90 Minutes of Burridge

Back to winning ways

2012-01-17T09:04:00.002Z

Durley Reserves 2-4 Burridge AFC

The kind of hard frost we woke up to on Saturday morning is usually sufficient in threatening the go-ahead of any game without the benefit of under soil heating; namely all Southampton League games. Nearby Hedge-End’s Norman Rodway ground was deemed unplayable because of a frozen pitch. This didn’t bode well for Durley, which is a relatively rural location and therefore more susceptible to the elements of an overdue cold snap of weather. Saturday’s bright sunshine quickly thawed out the pitch and the game went ahead.

Durley always seem to be scratching around for points at the lower reaches of the table, but no matter what personnel they have at their disposal – and there were many familiar faces from previous encounters playing today - they are never an easy team to roll over. Once again, Paul Dyke was forced to reshuffle his pack. Ryan Hurst was tied up with work commitments as a painter and decorator, while Kev Willsher has succumbed to a further back strain. Dave Williams and Sam Hewitt stepped in to replace them in the centre of defence. Both enjoy solid performances.With a shortage of available strikers, Dyke called upon Paul Andrews' fifteen years of experience to play up front with Sam Schwodler.

As perennial slow starters to games, Dyke tweaked our pre-match warm-up by getting us to play a keep ball session right up to the referee’s whistle. This ensured the blood was pumping. That there was only one goal in the first half wasn’t a reflection onthe amount of goal mouth action at both ends. Martyn Barnett hit the post, while we forced Durley’s keeper into making several saves from long-range shots. A flowing passing movement from back to front ended when Sam Schwodler shot low into the goalkeeper’s right from just inside the penalty area.

Durley offered themselves encouragement at half-time, by saying they’d had the better chances of the game. Although there was some truth in it their opportunities arose from our carelessness as opposed to any of their creativity. Ryan Jones was not his usual sprightly self in goal. A seventy hour working week fitting disabled bathrooms for an MOD hospital unit in Leatherhead had takenits toll on his energy reserves. Goalkeeping clearances became a chore for his heavy legs, with one accidentally serving as devastatingly accurate pass into the feet of an unmarked Durley striker, who Jones managed to foil by diving bravelyat his feet.

Dan Allen is in the mood. ‘I’m up for it today,’ he told me, as he eyed up the goal posts he sent a strike whistling narrowly over in last season’s 3-1 win. Today he was switched from right midfield to left-back. In his new Adidas boots he put in a coming of age performance full of running and a fondness to drop his shoulder in the attempt to get past his man; although with the score poised delicately at 3-2 he was guilty of over-elaborating on one or two occasions times, giving away possession and had to be reined in by Paul Dyke, who screamed at him to play the fucking percentage ball - up the line into the open grass ahead of him

Daniel Esfandiari was back in the side - this week he was not working at the call centre. He took up a position on the right of midfield in a 4-4-2. He later betrayed a little rust, when his attempted back heel cannoned into his standing foot, which in turn knocks him off balance. It’s a rare sight. Normally he is graceful, but on this occasion he produced fodder for 'You’ve Been Framed. 'However, he is influential, putting in several teasing balls into Durley’s penalty area.

Durley equalised within minutes of the second half. It was a neat finish from just inside the penalty area. We didn’t waste too much time debating it. Jones then made a very timely reflex save when it would have appeared easier to score. Durley put throughtheir own net – heading in from a corner. Sam Schwodler then gets in on the act. At first it looked like he’s fluffed his one-on-one with the goalkeeper, who does well to deny Sam space to shoot. Sam retreated, then chipped the goalkeeper and also and more crucially the defender, who had shown the diligence to cover his onrushing goalkeeper. He came within inches of heading it off the line; but, sadly for him, the ball rolled down the back of the net for 3-1. Durley scored immediately on the counter attack, but our win is sealed when Martyn Barnett scores with a twenty-five yard pile-driver. Marc Judd does his best to out do Barnett, but Durley’s keeper tips his strike over the bar.

Burridge lined-up in a 4-4-2 formation:

GK:Ryan Jones, LB:Dan Allen, CB:Dave Williams, CB:Sam Hewitt, RB:Mark Reeves, LM:Marc Judd, CM:Martyn Barnett, CM:Mark Sanderson, RM:Daniel Esfandiari, CF:Sam Schwodler, CF:Paul Andrews (Rob Mills)

Late Tackle Magazine: I have an article called 'N o One Likes Us' on the perils of being an MK Dons supporter in the current issue of Late Tackle Magazine, which includes an account of a trip with their fans to a game against Sheffield United at Brammall Lane. It is available on the shelves of WH Smith.

Hythe Aztecs 5-3 Burridge AFC

2012-01-12T17:25:00.001Z

Burridge conceded five goals in their first game of 2012, although anyone who witnessed the first twenty-five minutes of play might have feared far worse.......

These days there is no guarantee of a hot shower at Clayfield Sports Centre. The lack of hot water, or any water at all last Saturday afternoon, may well have been because the game on the adjacent pitch, between Cadnam and Thornhill Health Kicks, finished a good ten minutes before us, giving both teams ample time to make good use of the communal showers before we had chance to There was a disparaging water to shower gel ratio as we stood in a row beneath the shower fittings. Mark Reeves then told me we would do well toremember that football is supposed to be fun. Given that I was stark naked and temporarily blinded by the shower gel seeping into my eyes, this might not have been the ideal time to share such wisdom.

The first-half against HytheAztecs was anything but fun. We were three goals down after half an hour.Each goal was followed by heated arguments amongst ourselves. Much of the loudest abuse was directed at PaulAndrews, and he wasn't evenplaying – an unnecessary reminder that being linesman is a thankless task. We were without one or two players:Kristian Hewitt has hung up his boots. By the sounds of it so has BenRowe. While centre-half, Ryan Hurst, had taken his girlfriend for aday out at Madame Tussauds. Manager, Paul Dyke, would later reflect, on what he assumed to be, the poor mobile reception in London - what other reason for the club vice-captain not texting him to see how we had got on.

We did offer something of a comeback inthe second-half. Sam Schwodler tucked away a penalty, Paul Andrewsfollowed in on a goalkeeping fumble to score with his first touch,with Martyn Barnett scoring our third; but by then it was already 4-3to Hythe, whose number eight then scored from another free-kick to make it five. Club sponsors West-End Brewery did what they could to softenthe blow with a double platter of chips and chicken nuggets. This didn't provide Sam Schwodler with a suitable distraction. It's doubtful that a Queen of the South goal has been met with such enthusiasm in the Brewery, but further results went against Sam, so once again his accumulator bet came to nothing.

