End of Season Roller Round-Up 2017/18

Four Marks FC

I should really stop entering internet competitions. I've never won one. I never will.

There was one at the end of the season on a start-up site sponsored by a betting company. Why they set their website up in April, so close to the end of 2017/18, I don't know. Anyway, they were offering big prizes for a poetry competition:

Send us your poems about rollers and you could win £1,000 in cash, plus a season ticket for your favourite club!

Well, this competition looked too good to be true. I had to enter. No chance of winning, obviously, but if I didn't try, I'd regret it forever. Or at least 30 seconds, and then I'd forget all about it.

I had writer's block. I couldn't get beyond the following, extremely trite ditty:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Rollers are rusty
And so are you!

Well, if they only had one entry, I would win, so why not?

AFC Stoneham

I logged in to the website, typed out my terrible poem (feeling a little embarrassed, to be honest) and forgot all about it.

A week later, I bumped in to an old friend. He told me he'd got a job with this betting company in the marketing department. Unbelievably, it had been him that had come up with the idea of the poetry competition! I bought him beers for the rest of the evening whilst he showed me the other entrants on his smartphone. For example, this effort about the roller at AFC Stoneham:

Misty, cadaverous, as old as Stonehenge
The haunted roller appears
Forgotten, desperate, seeking revenge
Coffin-bound for eight thousand years
Howling with hatred, tormenting the innocent
The haunted roller appears
The rusted zombie groundsman's equipment
Of your nightmares and day fears

I couldn't help it. I shouted out:

Who ya gonna call? Roller Busters!

My old friend laughed and agreed it was a bit of an overwrought effort.
 

Havant & Waterlooville

Then there was this one about the moppy rollers at National League Havant & Waterlooville:

Another wet day in Havant
The thirtieth day in a row
Another day for their rollers
To be our spongey heroes

Slurp it up and regurgitate
Like a parent hawk for its chick
This pitch needs to be puddle-free
We need it to be in good nick!

I didn't like the last line. I told my friend it didn't scan properly. He had no idea what I was talking about. He'd never read a poem in his life. He said he'd put it to one side. If there was nothing better, he'd consider it for the prize. I rolled my eyes.

Borth United

Then he showed me this one about the roller at Mid Wales League Borth United:

Come hippie missiles and fall on Borth
Loaded with unicorns and glitter and flowers
Give the team strength to rise up and finish fourth
And give the players wings and laser boots and other super powers

Well, that was so poor, I was beginning to think my trite effort had a chance. One thousand pounds! I could see me renting an open-topped bus for the day, buying myself a cheap trophy and riding up and down Shirley High Street waving my cup around as if I'd just personally won the Champions League.

Dream on, baby. There were more poems...

Bishop's Waltham Dynamos

The next one sounded quite meaningful. For the first time that evening, I was worried:

In a world of circles
He felt like a hexagon
Every divot judged as a jerk.
He wished he had feet and legs.
"I can't avoid the broken glass,
The fox, the goose, the dog shit,
The rancid lumps of bubblegum,
The rocks and stones and beercan lids"
Imagine if you had to roll instead of walk
To squeak squeak instead of talk
Squelching over slugs and spiders
Feeling like a reversed Midas.
In a world full of potholes
Don't be a roller (or a wheel)
In a world full of hot moles
 ...Now you know how they must feel.

But I saw a glimmer of hope. It was that penultimate line about the hot moles. It was rubbish! I bought my friend another beer and pointed this out to him. He was in agreement! I still had a chance.

Godalming Town

Another drink downed. Another two poems to go:

There's a bird called a roller
It doesn't ta-whit
It doesn't ta-whoo
It lets out more of a KWEEK!

There's a roller called a roller
It doesn't rotate
It barely moves at all
And when it does, it lets out a SQUEAK!

That's because it needs some oil.

Well, that clearly wasn't going to win anything, unless the betting company had some sort of Rotten Tomato Prize...

Michelmersh & Timsbury FC

Just one more entry, according to my friend, who by now was on his seventh pint. I offered to buy him another one, and he told me how much he hated his job and all his insufferable workmates and how he'd like to hand in his notice and drop his trousers on his way out of the office and how he'd like to write exactly what he thought about them all on his bum cheeks as he disappeared for the last time...

