off berths before the game, with Slough having the edge in terms of positions. The game turned out to be one of the best, if not the best, I’ve seen all season.

Jack Barham gave Dorking the lead in the twelfth minute when he escaped beyond the Slough defence and slotted home under the goalkeeper. We had parity though four minutes later when Dan Roberts rifled home from just inside the penalty area.

Jimmy Muitt restored Dorking’s lead just before the half hour mark, and by now with the rain failing and both sets of fans wedged under the limited cover, we had some tension. The Slough fans were brilliant and very vocal, whereas their Dorking counterparts responded in good measure, barring a few teenage causal wannabees who thought it would be a good idea to goad the away support. A minor confrontation occurred and a Slough fan ‘Nigel’ was hauled away by the stewards, who in my opinion seemed more concerned with the Slough fans reaction than the initial provocation.

More cover, and segregation would have prevented the issue, and if Dorking are to progress again, that is something they’ll clearly need to address.

Anyway, just after the break Roberts made it 2-2 when his shot was fluffed by the Dorking goalkeeper, but shortly after that the visitors Paul Hodges was sent off for a professional foul. A decision made by the linesman, and based on video evidence he wasn’t the last man, it was very harsh.

Roberts then got his hat-trick to make it 3-2 to Slough, but Jason Prior was on hand for Wanderers with twenty minutes to go to make it 3-3. The man disadvantage only seemed to spur the visitors on though, and they went on to get a fourth and then a fifth goal from Warren Harris and Ben Harris respectively.

Nigel was back in the ground by the time the second half started, so in my opinion justice was done as he shouldn’t have been lobbed out in the first place, and, he got to see his team record a brilliant victory that took them second in the table.

The journey back was straightforward with no hold ups, it had been a fantastic day out and well worth the travelling. Just one more National League ground to visit now, fingers crossed for next Saturday and the South coast!

If one day I put my qualifications to good use and got a proper job working for the right people, maybe I too could live in a place like Dorking. Until then, I’ll leave it to the Lucy’s and the Priti’s of this World, besides, they’ve turned down Wetherespoons, and that’s something that my home town of Belper has in common with them. So maybe they’re not that much better after all!