Portland United v Horndean

From left to right: the cover behind the goal; the combined pay hut/tea hut; the ref and players; and the clubhouse at Portland United FC.

It's a puzzle.

I mean, who do those Premiership managers think they're fooling when they say their superfit, overpaid, mollycoddled players can't play four games in nine days over the Christmas period (the festival of whinging is coming soon, folks...)? They train for two hours a day, they eat nothing but the best food, they have fitness coaches on call 24/7. And they're paid as much in a day as we are for a whole year of hard, stressful, unbearable toil.

They don't have to get up at 5am to go and heave bricks around on a building site two hours drive away (and another two hours home again). They don't have to stand up and teach noisy, disruptive, uninterested teenagers all day long, then go home and mark homework until half past ten. They don't start work at 8 in the morning at the local hospital, patching up weeping sores and wiping helpless pensioners' bottoms only to get home at midnight after a 16 hour shift when they're only supposed to do 8 hours because the NHS is critically understaffed. Day after day after stressful day.

Yes, our disconnected heroes will be tired again this year at Christmas.

The Butch Nash Stand.

Details:
Portland United FC (1) (1) 2 aet 1 (1) (0) Horndean FC
Saturday 7th November 2015
Sydenhams Wessex League Cup 2nd Round
Attendance: 151
Admission: £5
Programme: 50p (better than several I've paid £2 for)
Colours: All blue v Red / black / white
National Grid reference: SY6972

Action in front of the disused St Peter's Church on Grove Road.

A Premiership club will play between 40 and 60 competitive matches in a season, depending upon how successful they are in the cup competitions that they enter. There will be money-making friendlies on top of this - trips to Malaysia, Thailand, or wherever the marketing men think they can rake in the dollars. So, if a player plays in 50 games a season, they're on the pitch for 75 hours or so. Some people work 75 hours in a week - most of us will work that amount in two weeks or less.

The players of Portland United and Horndean are just like us. They'll get up early to deliver the post or stack shelves or fix our cars. Then they'll leave work, grab a sandwich and an hour later, they're warming up in front of 100 people dreaming of being this week's hero. And being paid peanuts, if anything at all.

Horndean will play 40 league matches this season. They will also enter up to six cup competitions:

• The FA Cup
• The FA Vase
• Hampshire Senior Cup
• Portsmouth Senior Cup
• the mysterious Russell Cotes Cup
• and this competition, the Sydenhams Wessex League Cup

That's a minimum of 46 games to be played over the 40 weeks of the season. Many matches will be postponed during the cold wet months, so they could easily end up playing three games a week during April to fulfil their commitments. Now, with their day jobs to consider, that's tiring!

Portland clear this Horndean attack.

It had been raining constantly for three days. I woke up on Saturday morning not expecting to go to Portland. I started checking the fixtures for November 14th..."yes, perhaps the next HAH report will come from Pewsey Vale next week instead? I'll just check Twitter though - you never know..."

GAME ON! The pitch has held up well and the rain is clearing! Yeeessss!

It's quite a drive from Southampton to Portland, indeed, from anywhere else in the Wessex League to Portland. Their local derby at Christmas will be against Ringwood Town, which is nearly an hour away by car.

Arriving at Portland Bill, the rain had stopped around Wimborne and the sun was just breaking through. I drove to the top of the impressive hill which greets the visitor and stopped at a viewpoint above Fortuneswell. It's one of the most spectacular views in the south of England. I stood next to the Olympic rings (the National Sailing Centre, home of the 2012 sailing competition, is on Portland) and just stared. The 15 mile long shingle spit of Chesil Beach is to the left, fierce ex-storm waves pounding the stones, trying to break through to the lagoon on the other side.

The main town on the peninsula, Fortuneswell, lies below. Beyond that, across the bay, is Weymouth. Angry grey rain clouds welled up on the horizon, but I knew these were drifting away to the north and east. Only miles and miles of blue sky to the south and west, where the strong wind was blowing from.