Burridge line-up: 4-4-2: GK:Ryan Jones, LB:Sam Hewitt, CB:Kev Willsher, CB:Dave Williams, RB:Mark Reeves, LM:Marc Judd, CM:Mark Sanderson, CM:Martyn Barnett, RM:Dan Allen (Paul Andrews), CF:Sam Schwodler, CF:Lee Fielder

Christmas time

2011-12-21T11:49:00.002Z

Another December, another weather enforced break to Burridge's season.....

It was Friday evening, shortly before six, when Paul Dyke texted the news. Saturday's game with Cadnam was off – the pitch was waterlogged; so, with Christmas upon us there would be no game now for at least three weeks. I spent the evening at Kristian Hewitt's, drinking his Budweiser and eating his snacks. We did not discuss his decision to stop playing at the end of the season, at the age of 32; that ship had sailed. Perhaps the football boots he bought in the summer - the ones with both metal and rubber studs, to suit all weathers - was the pragmatic choice of a man who knew there wasn't much gas left in the tank.

In recent weeks, the economy has caused several players to spend their Saturday afternoons doing things other than play football. Daniel Esfandiari had been unemployed since coming home from a spell working as a holiday rep in Tenerife. After three months out of work he got a job in a call centre. We were waiting to run laps of the artificial pitch, when Daniel arrived for training a few weeks ago. Avoiding eye contact with manager, Paul Dyke, did nothing to ease the tension: “Oh, I'll pay your five pound, or whatever it is an hour.” Paul would have been happier for Daniel if the job didn't require him to work some Saturdays, as Daniel is everything Paul wasn't as a player: skillful, adroit, although completely useless at heading the football. Along with Sam Hewitt, Ryan Jones, Ryan Hurst, Chris Pye and Dan Allen, Daniel represents the younger group of players at the club, who Dyke hopes can help him realise his goals as a football manager. Not that those goals have been quantified, or shared, but they will not include remaining in mid-table in the senior division of the Southampton Football League.

There is now time to reflect on a season that has yet to capture the imagination of 2010 - by this time last year we had inflicted a rare defeat away to Forest Town, who are now challenging for the Southampton Premier League. Highlights of the season so far include captain, Martyn Barnett, who tripped over his dog and fell down the stairs, breaking his collar bone. He is now back to full fitness. Ryan Jones has continued to impress in goal. I remember when I stepped in as manager, while Paul Dyke was on an all inclusive holiday in Egypt, stood next to White Horse FC's manager, who after seeing Jones' reflexes stubbed out his cigarette and asked me where I'd got him from. Perhaps the moment of the season so far was also from Ryan, who saved the penalty and the resulting rebound during the 4-4 draw with Cadnam. Christmas parties tend to take over at this time of year. Last week there were six players at training; this week's session will be a break from circuit training. Instead, there will be a match between the older and younger players.

Dyke unable to stem tide

2011-12-15T10:52:00.000Z

Saturday 10 December: Bush Hill 5-1 Burridge AFC

Burridge took on the reigning Southampton League champions in the cup quarter finals with something of a personnel crisis on their hands.

We sat squeezed together in one of Green Park's dressing rooms. Paul Dyke pulled a shin pad up over his ankle strapping and toward his bandaged knee. Ben Rowe watched him from the other side of the room and said: “What? You're playing today?” Paul gave him a long look, then nodded. “I'm naming myself as second substitute.” We were missing players to injuries and work commitments: Paul Andrews, Kristian Hewitt, Marc Judd, and Dave Williams were unfit to play, Ryan Hurst was painting someones lounge for cash in hand, and Ryan Jones was plumbing somewhere. It's unusual if Paul Dyke doesn't get to the gym three times a week to work on his guns, but he hadn't played competitively for Burridge since focusing on being the first team manager a couple of years ago.

Ryan Jones was a big miss. He's our goalkeeper and goalkeepers are difficult to replace at the best of times. Dyke has lots of contacts, but in these circumstances, when it is cold and wet, that is not enough. Being on friendly terms with Peter Shilton, or having Facebook correspondence with Southampton-based England futsal goalie, Andrew Reading, is useless without the charm to sell a wet afternoon in Millbrook to whoever would provide us with a goalkeeping solution. The solution turned out to be a friend of Dyke's called Steve. It was spelt out in an approachable looking font on the mauve Halifax name tag he wore on the lapel of his suit jacket. He looked the part in Jones' green goalkeeping jersey, and he seemed confident enough, bouncing a ball up and down in the changing rooms. Of course, there was no sense in telling him that the team getting changed next door, Bush Hill - Southampton league champions for the last two years running, had put ten goals past us twelve weeks ago. He'd come to understand soon enough.

Dyke gave us a last minute pep talk: “Look. If I didn't think we could do something in this game I'd have just called it off.” Thankfully, nobody asked why he hadn't done just that. The team performance showed that the players agreed with him. Although the final score would have been more representative of the game had Chris Pye taken his three chances in front of goal. Paul Dyke had come on as substitute earlier than I imagine he would have expected. He was a straight swap for Kev Willsher: an accountant on for a graphic designer. Kev had felt his hamstring go. He tried running it off. If anything it made it worse. Like Kev, Paul takes defending seriously. He still enjoys an ending an opposition attack with a hacked clearance. We all had to make plenty of those. Sam Schwodler scored our consolation goal, but despite our efforts, which were whole hearted, we were well beaten. Dyke recognised our efforts, and did not charge us our usual five pounds match subscription fee. Rarely has a Burridge team given so much for so little.

GK: Steve, LB: Dan Allen, CB: Kev Willsher (Paul Dyke), CB: Sam Hewitt, RB: Mark Reeves, LM: Sam Schwodler, CM: Mark Sanderson, CM: Martyn Barnett, CM: Ali Ingram, (Lee Fielder) RM: Chris Pye, CF: Ben Rowe

Fifteen years of Burridge

2011-11-29T09:57:00.001Z

Saturday 26 November 2011

Michelmersh & Timsbury 0-5 Burridge AFC

Back on Tuesday 30 October 2007, the day he scored a memorable goal against Netley, this blog described one Burridge player as overweight with a dodgy back. Four years on and little has changed.

Timsbury, one of the few places left in the Southampton League that still supply the visiting team with a half-time cup of tea. One of our players is sat down on the damp grass with his black socks rolled down to his ankles, taking shallow sips from his white porcelain tea cup; “It's no good,” he says, shaking his head, while rummaging through the medial bag. His name is Kristian Hewitt. After fifteen years spent playing for Burridge he has decided to hang up his boots at the end of the season.

We were winning 2-0 with goals from both strikers: Lee Fielder and Sam Schwodler, who received a cross from the right on his chest, then turned and smashed in; but manager, Paul Dyke, wasn't satisfied yet; “There's still another 45 minutes to go,” he reminded us, keen to ward off any complacency and achieve his objective of a clean sheet, something we hadn't achieved since beating Hedge End Reserves 1-0 in pre-season on 21 August. (Although our last clean sheet in a competitive fixture came in April in a 5-0 home win over Wellow). Dyke called for further effort and diligence. He also wanted to bring on Ben Rowe, who was our one and only substitute.

