Shoreham FC can't shake the feeling, Bexhill haven't stopped dancing yet

It's bottom versus second bottom in the SFCL Division One; will the afternoon end in too many broken hearts?

Whether your football club is ‘struggling’ or not can often be a matter of perspective. For the supporters of some clubs of a certain heft, being below the top six or seven in the Premier League can easily become a “crisis.” For others, it might be the threat of relegation. These concerns are blown wildly out of proportion, as though status—most specifically, being the biggest dawg that one can be—is the only thing that mattters.

When difficulties become financial, these concerns can take a darker turn. The things that used to matter don’t quite seem to matter quite so much for a while, as the possibility of the near-unthinkable—that club not even being being there any more—start to occupy the mind instead. As you fall down the ladders of the league system, the bad takes on more of a low-level hum. By the time you reach the nether regions of the game, the ongoing success of the men’s team starts to matter less and less. What really matters is that it exists in the first place.

You get a reminder of this as the train rumbles westward out of Brighton. About ten or twelve minutes out is a sight very familiar to regular commuters on that journey, Old Barn Way, the former home of Southwick Football Club. The ground fell into disrepair in 2020. Bit by bit, it stopped being a football ground. The pitch grew over and the goalposts came down. The roof came off what passed for a stand.

But, with junior football being played there again, work to refurbish it started in 2021 and The Russell Martin Foundation, a football charity set up by the former Albion player, made the announcement of the ground's further redevelopment in April with plans which would see the site transformed into a new £2.5m football and community hub, including a new clubhouse building and floodlit 4G pitch. Nothing has been finalised, but if approved the site is hoped to be ready for 2025. In the meantime, Southwick FC’s men’s team play on a park pitch in the Third Division South of the Mid-Sussex Football League.

A stop further along the line from Southwick at Shoreham things aren’t quite as bad, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve had a good start to the season. But then again, it’s been a strange few seasons for this particular club. The years prior to the pandemic had been a bewildering time to be one of the small band that makes up Shoreham Football Club’s supporters. They were perennial strugglers near the bottom of the Sussex County League, and when that was rearranged into the Southern Combination Football League in 2015 their fortunes didn’t improve much. Shoreham finished the 2015/16 season in 17th out of 20, spared by the remarkably dismal showing of the three teams below them, who conceded 507 goals between them.

(There’s probably a case that could be made against St Francis Rangers 2014/15 team being the worst of all-time, but there may be one to be made that collectively, they, East Preston and Hailsham Town, who occupied the bottom three places between them, might well have been. For the record, Shoreham beat St Francis 8-0 and 5-0 in the league that season and 8-0 in the FA Cup.)

Bearing in mind the above, could there have been a team less-prepared for a promotion season than Shoreham were that summer? Yet that’s what happened. The following season it looked like Haywards Heath Town would win the SCFL, but in a set of circumstances so non-league football that just reading about them should come with a complimentary cup of Bovril, Haywards Heath were fined £50 and issued with a 9 league point deduction over three matches they’d won that season in which a player, Melford Simpson, had taken part while, according to Haywards Heath website, ‘unknowingly being placed on sine die by Fisher FC for a £10 club fine’.

Shoreham, who’d had an exceptional season by improving from 17th to 2nd regardless, therefore won the title by five points and were suddenly in the Isthmian League for the first time in their history. It’s fair to say that things didn’t go too well. A year later, they returned back from whence they’d came with 8 points from their 38 league matches, having also picked up a points deduction, this time of 6 points, although on this occasion the club were also fined £2,000, not an inconsiderable amount of money at that level of the game. In 2017/18 they were relegated again, this time into Division Two of the SCFL, but the abandonment of seasons at this level of the game due to the pandemic did seem to act as an opportunity for the club to reset itself somewhat, and last season they were promoted back into the top division again as champions.

