Haves & Havants, Ups & Downs
League positions mean little as Havant & Waterlooville make a mockery of their league position with a convincing win against Taunton Town.
There comes a point when the pressure becomes too much and you have to do something. I’ve lived with depression—or rather, depression lives with me, since I don’t see anyone else paying any rent around here—for more than a quarter of a century. But the last few years have been one thing after the another, weight upon weight, stress upon stress, pressure upon pressure.
And this time, I was close to breaking. This has been a bad year, certainly the worst of my life, and I’ll be more than glad to see the back of it. In preparation, I made an appointment with the doctors to talk it through. Because we now live in dystopia it was held by video call, and the answer was anti-depressants. Hello serotonin, my old friend, I’ve come to call on you again. It’s been the best part of a couple of decades, this time.
The plan was, get the appointment now, get the tablets, allow a couple of weeks for the effects to settle in, and start to feel the positive effects for Christmas and the new year. I wasn’t expecting this. Four days in, I am transformed. In some ways, it’s almost a little but scary. Every once in a while I stop whatever it is I’m doing, glance furtively around the room, and think to myself, “So this is how it feel to feel… normal, huh?”
I’m very conscious of the ways in which this could yet go wrong. A crash of some form is always possible. My delight at feeling this way for the first time in I actually have no idea cannot last indefinitely. But something had to give. I owed it to other people, as well as to myself. It’s just surprising to receive such a jump start.
Come Saturday morning, I’m four days into this strange but most welcome upswing. I’m due to be going to Littlehampton Town for their Isthmian League match against Cray Valley Paper Mills. I’m not approaching it with a good deal of enthusiasm, but it will be a new ground and it’s a fairly straightforward journey. This plan came to my mind and the reasoning behind it were formulated before my abrupt mental upswing.
By this time, I’m sufficiently confident that the game will be on that I don’t even check whether something unexpected has happened and I’m not far off leaving the house by the time I do. The match had been called off at 11 that morning thanks to an electrical failure. Never mind. To Havant instead, just on the north-eastern side of Portsmouth.
This part of the world is, to put it mildly, a land of contrasts. When you walk out the front of Havant railway station you’re met by a shopping arcade which is almost entirely shuttered up, apart from a nail salon and an oddly out-of-place Pizza Hut takeaway. But cross the bridge over the railway line and turn right, walk 100 yards and turn left, and you’re in a leafy lane, with grand houses on one side, Jaguar and Mercedes cars parked on wide driveways.
This lane ends abruptly and turns into what the town really is. On the left is a dual carriageway with a subway running underneath it. To my right, classic British 1950s housing, functional but pleasant, many of the houses adorned with various amendments to add a personal touch to the uniform red brick walls. Behind them sit two squat tower blocks, leftover memories from a time when at least they tried to build affordable housing for ordinary people.
Havant grew rapidly after the Second World war after the Luftwaffe left much of Portsmouth city centre in ruins or ablaze. 930 of its people were killed. Around 20% of the city's houses were destroyed or badly damaged. The rapid building of houses—still in use 70 years later—in those post-war years which was financially on its knees is an achievement of which this country should be proud.
And Westleigh Park is a pleasant enough enclosure, certainly ‘good’, by modern standards. It has a pub/clubhouse adjacent to it called The Westleigh, which is still filling up at 2.30, and once inside you’re free to walk around the ground, should you wish. The entire lengths of all three terraced sides are covered, though there’s also a feeling of open space, as well. The crush barriers are painted in yellow and blue.
It’s a grey, drizzly afternoon, and Westleigh Park is grey, in that way that modern grounds often are. But it’s comfortable and homely, and the crowd is a decent size, considering that we’re just two Saturdays from Christmas; good humoured too, considering the way this season has been, so far. I can think of some bigger clubs where, were they in this position, you’d see someone outside unpacking a portable gallows before a game like this.
Perhaps it’s quiet pleasure at having got out of going Christmas shopping, on the most heaving Saturday of the year. It’s quite a thing, really; football remains a sufficient excuse to give the Christmas shopping a miss. For many people, it remains the centrepiece of their day, their weekend, or their week.
This has been a complicated few years for Havant & Waterlooville. After a dozen years in the National League South they were relegated 2016, but bounced back in the most spectactular way possible, winning the Isthmian League Premier Division and National League South titles in successive seasons. The National League proved to be a step too far; they were relegated back at the first attempt.
This time, they couldn’t bounce back. When the 2019/20 season was curtailed by Covid, Havant were second in the table behind Wealdstone, who were crowned champions. They were then beaten 2-1 at home by Dartford in the semi-finals of the play-offs. They’ve been mid-table for the last couple of years, on the brink of the play-offs two years ago and tenth, last time around. Those who want to feel old are reminded that it is now 16 years since they played Liverpool in the FA Cup.