Kristian raises his arm, “I'm struggling,” he says. Dyke acknowledges it. Kristian is substituted around fifteen into the second-half. He walks towards the touchline, but with Rowe now on the field of play a replacement linesman will be needed. Dyke asks if Kristian won't mind going over to the far side of the pitch to do it. He'd rather not: “I can barely walk,” he protests; but he takes the linesman's flag. On Sunday he will struggle to play with his young son. Not because he is hungover, not because he doesn't want to, but because walking is a struggle. On Monday he'll still be stiff in the shins, knees and back. This can make things tricky at work: wedged into a John Dow shortly after 6am, cutting greens at East Horton Golf Course; or worse still - chopping wood. Tuesday will be a little better and by Wednesday he'll be getting back to normal, but then on Thursday it's circuit training on the artificial pitch in Hamble. His condition made the decision to stop playing easier, although going by what he has said he may decide to do so even sooner than first anticipated. He might not put his boots back on after Christmas.

Over the last fifteen years he has scored a number of goals that stick in the memory. The collection began on a Sunday afternoon in September, 1997 – down in Horndean, away to Lynx Sports. We were hampered by the late arrival of several players who thought Horndean, Waterlooville could be reached up the M3 towards Winchester. Meanwhile, over ten miles south-east, Lynx's goalkeeper had stepped off of his goal line. Kristian tried his luck successfully from an unreasonable distance. I remember being one of the first to congratulate him on the goal, failing to try and lift him off of the ground. Several other goals spring to mind: a far post volley against a poor Bishops Waltham side at Wicker Rec, Porchester; a 2-2 draw with Warsash Wasps, on a bone dry pitch at Osborne Road - scoring from long range via the underside of the crossbar. Then two against Netley. One at home, evading four players on his way to a tap in; but perhaps the best of them all came during the opening game of the 2007/08 season at Netley, which took place on a week night. Kristian opened the scoring in a 4-1 win with a thirty-yard blockbuster. It even drew a round of applause from the handful of old men at Station Road, who are normallypreoccupied in criticising Netley's players.

Kristian was close to getting in on the act today, cutting in from the right - but his low shot was held by the goalkeeper. He later admitted that his appetite for a goal was what kept him going. Things did go according to plan in the second-half though, with three further goals. Lee Fielder and Sam Schwodler got their second goals, with Daniel Esfandiari slotting home from just inside the penalty area.The match was notable for our unusual appearance. Although both teams had different coloured shirts – us in blue and black stripes, and Michelmersh in gold and black quarters - the referee was concerned about both teams wearing black shorts. In the end Michelmersh dug out some baggy red shorts for us. By the end of play it was almost dark, with the heavy pitch struggling to come to terms with 22 people trampling all over it. Perhaps for the last time for Kristian Hewitt.

GK: Ryan Jones, LB: Sam Hewitt, CB: Kev Willsher, CB: Ryan Hurst (c), RB: Mark Reeves, LM: Chris Pye, CM: Kristian Hewitt, (Ben Rowe) CM: Mark Sanderson, RM: Daniel Esfandiari, CF: Sam Schwodler, CF: Lee Fielder

Reserving judgement

2011-11-22T12:33:00.000Z

Burridge seem to wait until they're 3-0 down against BTC Reserves until they get going at Stoneham Lane, Southampton; eventually losing the game narrowly 3-2.

Last Thursday night, at training, Paul Andrews was awarded the yellow jersey for the second week running. The winners of the end of session six-a-side game were joined in a huddle, enjoying the dubious perk of voting for who they considered the worst player of the night. Having won it the week before, Andrews was obliged to wear it at training. Washing it carries a fine, so as you can imagine - it stinks. Andrews wore it over two further layers of clothing. Having scored an unfortunate own goal - the ball hit him square on in front of an open net - he knew he was a leading contender; “Any point in taking this off,” he asked, looking down towards the names of the previous winners written in marker pen on his shirt. It was a close vote between him and Lee Fielder, but no, there was no point in taking it off.

Andrews was named in the the thirteen man squad for the game at BTC on Saturday, where in the away team dressing rooms he pondered over his two pairs of highly buffed football boots. After choosing to wear metal, rather than rubber studs, he went outside to warm-up, dressed in an old Burridge training top – basically a navy fruit of the loom sweater with hisinitials in white capitals on the chest and Burridge written likewise on the back. It was regulation club wear when former manager, Colin Barfoot, issued them in 2000. One or two players enquire as to what washing detergenthe must use to maintain the condition of such an old top. Andrews smiles, nods, but offers no come back – he's busy: tall men likehim can't afford to be messing around when there are hamstrings to be stretched.

Daniel Esfandiari - equally tall, with groomed dark stubble and slip in shin-pads the size of tape cassettes - is known as Essy. At 21 he's over ten years younger than Andrews, and the adult era in which the jumper comes from attracts his attention. He joins Andrews to stretch his leg on the pitch's perimeter fence, then asks Andrews about his misspent youth in the years leading up to the millennium. Andrews takes a long look at Essy and says: “I'm the man now I've always been.” Having long since abandoned the protocol expected with senior players, Essy takes his questioning a step further: “Is it true,” he begins, now laughing uncontrollably, “that digestives are your favourite biscuit, because chocolate ones are too edgy for you?” Andrews gives him another long look. After 14 years on the adult football circuit such banter can wear thin.Andrews is a straight batter, a man in control: he doesn't run up debts, he drinks in moderation, and he's not the type to be caught watching Babestation with his trousers around his ankles. It's an unusual grouping of characteristics within the football world, and to some, it would seem, this is unnerving, which brings us neatly onto BTC reserves, who have recorded some pretty hopeless results this season. The mind boggles at the sequence of events the day they let 23 goals in against Bush Hill. However, with more than one Saturday XI they are able to call upon a large pool of players at any given time. What's more, the first team had their game with the University postponed.Although, that said, the first team are still rock bottom of the Southampton Premier League.

Andrews sat alone in the dug-out and watched BTC go into a two-nil first-half lead. Both goals were followed by inquiries amongst some of our players. Paul listened to them blame each other for the goals, shouting things like: 'Why wasn't he closed down?' and 'That's your job.' Things got worse in the second-half. BTC took advantage of space on their right to make it three-nil, but there were still twenty minutes left, and given the scoreline, perhaps a suitable time to warrant a substitution. Ben Rowe is put on first and makes an instant impact. Sam Schwodler then edone away, after being put through by a long punt from goalkeeper, Ryan Jones. Rowe was then pushed in the penalty area. Kristian Hewitt slotted in the penalty. With around ten minutes left the game was nicely poised.