It’s probably fair to say that things haven’t gone so well for Shoreham so far this season, either. They arrive for this game rooted to the bottom of the SCFL Division One table, having picked up just a single point so far. And their opponents are just one place above them in the table, although Bexhill United had won their first league game of the season the previous Tuesday night, away to Uckfield Town. They’ve brought a number of supporters with them. The home team seem to have been largely unable to do the same.

And it’s hot. Weather warning hot. It’s been a strange old summer, weather-wise, more rain than sun other than on Saturday afternoons, when my football-watching activities have been uniformly accompanied by bright blue skies. It’s just seemed to rain a substantial amount of the rest of the time, is all. Not, I should add, that I’m complaining about this. We should probably make the rest of any summer days during which it’s safe to go outside, based on recent trends elsewhere.

The Southern Combination Football League continues to struggle with the concept of contactless payment. Following on from being taken to the bar to pay at Redhill a couple of weeks earlier, a similar situation unfolds on this occasion, except we’re left to our own devices as soon as we’ve squeezed through the turnstile. Again, what’s left of my moral compass decides to hang around at the bar, pay, and grab a pint into the bargain. Perhaps this is just how they lure you in, now.

Still, on this blisteringly hot day there is shelter to be found at the back of the north-facing stand. Every morning the sun rises to its right, and every evening it sets to its left and—crucially, on a day like this—throughout the hours between it passes behind the stand. Sitting at the back of it for the first half is like having a sample go on nature’s air conditioning, still mild enough for short sleeves but no longer leaving you feeling as though you’re slowly boiling alive. There are cobwebs, too, as well as a not inconsiderable amount of rust.

The crowd is largely gathered on this side of the pitch, with the far side being bathed in the sun. Middle Road is probably my favourite of the football grounds that are very close to me. It’s not difficult to get to, there’s a grass pitch—certainly not a given in this neck of the woods any more—a small stand, some ramshackle cover behind each goal; just enough of the feel of a football stadium for you to able to forgive the modest nature of the actual football that you’re watching.

And then there was the linesman who looked like Pete Waterman, who ran his line at what might best be described as a “gentleman’s pace”, but whose decision-making seemed pretty fresh for the weekend and who wasn’t putting up with the nonsense of a group of kids who’d liberated a spare match ball with the presumable intention of using it for a half-time kickabout on the pitch.

Of course, there will be some who will look at all of this and scoff at the idea of paying actual cashmoney to attend a match at which one of the linesmen looks like Pete Waterman, but to this I can only say, not only am I getting to watch a football match, but I'm getting to watch a football match and one of the linesmen looks like Pete Waterman. You stick to your five minute delays for VAR checks and post-match social media racist abuse, I’ll stick to my linesmen who look like Pete Waterman. Nothing’s gonna stop me now. Bexhill take the lead, a daisy-cutter of a shot which seems to squeeze between defenders as though in slow motion. They still hold that lead at half-time.

There’s no significant fightback in the second half. Bexhill run out comfortable winners in the end, 4-0, with special kudos going to their striker James Stone, who completes a hat-trick with a fourth goal from the penalty spot as Shoreham run out of steam. You first saw the heads really drop with the first goal, and by the closing stages you rather get the feeling that no-one would mind that much if the referee blew up a few minutes early. After all, England kick-off at 5.00.

Shoreham rejoice in the nickname of “The Musselmen”, but this was not a performance of which Charles Atlas would have been proud. They allowed themselves to have sand kicked in their face by the opponents from just up the coast, and more worryingly this came against the team that was second from bottom in the league. It was also the third game in a row in which they’d conceded at least three goals.

But having said that, perhaps it will turn out to be the case that Bexhill have just had a slow start to the season. After all, they’ve finished the last four seasons—with a further two having been abandoned—in 7th, 4th, 4th and 7th place in this division. There’s no particular reason to believe that they will struggle, this time around. Two straight league wins should settle a few early season nerves there, and it seems considerably more likely that they were in a false position at the bottom of the table. But that might not be the case for the home side, this season.