Pride comes before a Faal as Havant slip up in Sussex in the Cup
To a ground that still partially resembles a building site for some FA Cup football; Havant & Waterlooville are dreaming of 17 years ago while Worthing are looking to create a narrative of their own.
Is there anything more pleasant in life than walking along the seafront on a lovely early late summer’s afternoon, the sun high in the sky and the smell of what the Victorians thought was ozone but which actually turned out to be dimethyl sulphide released by microbes in the air? It has been a season of weird extremes, huge amounts of rain and cloying humidity, but with autumn now just around the corner and the nights starting to draw in the summer of 2024 is bowing out with a lovely mixture of warmth and freshening breeze.
We’re off take in some FA Cup football at Woodside Road, the home of Worthing, for their home Second Qualifying Round match against Havant & Waterlooville. This is a ‘should win’ match for the home team. Havant were relegated from the National League South at the end of last season and go into this match in 11th place in the Southern League Premier Division South, exactly a division below their hosts, and while we all—well, those of us above a certain age—remember their 2007/08 FA Cup exploits, when they beat York City, Notts County and Swansea City and then briefly led at Anfield in the Fourth Round before losing to Liverpool, they haven’t done much in this competition since then.
Worthing looks ruggedly handsome on days like these. Boats on the seafront are being lovingly tended by their owners as the folk of this newly upwardly mobile town bask in the last dregs of the summer. There’s a slight chill in the air, a reminder of the longer evenings ahead, but for today at least people are taking in the last of those rays while they still can. The giant ferris wheel that sits on the seafront actually has people on it (this is never the case during the week) and the disorienting block of flats on just short of town still somehow gives me vertigo from walking past it, while the town centre is bustling and busy.
Heck, we even have time to stop off at a second-hand furniture shop on the way through because there’s an attractive-looking little nest of tables in the window which catches my eye. I’m not in a position to take them now and get a stern finger-wagging from the assistant that I need to pick them up by the following Monday or… what happens there isn’t quite made clear. Do they put it back up for sale? Take it out the back and set it on fire? Reader, we’ll never know. I do pick it up the following Monday, presenting myself at the counter at 9.15 in the morning, half-fearing that they have already made a crucifix out of it or something.
Woodside Road is changing. The necessities of progress demand it. The rotting tin shed and terracing apparently made of whatever stone-like objects someone could find have already been condemned and replaced by metal steps and a smart red cover, and the side opposite the main stand is still closed for renovation work which started in the summer and still hasn’t been completed. The new terrace taking shape along that side of the ground is certainly impressive, its silver skeleton shining in the late summer sunshine, but it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the idiosyncrasies of the place are being ironed out.
Most alarmingly of all, the park benches have gone. For many years it has been a source of bafflement to me that there were three of them in one corner of the ground. But they stayed, and they were used. Until this summer, it seems. Even the terracing at the near end of the ground has been replaced, and while I was expecting two of the benches to have been subsumed by the new cowshed, I wasn’t necessarily expecting the other one to have done so as well. Don’t cry because they’re over, smile because they happened.
As a result of this work, no home games had been played until the previous week, when they ground out a goalless draw against Hornchurch. The capacity of the ground remains limited to 1,500 and this alone was enough for me to book tickets a couple of days before the match. Worthing reached the final of the National League South play-offs last season, and the ticketing arrangements for this match were an absolute shambles, even with a capacity more than 1,000 greater than it is currently.
But as things turn out, there was no need to panic whatsoever. Under normal circumstances Worthing play their home matches when nearby Premier League behemoths Brighton & Hove Albion are playing away, but this is the FA Cup, and that has consequences. There may be hundreds with allegiances to both clubs, and they won’t be missing the Albion’s home match against Ipswich Town for this nonsense. It’s not included in the cost of your season ticket either, and some of those who hold one of those may baulk at paying another £17 for a match on a lovely summer’s afternoon when the domestic season still hasn’t quite got going yet. The eventual crowd is reported as 1,017, and that contains a fair number who’ve made the shortish trip over from Hampshire.
If anything, it’s a sign of how far the club has come in recent years. Here are their attendances from ten years ago this season; their highest attendance of the 2014/15 season was 448, for their Boxing Day match against Burgess Hill Town, less than half of the number turning out for this match. It’s more like five times the average crowd they got at that time. The story of that growth is probably a book in itself; suffice to say that the club that a decade ago had just finished 15th in the Isthmian League Division One South is now expected to push for a place in the National League. Two promotions already achieved, a third one so tantalisingly close last season.
Worthing had a run to the First Round of this competition last season, but it all ended in just about the worst way possible, an away trip to another non-league club—Alfreton Town—and a defeat in which they never quite turned up. This had been their first appearance in this stage of the competition in almost a quarter of a century and it ended up feeling a little like a balloon rapidly deflating. A repeat would bring some much-needed revenue into the club and push them back into the national spotlight.
At this level of the game the FA Cup does remain important to clubs. The potential for money-making, despite reductions from an FA who clearly couldn’t give a tu’penny damn for anything beyond the Biggest Clubs pushing up their TV audiences in its latter stages any more (even though the biggest clubs really couldn’t give a tu’penny damn about it either, really), and the maximum amount that they could make from a run to the Third Round—be still, thine beating hearts—and being shown live on the television remains potentially trajectory-altering for just about any non-league club. Havant were reported to have made £800,000 from their away match at Liverpool alone, and that was 17 years ago. There is definitely something at stake here.