Dyke's last roll of the dice was to bring Andrews on for myself. Although well over six feet tall, Andrews is not renowned for his heading ability. A high ball came his way on the right wing, and with it a certain level of responsibility: we had committed men forward in numbers, if BTC won this ball they would have had a very decent chance of making it curtains. Andrews quickly surveyed his surroundings, closed his eyes, and became air bound. In hindsight jumping may not have been necessary, as his opponent was the size of a child; although I felt it was petty to allow something as minor as an enormous height advantage overshadow Andrews' commitment to the cause. I shared the fact that Andrews had won a header - a crucial one at that - with Paul Dyke. Dyke is normally quite sociable, although much less so during games. He remained stood with his arms folded and his eyes glued to the action and said: "No he didn't." The following passage of play very nearly led to an equaliser, with Andrews' flick falling into the path of Sam Schwodler, who jinked inside and shot wide. We threw the proverbial kitchen sink at BTC, but they held on manfully for the win.Later, in the West End Brewery, I brought up Andrews' header in the company of both Andrews and Dyke. Dyke stuck to his guns and laughed, while Andrews lamented the fact he never gets any credit, unless it's on a Thursday night.

Burridge: GK:Ryan Jones, LB:Sam Hewitt, CB:Ryan Hurst (c), CB:Kev Willsher, RB:Mark Reves, LM:Chris Pye, CM:Kristian Hewitt, CM:Mark Sanderson (Paul Andrews), RM: Daniel Esfandiari (Ben Rowe), CF:Lee Fielder, CF:Sam Schwodler

Scorers: 1-3 Sam Schwodler, 2-3 Kristian Hewitt (p)

Booked: Mark Sanderson (foul)

Drawing lots

2011-11-03T10:47:00.000Z

Paul Dyke curses the lottery of decision making as Burridge draw their third game of the season, succumbing to a late goal in a 4-4 draw against ten-man Hythe Aztecs.

I probably deserved to be kicked; afterall, I had hit him first – in the face, too. It was purelyaccidental. We were losing 3-2 after an hour, which I had spentdemonstrating exactly why I am thinking about calling an end to myplaying days at the end of the season. Only noticeable when I gavethe ball away to the opposition - which happened on numerousoccasions - I saw an opportunity to make a positive contribution tothe game. One that didn't involve being substituted. It came in a tangle of bodies on the halfway-line. Chris Pye andtheir number three had fallen over the ball. The two ofthem scurried after the ball on all fours. The scene was ripe for afirm tackle to show my commitment to the cause. I got the ball, but must have followedthrough with either my boot or knee. Number three got to his feet and kickedme in the legs. He had a good head of thinned out chin length hairand fury in his eyes; “You just fucking kicked me in the head.”He wasn't ready for my explanation. The referee sent him off.

My actions were not premeditated, butnumber three's absence gave us more than simply a numericaladvantage. He had been dropping into the middle from the right allgame. It had caused us problems. Without him we'd have extra space toexploit. Ali Ingram equalised with his second of the game, smashingin Lee Fielder's cross. Ben Rowe then gave us the lead, expertlyweaving past the goalkeeper. But Hythe weren't done. At times it feltlike they, not us, had the numerical advantage. There was perhaps asense of karma that it was me who conceded the free kick in whichthey scored. It was another another late and fairly cynical tackle, around twenty-five yards from goal. There was some delay in taking it.Once the referee was satisfied our wall had retreated the sufficient distance, Hythe scored.

Only Paul Dyke was left in the changingrooms when the referee walked in after the game. His hair was still wet from theshower. He toweled it dry, dabbing his temples, then looked down at thematch card. “You're only giving me 51?” He sounded surprised,perhaps even a little upset. Dyke, who was sat down, explained thereasons behind his score. He felt Hythe should have had a mansent-off for denying us a clear goalscoring opportunity. “You'requestioning one decision in the entire game?” asked the referee. “Igave you a penalty, which you scored.” The two continued to disagreewith one another. The conversation was amiable enough, but both left the gravel car-park at Burridgedissatisfied.

Burridge scorers:

Kristian Hewitt (p)

Ali Ingram 2

Ben Rowe

Booked:

Lee Fielder - hand bags.

Kev Willsher - dissent. Tut-tut.

Marc Judd - possesion of a firearm. No, just joking - foul with a good slug of dissent thrown in.

Burridge lined up in a 4-4-2 formation: GK: Ryan Jones, RB: Sam Hewitt, CB: Ryan Hurst (c), CB: Kev Willsher, LB: Kristian Hewitt (Dan Allen), CM: Marc Judd, CM: Mark Sanderson, RM: Daniel Esfandiari (Sam Schwodler), CF: Lee Fielder (Ben Rowe), CF: Ali Ingram

Are you unable to distinguish between a miscarriage of justice and the referee's decision to give a throw-in to the opposition on the half-way line? Then help is at hand. I've written for the current issue of Late Tackle Magazine, assessing the task facing the FA's Respect programme in conquering our inner beast. It is available to buy in WH Smith.

Goal-Dan touch

2011-10-27T11:05:00.005+01:00

Burridge live up to this blog's name once more, with Dan Esfandiari scoring in the 90th minute to earn a 4-4 home draw with a decent Cadnam side.

Ten minutes before kick-off at Burridge. Having completed our warm-up exercises we congregate around the water bottles, fretting over whether or not the referee will turn up. Ryan Hurst looks towards the changing rooms and asks if anyone has seen him.

Manager, Paul Dyke, tells Ryan not to worry, saying, "Concentrate on your job."

Ryan looks a bit put out; "I'm not worried - just asking, that's all."

The referee does arrive moments later, looking like a podgy version of Chris Tarrant. Any anticipation surrounding his arrival is quickly replaced with loud criticism of his refereeing style. So, for the third successive week a referee is held responsible for the outcome of the game. This time by Cadnam, who later mark him 20 out of 100. Like Bishopstoke a fortnight ago, Cadnam will be required to file a report of explanation to the FA. On the basis of this refereeing performance they are going to get used to filing reports. While it could be argued that the referee seemed reluctant to venture too far out of the centre-circle, he had shown leniency to one of his biggest critics, who played in Cadnam's midfield. His tackle on Ryan Hurst was late and above the ankle, and could have easily resulted in a red card, as opposed to the yellow he was given.

