THE GREAT RESET

 

Fleet Spurs 3 Denmead 4

Hampshire Premier League – 29th August 2023

 

Relegation. Sometimes, there is a crushing inevitability about it. You can look at a club on day one of the season and confidently predict a slow, lingering death of a season. Other times, a club has mishandled every big decision over a season, shoot themselves repeatedly in the foot, and their unexpected demise will stun the supporters. The term “too big to go down” can also apply, but broadly speaking, any club that gets relegated gets what they deserve. In some situations, a club can point to bad luck, a sliding doors moments when the giddy heights of mid-table swap places with a league table showing a capital “R” next to their name, below a dotted line, possibly even with a different shaded background highlighting their end of season status.

Leeds United, from the moment they slipped out of Champions League football in the early part of the century, were financially and administratively mismanaged into League One. Luton Town, who were essentially one victory away from taking their place in the inaugural Premier League, suffered relegation to the Conference on the back of mismanagement and the severity of punishments delivered by the Football Association. Their triumphant return to the top flight has drawn confident predictions of their immediate relegation this season back to the Football League. In 1997, Hereford lost their status as a member of the ninety-two in a final day showdown with their immediate rivals for the sole relegation spot, a culmination of years of slow malaise, a 1-1 draw ending their league membership. Their opponents that day, Brighton, used their reprieve as a chance to ultimately reset, and they now sit as a model for how modern football clubs should be run.

Further down the pyramid, another factor is often an inability to assemble, and maintain, a competitive squad. Where players can be signed on seven days’ notice on the promise of an extra five pounds in their weekly pay packet (in some cases, I would imagine, raising their wage to five pounds), this can add an additional challenge to managers juggling training, match-days, and their own day jobs. Travel, at a level when players don’t receive expenses, can play a factor as well, so  a club being shifted from one league to another as part of the annual non-league reshuffle can play a part in the decision of where players choose to spend their Saturday afternoons. Another important factor: everyone wants to play in a winning team. So, when a team starts the season badly, when the wheels have come off before the schools have reopened, the motivation of players to hang around, and new players to sign-on can be loose.

When I first moved to Farnborough, my interest in attending football had waned. My wife had started playing rugby union, so our weekends tended to be spent in and around a rugby club, whether that was as season ticket holders at Harlequins, or watching her put herself through masochistic levels of pain every Sunday. I’d go to occasional football matches with my uncle, or watch friends play in Sunday league cup finals, but football was something that had lost interest for me. Having spent a few years running the line for my wife’s team, I decided to formalize my knowledge of rugby’s myriad, strange and contradictory laws by taking up the whistle myself. Saturdays were spent in the middle of a pitch along the A3 corridor, ruining thirty players’ weekends with my whistle, and then supporting my wife the following day. Rugby took over.

It wasn’t until 2015 that I started to venture back onto the terraces. Following a spell dealing with anxiety and depression, I first went to watch Reading Women (and purchased a season ticket that season). Bitten by the bug again, I searched out other local clubs. Always being a non-league fan – I was first taken to Hendon by my father before reaching my teenage years – I had no problem watching football at the lowest of levels. Farnborough weren’t really an option, as they were league rivals of Hendon at various stages. Aldershot, at this time, I still had an antipathy towards dating back to their days in the Isthmian League – I was in attendance for their first defeat as a reformed club at Claremont Road in a League Cup tie. It was the first time I had ever seen police called to a game, as one of the Aldershot fans tried to discuss several contentious decisions with the referee in the middle of the game. So, looking at my local map, I found another option, situated a mile from my work.

Fleet Spurs are, in every possible way, the archetypal club at level ten of the football pyramid. Run by volunteers, attendances in double figures, a welcoming clubhouse, with a small, covered stand to protect from the elements during the winter months. I had first visited them shortly after the birth of our daughter with some friends, mainly taking the opportunity to get out of the house for an afternoon. It was perfect. Cheap admission (Aldershot by comparison were charging £20 at that time), friendly people doing everything on match-day, the chance to have a beer without it being served in a plastic cup by a bored teenager earning their minimum wage with minimum enthusiasm. These people did this, like many others up and down the land every single weekend, because of a sense of duty, a sense of pride. I liked it here. So, I kept coming back. My next visit was a county cup tie and was also my daughter’s first ever football match. She now keeps coming back to their home, Kennels Lane, as well.

