There in the end: Lancing's chase for the Isthmian League play-offs remains alive
Conceding twelve goals in three games isn't the idea way to get into the play-offs, but Lancing's comfortable win against East Grinstead Town keeps their hopes alive.
We're getting towards the end of the season. Your team is in the play-off places as Easter approaches, but the sound of the thunder of the feet of your rivals is by now so loud that you can feel them rumbling through the pitch while you're playing.
It's fair to say that the last couple of weeks haven't been the most successful for Lancing FC, in the Isthmian League Division One South-East. Two Saturdays ago they lost 7-2 at Ramsgate. On Easter Saturday they were beaten 4-0 at home by Chichester City. A 1-1 draw against Horndean on Easter Monday knocked them out of the play-off places and down to sixth in the table. A comfortable looking points buffer has completely evaporated.
On just about any other Saturday throughout the whole season, a home match against third from bottom East Grinstead Town would feel like a home banker. East Grinstead, the home town of Scientology in this country, are just too far above the relegation places for getting dragged into a fight to hold onto their place in this league seems remote. With that safety can come a tendency to play as though already wearing water wings and carrying a straw donkey under one arm.
For me, Lancing is within walking distance. It's somewhat circuitous, to have to walk down to the coast, along, and back inland, but on a sunny spring day afternoon it's a pleasant enough walk. Between Worthing and Lancing is the Brooklands Nature Reserve, a little oasis of wild countryside on a bit of the coast otherwise crammed with houses and flats. As I walk along the beach I meet two swans, absolute units the pair of them, sitting on the beach willing passers-by to approach them for an arm-breaking contest. It’s their beach now. The rest of us are only there as a result of their good grace.
It is one of the smaller annoyances to my life that there is no quicker way to get into the middle of Lancing from East Worthing than to have to bowl down to the coast road, along for a few minutes and then back up to get back into the village centre. It’s not that it isn’t a pleasant walk. The sun is shining and there are a lot of people out and about on the beach, walking their dogs, hang-gliding and otherwise waiting with increasing impatience for the summer to start after months of dismal winter rain and storms.
It’s unlikely that Lancing will ever be much of a tourist destination, but there’s plenty to recommend a walk from the coast into the village centre; St Michael’s Church (former vicar - father of this Substack’s former podcast co-host), the Luxor, which used to be a cinema but hasn’t been for years, though it’s looking in somewhat better health now than it did a few years ago, and the curious footbridge that straddles the railway line for use by pedestrians and cyclists who simply cannot wait the four minutes it takes from when the barriers are coming down until they rise again after a train has passed through.
Culver Road grows on you, the more regularly you visit it. An extremely short walk from the village centre, this is the home of the Sussex County FA, and the ground remains plastered with more signs advertising that fact than the local team. And although it's quite a modern ground, with a 3g pitch and a sandstone-bricked main stand, offices and bar, it's already showing one or two signs of ageing.
The power supply to a couple of the floodlight pylons has already completely rusted away, while the one of the advertising boards that runs the length of the roof of the stand is missing. One of the PA speakers gives out no more than bursts of static which may be aliens trying to communicate with us, while signs warn supporters not to stand on the grass banks that surround much of the pitch, though it hardly feels as though any of the stewards would come racing over if you did. There are goalposts everywhere. I count 16, but might quite easily have got this wrong.
But these little scars only add character to the place. As at many clubs at this level of the game, Lancing are as much about their community as they are about the men’s football team alone, these days. They have a women’s team as well as a men’s team, and their youth set-up runs 17 teams from the Little Lancers (three to five year-olds who have sessions on a Saturday morning) right the way up to the under-18s.
There are a lot of kids at this afternoon’s match, many of whom are wearing Lancing gear. These kids might not be here in a few years’ time. The lure of Premier League football ten miles away in Brighton will be strong, and Chelsea do a huge amount of youth-sifting in this part of the world. But they’re here for now, and they seem to be enjoying the occasion. Whatever the future may or may not hold, in the present it’s been a pleasant surprise all season to see so many youngsters at matches more or less every Saturday.
It’s certainly an upgrade on the groups of old men who were the only people at these games thirty or forty years ago. When I was teenager, I worried about what the future might hold for the non-league game because no-one seemed to be coming through to succeed the old codgers who’d been going for decades. I don’t worry about that so much these days; most likely because I’m rapidly becoming one of them myself.
Even at this level of the game, there are often nerves in the air at this late stage of the season when there’s something left to play for, and for 45 minutes Lancing are firing blanks. They create chance upon chance but fail to take any of them. By the time the break comes around, some in the crowd are nervously looking at the scores from elsewhere.
It’s a little complicated at the top of the table. The top two, Cray Valley PM and Ramsgate, are locked in a title race with Cray Valley ahead by three points with four games to play. But below this are three other play-off places with six teams playing for them. At half-time, Herne Bay are only drawing at Littlehampton, but Three Bridges and Chichester City are already winning, Three Bridges against third-placed Sittingbourne. Three points might not be enough to get them back into the top five.
Eleven minutes into the second half, the nerves finally start to ease off a little when Lukas Franzen-Jones gives the home side. The exhalation that comes from the crowd as the ball hits the net feels as much like a relief as anything else. Finally, finally the difference between the teams starts to show. East Grinstead start to wilt as the afternoon goes on and with four minutes to play Charlie Bennett, who’s playing his last game for the club before leaving for Australia, doubles their lead, while in the last minute Danny Howick adds a third after sailing through the East Grinstead defence with relative ease.
The scoring of the second Lancing goals sees one of the East Grinstead supporters lose his patience with the way the afternoon has been going. His ire turns to the home supporters. “WHERE WERE YOU BEFORE CHRISTMAS?”, he shouts accusingly. He might be interested to know that two of the last three home matches before Christmas that Lancing played were watched by crowds of over 300; more than are here today. “YOU’RE ONLY HERE BECAUSE YOUR TOP FIVE”, he adds, apparently oblivious to the fact that they’re sixth in the table. There’s some laughter at all of this, particularly when the third goal comes a few seconds after the end of his little rant.
So, polite rounds of applause all round, and off we all go. The weather has turned over the course of the afternoon, the spring sunshine gave way to a light shower early in the second half. Such is the nature of living on the south coast, where you’re guaranteed at least three types of weather in the space of any given 24 period.
East Grinstead will probably survive relegation. With three games of the season to play, they have a seven-point buffer over the bottom two, Beckenham Town and Erith & Belvedere. Lancing, meanwhile, are eight points behind Sittingbourne, six points behind Chichester and two behind Three Bridges, and are a point ahead of Herne Bay. With Ashford Town, Sittingbourne and Hythe Town to play in their final three matches of the season, there’s still all to play for in the Isthmian League Division One South-East. Meanwhile back on the beach, the swans take a short back to the nature reserve. At least they didn’t break any arms, this afternoon.
