Eastleigh, Boreham Wood & the element of risk

The FA Cup First Round means a mid-table league fixture in the Hampshire countryside.

It’s been a wet and windy week down here on the Sussex coast. On the Wednesday morning school run, I return sufficiently cold and wet to require the services of a full change of clothes and a hot shower. Later the same day, the schools send out an amber warning. Attendance the following day would be optional, with no guarantees that they would be open. They did, in the end.

At this point in the week, it seemed extremely likely that this would be another blank weekend for me, and sure enough as Saturday morning proceeds “MATCH OFF” and “MATCH POSTPONED” both trend on Twitter. But this is also the weekend of the First Round of the FA Cup, and if I’m prepared to spread my wings a little, my options broaden significantly.

So to Eastleigh, five miles north of Southampton. Their rise from the Wessex League to the National League took just eleven years and this year marks their tenth at this level. For a while, they had a run of giving bigger teams a tough time in the FA Cup. In 2015/16, they took Bolton Wanderers to a replay before narrowly losing. The following year, they beat Swindon Town after a replay in the First Round before losing to Brentford in the Third. In 2020 they were beaten by Crewe after a replay, and the following year they were only beaten on penalty kicks by Milton Keynes after a replay.

Their First Round opponents this season are Boreham Wood. Just as they were last year. And the year before that. In one respect at least, this match is a record-breaker. It’s the first time that two non-league teams have ever been drawn against each other in the First Round of the FA Cup in three successive seasons. Slightly ominously for Eastleigh, Boreham Wood won both of the previous two. But for all that, Eastleigh start the game 11th in the National League, while Boreham Wood are in 17th, and while both of these previous meetings took place at Wood’s Meadow Park, this one is being played at Eastleigh.

On Saturday morning, it feels as though this journey has an element of jeopardy about it. The Eastleigh FC Twitter account posts a couple of reassuring messages about the pitch barely even needing an inspection, but I’ve been living in these parts long enough to know that this could change in a thrice. The weather on the coast can be incredibly changeable, and as I read their calming messages I’ve also got one eye out the kitchen window, where yet another shower of biblical proportions is hammering down on the patio.

On already saturated ground, it doesn’t look good, but in the absence of any signs that the match is going to be cancelled I haul myself out of the house. I bought the train and match tickets the day before, a signifier to myself that crying off and deciding that an afternoon with Sky Sports was not going to be an option. It’s even pointed out to me that another club still playing in the Wessex League, AFC Stoneham, are also at home that afternoon, a few hundred yards from The Silverlake Stadium and on a 3g pitch which will guarantee no postponement. So I even have a fallback. My excuses to stay at home are non-existent.

The journey couldn’t be much easier. Trains only run from East Worthing to Southampton Central once an hour, but East Worthing station is barely a five minute walk from my front door and, following a brutalist cup of coffee opposite that station, the other leg of my journey to Southampton Airport Parkway only takes eight minutes. Perhaps unsurprisingly on a day when most people would rather be curled up on a sofa with a mug of hot chocolate, not that many people are travelling westward on this particular late Saturday morning.

This is my seventh FA Cup match of the season. The midway point of a competition which started on the first weekend of August and will finish on the last Saturday of May. It’s also the point at which the wider world starts to take notice. The evening before Horsham, who I’d seen beating Hanworth Villa in the Third Qualifying Round, managed a magnificent 3-3 draw away to Barnsley, who are fifth in League One.

I’m outside the front of Southampton Airport Parkway railway station at 2.00. It turns out to be a good job that I got there so early. The Silverlake Stadium is in easy walking distance. Going by the map, there was a short way and a long way round to their ground, but what Google Maps didn’t point out was that with this being an airport and all, the short way round was reserved for cars only while those of us on foot had a journey that was twice as long.