Walking back to the car, I stopped and pondered at the war memorial, dedicated to all the local men who fell in the wars. I noticed a lot of names appearing over and over again - there must be a lot of Pearces and Saunders on the isle - but the name that really stood out was Stone. Not only is Portland famous for stone quarrying, but a large number of their citizens are named after the rock beneath their feet. As I was leaving, a family arrived. The little girl shouted to her mother: "Look mummy! A poppy!" I'd been so busy studying the names of the soldiers that I'd failed to spot the single poppy left at the base of the memorial. Once again, a small child proved more observant than me.

I was taking this panoramic view when Portland's Ross Doidge scored the opening goal!

I arrived at Portland United's New Grove Corner with plenty of time to walk around the ground. I knew that the club had been forced to move from their original Grove Corner ground in 1994, when the Crown demanded the land for a new quarry (Portland is famous for its quarries - the stone mined here was used to build St Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, the Cenotaph - both in London and Southampton - and Your House). The mining company built a new ground for the club on a reclaimed quarry site not far from their original ground, and it's rather splendid.

A gale force wind blew straight down the ground as I walked around. I noted two covered seated areas - the one behind the goal featured three park benches dedicated to club stalwarts, as well as a number of other bench seats. Lying next to the ivy-covered stone wall which separates the ground from the road outside were a set of old floodlights. I'd guess a condition of their promotion from county football last season was that the floodlights needed upgrading.

Both stands are handmade and give good views of the pitch. However, the best views were to be had from a grass bank which runs the length of the pitch on the north side. It may even be called The North Bank. This is where many of the regular connoisseurs of The Blues gathered to watch the game, either sat on one of the park benches perched up there, or simply standing at the top of the slope. Behind them were gorse bushes which separated the ground from another quarry. A kestrel spent most of the match hovering above the huge stones below her. She had more important things to do than watch football on this Saturday afternoon.

Watching the kestrel diving for rodents reminded me of my own hunger. I was able to buy food behind the bar in the clubhouse and stand outside on the balcony for a few minutes to watch the match whilst crunching away at my salt 'n' vinegar crisps.

More food - soup, chocolate bars - was available in the combined tea hut/pay hut at the entrance. Tea could be drunk from proper mugs for just 80p a pop.

Home-made cover behind the near goal. Shelter from the wind.

The wind blew and it blew and it blew. The glaring sun was dropping fast behind the clubhouse. It was crucial to win the toss and avoid having to defend the far end during the first half. I can only assume that Portland won the toss and decided to have the wind at their backs. The toss isn't normally as important in football as it is in cricket, but today was an exception.

Wave after wave of Portland attacks then ensued. They had their twelfth and thirteenth men (the sun and the wind) behind them and Horndean struggled to cope. Every time they tried to break forward, the ball would just stop in mid-air and start rolling back towards them. Running against the wind, it must have felt to them like they were eleven Marcel Marceaus climbing a ladder. Getting nowhere fast.

The incessant pressure paid off for the home side after 14 minutes, as Ross Doidge sidefooted home from eight yards. Portland are top of the Wessex League's lower division; Horndean are third in the higher division, but you wouldn't have known it.

The home side failed to score another goal during the first half, despite numerous chances, which they came to regret after eight minutes of the second half. With the wind and setting sun behind them now, Horndean equalised when Harry Potter [Reader's voice: Don't, just don't...!] produced a piece of magic [Andy!!! No!] as he headed the ball backwards over the advancing home keeper.

The wind then started to die down as the sun dropped behind the clubhouse, making the game a lot more even. Chances came and went for both sides. In to extra-time, and both teams had shouts for penalties which were turned down. 22 pairs of tired legs couldn't produce any more magic, until...

