One in the eye for Pagham on another day out in the hills

It's not so much that I'm scared of clowns. It's just that I don't want one to eat me.

You know there’s something going on locally when it’s standing room only on the West Coastway Line on a Saturday morning. The train between Worthing and Brighton is usually bustling at this time of day, but on this particular morning it’s standing room only. The Premier League, in their infinite wisdom, have scheduled Brighton vs Crystal Palace for three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and, while online discourse seems to be tilting in the direction of this not being a ‘proper’ derby (whatever that means), such platitudes count for little among those whose who enjoy standing with their arms outstretched in public, in what I’ve come to call “Goading Jesus” mode, and Brighton town centre is probably worth avoiding today.

But on this particular Saturday, at least I’ll be avoiding the energy-draining chaos of Brighton railway station. This morning I’m alighting at Hove and swinging north, up towards the South Downs. Good job, too, considering how busy it all seems. But when the fog of people on the platform there briefly clears, a new issue presents itself. On the platform opposite, heading back in the direction of Worthing, Portsmouth and Southampton, there is a clown, full face make-up, the lot, sitting alone on a bench. I have to be surreptitious about taking a photograph, because I cannot be certain what the ramifications of them seeing me doing so might be.

Now, I’m not scared of clowns, but I certainly don’t want one to eat me and I carry what I consider to be a normal amount of concern that John Wayne Gacy might rise from the grave and exact some form of revenge on humankind as a zombie-clown. I try to comfort myself with a reminder that at least the clown will be travelling in the opposite direction to me, but this is soon usurped by the possibility that it might be hiding in my front garden when I get home.

I’m on my way to Hassocks, which is probably best known locally for being one of the last stops on the London to Brighton train line. They’re in the Premier Division of the Southern Combination Football League, and they’re going reasonably well. And after the week before’s shambolic effort, which came about because two fully grown adults did not take the basic precautionary step of checking where a football match was being played before deciding to go there, this week I’m back to a militaryesque level of planning this week. This is a straightforward journey for me, so long as I can steer clear of freakin’ Pennywise or any of his buddies.

Even for a 2.00 kick-off, I’ve left too early. I’m in Hassocks just after midday and, as per the advice I’d been given before travelling, this is really just a commuter village, so sightseeing is… limited. A length of the high street and back reveals some nice details—a rather lovely school building, which looks like something out of an Enid Blyton story, and a pet shop possibly owned by the Corleone family—but if Hassocks is a tourist destination, it’s not for the facilities, it’s for the hills in which the village sits. I have enough time to spare for a pint in the pub by the railway station, and then a longer walk than necessary to get to the ground itself.

The map is clear. Their ground, The Beacon, is only a short walk away, but on my way into the village I saw a sign for the South Downs trail and a bit of countryside air will do me good. I walk out of town along it, south, past where I estimate the location of the football ground to be, and then through the Claydon Wood Natural Burial Ground, a woodland which sounds more likely to have the potential to be overrun by zombie clowns than it actually turns out to have, before turning onto the Brighton Road to walk back towards the ground. By the time I actually get there it’s gone 1.30 and I’m half-wondering where the time has gone.

There’s a bustling jollity about The Beacon this afternoon. Hassocks FC are on a good run, and a championship challenge remains a possibility. They’re in fourth place in the table, a point off second and six points off leaders Newhaven, but with a game in hand. And once in, there is something pleasingly unconventional about it all. The bar and food service joint are combined. The chips are crinkle cut and the beer comes in a can which you’re encouraged to pour into a plastic glass. And in a move which I don’t recall having seen elsewhere at a non-league ground (and if I have, it certainly hasn’t been this season), they have the PA guy piped into the bar in crystal clear clarity through their speakers. If anything, it’s almost slightly discombobulating to hear every word he says, without having to strain to make sense of it.

Their opponents, Pagham, are long-time county league rivals. Home of the world’s oldest pram race, home village of the paternal fourth great-grandfather of US president Joe Biden and the last resting place of Harold Godwinson, who may or may not have been hit in the eye with an arrow at the Battle of Hastings, Pagham is a village a couple of miles from Bognor Regis, on the other side of the county. Their team is in lower mid-table in this division following something of an error of judgement by the FA in their league reorganisations, a couple of years ago.

At the end of the season before last, Pagham were shuffled westward into the Wessex League, only to find that their players didn’t much fancy trips as far west as Dorset or as far south as the Isle of Wight. With an exodus having taken place they finished second from bottom last season (with only Alresford Town, who managed a near-heroic five points all season, below them), and were moved back into the SCFL, one suspects as much for their own good as anything else. Travel is a big deal to players who either aren’t getting paid at all or are getting paid very little.

Drink in hand, I have time to take in the warm-ups. The Pagham team do their exercises, while the coach shouts encouragement. “Come on, build it up. I want you all turned on by kick-off. I mean switched on. I don’t want you playing with boners”, he shouts. One of the Pagham players wanders over to the near sideline and takes a big huff of an inhaler. I can’t say for certain that he doesn’t tuck it into his sock afterwards, though I don’t see him getting it out again during the match. By the time kick-off comes around a crowd of what looks like just over 200 has assembled.

