Words & Pictures to Follow; Shoreham vs AFC Varndeanians

We don't don football matches on Christmas Day any more but we still do on Boxing Day, and at funny times, too.

It is one of the strangest things about the football calendar that Boxing Day is one of its busiest days of the year, when there is so little public transport. Indeed, until the 1960s matches were played on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day. The last time a match was played on Christmas Day in England was in 1965, between Blackpool and Leyton Orient at Bloomfield Road.

But it's also worth remembering that it's easy to see the past through rose-tinted spectacles when the reality was more complex than oil paintings of pictures of happy children receiving gifts. In the 1920s, say, if you were living in or close to poverty, your home may not be somewhere you’d want to be all day during the winter, while there might not be much food or many presents. Football offered a cheap afternoon's diversion, but as living standards rose, Christmas Day became increasingly home and family oriented. By the mid-1960s, these matches had largely fallen from favour.

Yet Boxing Day remains. But for a good number of us, this particular day is somewhat restrictive, at least for those among us without a car. With no trains and a limited bus service, my options for a football match to clear the old pipes are restricted to the very local indeed, and to further complicate things I'm home alone with the kids for Christmas this year, meaning that I will be accompanied by two gurning monkeys who make travelling more than a couple of hundred yards feel like a trip up the north side of K2.

There are three teams within walking distance of my house—Worthing, Worthing United and Lancing—and they're all away. Lewes are at home and that's achievable by bus, but it would be two long bus journeys and it feels like too much of an effort. More achievable are Arundel and Shoreham in the Southern Combination Football League, who are both at home and a direct bus route from the bottom of my road. I've been to both before and I know how to get to either. Shoreham win the day.

But there's another catch. The SCFL have, for reasons best known to themselves, decided to schedule all of their Boxing Day fixtures for 11am kick-offs. Now, I have been racking my brains for days trying to think of a good reason for this. Matches played at this time of day usually fall into the category of, “well, we've all got better things to be doing today”. I asked my Bluesky hivemind and they had various explanations, ranging from “to punish the hungover” and “spite” to “groundhoppers”.

Whatever, whatever, whatever. It's an 11am kick off at Middle Road in Shoreham for their SCFL Premier Division game against AFC Varndeanians. Shoreham, it has to be said, are not having a very good season. They’re fourth from bottom in the table with sixteen points from eighteen games, with only Lingfield, Saltdean United and Little Common below them.

Shoreham have been having an eventful time of things these last few years, and all after decades of having done very little whatsoever. They were one of the founding member clubs of the Sussex County League in 1920, winning it four times, and it was the last of those wins that set in motion the chain of events that leads us to where we are today. After almost a century of simply bobbling between the League’s two divisions, winning it those first three times had come without consequence. There was a route up, but there was an application process for which many clubs didn’t have the resources.

But in 2017, winning that league did most definitely come with one very significant consequence; promotion, to Division One South-East of the Isthmian League. It’s easy to snigger at what the ‘differences’ are between players at this level of the game, but better players will go where there’s more money being paid, whether there’s several tens or several tens of thousands a week being offered.

The 2017/18 season was an unmitigated disaster for Shoreham. They were relegated straight back from whence they came with eight points from 46 matches, having conceded 138 goals. As if sustained by the momentum of how severe that relegation was, they were relegated again at the end of the following season, this time into Division One of the SCFL. At that point the pandemic kicked in, forcing the abandonment of two straight seasons, and that reset seems to have done them some good. They were promoted back to the Premier Division two years ago as champions and finished 15th last season.

Old Varndeanians changed their name to AFC Vardeanians when they joined what is now the SCFL in 2015. They were promoted from the Second Division at the first attempt and again in 2021, on the basis of their results over the two previous abandoned seasons. Since then, however, they’ve struggled. Over the last three seasons they’ve conceded 89, 90 and 95 goals, and finished 18th, 17th and 17th. They haven’t won in the FA Vase since 2020/21, and they’ve only ever won once in the FA Cup, in 2019/20. That they’re 11th in the table going into this match is noteworthy.

And I have to admit, I do like their ground, Middle Road, which is a fairly familiar sized ground at that level, with a bar and changing rooms in one corner, a bit of cover behind each goal which looks as though it could potentially blow away in a storm, and a small stand which is at least partly covered in cobwebs. At a match there once, a friend saw they had sambuca for sale behind the bar, whereupon the barman poured us half a pint each, draining the bottle completely. I can remember more about the first half of that match than I could about the second.

Of course, that was a very long time ago and things are very different nowadays. I am a responsible parent with children. I can absolutely assure everyone reading this that I will not be drinking at 11 o’clock on Boxing Day morning, though it turns out that I am, I will be likely holding both my kids and the Southern Combination Football League responsible for it.

Merry Christmas everybody. I should add since my little ‘un is a little under the weather this match may be under threat, so if there’s no match for us on Boxing Day then I do apologise, but I do have to carry out a pitch inspection on him, first thing on Thursday morning.