End of Season Roller Round-Up 2014/2015

Wimborne Town. MOIST.

If you work for a large employer, you might have to endure a yearly report with your immediate line manager, in which you have to prove how you have conformed to the company's values over the previous reporting period. The values will all have names - they will be something like "Customer Focussed", "Inspirational" and suchlike. (There's a definite advantage to working for a small company or being self-employed - you can actually get on with your work at this time of the year).

What if pranksters took control of this farrago? What if pranksters took over at the FA* and deemed that non-league groundsmen's equipment had to conform to random bizarre values to justify their existence? What if pranksters created a Random Value Generator and handed out 1,000 different adjectives to our country's army of rusty rollers? Would the old boys be able to conform?

Well, it just so happens that I was given the pranksters' provisional list and was trusted to pull out random values from a fictional hat to give out to some of the rollers that I've photographed over the second half of the season. They were handed out as part of a pilot project last August. Let's see how they performed...

The first value out of the hat last summer was MOIST, which was allocated to Wimborne Town's roller. Well, it must have tried very hard to conform, judging by the amount of rust growing on the left-hand side. Not totally rusty though, so it wouldn't get top marks in the pranksters' grading system. A good pass, though.

*Some people might claim that pranksters already run the FA, but never mind, bear with me on this one...

Laverstock & Ford. KITTENISH.

Salisbury's Laverstock & Ford were given the value of KITTENISH to conform to. A good effort from them, as they encouraged a breeding programme early on which produced this endearing baby roller. It was certainly kittenish upon my visit in January as I threw it a ball of wool to play with. It soon got tangled up and had to be rescued by Mummy Roller. A lot of licking and a good sleep later, and it was ready to go again with a ping pong ball attached to a scratching post.

Baby's name is Charlotte.

Wantage Town. TIMOROUS.

Wantage Town's roller had no problem in living up to its value of TIMOROUS. A wee timorous beastie indeed, as it hid itself under a pile of straggly weeds outside of the main pitch area. He took some finding, as I had to wander out of the ballboy's gate at half-time and search the local hedgerows until I found him. He'd even tried growing some moss on his right-hand side to make himself less visible in the undergrowth.

You can't hide from me though, matey! My rusty roller sixth sense will always dig you out...

Liphook United. HARDCORE (YOU KNOW THE SCORE).

Liphook United's roller was asked to live up to the random value of HARDCORE (YOU KNOW THE SCORE). He took this to mean non-stop partying with his mates, the wooden pallets. Looks like the pallets suffered rather badly in the latest party. They'll regret hanging out with Liphook's roller tomorrow morning. Not sure even a pint of Alka-Seltzer will repair that damage...

Hamworthy United. BONHOMOUS.

Hamworthy United's roller had to look up the meaning of BONHOMOUS when it was allocated. When he realised that it meant he just had to be friendly and jovial, he invited over his best friend the heavy-duty orange wheelbarrow for a few snifters of brandy and an evening of tall stories. It was such a success that they had the blue bicycle over the next time. The bicycle felt saddled with expectations, but he spoke about the time he won the Tour de France, tyring out his companions with his lengthy story. They all had a wheely good time and then stayed on to watch Hamworthy's match with Petersfield.

Nice rust, by the way!

Swindon Supermarine. BODACIOUS.

Swindon Supermarine's roller was handed the value of BODACIOUSNESS at the start of last season. Previously a nondescript lead-coloured roller of no great merit, it made a tremendous effort during the season to live up to its allocated value. The addition of hard-rocking spikes impressed the pranksters no end as they gave out their highest award of Mega-Super-Dope-A-Star-Plus. Supermarine's roller can be seen on stage at Download Festival in June replacing late dropouts Five Finger Death Punch on Slipknot's under-bill. He'll be puncturing the stage ready to drain the headliners' rocking pools of heavy sweat to the sounds of the si-i-ckest guitar licks known to man.

Verwood Town. SI-I-I-I-ICK.

Talking of si-i-ick, Verwood Town's roller had trouble interpreting its value of SI-I-I-I-ICK. Frankly, he had no idea what it meant. No spikes, no tattoos of Iron Maiden's Eddie mascot, no attempt to paint itself black...disappointing, and an official warning received for next season to pull its leather socks up or face expulsion from the League of Non-League Rollers.

Incidentally, the values of SI-I-ICK and SI-I-I-ICK were allocated to Thetford Town and Cullompton Rangers's rollers respectively. They both did much better.

Bangor City. SHRIVELLED.