But this season has been a disaster. They go into their home match against Taunton Town bottom of the table on goal difference from Dover Athletic. Both clubs have just twelve points each, eight points below third bottom Welling United and twelve from safety. Steve King, who has managed practically every other club within ten miles of the south coast, was appointed in September to replace Jamie Collins, but he was sacked at the start of December, having failed to win a single league game.
And the improvement was immediate. Prior to King’s departure, Havant’s only league win of the season had come under Collins, against now runaway leaders Yeovil Town at the end of August. But they recorded their second win of the season the day after King left, 4-3 against Dover Athletic, and have since followed that up with a 2-0 win against Hemel Hempstead Town. So that’s the reason for the relatively good humour. Things are demonstably on the up.
Taunton Town’s upward rise was dramatic, with three successive promotions taking them from Division One South-West of the Southern League to the National League South, a spell during which they scored 310 league goals. They finished 14th in their first season at this level last season, and they’re 14th again this time around, though they have games in hand on everyone around them. They seem to have found their level.
Or they seemed to have found their level, because there’s only one team playing here who look like relegation candidates, and it isn’t Havant & Waterlooville. All the signs that you start to see in poor teams, the jumpiness, the inability to hold onto possession or control the middle third of the pitch, are more readily levelled at Taunton. Whatever it was that was happening to Havant under Steve King isn’t happening any more. They’ve already had a couple of half-chances by the time that Ben Morgan scores from close range to give Havant the lead, and they’ve only been playing for six minutes.
By the time they score, I do at least know which team is which. The teams take to the pitch—to “Under The Moon of Love” by Showaddywaddy, for lovers of mid-1970s rock and roll pastiche bands from Leicester—in all-white and yellow and blue. Taunton’s home colours and claret and blue, and I assume that Taunton’s change kit is all-white.
After all, those yellow and blue crush barriers. The club’s badge is yellow and blue. I start wondering why the supporters are going to stand behind the ends that their teams are defending as the teams kick off—it is normal practice, at grounds without segregation, to stand behind the goal that your team is attacking—until it occurs to me that no, it is not everybody else in this entire ground who is an idiot, it is me. Havant are in all-white, and Taunton are in yellow and blue. Still, at least I had that figured out by the time of the first goal.
There’s one team out there look like potential relegation material, but it certainly isn’t the home team. Havant & Waterlooville control the game from the start. They control the midfield well and they’re defensively well-marshalled. We’re on a 3g pitch again, here, and you do wonder about the possibility that teams who use them all the time have some sort of advantage, but I’m aware that my views are out of date (and likely based on entirely false premises), so let me just wave my zimmer frame at the clouds in peace and let’s move on.
It’s still 1-0 at half-time. The pub/bar/clubhouse is still open at half-time. They stamp the back of my hand at half-time so that I can get back in, like you’re at a gig and want to go outside for a sly cigarette between sets. It is, I reflect silently to myself, likely the last time I’ll ever have the back of my hand stamped. My hearing isn’t really up to live music any more.
Just before the hour, Nick Grimes turns a cross into his own goal and that, for the match as a contest, is just about that. Taunton do manage a couple of half-chances, but Havant continue to control the game very effectively. They’re just a little too strong, a little too well-organised for their opponents. They add a third in the closing minutes when Kai Innocent runs inside under no particular challenge from anybody and slides the ball along the ground into the corner of the goal.
It finishes 3-0, and with Dover having only managed a goalless draw at home against Bath City, Havant & Waterlooville are off the bottom of the National League South. “Let’s go for a little walk”, the supporters behind the goal sing as the players come over to applaud them, “under the moon of love”. The Taunton supporters seem considerably less happy. It’s a long way back to Devon from here, all the more so when you’ve just dropped a place in the league table thanks to a fairly abject performance. There is shouting, and some degree of dismissive waving.
Did Havant & Waterlooville have their equivalent of a video call with a doctor when they sacked Steve King at the start of December? Because if this performance is anything to go by, they’ve been given a shot of serotonin since his departure. They’re still some distance from safety. Four teams go down, and they remain eight points from safety. But it’s difficult to argue that they’re not headed in the right direction. False dawns are always possible. As is crashing back to earth with a splat.
But when you’ve had a bad time of things—and Havant & Waterlooville had endured a terrible season until just a couple of weeks ago—the healthiest thing to do is enjoy these happy moments and the hope that they bring, rather than worry too much about the the future. The news from Bournemouth lit up my phone early in the second half. It was a shock, what happened to Tom Lockyer, but within a few minutes it was being reliably reported that he’s conscious and alert. My heart-rate returned to normal fairly quickly.
So this is what it feels like to feel normal, then.
