Words & Pictures to Follow: Horsham vs Dulwich Hamlet

A very in-form team (until last week) vs a team under new management but in pretty poor form.

To say that it’s tight at the top of the Isthmian League Premier Division would be something of an understatement. Two points separate the top four of Dover Athletic, Cray Valley PM, Dartford and Billericay Town, with Horsham in fifth, only four points adrift of them and with a game in hand on two of those four.

And Horsham had been on a run. Going into their match at mid-table Folkestone Invicta last weekend they’d won eight in row in the league, taking them into the heart of the title race itself. At half-time the score was goalless, but by full-time it was 3-0 to Folkestone and the run was over. How do they react to that?

There’s a case for saying that they couldn’t be facing much better for such a question as Dulwich Hamlet. They’ve lost their last five games in a row and have dropped to 17th place in the table. They’re only two points above the relegation places, and three of the five teams below them have at least one game in hand on them.

Dulwich have already spun the managerial roulette wheel this season. Hakan Hayrettin was sacked earlier this month after 22 months in the job, and his replacement Bradley Quinton, formerly of Enfield Town and Braintree Town, had his first home game in charge in front of a crowd of 3,334 at home against Chichester City last weekend.

Chichester arrived at Champion Hill off the back of five straight wins, but it took a 97th minute winner for them to grab all three points on this occasion, so there’s reason for some degree of optimism that he can do something with his current batch of players. Curiously, when these two teams met earlier this season, Dulwich won 5-2.

I was only last here at the end of October, but it’s dad-sitting weekend. And I need a weekend of as close to nothing as possible, because every time my weekend has consisted of something recently, that something has ended up being bad news. I’m struggling, and in several different ways, each of which feels like an extra weight on what are starting to feel like flagging shoulders.

I need a long walk—and Horsham’s ground is a good couple of miles outside town—some company—my brother-in-law is going—and an opportunity to just cast off the shackles at the end of a month which has felt like a bit of a disaster, in just about every single way.

Roffey FC are starting to become a bit of a standing joke in these weekly write-ups. They’re at home against Horsham YMCA in the SFCL Premier Division tomorrow, and I have been an admirer of their enchanted football ground for a long time now. It’s closer to where I am right now and it might even have been a tiny bit of an adventure.

But again this match has been switched, again to the new artificial pitch at Three Bridges. They did the same, the last time I was in the neck of the woods. It does rather beg the question; what’s the point of having a football pitch for a winter sport if you don’t use it in the winter in order to protect it? It is a perplexing state of affairs.

Horsham’s pitch is plastic, so there’s little that can happen weather-wise that would result in their match being called off, and at this time of year I appreciate that degree of security. It’s also a perfect pitch, as so many of them are these days. One of the old mannish opinions that I have is that football is always better when it’s played on an absolutely terrible pitch.

But, it has to be said, they’re increasingly rare, these days. Indeed, I’m not sure I’ve even seen a really bad one, like properly churning up, since The Pilot Field at Hastings, and that was getting on for a year ago and on a day when not that many matches were on, on account of the weather. And I won’t be seeing one this weekend, either. The nearest I’ll get to the earthy scent of mud will be those little grey balls which I think are terrible for the environment (but for all I know may not be, these days).

Until last Saturday, Horsham were only two points off the top of the Isthmian League Premier Division, and it says a lot for how congested the top of the table is that the six points off the top of the table that they are looks like such a big gap. A win for them could put them back in the chase, and with a third of the season still to play for, they’re definitely still in it. Dulwich are in it too, albeit in a very different way.

Words and pictures to follow, on Sunday.