Whitehawk defy the weather to get their game on and keep Wembley in their sights

The FA Trophy isn't quite what it was but the scent of Wembley in the air, so a local derby with no other matches being on anywhere is enough to tempt a big crowd to East Brighton.

As the train creaks along the Sussex coast towards Brighton shortly after 1.00 on yet another rainy, blustery Saturday afternoon, through Lancing, Shoreham-by-Sea, Southwick, Portslade and Hove, I’m still wrapped up with thinking of ways in which this afternoon could go wrong. I've been blessed so far this season. Only one complete washout of a weekend without a game, no goalless draws (I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw one of those in person), and even a couple of penalty shootouts. But when you catastrophise in the way that I do, the next almighty fork in the road is always just around the corner.

The decision had been a fairly straightforward one. Whitehawk vs Lewes in the Second Round of the FA Trophy. It has a lot to recommend it; a bit of a local derby, at a ground I'm familiar with but haven't visited since well before the pandemic. And it's hardly as though I had much choice, on this particular weekend. Another international break had already cut a big enough hole in the fixture list, and on top of that there weren't many other games surviving several days of inclement weather in this neck of the woods. Not for the first time this season, “MATCH POSTPONED” and “GAME OFF” were both trending on Twitter on Saturday morning. It was raining in Worthing, and if anything the forecast for Brighton was worse. My back-up game at Shoreham fell foul of the weather at 10.15.

The Whitehawk FC Twitter account was confident, but I was less so. I checked on and off all morning, before I left for the station, and again as I stepped onto the train. This is a time commitment for me, 25 minutes on the train followed by an hour's walk at the other end. But it’s also a body commitment, these days. I'm 51 years old, for God's sake. I can't undertake to three mile walks for no good reason any more. I need to preserve what's left of the internal components of my knees.

In Brighton, the rain is essentially heavy mist. It's a long walk through Kemptown to East Brighton, up and down hills which feel simultaneously so familiar and distant. Brighton was home to me from 2006 until 2014, but I’ve now lived in Worthing longer than I lived there. Like a lot of other people, I was nudged westward by the vertiginously rising cost of living in Brighton. Nowadays, I wonder how much further west there may be to nudge me in the future.

On this occasion Google Maps hasn't taken into account that a more direct route to The Enclosed Ground is now available, meaning that my previously familiar ways of getting there from the main road, Wilson Avenue—half-tumbling down a steep hill like a Gloucestershire cheese-roller or following a road that takes you toward then away from the ground about four times, each time past the same caravan park, before you get to the entrance—are no longer needed. But for once, the map’s assumption of an hour’s walk turns out to be somewhat overstated. Heck, I even have time to stop off and get a coffee on the way through.

Like much of non-league football, my relationship with the FA Trophy isn't what it was. One of my fondest football memories involves this competition. In 1982, when Enfield beat Altrincham at Wembley, all four of my family were there, both parents, me and my sister. To the best of my knowledge, it's the only live football match my mum ever went to.

I've attended further Trophy finals since then—Enfield again in 1988, Cheltenham vs Southport in 1998, and Grimsby Town vs Wrexham in 2013, the latter two most definitely on a whim—but in a football world in which promotion is everything, it was probably always inevitable that the Trophy would lose some of its appeal over time. The National League playoff final is the Non-League End of Season Match That Matters nowadays, with the Trophy final now rolled into a day of two finals alongside it's younger sibling, the FA Vase.

Whitehawk FC has changed a lot since the first time I first came here, more than a decade ago. That was in 2010 for an FA Vase quarter-final against Marske United. The travelling supporters had been on a coach from Cleveland, drinking since six in the morning, and it showed. They drew 1-1 (Whitehawk won the replay and then lost in the semi-finals), but the match was marred by a considerable crowd disturbance during the second half.

Rumour had it at the time that a group of Brighton hooligans had half-attached themselves to the club after getting banned from all 92 League grounds. I didn't know then whether there was any truth to it—this is the sort of rumour that often starts at non-league clubs after trouble at a ‘big’ match—and I still don't. What I do know is that the next time I went there I saw someone get punched spark out in the bar at half time, again.

But the supporters certainly have changed a lot since then, with a new influx having adopted an ultra culture years ago. This is now one of the more inclusive clubs that you can visit in the south of England; a trans pride flag flies behind the goal the home team are attacking. During those previous years of being bankrolled, Whitehawk got as high as the National League South, but those funding the club it didn't stay, even after the club bought the old South Stand from Withdean and installed it at both ends of their ground. Whitehawk slipped down to the fourth rung of the non-league game before getting promoted back to the third at the end of last season.

I spent the previous Saturday afternoon in the Withdean’s North Stand. This week, I'm in the South Stand. Well, for a bit. Is it fair to ask how long these ‘temporary’ stands are supposed to last? Because this one was being used at Withdean more than two decades ago. It moves as I step onto it, and occasionally makes slightly unnerving creaking noises. But in contrast with the 30-odd attendance for the match I was at a week earlier the crowd for this match is 723, the largest since the 1,428 who turned out to see Whitehawk get promoted at the end April with a 1-0 win against Hythe Town in the Division One South-East play-off final.