Which made last season such a hard watch. Not so much for the results, but for the effect it had on the people involved. Fleet Spurs in 2022-23 were, by pretty much every calculable metric, awful. Starting the league season with twenty-one straight defeats, it was January before they picked up their first points. Two further wins followed suggested a great escape was a possibility, but lack of consistency in availability of players meant it was difficult to keep any momentum going long enough to mount anything other than an inevitable march into the lowest reaches of the pyramid. Two different management teams tried their hardest to turn things around, and it’s clear that both are good coaching tickets – Metropolitan Police’s current management team were the first to have a go, then two highly regarded local youth coaches attempted to reverse the tide. A total of ninety-five players are listed as having worn the blue and red jerseys in the league over the course of the season. Numbers like that are a guaranteed harbinger of relegation.

A chance for the club to reset in the Hampshire Premier League awaits. A new management team, a new group of players – only two remain listed from last season – and little of the emotional baggage from the constant defeats from last year. Even halving of the admission charge to reflect the club’s new status is a surprise – I don’t know if there is a league maximum admission fee, considering more than a few of the teams in this newest of divisions play in nothing more than school caged pitches. Another season trying to learn players’ names, knowing that you may never see them again.

One thing that doesn’t change at this level though is the seemingly random nature of player availability. It’s hard to pick a team when three players pull-out before kick-off, unable to leave their full-time jobs in time for the game. I’ve seen Fleet once already this season – watching an actual victory, acheived twenty games earlier than the previous season – and there were already some new players involved tonight, four games later. Who knows whether I’ll need to spend future Saturday afternoons remembering their names. When players aren’t used to playing alongside each other, mistakes happen. A lack of communication, not knowing what your teammate is likely to do in any given situation, and not having that level of trust in them. It’s natural.

Denmead took the lead in this exact manner. A long clearance should have caused little trouble, but a hesitation in the centre of defence meant the ball drifted over the backline and into the path of Charlie Hart, whose lob from the corner of the area was as delicate as it was accurate, clearing the stranded keeper with ease. The hosts did level quickly, following a sublime piece of play from Scott Davies. Winning the ball in the centre circle, his threaded, Xavi-esque pass sent Ortis clear on the right-hand side, with the winger’s low cross tucked home from close range by Aaron Redford. The lack of familiarity in Fleet’s defence reared its head again soon after. A moments hesitation in the centre, a mistimed clearance, and a mistimed tackle, resulting in Joshua Wallace clipping the Denmead striker as he was in the act of shooting. The referee took his time before brandishing the red card. Jordan Vincent got down well to block the free kick but couldn’t do anything as Vinnie McGee slotted the rebound home. All this inside the opening twenty minutes.

Last season, I can say with utmost confidence, Fleet would have folded. Any scoreline for their opponents would threaten reaching double digits. This Fleet Spurs side is clearly different beast – they allowed Denmead to dominate possession but maintained a solid defensive shape, with both of their wingers joining the rearguard action, looking to spring forward for any breakaway that might occur. This is how they managed to draw level just before the interval, Redford flicking the ball in behind for Christian Tepper to race towards goal. Scurrying towards the goal-line, his drag-back allowed him to slot the ball, via a deflection, inside the goalkeepers near post. Despite being a player down, the performance was enough to suggest that the hosts could get a point or more out of the game.

Ah, football. I’ve watched the game all my life and am no better now predicting how a match will progress than I was when I was a teenager. Denmead retook the lead shortly after the restart, a scramble from a corner rifled home from close range by Dehran McLay Hodge. A spell of pressure followed, with numerous corners, and one smart save from Vincent keeping Denmead from extending their advantage. Tepper and Ortis kept the visitors honest at the back, with Redford ploughing a lone furrow up front. With fifteen minutes left, Fleet got another equalizer, a reward for their perseverance, with Alfred Mepham connecting with a volley on the edge of the area with such ferocity that the keeper was only able to get a fingertip to the ball as it flew into the roof of the net. Denmead almost retook the lead immediately, with the woodwork denying them. A point with ten men. I am sure the hosts would have taken that.

They were within three minutes of earning that point, before another soft goal punctured their bubble. A back-pass to Vincent offered no problems, but his footwork let him down at the most inopportune moment, and he lost the ball to the Denmead forward, pressuring the keeper as he has done probably hundreds of times before with little success, and wheeling away as his shot-cum-tackle rolled in off the post. Attempts to equalize for a fourth time eventually lost out to the referee’s watch, a third defeat in their opening five games scant reward for a determined effort.

There are a lot of clubs around the country who deserve an upturn in fortunes. Losing two club stalwarts last season cast a shadow over the club, putting the efforts on the pitch into perspective. The results, and performances, already this season are an improvement on what was endured previously. It would be nice for the people involved to be able to enjoy a season of normality, mid-table obscurity, just to be able to reset. Even if they have now found a more natural level, the heavy defeats and desperate performances of last season are now footnotes in history. There will be losses, of that I can be sure, just not with the inevitability that was endured in 2022.