When your skin flakes off
It becomes dust
When a roller's skin erodes
It becomes rust

I just laughed out loud at that last one. I told my friend that if he dropped his pants, I'd write my poem on his cheeks in permanent marker and it would be the perfect riposte to his awful colleagues...

Overton United FC

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Rollers are rusty
And so are you!

According to the stories I read on social media the next day, he actually carried out his threat! My poem, his arse, all over Twitter!

Needless to say, I didn't win the poetry competition. Nobody won. The betting company found some legal loophole which meant there would be no £1,000 prize, and no season ticket for the lucky winner. To be honest, I don't think anyone deserved to win, as the entries were so uniformly dire.

But I was so close, so close to victory for the first and only time in my life...

Four Marks v Netley Central Sports

The dugouts at Four Marks FC.

When I first started doing this in 2011, there were a lot of other football blogs around nationally. I have to admit, I thought I'd be one of about 19 locally and nobody would be interested in what I did because the other 18 would all be more erudite, more worthy, have better jokes. There were definitely better blogs - Mark Sanderson was writing entertainingly about playing for Burridge and Skif was authoring Dub Steps (mostly about Havant & Waterlooville, but he covered other teams as well). Sure enough, they were both intimidatingly good. I tried, but I was never going to be their equal.

But there were hardly any others out there locally, even though that period was supposedly "The Golden Age of the Football Blog", so I carried on as the Third Best Football Blog in Hampshire. Bronze medal position, you gotta be happy with that?! And even if HAH wasn't the third best, at least it kept me occupied.

This one is called "The Lonely Footballer Without A Ball" or something equally pretentious.

Details:
Four Marks FC (0) 0 v 3 (1) Netley Central Sports FC
Saturday 21st April 2018
New Forest Care Hampshire Premier Football League Division One
Attendance:10-15
Admission: None
Programme: None
Colours: Orange / black / black v All blue
National Grid reference: SU6634

Division One's top scorer this season, Netley's Alex White, brings the ball under control.

So I carried on as Mark and Skif retired from the game. Others came and went, but I'm still here, and undoubtedly still third best.

I persisted through the years - I would go to a match involving at least one club from Hampshire every other week throughout the season and describe the town and the ground, occasionally mentioning the match. One thing I would never do was copy a description of a place straight from Wikipedia and pass it off as "research". Firstly, that's ripping off someone else's work, and secondly, it's boring. I'd rather have an original story taken from my own experience (or just make something up).

Hence, Four Marks. Would you rather a copy/paste job, or would you like to hear about my friend's story about the garage shop? The latter, obviously...

The view downhill towards the cemetery.

There's not a lot to do in Four Marks, or so my friend told me. She didn't grow up there, but her mum, her step-dad and her dog have moved there since she left home, so she's a fairly regular visitor. It's a nice place to live, apparently, full of large houses with well-kept gardens, but there's NO PUB!

There used to be one in nearby Ropley, but that shut down after a fatal accident involving a pair of teenagers leaving one evening and crashing straight in to another car. No-one survived. The pub building is still there, but its boards and shutters are rotting away along with the rest it.

So there's no pub in Four Marks, which means if you want a drink, you need to get a "takeaway". The problem with this is the lack of shops. The only place that sells alcohol is the Co-op attached to the garage. One evening, my friend went there to buy a bottle of wine and was told by the shop assistant on the till that she "shouldn't be drinking that in your state". She didn't know what he was talking about, so she asked him what he meant. He pointed to his stomach and made a bowl shape. He thought she was pregnant.

She wasn't pregnant - not even chubby - so she was quite upset. She's been dieting ever since.

So my only Four Marks story concerns a body fascist shop assistant. Not really that interesting, but it's a story.

Oh, and there's a fireworks shop in Four Marks where I once bought some bangers. One of these fireworks was the one that I planted upside-down in our garden, lit it and watched open-mouthed as it flew three times around the garden, narrowly missing my young children before landing on my friend's head and setting his hair alight. Another story. Good.

Elm Tree View or whatever it's called. No elm trees to be seen.

I have another story now, and it involves my visit to Four Marks Football Club last Saturday. I arrived at about 2:45 and there was nobody about. I did wonder if the match was on, but the Inspector Poirot within me noted that the nets and corner flags were both standing proud and erect, so the players must be warming up elsewhere.

My little grey cells were correct, as there is another field nearby where the lads were going through their last-minute preparations. The changing rooms and the St George's flag-bedecked clubhouse are next to the other field which appears to host cricket matches during the summer.