There are many ways in which you can watch non-league football, and of these, the park bench is much underrated. There are a couple still inexplicably bolted to the terraces at Worthing’s ground, but even Woodside Road hasn’t gone as all in on this particular feature as Hassocks. I count nine of them dotted around the ground, and its other idiosyncrasies only add to its singular charm. At one end of the ground is a large open space, behind which sit two enormous mobile phone pylons, overseeing proceedings like Ted Hughes’ Iron Man, and a mildly dilapidated looking tractor. At the other is a grass bank and a feature that I’ve definitely not seen inside a football ground before, a children’s playground.

I end up watching the entire first half from one of the park benches tucked away in the corner, and my growing paranoia about seeing a goalless draw is allayed after just a few minutes when Hassocks swing a corner over from the right and about four of their players meet the ball at the same time to bundle it into the corner of the goal. At least two of them celebrate having scored it. Eventually, it’s credited to Jack Troak. In the stand, a long-haired dachshund which it sitting on his owner’s lap starts yapping away as though he scored the goal himself. When Leon Turner collects the ball on the left, skips round a defender and shoots inside the near post to double their lead, it looks like Hassocks are on for a very comfortable afternoon.

By half-time the lead is still 2-0, and Hassocks look in control. And my afternoon has slipped into a kind of blissful reverie. I am, it’s probably reasonable to say, a busy man, a full-time single parent to 6 and 8 year olds (who attend different schools because West Sussex persists with junior, middle and high schools) with a freelance job for which I work gruellingly long hours for barely enough money to survive on. Moments of absolute peace and tranquillity can be thin on the ground.

But The Beacon offers me a solid 45 minutes of it. Sitting on a park bench with a pint of beer with a football match a few yards away would be pleasing enough at any time, but it’s at this point that the 2.00 kick-off really comes into its own. Other than Spurs Spursing things up at Goodison Park, there’s no other football going on at the moment. Nothing to distract me. No need to keep reflexively reaching for my phone. No concerns that I’m missing out on something more exciting happening elsewhere. I can just relax into the afternoon.

But Pagham aren’t quite out of this one yet. Early in the second half a flick on from a corner strikes an arm and a penalty is given. Dan Simmonds drives the ball down the middle of the goal, picks it up under his arm, carries it purposefully back to the halfway line, and puts it back down on the centre spot. Suddenly, we have a game on our hands. A Pagham free-kick from the left is smartly tipped over the crossbar. The chances aren’t quite flowing, but with the wind behind their sails Pagham look as though they can find a way back into this, while Hassocks have that slightly overburdened look of a team who’d probably thought they’d done as much as they needed to in order to get over the line only to find that actually, they haven’t yet.

Chances are thin on the ground. behind the goal, the mass rank of kit-clad children, who’d been on the pitch running around like maniacs at half-time and who assembled to watch the Pagham penalty, shouting “MISS IT, MISS IT” in a uniformly shrill prepubescent tone to little effect on the taker (who, it should be said, was at the other end of the pitch), have gone back to kicking a ball around at the top of the grass bank behind the goal.

The match is finally decided a few minutes from the end, with a second penalty kick of the afternoon, and it’s a decision that might be considered somewhat… questionable. There’s no doubt that Tobie Appleby’s tackle on the Hassocks substitute Alex Fair is a foul (Appleby himself doesn’t seem to be arguing that point), but it seemed to take place a good yard or so outside the actual penalty area itself. It’s a point that the defender seems keen to labour to the referee, but his protestations come to nothing. Another Hassocks substitute, Pat Harding, converts the penalty and the home side have the three points. 3-1 it finishes.

It’s not a result that does Hassocks a great deal of good, as the other three teams at the top of the table have all won as well, but they’re still very much in the mix. It’s their fifth win in a row and they remain six points off the top of the table with a game in hand. They play another mid-table side, Little Common, on Tuesday night, and a win would put them second. They drew at current leaders Newhaven at the end of October. The return match hasn’t yet been scheduled. It wouldn’t be that surprising if the league were holding this one back to the end of the season in the hope that it might be a championship decider, though Steyning Town and Crowborough Athletic, who currently occupy second and third place and would be leapfrogged by Hassocks with a win on Tuesday, might have something to say about that.

It took me more than an hour to circuitously meander my way from Hassocks railway station to the ground, but it takes me no longer to walk back there than Michael Olise spent on the pitch for Crystal Palace at the Amex, a few miles to the south. As per my original inspection of the map, it’s a very short and straightforward walk back and I’m on a train back to the coast by 4.15.

The thought crosses my find that I could just go into Brighton town centre, grab a drink and watch whatever tomfoolery might take place around Brighton station in the aftermath of that match, but I’ve had a couple of pints on top of a lot of walking, and I’m not really in the mood for rubbernecking. As the classified results start on Final Score I’m unlocking my front door, and I’m pleased to report that it turns out that there are no clowns waiting for me in my front garden. It’s not so much that I’m scared of clowns. It’s more that I just don’t want one to eat me. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.