Words & Pictures to Follow: Worthing United vs Storrington

From Essex to Sussex, this weekend's match brings a return to more familiar ground.

It’s been almost a year and a half since I last paid a visit to Worthing United, Worthing’s ‘other’ team. It was cold, is my lingering recollection of it. Good lord, how much has changed since then. I feel unrecognisable in so many ways, in comparison with then. No matter how tricky things may be these days, at Ieast I’m not as hollowed out as I was then. At that particular point in my life, I was existing rather than living.

This particular weekend is the quiet before a storm. A lot of changes are coming but this particular weekend, all is still and calm. I have the kids this weekend (so don’t be inviting me out clubbing, any of you), but not for the afternoon. I’ve had a look at the weather forecast, and while it might be a little fresh out it should at least be sunny. Second weekend in a row; I was out in the sunshine at Basildon last week, too.

But Worthing United isn’t a place about which I can say too much. They play at Lyon’s Farm, adjacent to a trading estate on the north-east side of town, and I do rather feel at times as though I’ve said everything I have to say about this town at the best of times. I was at a match at Woodside Road just three weeks ago. But while Worthing FC remain very much a club on the up, United are much more in stasis. They’ve never played above the division above this one.

The top end of Division One of the Southern Combination Football League requires some unpicking. There are only two promotion places, and only the champions go up. The title race is essentially between Seaford Town and Forest Row, with Godalming Town in fourth place and then a fifteen point gap to fifth. (If you noticed that I didn’t mention third place, that’s because the team in that position, Dorking Wanderers B, aren’t eligible for promotion.)

So sixth place is enough for a playoff place and there are effectively two still available, but there are four teams from fifth to eighth all tied on 49 points, and Worthing United are in among that four alongside Infinity, AFC Uckfield Town and Chessington & Hook United. As far down as 14th the gap is still only seven points, though with only six games left to play it seems likely that it’ll be two from the above four.

Their average attendance this season is 103, which is ten up on last season. The ground is, as I’ve mentioned previously, not a particularly convenient place to get on, across a dual-carriageway and tucked between a retail park and the base of the South Downs. It affords some spectacular views and is convenient for both a Sainsbury’s or a Toby Carvery. Just a thought.

But the match will likely be sparsely attended. Big Worthing are also at home against Hampton & Richmond in the National League South, with their title charge having stuttered slightly with a defeat in their game in hand on those just below them on Tuesday night. It seems unlikely that any floating voter would take this over that.

Their opponents are Storrington, who are 15th in the table with 39 points. They’re already mathematically clear of the relegation places, and this is a game that Worthing United should be winning comfortably. But Storrington have a bit of history. They’re 143 years old, having been formed in 1882, the same year as Tottenham Hotspur.

They joined the Sussex County League 49 years ago and have been bouncing around it ever since. Last season, they won the Division Two title but evidently the step up has been a bigger challenge. Mission accomplished, though, with mid-table stability this time around.

In a way, there is something fundamentally pleasing about these clubs that bounce around at this level of the game, ambitions tempered by decades of experience that what matters is the club existing in the first place, the opportunities it gives players and the role it plays in its community, rather than any particular ambitions of greatness. Neither of these clubs have played above or below this league in decades, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest. There’s a beauty to their stillness, a poise to their calm. They can get promoted or get relegated, but they remain in this league, continuing to turn out a team every week.

I worry about the amount of ‘ambition’ in football. It’s been the death of a far greater number of clubs than its been the making of. None of this is to take anything away from Big Worthing, of course. Their progress over the previous decade has been remarkable. But there are hundreds of non-league football clubs just plugging away, doing their thing, the solid base upon which the rest of the game in this country is built. On a weekend such as this, perhaps I need that stillness.

Words and pictures to follow, on Sunday.