Blue Square South Guide

   Looking back, over my shoulder

The thirteenth of April 2009, and our bank holiday 2-2 draw away at Basingstoke, represented ten years to the day since I attended my first Havant & Waterlooville fixture. To have properly book-ended it would have required a 3-0 defeat but then again that game was an aberration in a Southern League Southern Division promotion winning season, the success of which nudged the switch of my interest. It was probably the subsequent signing of Republic of Ireland international Liam Daish the following pre-season that sealed the deal. If anything was going to dispel the notion that watching my hometown non-league side would just be about following a load of blokes out the boozer, it was that.

Therefore, as the only game I saw of that first season for the merged clubs, it was the only league game I have ever seen us play that wasn’t at level six of English football. We flirted, like a dog with its masters leg, with relegation in our first seasons in the Southern Premier League and Conference South, and trembled like the San Andreas fault in making the cut of 13th place or above in 2004 when those regional Conferences were added to the rungs. Aside from that it’s been a fairly trouble free decade.

Indeed, the Hawks were part of what must be the best weekend of my life, back in 2003 – I hooked up with my current girlfriend on the Friday, Dave Leworthy scored two goals within a minute to enable us to come from behind to beat Tiverton the following day and my birthday followed on the Monday. My girlfriend’s delight in appearing in the story of the ‘best weekend of my life’ always depends on whether I have her as the headline, or as the footnote to The Ledge’s brace.

How to sum up these ten years then? There was the three seasons of pretty handsome football under the joint stewardship of Mick Jenkins and Big Liam. The team back then contained the three ‘proper’ Hawk legends: Tim Hambley, Paul Wood and James Taylor. The mere mention of this triumvirate tends to be met with a relaxing of the shoulders and a wistful sigh in most fans of that vintage. A couple of nasty seasons where the Daish/Jenkins combo unravelled and the otherwise popular figure of Dave Leworthy proved himself a little out of his depth were then steadied by the no-nonsense figure of Ian Baird, where the football might not have been as good but we became pretty tough to beat, particularly at home. Then he did one down the road, just as he was reaching stagnation point with us, and Shaun Gale proceeded to lead us to Cup glories beyond our wildest dreams.

So, despite the disappointments of this season, I can’t really complain when I take the bigger picture into consideration; the highs certainly outweigh the lows and our club is in a pretty good state in our credit crunchy times. That is not to say we’d want another season like this one. Getting to April with our status secured is something we’ve rather taken for granted in the last four seasons. One tends to forget what struggle is like when you’ve distanced yourself from it a bit. Having the post Cup-run hubris of believing us too good, or at least too financially secure, to go down also reduced the cat-like readiness that helps in situations like these.

There have not been many highlights this season, but I’d pick out our eye-catching wins against Conference National Crawley in the FA Cup and FA Trophy and also our away league win at the also highly fancied Chelmsford in September which put us 7th and everything still seemed possible. Aside from that you’re looking at generallys and a few champagne moments. Shaun Wilkinson being reborn after a loan spell at Lewes and scoring a screamer at home to Welling was very pleasing as was Kevin Scriven’s last minute penalty save at Shortwood United to prevent our 2nd Qualifying Round cup replay going to extra time and thus also meaning I could make it back to London without having to kip down in Swindon station first.

My moment of the season probably came in our 2-2 draw at home to Bognor on New Year’s Day and concerned risk and responsibility in one fell swoop. Kevin Scriven had been sent off with us trailing 2-1 to our put-upon friends from down the road in Sussex, and skipper Jamie Collins took the gloves as our reserve keeper Nathan Ashmore was not named on the bench. We were then awarded a penalty to potentially equalise. Everyone wondered who would take it as of our usual takers Luke Nightingale was not on the field, and JC was in between the sticks. Yet who was that figure in green and gloves striding towards us like Clint Eastwood through saloon doors chewing on a toothpick? JC, despite our best efforts to convince him to return to his one-horse town at the other end, took the responsibility, as captain, and scored the leveller. Brilliant simply because it could have been disasterous. Proper Hawk is our Jamie!

There’s been no getting away from the fact that it’s been mostly disappointing though. Despite our team looking great on paper, they rarely gelled on the field. Gary Elphick and Ian Simpemba are two class acts in central defence, yet we conceded a lot of goals through the gap between the pair of them. Gary Holloway and Jamie Collins are two very good central midfielders but neither performed consistently. Regular injury woes also affected our three most creative players: Charlie Henry, Matt Gray and Robbie Martin.

Buying last season’s golden boot winner Paul Booth also didn’t work out for a variety of reasons, and he was offloaded to Tonbridge upon his reasonable request. Over the eleven years since the merger, there has always been an iconic, reliable striker, or combination of strikers, that has made a real impact: Steve Tate/Paul Wood/Jason Lovell (98/99); James Taylor (99/00, 01/02, 02/03); Taylor/Wood/Jamie O’Rourke/Dave Leworthy (00/01); Chukki Eribenne/Taylor (03/04); Dean Holdsworth(04/05); Rocky Baptiste (05/06, 07/08) and Baptiste/Richard Pacquette (06/07).

This season it hasn’t felt like we’ve really had that. Mind you, that said, Craig Watkins finished with seventeen goals in all competitions, running Gary Elphick close in the supporter’s player of the season running, while Luke Nightingale, despite scoring only four goals in open play, went home from our end of season do with the players’ player award.

Perhaps then it won’t take that much tinkering to sort out, which is just as well as belts are being tightened all across football, and we are no different. We have apparently cut our playing budget for next season and have set an internal wage cap. Thankfully our supposed Cup riches have been allocated to debt payment and infrastructure rather than to an irresponsible gamble.

As a result, we’re in a better position than many and can at least feel confident that we will have a club to watch for some season’s to come. Hopefully we can be successful and push on next season. However, having got carried away last year, it may be best just to aim for the top half to start with.

I could mention our rivals, Eastleigh, at this point and deride them for letting slip a four goal aggregate lead in their play-off semi-final but, let’s face it, they performed in such a consistent manner as to be able to dine at the top table, and that deserves applause. It is where we believed we should be at the start of the season. Instead we were left with the last scraps of the cold meat buffet.

My fingers crossed then that next season we’ll get the invite up with the posh lot and that, if we do, we learn from our friends up the road and don’t tip our grub all over ourselves and break wind violently whilst we’re up there.

With another long-term ‘rival’ coming down in the form of Weymouth (even if the ‘rivalry’ is a touch one-sided, from our side) I have no doubt there will be plenty more byplays and controversies to keep us interested next season. All being well we’ll be a significant part of the promotion/play-off narrative too, but we shall see.

For now though, let’s take a break, go on holiday or watch some cricket (if you like it, and those who don't tend to feel the need to be vocal about it) and leave the stresses of the Conference South until mid-August.

Thanks for reading my overly verbose guff this season.

Have a good summer.

   Posted by skif at 11:19:26             4 comments             Leave a comment