We went two-nil up in a hurry. Martyn Barnett scored a cracker from outside the penalty area - the ball was destined for the top corner as soon as it left his boot. Like Kristian Hewitt, he does tend to score good ones. His contribution to the team will be missed during the coming weeks, having fell awkwardly on the stairs on Sunday and breaking his collar bone. We wish him a speedy recovery. Cadnam had the opportunity to equalise from the penalty spot. Although well hit, Ryan Jones managed toblock it; which seemed a pointless exercise, as the ball rolledkindly back into the stride of the penalty taker. If anything therebound was struck better than the penalty, but Jonesregained his footing and blocked again. It was a save that crowned hisperformances in goal so far this season. In terms of reflexes therecan be few better goalkeepers in the Southampton League. We'recertainly giving him plenty of practise

Lee Fielder doubled the lead. Sadly, I missed the goal. As substitute, I was spending significant amounts of time up to my waist in the stinging nettles growing from the sloped bank behind Jones' goal, trying to retrieve footballs. I was at least fortunate enough to have a running commentary of sorts, from Kev Willsher's Dad, Alan - who stood at the top of the bank shouting goal. By half-time Cadnam had drawnlevel, with some good progressive passingfootball that contributed largely to an exciting game. Cadnam assumed control in thesecond-half, going ahead with a neat lob over Jones.

Paul Dyke did what any manager would do with twenty minutes left and the game slipping out of reach - he brought on Dan Allen, with instant results. Dan made a nuisance of himselfon the wing, winning apenalty. Regular taker Kristian Hewitt had already beensubstituted, and Martyn Barnett, normally so confident, was not up for it, having missed one in pre-season. Up stepped Daniel Esfandiari. It is baffling that someone so tall and muscular can be so terribly ineffective in the air. Not that his game is built on physique, he regularly uses the outside of his right boot for God's sake. Composed and full of neat touches, he was having arguablyhis best performance so far in a Burridge shirt.

Cadnam's right-back decided to play mind games with Esfandiari; "You'll feel stupid if you miss."
Esfandiari took a moment to consider this, "But what if I score?" Who needs Albert Camus when you have this kind of gripping philosophical narrative? Esfandiari scored, but about five minutes later, so did Cadnam - hitting a long pass over our defence. The striker lobbed neatly over Jones. That appeared to be that for the afternoon. You know the game's up when Ryan Hurst is being deployed as anemergency centre forward. To his credit he went about his business with plenty of hustle and bustle - winning umpteen flicked on headers with his mane ofblond hair, but still.

By now Cadnam were keen to establish exactlyhow much time was left. The referee wasn't all that forthcoming; “Plenty,”he said. This didn't go down well with Cadnam. “I don't actuallyhave to tell you,” said the referee, therefore cementing his lowly score. With the ball at his feet outside box, Esfandiari had little choice but to shoot. A quick shuffle of the hips and a right-footed strike created merry hell in Cadnam's penalty area. Ironically their commitment in closing the shot down became their undoing. The ball took the slightest nick of a defender's slice and slid into the one place the goalkeeper could not reach. There was time only for Cadnam to restart the game.

Are you unable to distinguish between a miscarriage of justice and the referee's decision to give a throw-in to the opposition on the half-way line? Then help is at hand.

I've written for the current issue of Late Tackle Magazine, assessing the task facing the FA's Respect programme in conquering our inner beast. It is available to buy in WH Smith.

Burridge goalscorers:

Martyn Barnett 1-0
Lee Fielder 2-0
Daniel Esfandiari (pen) 3-3
Daniel Esfandiari 4-4

4-4-2: GK: Ryan Jones, LB: Kristian Hewitt (Mark Sanderson), CB: Kev Willsher, CB: Ryan Hurst, RB: Sam Hewitt, LM: Chris Pye, CM: Marc Judd, CM: Martyn Barnett, RM: Daniel Esfandiari, CF: Lee Fielder (Dan Allen), CF: Ali Ingram.

Click here for the current Southampton League tables.

Referee Assess-ination

2011-10-17T15:14:00.003+01:00

Burridge's 5-2 home win over Comrades reserves on Saturday afternoon was watched by a referee assessor.

Burridge on a sunny afternoon in mid-October and not a cloud in the sky. Comrades reserves are today's opponents – a side we beat 2-1 after extra-time in a Trophyman Cup tie earlier this season. One man chooses to watch the game alone, walking slowly around the perimeter of the pitch, stopping occasionally to whisper into his microphone headset. Somewhat conspicuous in a baseball cap, tinted glasses, and despite the heat, a black mac, he fills out various forms attached to his clipboard. He is here to assess the performance of today's referee. Assessors are usually identifiable by a clipboard, a flask of hot drink, and an aloof demeanour. This one hadn't brought a flask of hot drink.

As one of our three substitutes I decided to take the opportunity to ask him about his role. Sadly, he wasn't keen on conversation, which on reflection is probably anoccupational hazard, what with the headset. For all I know he could have been in on a conference call with a host of delegates from FIFA's head office in Zurich. This is unlikely though. I would expect an organisation as spendthrift as FIFA to be more generous with the quality of employee trousers. By all accounts Sepp Blatter is atolerant man, but badly pressed black trousers would not reflect well on FIFA. No, a far more plausible explanation was that his headset was plugged into a cassette player. The assessor would spend his evening listening to the recording in order to write his report on the referee's performance. Let it be said, the role of referee's assessor isn't all glamour.

The first-half was notable for twoseemingly clear cut penalties for either team. Sam Schwodler wastackled from behind, then Burridge goalkeeper Ryan Jones brought downan opponent with his arms. Neither side were awarded spot kicks. Abusy night of paper work no doubt beckoned for the assessor – had hebeen anywhere near either of the incidents. One Comrades follower wasoutraged that his side weren't given a penalty. Burridge manager, Paul Dyke told him that this tied the bad decisions at one-each. The Comrades supporter didn't agree, and the two of them began debating at twenty paces. It was a bit of astalemate given that the Comrades supporter was similar to Dyke, inbeing gruffly spoken and forthright with his opinions. Although bythe sounds of it the one thing missing from Dyke's opponent was anyform of secondary education. So, on reflection, a spilt decision winfor Dyke.

We went into half-time leading 3-1,with goals from our younger contingent of twenty-one year olds, ChrisPye and Ryan Hurst, and twenty-year old Ali Ingram. There was furtherroom for refereeing analysis in the second-half, when Chris Pye had agoal disallowed for offside. Chris was extremely cheesed off. Having already accepted the congratulations of his team mates, and back in his own half for the re-start, he could only assume he'd made the score 6-2. Comrades' linesman had other ideas. Dressedin deck shoes, jeans, shirt and a grey Ralph Lauren tank top –naturally, he was quite adamant that the goal was offside, leaving his flag raised untilthe referee saw it. A long discussion between the referee and linesman followed, presumably one abouta brand new ruling meaning two men and a goalkeeper between you and the goal can play you offside. If the assessor really was on the FIFA hotline, this was surely the perfect opportunity to check the rule book and pull rank. He didn't. The disallowed goal had no bearing on the outcome of the game either. Chris Pye later hit the post, then Ryan Hurst, up from a corner, came within whiskers of completing his hat-trick. This is our first league win of the season, and having now scored ten goals in the previous two games, we look to have found some momentum.

