One Photo From Each Club: Hythe & Dibden to Romsey Town

The highest point at Hythe & Dibden.

Part three of the "one photo from each club in alphabetical order" series takes us from Hythe & Dibden to near-neighbours Romsey Town, along an inefficient petrol-guzzling route through the county of Hampshire.

Hythe & Dibden are intending to move from their home in a public park, and understandably so, as they share with the local cricket club and their property is an easy target for ruffians and vandals after dark. However, I do like their current quirky ground very much. I chose this photo of the top corner of their ground as my favourite of a pretty good set of pictures. It's the angles, you see. I very much hope they take their spectators' bits and pieces to their new ground and arrange them in a pleasing way for all us amateur photographers to enjoy anew!

Picturesque Lymington Town.

Another excellent set of pictures came from Lymington Town (if you look at the photo behind the blog title, that's from Lymington). A picturesque ground in a public park on a day when the winter sunshine shone just for me. The photo I've chosen from the derby match with New Milton Town features the clock tower from the Church of St Thomas in the background.

Luxury seating in the dugout on Moneyfields' second pitch.

Saints fans had a whale of a time with my pictures from Moneyfields on their Saintsweb message board. I visited the Wessex League club from Portsmouth just as it seemed that Pompey might be going out of business. Saints fans were almost unanimous in saying that their rivals should start again by sharing at Moneyfields, with the picture featured above receiving a lot of virtual guffaws (and hits). Pompey are now owned by their fans and Saints are wearing a terrible kit for the second season running, so let the teasing and ribbing begin again for season 2013/14...

Preparing for a wedding reception after the match at New Milton Town.

Moneyfields got a lot of visits from the links on Saintsweb, but the most-viewed page on HAH is New Milton Town, with 620 hits* at time of writing. I don't understand this at all, unless I explained how to make a bomb in the match report (I didn't!), in which case, the NSA must have been reading  with interest. Or perhaps someone really really likes the photo above, with the marquee held down by bar chairs?

*Saints are second with 546, Romsey Town third with 415, United Services Portsmouth fourth with 394, and Moneyfields fifth with 352.

Petersfield Town's old stand.

Another favourite set of photos came from Petersfield Town's old ground. I liked their ramshackle and charming old stand so much that I sat in it for over ten minutes in the first half - for a fidget like me, that's good going! My seat was just out of shot to the left on the top row in the photo above. I tipped my camera slightly to one side to make the angles a bit more arty in this picture. I believe it's only a matter of time before my work is recognised by the artistic cognoscenti and hangs in a gallery in that there London.

Waiting to enter the fray at AFC Portchester.

AFC Portchester are relatively new to the Wessex League, but they don't want to stop there, they want to move on up and then up some more. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I went there on a gloomy day in November 2011 to watch a nine goal thriller against their then-promotion rivals, Team Solent. The students kept Portchy waiting outside their changing rooms before the match started, as noted in the above photo. Signs warning people to keep off the pitch (or similar), usually make a good photo. In my honest opinion.

It was downhill all the way after this for Pompey.

My favourite Pompey photo wasn't taken at Fratton Park - it was taken at Wembley after the 2008 FA Cup final. I waited behind after the celebrations had finished on the pitch, not because I wanted to see all the winners' paraphernalia dismantled, but because I was desperate for the toilet, having been put off by the queues at half-time. As it happens, because I was hanging around waiting for the full-time toilet queues to disperse, the paraphernalia was dismantled and was taken down a tunnel right in front of me. I got this lucky shot and made it monochrome when I uploaded it to the computer. I call it "The beginning of the end", as Pompey's dishonest project began to unravel right there and then.

A snowy winter's day at QK Southampton.

I've not visited QK Southampton for a match (I was only seeing clubs from the top ten levels of the English football pyramid on my journeys - QK play in the next level down). However, their ground is local to me, so when it snowed this past winter, I popped along to take a few photos. I like this one of the dugouts best. Big dugout. Small dugout.

Sunset over Ringwood Town.

Ringwood Town was rather photogenic when I visited last November, giving me my only half-decent sunset of the season. I entered the above effort into a charity photo competition at my workplace, but it was beaten by a picture of a sheep.

Poplars behind the goal at Romsey Town.

My adopted Wessex League club is Romsey Town, who play a ten minute drive from my front door. I've seen them around fifteen times over the last couple of seasons. They usually lose, but very occasionally, they sneak a 1-0 win, such as on the night I took my camera along when they played Christchurch. I took this photo of the poplars behind the goal lit up by floodlights on that serendipitous evening. (Note to self: must look up "serendipitous" in the dictionary and check its meaning. Should probably look up "cognoscenti" as well...)

The final set of photos will run from Sholing to Winchester City (in alphabetical order, of course), and shall appear before the start of the new season.