At the start of 2014/15, Bangor City's roller was a two tonne behemoth, but when allocated the value of SHRIVELLED by the FA's pranksters (in cahoots with the Welsh FA's own pranksters), it went on a crash diet, losing 1.99 tonnes over the course of the last nine months, making the cover of Diet Weekly magazine in the meantime as its Groundsmen's Rusty Equipment Slimmer Of The Year. An amazing achievement, and a worthy winner.

Pagham FC. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY.

I visited Sussex County League Pagham FC in the Spring when Havant & Waterlooville, Pompey and Romsey Town were all playing away. A nice ground with two rollers. The one in the pic above was asked to be HAPPY-GO-LUCKY by the pranksters. By the time I arrived in March, it looked absolutely cream crackered after a season of giving rides around the pitch to dogs, cats, small children and squirrels (you can see scratch marks on the seat as some of the animals tried to leap off when they became scared). It had also been involved in Roller v Wheelbarrow racing contests for the previous eight months. No wonder it looked the worse for wear upon my arrival.

Enough of this nonsense. Previous roller round-ups can be seen by clicking on the "Rollers etc" label on the right. Some of them were relatively sensible...

Thanks to everyone who popped in to read HAH this season (or if you just stopped by to look at the pictures, that's okay too!). Thanks also to all the American, Russian and Ukrainian automated false referral sites that leave their mark in the stats. If it wasn't for your efforts, I would have several thousand less page views! I still won't be clicking on your links, mind.

Back in a couple of weeks with some statistical stuff and some more photos.

Wimborne Town v AFC Totton

Wimborne Town's ground is hidden away near this old church.

I love Wimborne, absolutely love the place. It's one of those towns that's not quite big enough for the enormo-corporation-low-wage-tax-avoider-seven-figure-bonuses-for-directors-we're-based-in-Luxembourg-only-because-we-like-their-delicious-cakes-honest-bland-bland-bland shops to suffocate, but is just large enough to support an independent record shop, book shop, kitchen shop, etc. It has an abbey, several independent cafes and an old-fashioned sweetie shop.

And for map-loving geeks like me, it's a thrill to know that two Ordnance Survey 100km National Grid lines run through the town, such that Wimborne Town's football ground at The Cuthbury is in the SU 100km grid square, but travel 400m (or less) to the south, south-west or west, and you would be in a different 100km square. Indeed, one line runs east-west straight through the town's independent record shop, Square Records, such that you can browse for CDs on the north side of the shop and be in SU, but cross the floor to pay for your purchase, and you would be in SZ. Straddle the imaginary line with one foot on either side, and mention the fact to another customer, and they're likely to leave the shop pretty quickly, glancing back to make sure you're not following...

AFC Totton fans watch their team take a throw from one of Wimborne Town's covered standing areas. Beyond there are the directors' seats, then the changing rooms; beyond those is the covered bench-seated stand.

Details:
Wimborne Town FC (0) 0 v 2 (1) AFC Totton
Evo-Stik Southern League South & West Division
Saturday 17th January 2015
Attendance: 261
Admission: £9
Programme: £1.50 (superb issue)
Colours: Black and white stripes / black / black v All blue
National Grid reference: SU0000

And at the far end of the ground, another standing area.

I've just had a break from writing HAH over Christmas. I've been doing this blog for four years and I did think about stopping altogether. My mojo had stopped working and needed replacing by a shiny new Mojo 6.0, but I didn't get one for Christmas, despite all the hints. After all, it was rather nice watching a few games over the break - albeit in the freezing cold - and not having to remember what happened and then spend a few hours afterwards writing about it. (Shame about the defeats for Pompey, Romsey and Havant & Waterlooville, but I'm used to it. I can take it on the chin after all these years of disappointment).

But then, I drove my son back to university last week and was privileged to watch Bangor City win their first home game of the season against Port Talbot in front of 450 or so noisy herberts. And I loved it. I wanted to tell the world all about it. But I couldn't, because there were no Hampshire teams involved. And so, with enthusiasm regained, I started to look forward to the following weekend and my planned trip to Wimborne.

The town crier takes in the action beside Wimborne's BBQ hut.

Friday came around. I put down my work tools at 5pm and shouted "Stuff this for a game of soldiers, I'm out of here!" I said it very very loudly (hmmm, okay, just inside my head, to myself, so that nobody else could hear me...), stormed off (more of a tiptoe towards the door with a few polite goodbyes, really...), and roared home on my supercharged 5000cc Yamaha Hell-Bike XL5 (erm, make that driving home very slowly in heavy traffic in a ten-year-old Vauxhall Slowcoach...).

