Alan Lee
25 Jan 2008 The Times
25 Jan 2008 The Times
The Havant and Waterlooville clubs were once sworn enemies. Now they share the dream of going to Anfield with 6,000 fans
It would be easy to believe that there is nothing in common between Liverpool and Havant & Waterlooville. Easy but entirely wrong. They share a sponsor, for one thing, and at Anfield tomorrow, while Liverpool’s shirts bear the Carlsberg name, those of their opponents will invoke the brewer’s familiar commercial with the word “Probably”.
Their mountainous task, in a fourth-round tie that defines the rarefied values of the FA Cup, suggests it should instead be “Probably Not”. Yet the 6,000 travelling fans – ten times the average gate at the Hampshire club – will take more than blind hope. They carry the message that a merger between sworn enemies, as is periodically raised on Merseyside, really can work.
Liverpool and Everton are separated by the width of Stanley Park, Havant and Waterlooville by the A3(M). Ten years ago, these nondescript towns, the dormitories of Portsmouth, conducted an arranged marriage that aroused the sort of wrath familiar to the European City of Culture when a ground share between the Reds and Blues is mooted.
Trevor Brock was secretary of Havant Town and explains: “Both teams were in the same league – we got gates of 130, they got 110. In many ways it made sense but they were our biggest rivals and there were people saying they wouldn’t cross the road to come to us.”
Malcolm Jamieson, who supported Waterlooville, said: “I was one of the loudest voices against it. Havant were our hated enemy and I didn’t want anything to do with them. We didn’t get on with Havant at all.”
Yet somehow the jagged edges of this non-League jigsaw fitted together. Brock – bluff, balding and blazered in the best administrative tradition – is into his 45th and most momentous year as a nonLeague secretary. Jamieson is now one of his volunteers, this week working on the logistical conundrum of sourcing enough coaches to travel north for the last great giantkilling attempt of this year’s competition.
“I had tears in my eyes the night we beat Swansea,” he said. “Drawing Liverpool is just surreal – especially as my wife, Alison, supports them. I can’t sleep. I feel sick every time I think about the game.”
Brock, the son of a naval officer, has to balance his swelling football agenda with a day job in the civil service. His pleasure comes in contemplating the profile and the profit (about £300,000) that his club will gain. That, and his savoured seat in the directors’ box.
With the aid of Blue Square, sponsors of the Conference South in which the club languish in mid-table, Brock has arranged for Havant to use The Cliff, Manchester United’s indoor training facility, this afternoon. Tonight they will receive a motivational talk from Kenny Dalglish, who may be risking his iconic status at Liverpool if he performs too well.
This is living the dream. The Havant players are right to relish it. After all, their football earnings are about 1 per cent of Liverpool’s top salaries. And while Anfield boasts the world-famous Kop, Havant’s West Leigh Park has the tiny “Don’s Doors Stand”.
The hype, though, has got overheated this week. The local evening paper ran a feature on a Havant “WAG” and Showaddywaddy, the Seventies band whose Under The Moon Of Love is sung on the Havant terraces, have got in on the act.
Meanwhile, the tale of the team getting a trip to Las Vegas for their cup glory was exposed as a joke that went too far. In truth, Las Vegas, and even Liverpool, are a world apart from this forsaken conurbation. Leigh Park is the postwar development that rehoused thousands of evacuees from the Portsmouth bombings. It was to be a brave new world, carved out of the countryside near such bucolic villages as Hambledon. It turned into the second-biggest housing estate in Europe, a dour, grey breeding ground of resentment.
The ground is framed by hideous 1960s office blocks and factories and by relentless streets created in haste and repenting at leisure. What it lacks in aesthetics and amenities, though, it compensates in sheer numbers. Simon Lynch, who edits the club programme, said: “Leigh Park is not the best area but they are great people and this is our chance to attract more of them to watch us regularly.”
Havant itself is not exactly on the tourist trail. Even one of the club directors described it as “a dour little place” and he was not wrong. Thankfully, there is a town museum, which reveals that glovemaking was a source of prosperity and that hockey, rugby and sail-boarding – though not football – gave the area “national status”.
Yet even this sanctuary is short-lived: council funding withdrawn, the museum must close next year and even the life-enhancing romance of FA Cup football has taken time to permeate this characterless landscape. Yesterday, the Post Office windows were bedecked in “Giantkillers” flags and match souvenir scarves were selling outside the shopping arcade. Lynch, who also runs the club shop, reports a rush on replica shirts, with orders from New Zealand, Chicago and Richmond, Virginia.
Lynch will board one of 26 coaches leaving Havant at 6am tomorrow. They might be back before closing time and some, doubtless, will file into The Heroes, the Waterlooville pub, named after the soldiers who returned from the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
A band is booked tomorrow, called The Four Kicks. Returning supporters will hope that does not describe their team’s labours. They will hope, indeed, that the pub name is more appropriate. But probably not.