So the players had to walk 50 yards or so from the changing rooms along a road next to a popular playground and bowls club to reach the football pitch.

Four Marks on the attack during the five minutes that the sun has shone this season.

The pitch slopes by about 6 feet from top corner to the opposite bottom corner. You might think it would be an advantage to play down the slope as you can probably run a bit faster downhill. However, as the Netley manager pointed out at half-time, it was actually harder, as the ball tends to run away quite fast when through passes are played. That had never occurred to me before, but he was quite right.

Behind a hedge at the bottom of the slope is a cemetery. On the right-hand side is a field with a piebald horse behind some tall trees. I stood for ten minutes in such a position as to try and get some players in a picture with the horse in the background. I failed (there's a photo of the horse on the HAH Facebook page, but no footballers).

At the top of the slope is a small children's football pitch, whilst off to the left is a new housing estate. As usual with new estates, the roads are named after things that were there before the building started, but won't be there any more. In this case, some of the roads are named after birds that used to nest on the land, whilst others are named after trees that were probably chopped down to make way for the houses.

Matt Watts scores Netley's second and they know there's no coming back from that!

The match was the most important of the season in Hampshire League's Division One. The visitors, Netley Central Sports (who I featured earlier in the season against Infinity), were top of the league going in to this, their last match. They were six points clear of the hosts, Four Marks. However, Four Marks would still have one more match to play after Saturday. Win both, and the two clubs would be level on points.

The catch was that Netley's goal difference was superior by ten, so even a narrow one or two goal defeat would probably be enough for them to be champions, although there would still be some jeopardy as Four Marks could theoretically still score a big win at Upham the following Saturday.

This was clearly the game of the day in the Hampshire League, but as is often the case at this level, there were more people playing than there were spectating. Even so, that doesn't make the game any less enjoyable for everyone there.

I didn't take many notes, but from memory, Netley took the lead after around eight minutes - Alex White slotting a penalty home after one of his team-mates was brought down as they were about to shoot. This was White's 24th league goal of the season, which made him Division One's top scorer for 2017/18. I wonder if he wins a trophy for that?

Netley were the better team in the first half. They knew at half-time that Four Marks had to score at least twice, and then another eight times in their final match, so there was no need to panic if they got a goal back. They didn't, as Netley went further ahead five minutes in to the second half. The ref gave a controversial free-kick 20 yards out on the right as a Four Marks defender appeared to win the ball cleanly in a tackle. But once a decision is given, the ref ain't gonna change his mind. The ball was lofted in over the three man wall, and there was Matt Watts at the back post, ghosting in to head home just like ex-England international Martin Peters used to in the old days.

Netley knew it, Four Marks knew it, we all knew it...this was the moment when the team in blue had won the league. They did score again five minutes from time when Watts was played through and chipped the keeper, but it really didn't matter at that point.

Two league officials had turned up with the champions shield and Netley Central Sports were taking it home with them! They had last won a league in 2010 when there was no promotion between the two separate Hampshire leagues. This time, they've applied to go up to the Hampshire Premier Football League Senior Division. They've done the business on the pitch, it's now up to the authorities to judge if they have good enough facilities for the step up.

Netley Central Sports...CHAMPIO-NAYS!

I shall be uploading more pictures from the game on to the HAH Facebook page later this evening. After dinner.

I think this will be my last blog report of the season. I've done slightly less than usual, which has been down to the weather in the second half of the season. I may do some sort of round-up of recent matches which will include Fareham Town, who I promised to feature but whose matches have been regularly postponed since I gave my word to them.

There will also be a roller round-up at some point. Some people seem to like them, although most don't.

As for next season? I think I'll carry on, but I won't write quite so much - it does take a lot of time. The blog may become more of a photo-blog. I don't know, I'll give it some thought. In the meantime, I'll be cheering on "my" team, Havant & Waterlooville, as they attempt to win promotion to the National League. Exciting times for the Hawks!

Oh, and my friend is still not pregnant and still enjoys her wine. And my other friend has lost all his hair since the fireworks incident. Nothing to do with me, honest.

Sway v Four Marks

The home end at Sway FC.

If anybody ever asks me "What's the best thing about living in Southampton?", I invariably struggle for an answer. Is it the fact that the council erected some new energy-saving lampposts in our road a couple of years back that thrills me? Perhaps it's the smoothly tarmacced pavements - no chance of tripping over in the dark when the lampposts have switched themselves off for the night? Or is it the huge array of 99p shops in Shirley?

