Third will probably have to be good enough for the Worthing Women
They probably thought that the race for second place was over before kick-off, but an unlikely result elsewhere meant two points were definitely dropped at Woodside Road on Sunday afternoon.
It wasn’t meant to be like this, really. Early on Friday evening, I was looking forward to an end of season trip to Newhaven to look at some BLOODY MASSIVE BOATS and for an end-of-season title decider against Steyning Town. “What time do you want me over tomorrow?”, I asked my former podcast co-host ahead of the following evening’s festivities.
My plan was to get up to Newhaven and straight back for an early evening kick-off. “One o’clock”, came his reply. And in that moment, my plans had to change.
It’s been a successful season for Worthing Football Club. The men’s team are in third place in the National League South table with one game left to play, and they could yet bag the runners-up spot from Chelmsford City on the last weekend of the season. A day earlier they’d beaten St Albans City away from home, with their fourth goal marking their 100th of the season. They may yet get promoted.
Going into their third last game of the season, the women’s team are also in third place in the league table. Wimbledon are the division’s champions with a little room to spare, but second-placed Norwich City are only ahead of Worthing by two points with a couple of games of the season left to play. They couldn’t, could they?
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It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Worthing, the sort that puts a smile on people's faces. My walk along the seafront is carried out in glorious spring sunshine, the stiff winds that can blow in from the sea unencumbered by buildings nowhere to be seen. Past the weird wooden pirate, to whom I’ve doffed by cap upon passing perhaps more times than a grown adult probably should.
I seldom look up when I’m walking this route. You don’t, when it’s so familiar. Past the block of flats which looks as though it was designed to be an optical illusion, past the pier and the pavilion, and the queue of people who seem genuinely excited to be buying an ice cream from a van for the first time this spring. Past the middle-aged woman who can’t be angry with her dog for having run into the sea, even though he’s going to require a considerable amount of cleaning when they get home.
My ex-wife is sick, so there’s a brief detour via Boots during which I confirm that no-one in my household intends to take Sudafed recreationally, and at her flat she practically crawls back in behind me after letting her in as though shaken from her hibernation a couple of weeks early. I only have to tell the kids to put their socks and shoes on five times between them before we’re ready to walk up to Woodside Road. This, mark my words, is progress.
Worthing is the only home that my children have ever known, and for the last three and half years we’ve been living in the same house. It’s on the opposite side of town to Worthing football ground, but when it includes picking the kids from their mother’s up en route, it’s handily placed.
It’s not that I worry about whether my kids will be interested in football, it’s more that it often feels as though I’m not giving them the chance. I have them five days a week, but their mother has no interest in sport whatsoever, so she wouldn’t be taking them on a Saturday afternoon, while evening matches finish too late. They still enjoy going, but they don’t watch the football. Essentially, they like chips, orange juice and running around playing a game to which I suspect no-one knows the rules.
But this particular Sunday, when turning up to my best friend’s birthday do six hours late would still have been unconscionably rude, even if he wouldn’t have minded, switching everything around made sense. We walk inland, up the leafy Heene Road, past an American school bus which causes come commotion because it turns out that older kid’s explanation that “Someone must have driven it crossing a railway bridge which may have been repurposed from Stalag Luft III, and then making the short walk through an otherwise silent suburbia, past red brick houses and the Bowling Club, which backs onto the ground, to the turnstile.
Woodside Road has been undergoing redevelopment of late, and the latest change is particularly visually arresting. The tin shed and crumbling concrete and paving slabs at the far end of the ground were removed a couple of years ago, but this season it’s been replaced with a red covered terrace which runs the entire length behind the goal, with four metal steps. It’s functional rather than exciting, and it’s certainly a considerable improvement on what was here before.
There’s not much end of season fever about. Wimbledon are already just about confirmed as the division champions, and while Worthing might only be two points behind Norwich going into this match, the Canaries have a game in hand, are unbeaten in the league all season, have a superior goal difference, and this afternoon are away to Haywards Heath Town, who’ve already been relegated in bottom place and only have four points all season. Worthing, meanwhile, are playing Ashford Town (Middlesex), who are comfortable in mid-table, in by some distance the trickier-looking of the two fixtures.
By the time that the referee blows his whistle for the mid-game interval we’ve had a busy time of things. An early Georgia Tibble goal gives Worthing the lead, but Ashford clearly aren’t here just to make up the numbers. By the time 19 minutes have been played they lead 2-1, and it takes a smart finish from Shanon Albuery to salvage parity by the half-time break. There have been, somewhat curiously, no goals a few miles north at Hanbury Park, in the match between Haywards Heath and Norwich.
But Ashford are difficult to break down, all the more so when they reclaim the lead four minutes into the second half. Worthing huff and puff. The pack is shuffled. And it takes until seven minutes from full-time for the excellent Tibble to drop in a free-kick from the edge of the penalty area to bring them level at the full-time whistle.
Of course, I see very little of all this because I am herding cats. My kids are right and half and six and a half, nowadays. The older one might be best described as a ‘big galoot’, tall enough to be above my armpit but still slightly ill-at-ease with this height. He is wearing pink sequin leggings, a luminous hoodie and a bomber jacket, because he likes to make an entrance.
The younger one, about whom I think it unfair to use in association with the phrase ‘small man syndrome’, is a perplexing and occasionally frightening ball of energy who considers everything he does to be a potential practical joke and his father enough of a dozy pillock to fall for them. He’s not always wrong.
But this afternoon, he has an uncharacteristic bout of shyness. Away in one corner of the ground is a small hump covered in artificial grass which is a perfect spot for kids to mess around without getting under the feet of adults who may be carrying piping hot tea or, more importantly, pints of beer. There are three kids playing on his hump, but Junior doesn’t want to go over and ask them if he can play with them so I have to go over and ask for him.
Senior, meanwhile, is laying on one of the park benches behind the goal and looks for a moment as though he may even have fallen asleep. It turns out that he’s lazily watching the match through the gaps in the perimeter. He jumps to his feet when Worthing tie things up at 3-3. I’ve watched with interest over the years as his loyalty to his home town has grown. He is proud to be from here to the point that it has taken me a lot of convincing that Worthing might not be the centre of the universe. To him, it most definitely is.
Because they’re six and a half and eight and a half, the kids would rather take the train the 35 seconds or so from Worthing to East Worthing. They’re older than they used to be, these two, but that fascination with large, heavy machines that deliver people from place to place remains as strong as ever. There's some theatrical complaining when we have to get off again. I’m just about certain that they wouldn’t have complained had we gone all the way to Brighton and then turned around and come straight back.
Worthing women have cause to regret their two dropped points. It turns out that Norwich City made extremely hard work of their trip to Haywards Heath Town, only taking the lead with 18 minutes to play and then being pegged back by an equaliser a couple of minutes from time. Had Worthing managed to grab a winner they’d have gone level on points in second place. Okay, so Norwich would still have had a game in hand, and yes, it is still theoretically possible that they could be overtaken on the slipstream in the last couple of matches, but it doesn’t seem especially likely. Norwich remain unbeaten in the league all season, after all.
But this season has been about progress for this club, both on and off the pitch. The men are guaranteed a play-off place in the National League South. The women have had a successful season in the Women’s National League South-East Division, too. They’re practically guaranteed third place behind Wimbledon and Norwich City. Queens Park Rangers could yet catch them should they win their remaining three games and Worthing win their last two, but just the fact they’re competing against the women’s teams from three different EFL clubs shows the progress that they’ve been making. This is what community football looks like, and its benefits to the local population feel huge, even if the women’s team fell slightly short on this occasion. Change is in the air, down here. You can feel it.