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?