I really do struggle.

The answer I usually give is "Southampton is handy for the New Forest". A damning indictment of the place I live in, but I can't usually think of anything better.

The New Forest is a charming place. It lies in between two large conurbations, but you can walk for miles in some of the more deserted areas and see very few people. What you will see are woods and boggy heathlands filled with wildlife - there's the famous ponies, but in the Spring and Summer, the place is alive with bird song and butterflies as well.

If I could afford to live there instead of Southampton, I would do.

Sway's neat little stand and clubhouse.

Details:
Sway FC (1) 2 v 1 (0) Four Marks FC
Puma Engineering Hampshire Premier Football League Division One
Saturday 17th October 2015
Attendance: About 35 (varied throughout the match as people came and went)
Admission: By donation
Programme: None
Colours: All red v Tangerine / black / black
National Grid reference: SZ2798 / SZ2898

The Denny Blackmore Stand providing cover at Sway FC.

I've been to football matches in the New Forest three times already this season, and it's always a pleasurable experience - two FA Cup matches during Brockenhurst's remarkable run to the Third Qualifying Round, and then this, my first trip to Sway.

Why did I choose to come to Sway, rather than anywhere else on Saturday? Well, with my photographer's hat on (it's a jaunty, jolly sort of hat with a colourful ribbon tied round the middle), I wanted to go to a pretty ground with a chance of capturing the New Forest in all of its Autumnal splendour. Pre-match, in my mind's eye, I could see the seasonal reds, oranges, yellows, greens and browns producing a kaleidoscopic background of pure natural beauty for my football photos. In reality, the day was overcast and the only bright reds and oranges on show were on the shirts that the players were wearing.

Never mind.

There was also the stand. I'd heard that Sway had a covered stand, but I'd not seen any good photos of it, so I wanted to have a look for myself. Ground enthusiasts like a homemade area of cover - we appreciate the work that's gone into creating a little stand of your own, rather than buying one off the shelf. Sometimes they're rickety, ramshackle scaffolded structures; at other times they're neat, brick built structures that look like they're made to last. Sway have the latter variety. It's really the difference between enjoying a Victoria sponge, slathered in strawberry jam, lovingly handmade by your favourite auntie, and a shop-bought Mr Kipling angel cake. They both do the job, but which is nicer?

Matching bottle green dugouts at Sway.

I'd had a look at Sway's excellent website before I travelled and read about their history. They were formed in 1908, and the players had to bathe in a pond post-match to get clean and relax their aching muscles. Move over ducks, here come the lads...

The club was banned for a year in 1923 after crowd trouble following one of their matches. When they reformed, a little wooden collection box was made to collect donations. I'd heard that this was still in use today, so I was looking forward to seeing it...and sure enough, towards the end of the first half, a club volunteer came along, holding the original, ninety year old collection box! I was so enamoured with this slice of history that I stuffed a fiver inside it.

We spoke for a little while about the club's present and future. He said that the club rent their ground from the parish council, but they have to pay for the upkeep. They're happy to be playing in the Hampshire Premier League, and that if they had the opportunity in the future, they would consider moving up to the Wessex League, but that finding money for the required ground improvements would be prohibitive. Floodlights may be considered in the future, but their next project will be to extend the clubhouse.

In the meantime, they do the best they can with what they have, and they're perfectly content as they are.

I hope I didn't misquote him there.

Well, somebody had to go and fetch that ball!

With crowds of around 35, there's no problem finding a place to park at Sway's Recreation Ground if you drive there. Alternatively, the village has a train station on the main Bournemouth to Waterloo line a ten minute walk away. You know when you've reached the ground, as the club put a little sandwich board sign up outside the entrance to the car park with the day's fixture written upon it.

The football ground is part of a larger sporting complex which is run by the parish council. To the left of the car park are tennis courts and a children's play area. At the far end of the car park is the clubhouse and changing rooms building, which was erected in 2004 and officially opened by Lawrie McMenemy. There's a cardboard box containing second-hand books for sale in exchange for a charity donation (I was tempted by a Sue Townsend novel), as well as the expected TV set for those who want to know the half-time scores from around the country.