What I’d thought would be a ten minute walk at the most was now going to take 25. Regular readers will already be aware of the extent to which I’ve found myself watching football in semi-rural environments this season and yes, yet again I find myself walking along a road with a wood on one side of it, and this time there’s also the additional excitement of walking past a miniature steam railway station—don’t threaten me with a good time—and a path which involves jumping and darting like a substitute warming up to avoid uncomfortably wet feet. The Monks Brook River, which I cross to get there, still looks somewhat close to overflowing should the rain return again.

But by this time, any further threat of rain seems to have almost completely diminished, and by the time I get to the ground the sun is out. The first thing you notice about the Silverlake Stadium is how appropriately named it is. There can be no doubting how silver it is. On what’s by now a bright—and slightly chilly—afternoon, the sun bounces off it with a fierceness that makes you wonder whether the glare might burn a hole straight through you.

Once inside, the shininess continues. The covered terraces that run the length of one side of the pitch and behind one of the goals are made of steel, with the one along the side being made entirely of metal, including its roof. It’s not difficult to imagine how quite a din could be made in there, but we won’t find out today because they’ve left it completely closed off. Still, the rest of the ground is completely open to wander round at will. There’s a large, seated stand behind the other goal and another seated stand along the other side with a large open space next to it that you fancy will be filled in should the club progress higher up the pyramid.

In the corner of the stand behind the goal are tucked about 150-odd Boreham Wood supporters. As the fifth-lowest supported team in the division, perhaps it’s not that much of a surprise to see a relatively small number making the journey down from the London/Hertfordshire border. Perhaps they have bigger fish to fry. After all, two years ago they beat Wimbledon and Bournemouth before losing in the Fifth Round to Everton, and last season they beat Bristol Rovers away before losing after a replay to Accrington Stanley.

By the midway point in the first half, we’ve already had three goals. Nigel Atangana gives Eastleigh the lead with a crisp, low shot from the edge of the penalty area, but within a minute Boreham Wood are level with one of their own, from Matt Robinson. But you can see why the visitors are struggling in the league. On 22 minutes, they fail to deal with a cross from the right again, and Chris Maguire scores at the far post. The Boreham Wood central defence seems primarily to be built from a combination of twigs, moss and marshmallow.

Seven minutes from half-time comes a third Eastleigh goal, and again it comes from a cross from the right, turned in by the memorably-named Ludwig Ancillette. It’s 3-1 at half-time, and there’s been little evidence that much is likely to change in the second half. I take the opportunity to have a wander. To my immense pleasure, I finally see a tin foil FA Cup, that endearingly odd ritual which has undergone a considerable revival in recent years.

The Silverlake Stadium straddles that line between being a non-league ground and a League effectively. The two seated stands give it a sense of presence, but at the same time you’re not tied to one spot, as you would be at some other—particularly obviously—all-seater grounds at this sort of level. For all that metal, it feels homely. There doesn’t seem to be any way to get into anything like a bar, so I settle for a Bovril instead, because nothing says ‘football in the winter’ like dessicated cow.

The half-time break is enervated by the final and the third/fourth place play-off of kids tournament. The minute that the referee blows for half-time, four small goals are brought onto the pitch and two matches between teams made up kids who are probably no older than seven or eight. Goals immediately start flying in—the standard of goalkeeping is, shall we say, patchy—to the point that the PA guy, who’s valiantly trying to keep the crowd up to date with the scores, seems to start to lose count.

One of the teams has a goal disallowed because no headers are permitted, but it matters little as they end up winning the tournament regardless. Crowded around the corner of the pitch where their game has been played, proud parents take photographs of their kids as they cheer them on. Another little reminder of the importance of that bond between football clubs lower down the pyramid and their local communities.

There’s little crackle of nervous tension throughout the second half of a jig that more or less everybody already knows is up. Eight minutes into the second half a cross from, you guessed it, the right is met by Francillette, who leaps to extend Eastleigh’s lead to 4-1, and from there on just about everybody is running down the clock. Eastleigh even have the generosity to allow their guests a one player advantage for the last twenty minutes when Jayden Harris gets himself sent off for a second bookable offence which might have even been a straight red card, had he not already been booked.

