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Blue Square South Guide

Bin Man 87

23-09-2008

Up for the cup vs. cup for the 'up'

Last year in a dubSteps piece concerning the final match of our FA Cup campaign, I wrote the following: “ I think it’s fair to say we’ve used up our FA Cup vouchers this season, the now barren ration book meaning that, next year, we can look forward only to losing to Slade Green in the pissing rain.”

Theoretically, I can rest easy, as Slade Green succumbed to Tunbridge Wells ias early as the Extra-Preliminary Round, and also the sun’s supposed to be stickin’ around for the rest of September. However, taking out the weather and the arbitrary example- of-club-from-lower-division does not necessarily discredit the entire hypothesis. Still, as a group of supporters, we’ve been more than fortunate. So much so it feels greedy to have any more dreams about FA Cup runs and such.

However, you can have it all and still want more, and I certainly wouldn’t say no to away trips to Lincoln or Hartlepool, Leeds or Leicester. The thing that is different is this: in the past we have drawn fellow non-league opposition on reaching the 1st Round proper and been both gutted and jealous of those who got a dig at the pros. Now, we really can take each game as it comes and should we reach that stage again and get Tamworth, or even if we don’t make it that far, any disappointment will soon dissolve with the memory of the 07/08 season’s elongated beano.

Shaun Gale spent most of the rest of last season trying to convince people that he’d have chucked in all those experiences and memories in exchange for promotion to the Conference Premier. I doubt there are many, if any, of our supporters who would chuck our adventure back in the lucky dip barrel for the chance to delve again. After all, you never know if you’re going to pull out the melting family bag of Minstrels instead. While managers have got to say this kind of thing, given what they are paid for from July to May, Galey began mentioning “bread and butter” so much we assumed he was collecting bungs from Hovis and Flora.

I guess, given the choice now, I would exchange this year’s cup for the ‘up’. There are downsides to promotion – segregation; less friendliness in the banter; and an almost certain relegation battle to watch if your team remains semi-pro, but a tour of duty across a national stage would be pretty good fun, whatever happened. Perhaps in a few years when the memories of last year have faded a little and I fancy an adrenaline rush again, I’d pick ‘cup’, but for now I’m quiet into the idea of a different kind of escapade. Although with a 4-1 home defeat to Hampton at the weekend perhaps I should play the percentages and pick ‘cup’ now too.

Still, at the heart of wanting promotion is the desire to play some new teams, visit new places, and the qualifying rounds are just as good for that; we’ve had some larks at Carterton, Thame and Croydon over the years (albeit not so much fun at Langney Sports and Cirencester). That’s why I’m rather sad that I won’t be able to get to West Leigh Park this Saturday, due to a prior engagement, as we’ve been drawn against Hellenic League side Shortwood United. Waterlooville apparently played them 23 years ago in the Cup, but they’re still unfamiliar, offering up a different kind of challenge. This is when people usually mention bananas, specifically their discarded casings.

I’ll just say this: Shortwood United play at the same level of the English pyramid as Slade Green.

Bring me sunshine...

Posted by skif at 08:18:49 7 comments Leave a comment

14-09-2008

just gimme some steam

"Following my opening paragraph from our opening game at St Albans, which made mention of maestro Malc’s grandmaster guff, Malc has seemed to take this as some kind of tribute. Prior to kick-off at Chelmsford he made the suggestion that my recent regular attendance has been due mainly to my nasal enjoyment of his regular, cloudy gifts. While I might play along with this in person, I think I should make my position clear before my reputation gets a coprophilic monkey on its back..."

This kind of guff talk (ahem), along with some vague mention of H&W's excellent win at Chelmsford City, occurs as of now at the DubSteps site

Posted by skif at 10:31:27 0 comments Leave a comment

08-09-2008

I got 96 two-ones, but this ain’t one…

Over the course of this season, in fact most seasons, I am likely to pontificate to a large extent on omens, particularly those relating to me. Essentially I’m trying to scientifically prove or disprove my watching worth. Am I a talisman or just a monkey on the team’s collective back? Sometimes I ask myself if football suffers from the Observer’s Paradox – does the very act of watching change the nature of what goes on? If 704 people were at West Leigh Park this weekend rather than 703, would the game have panned out in exactly the same way?