Burridge played a 4-4-2:

GK: Ryan Jones, LB: Kristian Hewitt, CB: Marc Judd, CB: Ryan Hurst, RB: Sam Hewitt, LM: Chris Pye, CM: Martyn Barnett, CM: Ali Ingram (Mark Sanderson), RM: Daniel Esfandiari, CF: Ben Rowe (Lee Fielder), CF: Sam Schwodler (Paul Andrews)

Burridge scorers:

1-0 Chris Pye, (tapped in from aright-wing Daniel Esfandiari cross).

2-1 Ryan Hurst, (smashed in the looseball from a corner).

3-1 Ali Ingram, (low accurate shot fromtwenty-five yards into goalie's bottom right-hand corner).

4-1 Ryan Hurst, (another corner,another goal – this time arriving on the back post to steer in).

5-2 Sam Schwodler, (walloped the ballagainst the underside of crossbar and in).

Booked:

Kristian Hewitt, (ran thirty yards to speak his mind to the referee, who duly showed him a yellow card).

Burridge AFC 5-4 Bishopstoke (Aet)

2011-10-13T18:27:00.000+01:00

Burridge progress in the Trophyman League Cup by taking a tie to extra-time for the third match already this season, leaving defender Dave Williams to suggest this blog should be re-named 120 minutes of Burridge.

Just five minutes have been played when Kev Willsher gets back to his feet and waits for the referee to send him off. He pleads innocence by putting his arms out by his side; body language that does more to confirm rather than admonish his guilt for bringing down Bishi's centre forward with a late tackle in the penalty area, denying him what would have been a clear goalscoring opportunity in the process. The referee assesses the scene of the crime. With his coiffured hair and full moustache he is similar in appearance to Des Lynam - if Des Lynam was Maltese, with a taste for Black Sabbath records. The handful of Bishi followers have already made their minds up. One jumps out of the wooden farmhouse chair we use as a makeshift step ladder to put up the goal nets with; “Fucking dirty bastard,” he shouts. To his amazement the referee waves play on. Bishi don't forgive the referee, marking him a lowly 25 out of 100 in the match card. As a result, they will have to file a report of explanation to the FA.

Burridge centre-back Kev Willsher wonders what else he can get away with

Bishopstoke play division higher than us in the Southampton Premier; where, if the current league table is anything to go by, they are having a hard time. Without a win in either of their league games, they were also been beaten 7-0 by Queens Keep in the opening round of the Southampton Senior Cup. This after being spared relegation for last season's bottom of the table finish by a league reshuffle, which saw Premier League sides AFC Redbridge, Northend United and Solent WTL pulling out entirely this year. Despite all this, Bishopstoke have talent. Particularly going forward, which they showcased in their 5-3 pre-season victory over us in August. Shame then that they're a bit susceptible to pretty much any ball plonked over their defence.

Bishi do make the brighter start and take the lead. Ryan Hurst is unable to keep pace with their particularly quick centre forward, who makes it one-nil. Marc Judd then equalises with a finely executed left-footed free-kick. It's made all the sweeter by one Bishi follower's ill-conceived habit of shouting 'spoon' almost every time we shoot at their goal. The moment he finishes the syllable the ball is in the net. However, it is Bishopstoke who go into the break leading, reacting first to the scraps of a corner kick and walloping past Jones. Having spent the best part of twenty minutes practising set-pieces during Thursday night's training session, manager Paul Dyke begins showing early signs of a stomach ulcer.

During half-time I hear Bishi's midfield discussing the merits of our back four; “They're slow as fuck,” says one, before going on to be even less complimentary about the state of his own defence. In the second half they continue where they left of from in the first, perhaps with the goal of the game, from a good twenty-five yards out. When goals of this calibre are conceded on days like this it tends to stifle both the mind's belief and the belly's appetite for meaningful competition. Although not yet inevitable, defeat seemed heavily pencilled in when Ali Ingram was booked, somewhat unfortunately. He retreats from a Bishopstoke free-kick with his back to the ball, which is soon kicked at him. The referee books him for holding up play. Perhaps it was the bewilderment in Ali's eyes that cast doubt over the referee's own judgement, or perhaps he, like many on the field, was prone to making the odd mistake, because minutes later he's giving us a penalty kick. There is an unnecessary and clumsy push on Ali in the penalty area. One Bishi follower can be heard above the silence - “It's a man's game,” he reminds the referee. Although if the true measure of a man's strength is by pushing other men in back, it certainly wasn't featured in Rudyard Kipling's poem on the matter.

With regular penalty taker Kristian Hewitt off with shin splints, Sam Schwodler side foots the kick past the 'keeper's right. Any hopes of a grandstand finish are then seemingly dashed after a mishap in our goalmouth. Several opportunities to clear ball are bungled. Jones then calls the resulting shot on his goal safe and watches the ball nestle in the top corner - 4-2, but still time. Moments later, Chris Pye is almost apologetic for getting one back direct from a left wing cross, to make it 4-3. Then with two minutes left, Lee Fielder arrives on the end of a speculative clearance from Ryan Jones, and goes past Bishi's goalkeeper. With a clear and open goal in front of him it appears Lee is here to save the day; a view which is somewhat compromised the moment he's called upon to kick the football, which he slices wide of the post. But there is still ample time for Dyke to learn more about his players - Lee is obviously far happier when there are lots of things between him and the goal.

With time running out, Kev Willsher plays a long ball behind Bishi's defence. Lee runs onto it, steering a shot past the goalie's right. This means extra-time, in which the winning goal comes late on. Martyn Barnett splits Bishi's defence with a through-ball to Lee, who scores again. Whether or not he's mentally tough when it comes to getting over missing sitters, or he just tends to blow a little hot and cold in front of goal is not abundantly clear. However, it is his two goals that knock Bishi out. They trudge off, disappointed at a missed opportunity to progress in the cup; while Burridge move onto the uncharted waters of the third round.

Burridge line-up: GK:Ryan Jones, LB:Marc Judd, CB:Kev Willsher, CB: Ryan Hurst, RB:Dave Williams, LM:Chris Pye, CM: Kristian Hewitt (Sam Hewitt), CM:Martyn Barnett, RM:Daniel Esfandiari, CF:Ali Ingram (Mark Sanderson), CF: Sam Schwodler (Lee Fielder)

Christchurch reserves 4-3 Burridge AFC (Aet)

2011-10-05T10:27:00.001+01:00

Having conceded 13 goals in their previous two games, Burridge come within five minutes of knocking Wessex Leagueopposition out of the Hampshire Intermediate Cup on Saturdayafternoon, which begs the question: why can't they perform to thislevel every week?