If you trundle out of the clubhouse and walk clockwise around the pitch, the first thing you see is a collection of rollers on your left, safely caged up so they can do no harm. The pitch is surrounded by concrete paving. There are two bottle green breezeblock dugouts on the east side, behind which is a bench seat. Behind the bench are holly and gorse bushes, which obscure the village cricket pitch from view.

At the far end is an extremely tall mesh fence to stop footballs being booted out into the road (it reaches up to what would be Row X or Y at Pompey's Fratton End - it needed to be even taller when one particularly wayward shot got belted into an imaginary Row Z during the first half).

Walk around past the corner flag and up to the halfway line and you come to the little homemade stand, painted in pine green to blend in with the surrounding trees. Four rows of wooden bench seats give enough cover for the entire average crowd on a rainy day. Just beyond the stand is another bench seat, dedicated to a fan who died aged just 45 in 2014.

The famous Sway collection box, being modelled by one of the club volunteers.

Sway have just come up from the Bournemouth Hayward League. They lost a few players in the summer who weren't prepared to travel the extra distances involved when playing in the Hampshire Premier League - although the average distance travelled for Sway is only 33 miles for away matches, it could make a difference to anyone who works on a Saturday morning or evening. Thus, with a relatively large turnover of players, Sway have had a slow start to the season as the new teammates gel. They started the day in fifth place in the eleven team league with seven points from seven games.

Four Marks were lying in third place, unbeaten after six games. However, they turned up to Sway's Recreation Ground without eight first choice players - one had phoned in sick on the morning of the match, whereas several others had gone to Royal Ascot for a day's racing. Something Ronald Koeman doesn't have to worry about.

The day got even worse for Four Marks after 32 minutes when they had Kenny-Lee Guinness sent off for an off the ball incident. I didn't see it, as I was pointing my camera towards the player in one of the pictures above who had gone to fetch the ball which had landed in the road behind the ground (just missing a car) after clearing the big mesh fence. An away supporter told me at half-time that there had been handbags from both sides and that the ref had only seen his player's reaction to the initial incident. I suppose the poor old ref can't see everything - he could only adjudicate on what he'd actually seen out of the corner of his eye, so - rightly or wrongly - Four Marks were down to ten men for the last hour.

The last minute winning goal for Sway.

Sway took the lead a few minutes before half-time, when Dan Fairhurst walloped one in from 30 yards, leaving the away keeper grasping thin air - as good a goal as I'll see all season, whether live or on the telly by a top pro. The home team nearly doubled their lead in stoppage time - the crossbar coming to the away side's rescue.

The team in red fully deserved their half-time lead against their unbeaten opponents. Time for some refreshments in the clubhouse - £1 for freshly brewed tea in a mug and a Kit-Kat. You'd be lucky to have a sip of tap water and a Polo mint at a professional club at that price...

Four Marks improved in the second half. They scored a deserved equaliser from the penalty spot after 70 minutes, Steve Brown confidently dispatching a low shot to the Sway keeper Matt Langdown's right. The match could have gone either way after that, but the deciding goal didn't arrive until the 91st minute. A corner from the right was cleared by the Four Marks defence, but the ball came straight back into the box, where it was headed across the goal by Ben McQuoid. Fairhurst reacted quickly with a scissor kick from five yards which looped up and over the keeper's outstretched arms.

Protests from Four Marks followed the goal - for high feet, I think (wasn't there a similar goal disallowed for Crystal Palace earlier in the season?), but after a quick discussion with the club lino wearing a Man U trackie top, the young referee allowed it to stand, blowing the full-time whistle a minute later.

Another of the club's volunteers gathers the flags post-match.

There's a well written match report on Sway's website here.

My next report should be from a Dorset-based Wessex League club on November 7th. Following that, I intend visiting another Wessex League club, but this time in Wiltshire, on November 28th. Beyond that, I had AFC Totton scribbled down as my last pre-Christmas destination on December 12th, but if the weather allows it, I may well rock up at another Hampshire Premier League ground on that day - the 2 o'clock kick-off times are handy for photography at that time of the year - and it will allow me to get to an all-day show at the Joiners an hour earlier than I would otherwise have done...hey, hang on, Southampton has some decent music venues! Perhaps I'll say that the next time I'm asked to justify why I live in the city.

Wherever I go in the Hampshire Premier League in the future, I'm sure I'll end up somewhere pleasant and friendly again.

I'll finish off this week with some bonus shots of the players. No captions, all action...