Shoreham run ragged by Crows

It's only a short hike along the coast to the home of Leo Sayer and Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, where the local football team are, as they have been for much of the last few years, struggling.

Even though I’m almost exactly the same age as Pong, there’s nothing that makes you feel quite as old as watching your kids play video games. Mine play Minecraft more than anything else. It’s good for their education, apparently, although it doesn’t really feel like it when they’re arguing over whose turn it is—despite the fact that Minecraft allows them to both play at the same time—to a point at which one of them says to the other, “You don’t deserve to live”. I try to let them resolve their own arguments without fighting, but sometimes you just have to step in.

It’s Valentine’s weekend and there doesn’t seem to be much love in the air in the wider world at the moment. But in our little corner of the universe, things are different. My girlfriend is here for the weekend, and the kids, who aren’t usually with me on weekends but are on this occasion, love spending time with her. The night before, she was feeling cold and put on an extra layer to wrap up, all of which made it look a little as though she’d decided to go home within a couple of hours of having got here. Older was horrified and immediately jumped out of his seat. “You’re not leaving, are you???”, he said, adding the three exclamation marks himself through his tone of voice as he ran over and clung onto her waist. He’s got a lot of love to give, this kid.

This weekend’s journey is short but sweet. It’s an eight minute train journey and a 15 minute walk to Middle Road, home of The Edgar & Wood Stadium and Shoreham Football Club. I don’t usually mention sponsors names for stadia unless I have no choice, but on this occasion I’m making an exception. Sponsorship money is valuable to clubs of this size, and they deserve recognition for getting involved. Furthermore, I don’t even know what Edgar & Wood do. Turns out they make things that look like this, I presume. So, if you need something that looks like that, you now know where to go.

Except it turns out not to be an eight minute train journey and a fifteen-minute walk. We’re in Shoreham-by-Sea an hour before kick-off, and the bijou size of the town centre affords us the opportunity to have a bit of a wander around. It’s pretty, and has in the last few years has had a bit of money spent on it. It’s packed with artisan little shops and second hand places. On the corner opposite the 11th century St Mary de Haura church in the town centre is a little cafe with an almost baffling array of cakes in the window, all of which look like they were definitely made by somebody’s kindly nan.

The WH Smiths looks like a disgrace and has a cage in the doorway with a notice attached to it warning the public not to move it, even though it probably restricts anyone of a certain width from even getting inside. Younger asks me why it’s there. “Well, if they see anyone they don’t like the look of you they lock you in that cage, and the thing is… they call you “WH Smith” for the entire time you’re in there. Nobody knows why”. Younger looks at me horrified for a moment. I roll my eyes and he laughs. You need to stop blindly believing everything I say, kiddo.

Shoreham-by-Sea is… nice. It’s home to the mouth of the River Adur, a harbour, a large power station, and the UK’s oldest airport, which is now known, in that disingenuous way that airports do this sort of thing, as Brighton City Airport, even though it’s in a different county to Brighton itself. It’s recorded in the Domesday Book as having had a population of 76. It’s home to just over 20,000 people, nowadays.

Its most famous son is the Grammy award-winning Leo Sayer (actual first name: Gerard), but he’s not the only famous—or indeed infamous—person to have called this little town home. Nicholas Van Hoogstraten was born here too. He’s a strong contender for the worst person that Sussex has ever produced, which is really going some, when you consider that Eric Gill, Aleister Crowley and Michael Fabricant have also called these twin counties home.

In football terms, it’s a mixed bag. Michael Standing, the former player and now an agent and close friend of Gareth Barry, was issued with a six-month ban by the FA in July 2024 over his involvement at Swindon Town. But then, Marcus Tudgay, whose distinguished career took in almost 100 appearances for Derby County, more than 200 for Sheffield Wednesday, and over 150 for Nottingham Forest and Coventry City, was born here too.

We procrastinate on our wander up towards the ground for long enough to be arriving at the turnstile until five to three, but there are still no signs of the teams once we’re inside. Last time I was here it appeared that the club was still having issues with the concept of accepting contactless payments, but this doesn’t appear to be the case any more. Furthermore, there is a reasonably large number of away supporters here too who’ve travelled down from Crowborough.