The common sense answer is to say, well, it was always going to be 703 and the game was always going to happen this way. Perhaps then Havant & Waterlooville’s season is already tattooed into some global DNA code. If it is written within it that we will win this gleaming goldpot league then we will; if it isn’t then, well, we’ll probably fall just short of the play-offs once more. Que sera sera, when I was just a little girl etc.

It has often been seen that managerial decisions change games; tactical substitutions, formations and all that. Perhaps though it might equally be down to which part of the technical area the gaffer stands in, or which inadvisable shorts he decides to wear in January away at Bromley? And why stop there. Perhaps where I stand on the terraces will guarantee defeat, or what I choose to talk about. I know a fine gentleman who cannot abide discussion of the day’s potential result before kick-off, preferring to stick his fingers in his ears and sing the hits of The Sweet loudly to himself rather than indulge in some idle game-ruining prediction-fuelled comment.

Things one says or does in a week leading up to a game surely cannot make much of a difference to your chosen team’s weekend spoils, but science struggles to explain a lot of things and sometimes it just feels a little spooky. Perhaps I’ve been watching too many episodes of ‘Medium’, or maybe I am the passive-acting cornerstone to the whole H & Dub show.

This week it wasn’t even something I spoke out loud, just something I thought about. “Somebody’s had too much to THINK!” Captain Beefheart once barked, and given that I was day-dreaming about scoreless draws of our time, and that was followed up by a nil-each at home to Bath this past Saturday perhaps, indeed, I had. Not a dull 0-0 as it goes and we should really have turned pressure into goalage but by the same token Bath will be disappointed they didn’t make the most of the chances they had when breaking away. Still, it would perhaps be miserly to bemoan a clean sheet and a point after three wins on the bounce and, besides, we still managed to have some fun with Bath’s affable and sardonic keeper Paul Evans.

What I had actually thought was that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen us play out a 0-0, so perhaps my attendance guarantees goals for someone or other. Actually it wasn’t as long as I thought, last season’s opening game being the last. Indeed, both my last H&W 0-0’s, unsurprisingly, came whilst watching us come up against a Borg-built Braintree brick-wall. Prior to those you have to go back five years for my last H&W scoreless, but that was largely due to my four-year decamp to the grim north.

Not that I was wanting for nil-nil’s whilst there, sitting through nine of the bastards as a neutral. Oddly, I went to games on the eighth day of each of the first four months of 2005 and all finished without a goal. Nevertheless that still doesn’t beat the three H&W 0-0’s I sat through in the space of twelve days in 2001. A soggy winter and the resulting fixture congestion meant we played 17 games between 29th March and 5th May that year and by the end of April I’m surprised the players had enough in their legs to be able to keep the goals out in those games, let alone think about scoring any.

How do I know all this? Well, for these writing purposes (and the fact that I’m an anally-retentive, friendless, sad librarian twunt) I keep records. This enables me to tell you that I’ve attended 540 games of football, of which 26 have ended without a goal, 47 have ended with a goal apiece, but a 2-1 result remains the most likely if I’m about as there have been 96 of those.

Screw the general speaking though, as thanks to this I am now able to use maths to prove once and for all whether I am a help or a hindrance to them handsome Hawks. Here goes… 268 Hawk competitive first team games, 141 at home, 125 away. At home, the win-lose-draw tallies are 75-32-34, away they are 43-32-50, with two defeats on neutral territory, giving an overall count of 118-64-86.

So if you consider a 44% win ratio, or better a 68% non-defeat quotient to be, at worst, decent then my peepers staring out at the Hawks are officially not an impediment to the overall effort. Which is good really, considering our next league game is at the team who were joint-favourites with us to steam the Conference South and who, thus far, are making a slightly better fist of it.

To Chelmsford in the hope of a 119th then.

Posted by skif at 09:31:43 7 comments Leave a comment

Archive
Up for the cup vs. cup for the 'up'
just gimme some steam
I got 96 two-ones, but this ain’t one…