But there is one small… problem. This is the highest level of men’s football that I’ve seen in-person this season, but the aesthetic quality of the football is probably the lowest. Eastleigh have an excellent pitch—it’s obvious from the first moment I see it that this match was never going to be called off—but the ball spends much its time in the air. Perhaps this level of robust directness is necessary at the bottom tier of the full-time game, but still feels like a bit of a culture shock after several months of seeing considerably smaller clubs than these two playing the ball more or less exclusively on the ground.

This comes at obvious costs. There’s no point in being robust and direct if you’ve got the sort of soft underbelly that Boreham Wood seem to have. Eastleigh are also playing a direct type of football, but that’s okay so long as it works. When it doesn’t, it just starts to look as though you don’t really know what you’re doing. Their league form is somewhat improved recently following a poor start which saw them win just one of their first eight league games. But this first half has been a huge step back.

Eastleigh drop back, apparently keen to preserve their lead, but Boreham Wood look as ineffective with a one man advantage as they had with equal numbers. In the fifth minute of stoppage-time, they add a fifth, again as the Boreham Wood central defence melts away in front of them. It’s a goal straight from Route One, a goal kick flicked on in midfield for Maguire, who surges into the right channel, then checks inside and scores from ten yards. 5-1, and Eastleigh’s place in the next round is beyond doubt.

By this time I’m near the exit, warming up as though preparing for a 100m sprint. It’s reasonable to say that I ambled to the ground in the first place, but this has had the knock-on effect of meaning that I don’t really know how long it will take to get back the railway station. There’s a train at 5.15 which segues with one back to East Worthing, but Maps is telling me that it’s a 25 minute walk. “I’ll be the judge of that”, I mutter under my breath as the final whistle blows and the sprint begins. Fifteen minutes later, and with a couple to spare, I’m stepping back onto the train, having got an unexpected extra cardio session in on the way back. I reach the threshold of my front door at five past seven.

Of the three teams I saw in qualifying who made it through to the first round, two are still in it. Worthing are out, beaten 2-0 at Alfreton Town, but Maidstone United, who beat Steyning Town in the Second Qualifying Round, are through to the Second Round following a 2-0 win at Chesham United. Horsham will replay against Barnsley in front of what will almost certainly be a capacity crowd a week on Tuesday. I could in theory pull a lever or two to get a ticket for this, but it’ll likely be shown live on the television and while it isn’t a school night for me, it is for my kids, who I’d either have to lug up there with me for the latest they’ve ever been allowed to stay up when they have class the next morning.

So here we are at the mid-point of the 2023/24 FA Cup. Seven rounds played, seven still to play, and this is the point at which it starts to matter less and less. The average home crowd at the Silverlake Stadium season for league matches has been just over 2,000, but the crowd for this was 1,727. In many respects, this is understandable. It wasn’t clear that the weather was going to hold, while these matches are ‘all pay’, meaning that those who’d already forked out a couple of hundred quid on a season ticket would have to pay to get in as well.

This wasn’t the sort of FA Cup tie that gets eulogised in the media. These were two full-time teams who haven’t quite had the seasons they’d have wanted so far. One of them is among the lowest supported in the National League, and for them it was a long journey down from the other side of London. But for all of that, Eastleigh can allow themselves a little dream or two. They’re now 90 minutes from the Third Round, the point at which things start to become very real indeed. Half the gate receipts from a trip to Old Trafford or The Emirates Stadium, say, would be a substantial financial boost.

But those considerations can wait. For the community, the guy with the tin foil FA Cup, the kid excitedly nattering to his dad about who they might get in the next round (Reading, seemed to be the hope of his father), and for the club itself, this was about taking another step towards the sort of season that they want for their club. A chance of building the sort of memories that long outlast those of bread and butter league matches. It’s what the FA Cup is all about, really. It’s just a shame that so few above this level seem to consider it with much regard any more.