It would be easy to believe that there is nothing in common between Liverpool and Havant & Waterlooville. Easy but entirely wrong. They share a sponsor, for one thing, and at Anfield tomorrow, while Liverpool’s shirts bear the Carlsberg name, those of their opponents will invoke the brewer’s familiar commercial with the word “Probably”.
Their mountainous task, in a fourth-round tie that defines the rarefied values of the FA Cup, suggests it should instead be “Probably Not”. Yet the 6,000 travelling fans – ten times the average gate at the Hampshire club – will take more than blind hope. They carry the message that a merger between sworn enemies, as is periodically raised on Merseyside, really can work.
Liverpool and Everton are separated by the width of Stanley Park, Havant and Waterlooville by the A3(M). Ten years ago, these nondescript towns, the dormitories of Portsmouth, conducted an arranged marriage that aroused the sort of wrath familiar to the European City of Culture when a ground share between the Reds and Blues is mooted.
Trevor Brock was secretary of Havant Town and explains: “Both teams were in the same league – we got gates of 130, they got 110. In many ways it made sense but they were our biggest rivals and there were people saying they wouldn’t cross the road to come to us.”
Malcolm Jamieson, who supported Waterlooville, said: “I was one of the loudest voices against it. Havant were our hated enemy and I didn’t want anything to do with them. We didn’t get on with Havant at all.”
Yet somehow the jagged edges of this non-League jigsaw fitted together. Brock – bluff, balding and blazered in the best administrative tradition – is into his 45th and most momentous year as a nonLeague secretary. Jamieson is now one of his volunteers, this week working on the logistical conundrum of sourcing enough coaches to travel north for the last great giantkilling attempt of this year’s competition.
“I had tears in my eyes the night we beat Swansea,” he said. “Drawing Liverpool is just surreal – especially as my wife, Alison, supports them. I can’t sleep. I feel sick every time I think about the game.”
Brock, the son of a naval officer, has to balance his swelling football agenda with a day job in the civil service. His pleasure comes in contemplating the profile and the profit (about £300,000) that his club will gain. That, and his savoured seat in the directors’ box.
With the aid of Blue Square, sponsors of the Conference South in which the club languish in mid-table, Brock has arranged for Havant to use The Cliff, Manchester United’s indoor training facility, this afternoon. Tonight they will receive a motivational talk from Kenny Dalglish, who may be risking his iconic status at Liverpool if he performs too well.
This is living the dream. The Havant players are right to relish it. After all, their football earnings are about 1 per cent of Liverpool’s top salaries. And while Anfield boasts the world-famous Kop, Havant’s West Leigh Park has the tiny “Don’s Doors Stand”.
The hype, though, has got overheated this week. The local evening paper ran a feature on a Havant “WAG” and Showaddywaddy, the Seventies band whose Under The Moon Of Love is sung on the Havant terraces, have got in on the act.
Meanwhile, the tale of the team getting a trip to Las Vegas for their cup glory was exposed as a joke that went too far. In truth, Las Vegas, and even Liverpool, are a world apart from this forsaken conurbation. Leigh Park is the postwar development that rehoused thousands of evacuees from the Portsmouth bombings. It was to be a brave new world, carved out of the countryside near such bucolic villages as Hambledon. It turned into the second-biggest housing estate in Europe, a dour, grey breeding ground of resentment.
The ground is framed by hideous 1960s office blocks and factories and by relentless streets created in haste and repenting at leisure. What it lacks in aesthetics and amenities, though, it compensates in sheer numbers. Simon Lynch, who edits the club programme, said: “Leigh Park is not the best area but they are great people and this is our chance to attract more of them to watch us regularly.”
Havant itself is not exactly on the tourist trail. Even one of the club directors described it as “a dour little place” and he was not wrong. Thankfully, there is a town museum, which reveals that glovemaking was a source of prosperity and that hockey, rugby and sail-boarding – though not football – gave the area “national status”.
Yet even this sanctuary is short-lived: council funding withdrawn, the museum must close next year and even the life-enhancing romance of FA Cup football has taken time to permeate this characterless landscape. Yesterday, the Post Office windows were bedecked in “Giantkillers” flags and match souvenir scarves were selling outside the shopping arcade. Lynch, who also runs the club shop, reports a rush on replica shirts, with orders from New Zealand, Chicago and Richmond, Virginia.
Lynch will board one of 26 coaches leaving Havant at 6am tomorrow. They might be back before closing time and some, doubtless, will file into The Heroes, the Waterlooville pub, named after the soldiers who returned from the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
A band is booked tomorrow, called The Four Kicks. Returning supporters will hope that does not describe their team’s labours. They will hope, indeed, that the pub name is more appropriate. But probably not.
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