So The Enclosed Ground, another ground now carrying a sponsor’s name which doesn’t stick in the memory, is something of a hotch-potch, never less than interesting, with its small main stand set back about fifteen yards from the pitch and the side opposite completely closed off. The bar and food are both inside the same building, which makes it busy to the point of chaotic.

Elsewhere, it’s a curious combination of former county league ground and quasi-EFL ground. Excess seats and supports that they didn't have the room for are shut away in one corner of the ground, but what they have found the room for are at least imposing, and it should be added that the view of the Sussex Downs can be spectacular. From the top of the uncovered stand at the top end of the ground, on a good day you can see also the sea peeking through on the horizon behind it.

The floodlights are already on prior to kick-off. Winter is coming. But the crowd is large and boisterous, with a sizeable number having made the six-mile journey down from Lewes. There are only three places between these two teams in the Isthmian League Premier Division table at kick-off (Whitehawk are in 9th place and Lewes in 12th, though the visitors have slipped 14th by the end of the afternoon thanks to matches being played elsewhere), but Lewes start the game stampeding down the hill towards the Whitehawk goal and it's no great surprise when they take an early lead.

The travelling supporters are less than complimentary about their hosts at times, particularly their personal hygiene habits. But their celebrations don't last for long. Within six minutes Whitehawk are level again, and what follows from here is the dissolution of their afternoon. By half-time it's 3-1 to Whitehawk, a penalty driven straight down the middle following a trip inside the penalty area and an angled, David Narey-esque twenty yarder which is good enough to prompt the PA guy to bellow “GOLLLLLLLLLLL, PICK THAT ONE OUT!”, before recovering his composure, perhaps remembering that the microphone was switched on all along, and announcing the name of the goalscorer instead. Never change, non-league football.

Lewes haven’t had an especially strong season, so far. The women’s team are leaving the men’s team behind; literally, in some senses. An offer from an outside investment company to buy a 51% stake in the women’s team has been accepted by the club’s membership, admittedly on a relatively low voting turnout of 42%. Whatever happened regarding that vote the decision has been made now, and with nearby Brighton & Hove Albion now planning a purpose-built stadium for their women’s team, quite what the future will now hold for ‘Equality FC’ is somewhat up in the air.

But those questions are for another day. By the interval in this match it still feels as though Whitehawk’s lead may be more precarious than anything else. It looks at a glance as though a second Lewes goal carries the likelihood of setting the cat back among the pigeons, and with the prospect of a penalty shootout after 90 minutes should they manage a comeback, the second half feels like it should be compelling.

And then… it isn't, particularly. Shows what I know. Lewes have little to offer going uphill, and Whitehawk have better chances to extend their lead. At lower levels of the game than this, where the fitness of some of the players might be considered patchy at best, playing uphill or downhill makes a difference.

But while it feels as though something like this shouldn't make as much of a difference to professional or semi-professional players, Lewes barely get out of second gear in the second half. One goal, you suspect could suddenly make the whites of Whitehawk eyes considerably more visible, but it doesn't much feel as though Lewes are going to get close to that point.

If anything, the highlight of the second half turns out to be the chips I finally order when the hubbub inside the bar area finally dies down after half-time. They are, by a considerable distance, the best chips I've ever had inside a football ground. Back in the covered stand again—the drizzle, which tailed off before 3.00, has returned—a dog watches me eat them with sufficient diligent attention to persuade me that if he had opposable thumbs, a notebook and pencil, he’d have been taking notes. The sadness in his eyes is obvious, but these chips are covered in sriarcha mayonnaise and I really don't want to be responsible for the owner having to clear up behind a dog with an explosive rear end in a couple of hours’ time. On this occasion, he has to go without.

It’s not than another hour’s walk is beyond me, but I know that I have a two pound coin in my pocket, and as I walk past the bus stop near the ground which takes you back into Brighton town a bus pulls up, allowing me to save myself both valuable time and precious energy by jumping on it. It’s even passing by the railway station on its way to Hove. I’m on a train back to Worthing by six o’clock. Catastrophism? What catastrophism? My forty-plus year record of never having had a Saturday afternoon ruined by turning up at a game only to find that the weather has got in the way of it being played remains intact.

If Wembley does get into the nostrils as teams progress through this competition, for now that aroma remains distant. Whitehawk are still five rounds from Wembley and even though the teams of the National League haven’t even entered yet there were forty ties being played up and down the country in this round alone. But they’ve picked up £3,750 for getting through—there’s a consolation £1,000 for Lewes— and while singing, “Que sera sera, whatever will be will be” may still be a tiny bit premature with the biggest guns in the competition still waiting to make their debuts in it, they’re still in with a shout.