Horsham are now 90 minutes from being 540 minutes from Wembley.

It took Horsham FC more than a decade to get home after they sold their ground. But now they're back, and looking healthier than ever.

“Oh, we should definitely watch that. Five-thirty kick-off. When’s Saturday?”

“It’s today, dad. I’m not sure whether I’ll be back in time for kick-off, but I’ll leave the TV on the right channel and give you call then to remind you, if I’m not already back.”

He’s happier. A lot happier. And I’m not surprised. He’d been in hospital for almost eight weeks. Myocarditis. Then sepsis. Then covid. But he’s a battler. He’ll be 87 in a fortnight, and despite the fact that there have been times this last few weeks when I’ve wondered whether he’d ever get out of that damn hospital, he’s home again, reunited with his grumpy cat again at last.

Except there’s a complication. He’s been discharged the day before my sister is due to go on holiday to Greece for a week. While I’ve been thirty-odd miles away, she lives just round the corner from him. He’s been a full-time job for her on top of the one that she already has, and she sounds worn out on the phone.

There are also concerns that some sort of cognitive decline may have started too, though the hospital have also confirmed that myocarditis, sepsis, covid and the antibiotics can each cause some degree of brain fog, and that almost two months in hospital doesn’t exactly help, either. They don’t know, so we don’t know. All we can do is hope that it clears, but in the meantime—at least—we have to wait and see how much of the fog clears, and how much of it may be permanent.

So here I am. It was short notice, and it required my ex-wife to come to my house and look after my kids for a week. I miss them terribly; it feels like someone has just cut a chunk out of me. But dad doesn’t need 24-hour maintenance. Just having someone here some of the time is enough, and I have the advantage of being able to work from anywhere while keeping a moderately close eye on him; not that he’d be disappearing anywhere quickly, at his age. My ex-wife jokes that a holiday from the kids will do me good. I smile appreciatively at the gesture, but I’m not really built to feel that way any more.

Horsham is not, and almost certainly never will be, my home town. My sister has lived here for just over thirty years and my parents for just over twenty, but I had already flown the nest by the time they moved. And it’s not that I don’t like it, more than I barely know it. I know the bit to the north-east of the town centre, where my dad actually lives, and the executive estate about a mile and half to its north where my sister lives. And that’s it. That’s what I know of it.

Horsham is an old market town, and as such its town centre nowadays is a jumbled mash-up of the old and the new, a mixture of big open spaces and tightly-knit alleyways. For many years, one of the main meeting spots was the “Cosmic Circle (The Rising Universe)”, a statue/fountain thing in the town centre marking the birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley in nearby Warnham, which was never known by its official title, instead becoming known as at best ‘Shelley Fountain’ or, less politely but certainly more bluntly, as ‘The Bollock’. Horsham was neutered of this unlikely and largely unpopular local landmark in 2016.

And nowadays, when I look up from the pavement as I traipse through it on a warm late summer’s afternoon, I can see something very distinctive indeed about Horsham. There’s money here. It’s been gentrified. I’ve never seen so many BMWs and Teslas in my life. At times, it can be easy to forget that you’re still in West Sussex, and while that is indupitably true—there is a six martlets flag, the county flag of Sussex, flying behind the goal at this match—we're also not much more than five or six miles from Surrey on the north side of Horsham, at least.

The town’s exact location gives it a bifurcated personality. On the one hand, like rest of the capital-C shape which stretches around London, this is squarely commuter territory. But it’s also something else. We’re also adjacent to the High Weald Area of Natural Beauty, which means that there is always a literal wilder side to the town, and all the better, it was just a short walk from my dad’s house.

At 106 acres, Leechpool and Owlbeech Woods are big, and it’s tempting to wonder how many people might have wandered into this particular area of them thinking that just round the corner there might be a another exit, only to find that it goes on for quite a long way.

I did find the above construction, which was presumably built for sacrificing something, but it was situated so close to the road as to give me pause for thought until I realised that presumably when you’ve got those sacrificial cravings, patience and discretion presumably aren’t at the top of your list of priorities. Elsewhere, I found a tree with an enormous knot that looked like a monkey’s face.

But I digress. This warm Saturday afternoon, I’m making another one of these football walks that doesn’t really feel like a football walk. South, out of the town, towards the nearby village of Southwater. There is a bus, but it’s a warm afternoon and I have the time. Dad’s had his lunch, and his cat has had hers. The lore of the game is that football takes place near cobbled streets, or otherwise hidden away among rows of terraced houses. But for the fourth time this season, I instead find myself wandering out of town and into the countryside.

Horsham FC haven’t always played outside town. Until 2007 they played at Queen Street, a short walk from the town centre, but after selling their ground for a replacement which they hadn’t gotten round to builkding yet there followed a rootless decade, sharing not only miles from the town, at Worthing and Lancing, but also at Horsham YMCA’s Gorings Mead, which was almost adjacent to their former home. Gorings Mead was never really an answer, but the aspiration of a new stadium took until 2017 to finally be approved by the local council and even when they moved in two years later they couldn’t even complete a full season there before the pandemic swooped in and closed everything for the next year and a half.

This is a match of significance. It’s the Third Qualifying Round of the FA Cup, meaning that the winners of this afternoon’s match will be just ninety minutes from the First Round, with its promise of big money and the possibility that a couple more wins just might offer a club-changing payday. Horsham have been there four times before, including last year, when they lost 2-0 to Carlisle United. They earned some media exposure from a gutsy 1-1 draw against Swansea City in 2006/07 before losing the replay 6-2.