It's pushing thirty degrees in the car. So, what would normally bea half-hour drive down the M27 and A338 to Christchurch, becomes aslog through traffic bound for Bournemouth beach. My ankle is stillstiff, so I am here to watch. On arrival I cool off in the shade ofthe stand, where two men in their fifties are sat a few rows behindme, watching us warm-up. “That them?” asks one, taking a largebite from his hot-dog. The other man nods, then makes an observation;“One or two of them look a bit chunky.” Both men seem to be underthe impression we play several leagues higher than we do. “So, ifwe don't win today?” Asks the first man. The other looks a littleirritated he's not focusing on anything other than a comfortablevictory, and says; “Lock 'em in the bloody changing rooms, that'swhat.”

The main stand and far goal at Hurn Bridge Sport Club back ontorows of tall pine trees. It's a picturesque setting. I share thiswith a man with a northern accent who people in the ground seem toknow. He's the club chairman, who tells me they are one of the fewWessex League teams who don't have a budget for players. To put thisinto context, fellow Wessex Premier league side, Winchester City arerumoured to have £3k a week to pay players with. He asks me how muchI think it costs to run the club a season, and imagine I looksurprised when he tells me it's £45k. They don't own the ground,making them council tenants in much the same way both Milan andInternazionale are at San Siro. Their focus this season is ondeveloping players their players in the Wessex League - a level thatBurnley'sCharlie Austin was playing at only a few years ago. Soessentially, Christchurch are widely expected to win today,irrespective of our recent form. Our 10-1 defeat to SouthamptonPremier League champions, Bush Hill may have been a blip, but thearguments during the second-half of last week's 3-1 loss to WhiteHorse suggest today's task could be made even more difficult. Isecretly worry that we might take a pasting.

Christchurch take the lead after 15minutes from a back-post header. Kristian Hewitt leads the appealsfor a foul on Ryan Hurst, but the goal stands, confirming my worstfears. Despite this setback there is no downing of tools on our part.Up front, Ben Rowe is willingly mobile, covering stretches of fortyyards at a time in both directions. Like the majority of the team, heis unrecognisable from last week. Rowe then picks up possession onthe half-way line, wriggles free of a chasing pack of opposition, andslices Christchurch's defence in two with a measured through ballinto the path of Chris Pye, who scores. Manager, Paul Dyke goesberserk in the away dug-out.

Christchurch now realise that strokingthe ball amongst their back four is no longer a winning strategy,especially as they are now giving the ball away - sometimes undervery little pressure. After slicing the ball off for a throw-in,their right-back looks down accusingly at the grass beneath his feet.They are clearly rattled. Their manager, too; who calls KristianHewitt a 'fatty' - accusing him of having a hamburger hidden in hisshorts. Dyke doesn't appreciate this, and when Hewitt skips free ofone or two younger opponents, Dyke makes a point, seemingly for thebenefit of Christchurch's manager, by giving Hewitt the thumbs-up andtelling him his hamburger will be ready at half-time. I protectmyself against disappointment with a dose of half-time realism.Surely we would run out of steam in the second-half. Christchurch choose to take advantageof the heat and have their half-time team talk in the shade of thepine trees behind the far goal. I cannot hear what is being said, buttheir manager is using his hands to get his point across.

We continue to play progressivefootball in the second-half. Ryan Hurst steps out of defence, makes astrong tackle on the half-way line, and plays an early ball up toRowe, who having completed a remarkable seven day transformation fromEmile Heskey with a tranquilliser habit, to something approachingDuncan Ferguson, takes the ball in his stride, side steps a defenderand drills the ball low past the goalkeeper's left. A man with anenormous camera lens takes lots of pictures. Dyke goes berserk again.(NB You can see photos of the game at Christchurch's website, byclicking here.)The rest of the second-half is end to end stuff. Chris Pye brings thebest out of Christchurch's keeper from an eighteen yard shot.Christchurch have their moments too - the ball squirming out ofJones' hands from a corner and fortuitously past the post; Dan Allenthen chases and clears a loose ball off line.

There are five minutes left whenChristchurch equalise. We're slightly over run at the back and across from the right is volleyed past Jones. Their tails are up nowand we do well to take it to extra time. Christchurch then take thelead in the opening minute of extra time – getting a run on ourdefence and shooting low across Jones. Spectators behind the dug-outchoose this moment to tell Dyke his team talk did a fat lot of good.Dyke is keyed up, and therefore unable to detach himself from anyderogatory comments. He's not quite foaming at the mouth, but everybit the budding Joe Pesci circa Goodfellas, as he gives them a piece of hismind, reminding them of the gulf in divisions between the two teams.His detractors know better than to offer him any more grief, evenwhen it becomes 4-2; an attack is cleared only as far as the edge ofthe box, the resulting shot is hit powerfully past Jones.Christchurch pay us an unintentional compliment by celebrating thegoal greatly. There's now a danger of the score running away from us.Kristian Hewitt pulls the trigger from outside the penalty area. It'snot one of his best strikes – hitting a tangle of legs around thepenalty spot, but Christchurch fail to clear their lines, and AliIngram is quick to tuck the ball away for 4-3. Jones continues tomakes it interesting, with a fine reflex save from a corner whichdraws a round of applause. But there are no further goals.

Christchurch described their win asunconvincing, (click hereto read their thoughts on the game). So where exactly did ourresolute and enterprising performance come from? Martyn Barnettclaimed that large and well maintained pitches, like Christchurch's,suit our playing style better say than Green Park in Millbrook. Thereis an element of truth to this, but to isolate the quality of thepitch would be to discount a significant part of our performance,namely the team's re-acquired desire for tireless running without theball. This is a quality that theoretically, could be replicated toany playing surface. Of course, we may have been seduced by the raresight of rows of plastic seats – some of them occupied, thefloodlights, and all the other trappings that come with a higherstandard of football. However, having responded well to twodifferent, but equally painful defeats, Paul Dyke will be demandingthat today's musketeer spirit of guts and determination will berepeated on Saturday, in a sequence of four consecutive home games.

4-4-2: GK: Ryan Jones, LB: MarcJudd (Paul Andrews), CB: Kev Willsher, CB: Ryan Hurst, RB: Sam Hewitt(Dan Allen), LM: Daniel Esfandiari, CM: Martyn Barnett (c), CM:Kristian Hewitt, RM: Ali Ingram, CF: Chris Pye, CF: Ben Rowe (LeeFielder)

Burridge AFC 1-3 White Horse FC

2011-09-28T12:27:00.000+01:00

Burridge went down fighting at home to White Horse on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, it was done amongst themselves.