The two teams are in very different places at the moment. Shoreham are fourth from bottom in the SCFL Premier Division and five points above the relegation places, with nerves having sharpened a little following a defeat at second-bottom Saltdean United last week. Crowborough Athletic, on the other hand, need to keep winning. Hassocks are 17 points clear at the top of the table, but below them is a clutch of six clubs with six points between them, and with only four play-off spots available come the end of the season. Crowborough are in the middle of this, in fourth place.

Eventually the teams emerge from the corner of the ground, Shoreham in blue with white sleeves, Crowborough in a striking away kit of jade and red, which bears a passing similarity to what Sporting Bengal United were wearing at Brentwood Town a week earlier. But our first priority is food and drink. The main persuader for the kids this afternoon is, as ever, chips. It’s the difference between them being happy to hang out inside the ground and starting to complain about wanting to visit the playground. A pint for the grown ups, fried food for the children. The way nature intended.

The team near the top of the table don’t find everything going their way, though, and midway through the first half there’s a squawk from the far end and Shoreham have the lead, the goal scored by Levi Smith. The referee is on the receiving end of some forthright comments from the away supporters over a couple of his decisions and things even start to get a little tetchy at moments, but there’s no doubt that Crowborough are making harder work of this than they need to. By half-time it’s almost four-o’clock and they haven’t looked much like scoring at all for much of the half.

We spend much of the first half meandering slowly around the ground. All the kids really care about is a patch of grass to chase each other around on and the possibility of finding some sticks to use as swords. In the small stand behind the far goal are half-a-dozen or so teenagers doing teenager things, which in this case seems to be daring one of them to climb onto the roof of this extremely rickety-looking structure while a 14-year old lad in a hi-vis jacket who I can only presume to have been either a steward or a ballboy (and no inconceivably both) looks on. There is, I’m pleased to report, no repeat of Scarborough vs Wolves in 1987.

And I do like this ground. Almost everything is packed along one side; the changing rooms—the one thing that Middle Road has in common with Old Trafford is that the teams take to the pitch from its corner—the bar, complete with a food facility built into the end of it, the main stand and a media gantry. Behind each goal are small stands. At the near end is a cover made of wood and may have been constructed without much involvement from a spirit level. At the other, it’s scaffolding and seats. Every single flag flying around the place has been tattered by the wind blowing in from the Channel.

The bar, which was completely empty a couple of minutes into the game, is packed to the rafters by half-time. It is, to be fair, extremely cold outside. The post-match is already starting to be arranged for the players. The home team get the large, leather sofas in front of a large projection TV screen that is being used during the interval for an impromptu animal silhouettes show. You can probably guess who it was (it wasn’t me). The away team get a tiny table around which you could fit at best four people, and even then only when they’re standing. This, I guess, is what they mean by ‘home advantage’.

The kids are both extremely interested in the pool table, but the risk of them accidentally whacking somebody round the back of the head with a pool cue and/or tearing the (already slightly frayed looking) baize on the table is too much of a risk for them to play on it. Nevertheless, I note from inspecting the table that I have to get a token from behind the bar in order to play, and a couple of minutes later Older finds one of these ‘tokens’ on the floor and asks me what this small, golden tablet could possibly be. It turns out to be an old pound coin (issued in 2004, which is now, as I do feel we all now need to be reasonably regularly reminded, twenty years ago), and suddenly I feel a million years old.

The second half gets under way, but I’ve found a corner of the bar from which I can see both goals and opt to stay in the warm for a while. Crowborough are turning the heat up a little, but Shoreham seem to be holding them at bay reasonably comfortably. I note with interest that they have two players in their team—who, I can only assume from the fuzzy pen pictures in the match programme, are brothers and not-inconceivably identical twins—by the name of Cousins, which amuses me greatly. As if that isn’t enough, their manager’s name is Michael Death. I could get used to this place, you know.

I leave the other three midway through the second half and step out of the bar to go and watch the match from pitchside. My timing couldn’t be much better, though it may concern Shoreham’s home supporters that this coincides with them conceding three goals in five minutes which more or less completely chucks the game away for them. The kids, meanwhile, are delighted to meet a dog who seems as pleased to see them as they are to meet her.