Hanworth Villa come from Hounslow, in the shadow of Heathrow Airport, rather than Birmingham, as their name might suggest—it’s “Handsworth” in Birmingham, not “Hanworth”—and they’re on the up. Two seasons ago they won the Premier Division North of the Combined Counties League, winning 30 and drawing 4 from a 34 game league season. Promoted to Division One South-Central of the Isthmian League, they finished fourth and reached the play-off final last season before losing to Walton & Hersham. This season has begun more modestly, and they arrive in mid-table, a division below Horsham, but with just five league games played so far, there’s a long way to go. They’ve never played in the FA Cup First Round before. Since getting to the Fourth Qualifying Round at their first attempt twelve years ago, they’ve only got as far as the First Qualifying Round since, only managed that once prior to this season.

This is the most modern ground that I’ve been to, and it shows from the very moment you pass through the turnstiles. Immediately to its left, behind the goal, is a large bar and clubhouse, complete with a balcony from which you can get a (slightly) elevated view of the game, protected from wildly flying balls by netting. At the other end is a smart covered terrace. Club mascot Harry the Hornet, it seems, might quite like to be doing a perimeter lap of the pitch waving to the crowd, but instead he’s the object of affection of a small child who’s absolutely enraptured with him, trying to shove a bottle of Robinson’s Fruit Shoot into his not entirely real mouth.

On one side is a seated stand, and on the other two smaller covers separated in the middle by a media gantry. In one corner sits a large electronic scoreboard which is in considerably better condition that it looks from the angle of the photograph that I took. There are garden sheds which have been converted into serving hatches dotted around the ground, the stewarding is excellent and the crowd is big (916, it turns out), if initially slightly subdued by the afternoon sunshine combined, perhaps, with a touch of lunchtime alcohol. It’s a smart, tidy, and extremely modern venue, all the more appealing for being surrounded on two sides by trees, which add something to the intimacy of the occasion. The pitch is 3g, but if I haven’t already promised not to complain about those all season, then let me do that now.

Horsham start well, forcing a save in about thirty seconds, and after nine minutes they open the scoring, a near post header from Jason Strange. For a while, it feels as though they could run up a big win. But somehow they stall. Hanworth—who are wearing, for the record, a very fetching dark blue shirt with a black sash; coupled with Horsham’s yellow and green, it makes for a very colourful afternoon—come back into the game and force a couple of half-chances.

Those half-chances become chances, and right on half-time they’re level with a goal from a familiar name. Sam Merson is the son of the former Arsenal player, who is now to be found in clubhouses the length and breadth of the country on Saturday afternoons, in football club bars on Soccer Saturday. His son’s shot from twelve yards fair stuns the crowd. The half-time whistle leaves much to ponder.

Early in the second half, there’s a sharp reminder of the fact that there’s no technology even attempting to make sure that the rules are strictly adhered to. I’m too far away, at the other end of the pitch, to be able to see with any level of authority when a defensive mix-up was claimed by the home supporters to have crossed the line, but no flag goes up, the referee doesn’t give anything, and life goes on. If anything, it breathes a little much-needed fire into some bellies. The noise of the crowd swells a little with a perception of injustice, and in just a couple of minutes Kadell Daniel scores a fine goal to put them back in front to a proper, big cheer.

And this time, they do hold on. Captain Jack Brivio—the team captain, not an experimental first draft of Captain Jack Sparrow out of Pirates of the Caribbean—adds a third with seventeen minutes to play, and although Hanworth continue to nip at their heels this goal really books Horsham’s place in the next round. I’m hanging around near the exit as the teams leave the pitch at the end of the game, when an old guy with a scarf that drags slightly on the ground behind him runs over to me and excitedly says, “FIRST ROUND PROPER!” Well, you’re ninety minutes away now, friend. That much we can say for certain.

The walk back always feels like it takes three times as long as the walk there. As the crowd pours out of the ground, the drawback of these slightly out-of-town grounds becomes apparent. On the main road by the entrance, fans filter in two directions. A small number, including myself, turn right and start walking back towards the town centre, but the vast majority file in the direction of the park and ride, some to get the bus, but many to get into their cars.

This obviously isn’t a criticism. In the south of England land cost and availability are both at a premium. You build a football ground where you can. And for all the lack of romance that comes with a sponsored name—The Camping World Community Stadium—what is very clear from this visit is that there is a community football club here. The men are 7th in an Isthmian League Premier Division which doesn’t have a clear favourite, this season. But as with so many other clubs of this nature, it isn’t only about the men any more. A women’s team, walking teams and numerous youth teams are as much a part of this football club as them, now.

I phone dad from Sainsbury’s on the south side of the town centre. It’s almost 5.30 and I’ll be missing the first half-hour of the Spurs vs Liverpool match. Never mind. There probably won’t be that much drama. And he’s okay. He sounds fairly bright, and when I get back we watch together, chortling at the absurdity of the Dias offside and the daftness of Diogo Jota for getting himself yellow carded for a second time in a couple of minutes. When Joel Matip whacks the ball into the top corner with ten seconds to play, dad thinks for a moment that Liverpool have won the match.

“That was a bit of luck”, I tweet upon the final whistle. “Freak”, comes a reply from somebody who doesn’t even follow me on there, all riled up because the team they watch on the television lost a football match and they don’t think it’s fair. I’m not even sure how they might have even found my tweet, given that it made no reference to the Liverpool Football Club that they love so much that they’ll just go on and insult a stranger over them. But that’s the modern world, really isn’t it? Angry now, think later.

My finger doesn’t even hover over the block button, though I am grateful for the timely reminder of why I give the Premier League such increasingly short shrift. I’ve got enough going on at the moment, so I press the button and move on with my evening. I don’t need the deep unhappiness that comes from supporting A Big Club contaminating my mood right now. I prefer my football played at a venue where people will be genuinely excited about reaching the Fourth Qualifying Round of the FA Cup. It’s better for the soul.