Friends With Benefits

Gosport Borough  1  Harrow Borough  0

Southern Football League – Premier Division South 

Admission / Programme - £12 / £2.50

I like to do my homework before I go to a new ground, especially when it’s a town / village that I’ve never set foot in before.

Gosport was no different, and I’ve learned over the years that my first port of call (before I go to Wikipedia), is my old mate Derek. Derek is well travelled, partly because he’s moved house a lot over the years, but also because he used to be a bus driver, not just service bus routes, but also excursions. 

I also have a couple of other mates who I go to for advice, Steve and Dave, and to be fair, if you want food, Steve is your man, he is the Jay Rayner of eateries close to football grounds. Dave, bless him, can’t remember where he went yesterday, so that’s not helpful when you want to know about a place he visited in 1992….but anyway, he’s good with roads, congestion, public transport and car parks, so he does come in handy to be fair.

Anyway, Derek, turns out his Mum lived in Gosport for a bit, while his brother who was a Navy type, lived just down the road in Lee-on-Solent. Did any of this information help in terms of my day out in the town, no, not at all, but he did give me one very good piece of advice….

“Avoid the M25, it’s going to be shut at the junction for Portsmouth”

Gosport, of course, is just over the water from Pompey, so if I was serious about going, then it was going to have to be the trusted A34 and then of course the M27 in an Easterly direction. I just hoped that someone had told visiting Harrow Borough about the M25 and all that chaos……

I’ve made good inroads into the Southern League this season, and now I’m down to a stage where I’ve only got four grounds still to visit, all within very close proximity of each other on the South coast, namely Gosport, Sholing, Poole and Bashley. Gosport Borough have always intrigued me a little, largely because they’ve had a yo-yo existence over the years, but also because they play in yellow, I like clubs that play in yellow! I can also recall looking at pictures of their ground, Privett Park, in old non-league football books and thinking to myself, yes, I quite like the look of that place.

You can also catch a ferry to Gosport, it runs from Portsmouth Harbour Railway Station, and going back to the days of the infamous hooligan mob, the 657 Crew from Portsmouth, they had a chap who was a notable member called ‘Docker’ Hughes who stood for election as a member of parliament for the City (The 657 Party). In his manifesto he was going to introduce a Duty Free Service on the Gosport Ferry. He got votes, but he didn’t get elected, sadly! His manifesto also included taking Portsmouth out of the County of Hampshire, building a Horse Racing Track in Southsea and only having magistrates working in the City who had previously served prison sentences.

He spoke a lot of sense to be fair!

The journey was kind to me, no traffic hold ups barring a minimal queue to get on the M3 at Winchester, and as I left the M27 at Fareham my eta at Privett Park was scheduled to be a convenient 1.30pm. A leisurely drive down past HMS Sultan saw me turn down towards the ground and as if it were my lucky day, I found the one remaining car park space on the short driveway that runs up to the ground.

I said earlier that Gosport Borough have had something of a yo-yo existence, well, having been founded in 1944 they joined the Portsmouth & District League but within a season they had joined the Hampshire League where they remained until 1978 when a move to the Southern League beckoned.

The final years in the Hampshire League saw the league title won two years in succession, and upon joining the Southern League South Division they never finished outside the top four in their first four seasons, and by the start of the 1982-83 season they found themselves in the Premier Division.

This is when the club started to flit between the divisions in the Southern League, until 1992 when they suffered a relegation to the Wessex League, where they remained until the championship was won in 2006-07 and a return to the Southern League took place.

Within five seasons they found themselves in the play-off picture and after beating Southampton based rivals Sholing in the semi-final, they beat Poole Town in the final to make it to the Premier Division, where again they made the play-offs in the first season, beating Hemel Hempstead Town on penalties in the final, this after overcoming Stourbridge in the semi.

So, 2013-14 and the club were in the Conference South, they finished mid-table but in the same season they reached the FA Trophy Final at Wembley, only to lose 4-0 to Cambridge United. The semi final saw them overcome local rivals Havant & Waterlooville in a memorable encounter that saw much local pride at stake. The following season they finished sixth, just missing out on the play-offs, but two seasons later they found themselves relegated back to the Southern League Premier Division South, where they remain, but this season, they are well in contention for a play-off spot.

I loved the ground, you enter in the South East corner and then running half the length behind the South goal is a large club house facility, with some covered standing area in front of it where the more vocal and boisterous Gosport fans congregate. Moving round in an anti-clockwise fashion you then have the iconic old stand complete with bench seats and yellow / blue décor, with the dressing rooms underneath. I didn’t venture into it, but apparently from the back of the stand you can see the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth Harbour!

Next to the main stand is a two tier corporate box structure, while adjacent to this and running up to the North West corner is a gymnasium. It’s open standing behind the North goal, and then as you move to the East side you get the modern Harry Mizen Stand which is a long seated structure bedecked with blue seats, before finally stumbling upon a tea bar, just before getting back round the turnstiles once again.   

Behind the South goal, parked next to the clubhouse is a double decker, open topped bus, complete with a Gosport Borough banner draped across the back of it, presumably this was used when the club got to Wembley back in 2014, why it’s never been returned to the bus company is anyone’s guess! Wonder if Derek had anything to do with it…………….

Anyway, the game against struggling Harrow won’t live long in the memory, it was decided by a single but very well taken goal from Bradley Tarbuck in the first half who controlled and finished well to fire home while on the run.

Harrow, in fairness to them, took the game to the hosts in the second period but didn’t produce enough quality in the final third to threaten, and it was Gosport who march on to consolidate a place in what looks like a shoot-out lottery come the end of April.

My car parking space allowed a quick getaway, and the key was turned back in Belper at 8pm, avoiding the M25 was clearly good advice. It was a great day out, with the only disappointment being not having time to take the ferry, and of course, to see if Docker got his wish when it came to the duty free options!