...Nine minutes from the end, a ball was heaved forward from Portland's defence. Ed Bastick got in front of two Horndean defenders. The ball bounced once, then did Ed juggle the ball on his knee two or three times as he rushed forward, 35 yards from goal? Did my eyes deceive me, or was that CR7-esque skill on display? I was tired too and could have been hallucinating, but whatever the truth, the next thing we knew, the ball was flying, arcing over the Horndean keeper's head and rippling the back of the away side's net.

The home supporters went wild, the players did a collective Klinsmann, diving and sliding over the wet grass, piling on top of one another. We had our Saturday hero, and this week, it was Ed Bastick.

After two hours'-worth of shift and toil, Portland ended the game with nine men when one player went off injured during extra-time (all subs had been used), and another received a dead leg with a few minutes remaining. He could only stand and watch as his team mates defended heroically until the final whistle for a deserved victory. For those Portland players who had worked hard all week in their proper jobs, they could relax and unwind after a job well done on the pitch. Horndean's players had a long trip home, but for them, there's always next week to be the Saturday afternoon hero.

Horndean fire in a free-kick.

I started off this report with the phrase "It's a puzzle". I'm ending it with two puzzles. Two wordsearches, to be precise. The first wordsearch contains words which may have been uttered by the fans of Portland United when Ed Bastick's wonder goal hit the back of the net. If you're unfamiliar with wordsearches, you are looking for the following 14 words or phrases within the grid. They can be spelt out horizontally, vertically or diagonally. They can be read as nature intended, or back-to-front or upside-down:

ACE                        GET IN
AMAZING                GREAT
AWESOME              MAGIC
BONZER                  NEAT
CRUCIAL                 RAD
DANDY                    SPLENDID
FAB                         WIZARD

A	T	Y	D	N	A	D	S
W	M	W	R	N	R	P	U
E	C	A	E	A	L	T	C
S	M	A	Z	E	D	A	I
O	T	I	N	I	T	E	G
M	W	D	O	Z	N	R	A
E	I	O	B	A	F	G	M
D	L	A	I	C	U	R	C

Silhouetted fans pointing at the action on the pitch as the sun sets.

The second wordsearch contains words which may or may not have been spluttered by Horndean's fans when they conceded that extraordinary second goal. I've had to be careful here, because I remember buying a Barbie magazine for my daughter when she was little, and in the back was a seemingly innocent wordsearch puzzle where the girls had to find words such as BARBIE, KEN, HORSE and suchlike. However, the compiler had obviously had enough of his/her job, and had hidden some filth within, which had not been picked up at the quality checking stage of the magazine (cheaply made tat that it was, I suspect there was no checking done at all...).

Find the following nine words or phrases of frustration in the grid below:

BOO                         OH MY
FLIP                          OOPS
HISS                          PANTS
NUTS                         SUGAR
OH DEAR

R	A	G	U	S	A	R	B
E	A	J	P	A	N	T	S
E	T	E	E	L	F	S	E
W	O	O	D	L	I	C	E
F	H	G	I	H	L	B	N
E	M	P	R	I	O	Y	U
C	Y	S	P	O	O	N	T
K	N	I	C	K	E	R	S

I'm fairly confident there's nothing else hidden within that one. No Barbie magazine situation here. Not that I've checked properly.

[Hmmm, don't know if that worked. It seemed like a good idea at the time...]

More silhouettes. Players this time, waiting for the ball to be crossed in to the box.

There's a proper match report on Portland United's website here. I'd recommend a visit to New Grove Corner for any ground enthusiast out there reading this. A fine place.

I've been writing Hopping Around Hampshire for just under five years now. At some point towards the end of November, it is likely to receive its 100,000th page view. I didn't expect that when I started.

I intend to set up an HAH Facebook group at some point this week. I shall add extra match photos to the group pages. I'll add a link on here when I've done that. You're welcome to join if you're on Facebook.

The next HAH report will be from a match in Wiltshire on November 28th, so long as the weather is kind. See you then.

Goodnight from Portland United!