And there is a little bit of personal interest for me in this particular game. Sometimes a player just sticks in your head, and at 6’5 tall and with the gait of a daddy longlegs, Mo Faal did so very easily when he played for Enfield. I was here a few years ago, watching him absolutely tear Worthing a new hole, and to see him now having signed for Worthing after unsuccessful spells in the EFL with Bolton Wanderers and Crawley Town feels like an absolute pleasure. He’s enormous fun to watch, all arms and legs, but also deadly dangerous in front of goal so long as he’s given a very specific form of service. He is a cousin of Liverpool and (somewhat irregularly) England’s Joe Gomez, so there’s pedigree, of sorts.
He doesn’t get it for 45 minutes. Indeed, he is largely an observer for the first 45 minutes. In actuality, Worthing are abysmal throughout the first half. Havant hit the the post when a long, deep cross bounces off a defender, back up into the air and then down off the right hand post, but it’s only a temporary respite.
Midway through the first half, they lose possession on the left side of midfield and the ball is sent diagonally across to Keane Anderson who, under no challenge of any particular note, is given the space to move towards the edge of the Worthing penalty area before shooting low across goalkeeper Chris Page and in to give the visitors the lead. Oopsie. By half-time it’s still 1-0 and the team from the higher division still haven’t had a shot on target.
The relatively meagre attendance meant that there were plenty of seats in the main stand before kick-off, but we vacate them at half-time. Non-league football is meant for standing. We grab a second pint and opt to stand for the second half in an area clearly marked ‘No Standing’ in front of the stand. Various stewards and security guards pass through this passageway and offer no comment on our flagrant rule-breaking, so we stay there for the remainder of the match.
The guy standing to my left is wearing a “Franchise Football. Never Forgive. Never Forget” T-shirt and, fuelled by two pints of beer on top of just a tray of chips, I fall into conversation with him. He’s down from Scotland to visit his sister in nearby Steyning, but with them being without a home match he opted for this one instead. Wimbledon have just beaten football’s least favourite franchise 3-0 at Plough Lane in a lunchtime kick-off, but he’s not a Don. It turns out that he’s a Clydebank supporter who bought the T-shirt prior to a play-off final between that particular football frenzy and Grimsby Town a few years ago. “Ah yes”, I reply, “I remember them selling those”. In fact, I might even know the guy who sold it to him. We talk about the Bankies, about Enfield, and about the disgrace that the franchising of football continues to be upon English football.
Meanwhile on the pitch, Worthing have been given an appropriately-sized rocket up the backside at half-time and seem in the mood for business as the second half starts. My man Mo gets into the penalty area and stings the hands of the goalkeeper with a crisp shot, and as the early stages of the half play out you start to remember again that there is a division between these two teams.
Just before the hour they draw themselves level. A free-kick on the edge of the penalty area—especially from a bit of an angle, as this one is, isn’t usually that much of a danger at this level of the game, but the magnificently-named Jack Spong clips the ball over the wall and into the top corner to bring Worthing level. The PA guy incorrectly gives the time of the goal as the 69th minute rather than the 59th. Nice.
But even with this goal, the home side continue to contrive to make things difficult for themselves. They’ve been playing much better since half-time and they’re definitely on the front foot, but it only takes five minutes before they’re back behind again when Havant break on the right and cross for Ryan Seager to miscue the ball past Haigh to restore their lead.
For twenty minutes Worthing bluster in an all heat no light kind of way, but Havant legs are starting to tire and the home side look stronger when fresh legs replace the weary. With five minutes to play the Havant defence can’t deal with a run into their penalty area which results in a couple of slightly fortuitous deflections and Tommy Willard drives in a low shot to bring them level again. A replay doesn’t exactly feel on the cards. Within a minute the defence has passed through and Temi Babalola, who may without question be considered a ‘unit’, breaks through only to see his shot charged down by the goalkeeper.
It’s only the briefest of respites. The resulting corner is swung across towards the near post and there’s my bwoy, Mo Faal, ghosting across the six yard line and stooping to the height of a normal person to flick the ball deftly across and inside the far post. It’s taken them 87 minutes to get there, but the rest of Worthing’s players have finally found a method of delivery that works for him. The Havant players stand around, bemused at how their inertia could possibly have led to a player who has torn them a new one before meandering across to take advantage of it.
It’s all that Havant have left, really. Six minutes of stoppage-time pass without serious incident, and they’re through to the next round to a cheer that sounds more like a collective sigh of relief. We amble home through the industrial estate, crossing the weird, half-hidden railway bridge near my older kid’s school. Autumn will be here soon. The sun is starting to set by the time we get back to my house. Another summer over, another winter coming. But this has been a good summer. From a personal point of view, possibly a transformative one. And the new football season finally seems to be gathering up something approaching a head of steam, which is a blessed relief after a start which has felt strangely bereft of something.
The last time I saw Havant & Waterlooville play was last December, when I was freshly onto antidepressants and coming to terms with seeing the world in a different way. A lot has changed since then, and I’ve not been taking those tablets since early in the summer. I may need to again one day, but on a day like this, with the sun on my face, outstanding company, a couple of pints of beer and the football feeling like it makes sense for the first time in months, I’m kinda hoping that I won’t need them.
Following Monday afternoon’s draw, Worthing will be at home to Dartford in the 3rd Qualifying Round of the FA Cup on the 28th September.