A pizza, a couple of beers, an early night, and I was up before dawn, ready to hit Dorset! Travelling through the half-light, passing the previous night's roustabouts and malcontents stumbling home through Shirley Precinct...the kids with bum-fluff soul patches heading who-knows-where after an all-night X-Box killing spree...the milkmen and night workers going home to sleep after 12 hour shifts, ready to wake again at 5 to the sound of Sports Report on the bedroom wireless...

Destinations unknown all, but I was going to Wimborne, and I was excited!

Big hugs over the wall for Totton's first goal scorer, Rob Flooks.

Did I mention that I love Wimborne? I love the journey there as well, because I can stop off at Blashford Lakes nature reserve and watch kingfishers fishing from the Ivy Lake hide. I can spot three different types of grebe and work out which species are which (not easy with winter plumages, you know...).

I can stop off anywhere in the New Forest and be at one with nature before the afternoon's excitement. When someone recently asked me what was the best thing about living in Southampton, I was able to reply that it's close to the New Forest (...and that we'd recently had new lamp-posts installed in Shirley).

Even closer to the Forest is Totton, so they had an even shorter journey than me - Totton to Wimborne is just over 30 minutes, which is as close as you get to a local derby in the widely-spread Southern League South & West Division (it can theoretically stretch from Cornwall right up to the West Midlands - long journeys for part-time players playing in front of 100-200 spectators).

Beneath the scoreboard, a selection of other Southern League clubs. I think I can see Shortwood United and North Leigh in the pile, as well as the two obvious ones.

I think AFC Totton might love Wimborne as well. They started as brightly as my friend the Blashford Kingfisher, scoring after five minutes of non-stop pressure on the Magpies' goal. The excellent Mike Gosney curled over an in-swinging free-kick from the right that Gareth Bale would have been proud of. Rising highest at the back post was his team-mate Rob Flooks, who headed down and into the net past the Wimborne keeper. Even Manuel Neuer couldn't have kept that one out.

Whether or not the match cameraman caught the goal on film, I don't know, as I haven't seen any highlights on the web. However, the match was being filmed from Wimborne's TV tower - another one of my favourite things about Wimborne, but I don't love it as much as the scoreboard underneath.

I couldn't wait to see how the scoreboard worked (I'd seen it in other people's photos beforehand), so the first thing I did upon arriving at The Cuthbury was to wander round to the far side to inspect the scoreboard from behind. Excitingly, there was a pile of team names on boards on the ground, just like giant versions of the cardboard team names that came with Subbuteo's scoreboard...Fleet Town, Mangotsfield United, Yate Town (where referees come from)...they were all there...apart from AFC Totton, freshly relegated from the division above last season, so they had to make do with being merely "Visitors".

2-0 to the Visitors!

There's lots more to love about The Cuthbury, but not for much longer, as I believe the ground may be sold soon for housing and the club will be moving. In photos that I saw before the match, there was a 30 foot tall blow-up man outside the entrance (I believe his name is Mr Magpie). From certain angles, he looked like he was joining in the action. I was going to take a photo of him and say that Peter Crouch had signed for Wimborne in the transfer window...but he wasn't there on Saturday, so I'll have to keep that joke for another time.

Anyway, the score remained at 0-1 until the final minute, when Totton broke away. A one-two was played off of the referee, and Craig Feeney was through on goal. He slotted the ball in to the net, low to the keeper's left.

Not even the town crier's bell could inspire Wimborne to come back from two down at that point. They very nearly scored a consolation deep into injury time, but Steve Mowthorpe pulled off a tremendous point-blank save to deny them. One that Manuel Neuer would have been proud of.

Wimborne Town's TV tower. If you look closely, you can just make out a halo around the sun above the tower.

So, how did the scoreboard work? Well, the numbers are double-sided, so that when a team scores their first goal, the number board is flipped over to reveal a 1. When the second goal is scored, a new board appears from a bag of numbers. This is also double-sided, featuring a 2 and a 3, and so on. I want one in my garden! With all the team boards! Just as an ornament, of course. Or perhaps I'll take up Subbuteo again and play a summer season in the garden with my very own giant scoreboard...

There are proper match reports on both clubs' websites here and here. Plenty happened which I forgot to write down, and it's all there, all well described. AFC Totton move up to the verge of the play-offs, whilst the Magpies remain in mid-table, but with a brilliant ground in a wonderful town, which should be good enough for anyone. Photos of the match can be found here. As usual, I can't see myself in any of them!

Next match report will be in a fortnight - weather permitting. I'm hoping to visit a Wessex League club in the Salisbury area. See you there!

[Edit: I found the match highlights, thanks to the Stags Voice Facebook page! They are here]

Special Bonus Picture 1: Bangor City last weekend.

Special Bonus Picture 2: a kingfisher posing at Blashford Lakes on the way to the match.