Marcus Goldsmith volleys into the top corner of the goal from the right hand side of the penalty area on 70 minutes, an absolutely unstoppable shot. Two minutes later, Harry Forster’s free-kick from the edge of the penalty area pings into more or less the same spot. Three minutes after this, Stephen Smith adds a third, with the aid of what looks like a huge deflection, and that’s more or less that. There’s a lot of stoppage-time added at the end, during which Goldsmith adds his second of the afternoon.

It’s 4-1 by full-time and Shoreham have a right to feel a little hard done by. It would be a stretch to say that they were the ‘better team’ for the first 70 minutes, but they were certainly matching their opponents and by the midway point in the second half were probably looking to just close things out for a precious—and in many ways unexpected three points—only to find themselves undone by two goals in three minutes about which they realistically couldn’t have been expected to do anything whatsoever. It’s tough at the bottom. The only real good news to come from the afternoon for them is that no-one else near the foot of the table has picked up anything either, so at least they’re not in a worse position come the end of the day than they were at the start of it.

It’s tough at the top too, albeit in a completely different way. Leaders Hassocks have been beaten 3-0 at Crawley Down Gatwick, meaning that their lead at the top has been ‘trimmed’ to 14 points. But since Roffey—they of the imaginary stadium—could only pick up a goalless draw from their trip to Bexhill United, Crowborough have nudged themselves up to third place in the table. They’re still 16 points off the top of the table, but the leaders’ advantage has at least been trimmed. It’s progress, of sorts.

We head back into the town centre at a leisurely pace. First up is a stop-off at the playground next to the ground, where the kids can burn off some energy, and then comes another at a corner shop so that we can buy them some candy. They’ve been exceptionally well-behaved this afternoon, and they deserve a treat. Outside the shop we’re stopped by a man on a bike wearing a Shoreham FC hat who’s imploring us to return, after possibly having had a couple of light ales earlier in the afternoon. I don’t really feel as though I need that much persuading.

They run kids teams, youth teams and a walking team from here, like many others in the area. Getting people involved is important. Somehow throughout the course of the afternoon Younger has decided that he wants to be a professional footballer, even though he’s never really played football in his life and knows more or less nothing about the game whatsoever. His interest is piqued even more when I tell him how much the best players earn.

At the level crossing by the railway station, a stroke of luck. There’s a train in three or four minutes, but a combination of some extremely undignified running and the forbearance of the train driver allow us to get home via a stop-off to get the kids the stuffed crust pizza they’ve been half-asking for all afternoon. By 8.00 they’re in bed and asleep, and we’re curled up on the sofa with a movie and some Thai food on order. Less than three hours later we’re in bed ourselves. Today has been a lot of walking. We both need a good, long night’s sleep.

Things are changing. By the start of next season, we likely won’t be living in Worthing any more and I won’t have much reason to leave my locale again. And there’s been a part of me this last few months which has started to wonder whether this nomadic football-watching lifestyle of the last couple of years is really what I even want any more. And I’ve witnessed so much kindness and good nature from the volunteers I’ve seen at matches on Saturday afternoons that I’m wondering whether next season might have me commit to one club, possibly with some volunteering on the side. I’ve been around and I’ve done my time. Perhaps it’s time to really settle down properly, and in more than one sense.

And would Shoreham be in the running in that event? Well, of course. Football clubs at this level of the game aren’t always even really about what happens to the men’s senior team between three and five on a Saturday afternoon. They’re about the youth teams, the kids teams, the women’s teams and the walking football teams. They’re about the bar and the social side of it. They’re about trying to hold together the community of a local area, a hub which can benefit its local people.

The success of this won’t be judged by whether the men’s seniors are in the Premier or First Division of the Southern Combination Football League. It will be judged by who gets the bug. Who gets involved. Whose lives are enhanced by these slightly down-at-heel clubs being there in the first place. The guy on the bike outside that shop understood this, and I did too. There’s a lot about the story of this year in my life which is yet to be written, but what I do know for certain is that whatever is coming next will be different.

And if it is to be different, why shouldn’t that be more communal? Why shouldn’t that involve being actively involved again rather than a passive observer of games over which I have no opinion on who I’d even prefer to win? On the weekend of Valentine’s Day, it doesn’t feel unreasonable to posit that whatever does come next, it has to involve me feeling much more than I have in recent years. It may be Shoreham, it may be someone else; what I knw for certain is that I have as much love in my heart as my kids. It feels as though a football club should at least get a proportion of that again.