Somewhere, beneath the twisted wreckagethat is currently team morale at Burridge AFC, is a desire to do wellfor the football club. At present that desire is only able to expressitself as it did during the second-half on Saturday afternoon – all too often bybickering with one another. Sadly, this new trait spilled over into the post-match chores of taking down the goal nets, and continued in the changing rooms. This behaviour doesn'treflect well on either the club or the players. Quite frankly, it's a bit of a mess.

Burridge substitute Dan Allen scores a late consolation goal.

White Horse had travelled in convoy from Totton. They are talkative andboisterous. The majority of their squad are soon kitted up and readybefore most of us have even arrived at Burridge. I fill our club bottles up with water from the cold tap of the disabled toilets, trying to make sense oftheir conversations in the away team dressing rooms. It's not so much what they were saying, but theenthusiasm in which they are saying it. They are having fun. Yes,it would be later proved they have one or two odious characters within their ranks, the kindyou wouldn't be too upset about if they were to suffer some smallmisfortune, but this is men's football, not the operaticsociety.

Speaking in the West-End Brewery,Kristian Hewitt recalled a bad spell he had whilst playing forCompton. After another defeat the manager went around each player in turn, asking them togive their opinion on why things were going wrong. A selection offairly glib answers followed until it was Kristian's older brother,Jamie's turn. Not one to be described as a shrinking violet, Jamie said that the problem stemmed with the managerhimself. That manager didn't last much longer. If we were to applythe same logic then I would be out on my ear after only one game incharge.

With Paul Dyke on holiday in Egypt, I am manager. I decide to freshen things up by introducing one or two slight variations to our pre-matchwarm-up. However, by the looks of some of our players this has the opposite effect. The first-half is fairly equal, with severalopportunities for both sides. Ryan Jones makes one save, diving to his left to push a header wide of the post, that drawsWhite Horse's manager to throw his cigarette down in disgust. “Wheredid you get him from?” He asks me on several occasions throughout theafternoon. White Horse's goalkeeper, although somewhat taller thanJones, looks nervous. Three times he comes to collect a cross and fails to do so on each occasion. Kristian Hewitt is unfortunate to firstly see his lofted free-kick tipped unconvincingly onto the cross-bar, and then not get a corner kick. It was a weakness we failed to capitalise on.

The players come in at half-time disappointed not to be winning. However, such is the level of confidence at present, the game as a meaningful contest is effectively over once White Horse open the scoring from a header in the second-half. One goal soon becomes two, as White Horse begin to enjoy themselves, rattling the crossbar in the process. I decide to play my hand with a double substitution. These plans are slightly jeopardised when right-back, Sam Hewitt signals that he had a knock. I revert to a 3-5-2 formation, but in doing so I hesitate with exactly how I am going to reshuffle the midfield. White Horse's left-back seems to takepleasure in this. “Do you know what you're doing?” Heasks. I didn't give him the satisfaction of a reply. One or two otherplayers join in, as I quickly became the butt of their jokes. I had endured a brief glimpse into the daily life of Arsene Wenger, and I didn't care for it.

Jones blots his copy book slightly when he concedes a penalty. A two goal lead has done nothing to White Horse's bedside manner, as they insist Jones should be sent off. He gets a yellow. White Horse then score from the spot. At this stage I'm just hoping we can keep the score down. I give Dan Allen a ten minute run out. He has spent the second-half marooned in the one place substitutes fear above all else - stranded on the far side of the pitch as linesman. His reward is a late consolation goal - following in to hook high into the net. This makes him an unlikely joint top scorer with two. However, the goal brings the mutest of celebrations. This Saturday Burridge travel to Christchurch in the Hampshire Cup.

4-4-2: GK:Jones, LB:Judd, CB:Brown, CB:Hurst, RB:S.Hewitt (Esfandiari), RM:Ingram (Allen), CM:Barnett, CM:K.Hewitt, LM:Pye, CF:Schwodler (Fielder), CF:Rowe

Bush Hill 10-1 Burridge AFC

2011-09-18T11:56:00.001+01:00

Victory against reigning Southampton Premier Division champions, Bush Hill, may not have been widely anticipated, but nor was conceding ten goals in the space of one afternoon, as Burridge go crashing out of the Southampton Senior Cup at Green Park , Millbrook.

My game was over after the first tenminutes of play. Rather embarrassingly, I had twisted my ankle in thepre-match warm up. There were neither any opponents, nor divots inthe pitch, on which to blame the injury on. I had simply changed the direction in which I was running in, when myfull weight fell upon my left ankle, which I then felt slowly inflateinside my boot like the cheeks of a tuba player. It was what MarcJudd had rather philosophically described as just one of thosethings. He too had aggravated an injury prior to the game, althoughKristian Hewitt was adamant that his hamstring strain was being usedto mask the hangover he believed him to be suffering from, havingspent the previous evening at a wedding reception at Ford's socialclub. Despite being picked in the starting line-up he would play nopart in the game.

Ali Ingram is generous in his estimations of just how far away my pass to him was.

Five minutes earlier, I had been tipped off about starting the game in the centre of midfield, with strict instructions to try and break up the play of Bush Hill - the winners ofthe Southampton Premier League for the last three year's running. With equal measures of optimism and enthusiasm getting the better of me, I convinced myself that the problem could be run off. Although just to be sure I peeled down my sock andcovered my ankle in repeated blasts of heat spray. It was now cast beneath a lilac shadow. As I recall, my one and only touch of the ball in the game came straight from kick-off, when I decided to make our attacking intentions known by spraying the ball wide to the left. So much so that the ball went out of touch, about twenty-five yards ahead of Ali Ingram.

None of my team mates seemed to find anything unusual in either my inability to get within five yards of my opposite number, or the awkward running gait that the swelling had left me with. I soon came to realise I was nothing more than a vocal passenger in the game, with no choice but to wave the white flag. Mark Reeves replaced me, with the game nicely poised at one goaleach. Ben Rowe had equalised by dribbling around the goalkeeper. Although Bush Hill went into a 3-1lead by half-time, there was little evidence of what was to come, as we had made frequent visits into the penalty area, getting behind Bush's defence and creating chances on several occasions.

I am in no position to give thorough anassessment on the second-half, as I was I sat in a heap on the floor with an ice pack tied around my ankle with a football sock. Sam Schwodler told me that he was quitehappy for me to gloss over details of this game. He stood at the bar shaking his head and whispering ten-oneto himself. It is not unusual for players to have angry exchanges after defeats of this magnitude. However, with the severity of this ten goal loss being uncharted territory for the vast majority of the team, it is probably yet to sink in. As a result, the post-match mood in the changing rooms was one of relative calm, although perhaps a more accurate diagnosis would be shell shock. Sam Hewitt text me later in the evening, saying he felt marginally better having watched Osasuna get trounced 8-0 by Barcelona. With manager, Paul Dyke away on holiday next week, I will be making a guest appearance in the managerial hot seat. However, my role will be restricted as a conduit for Dyke's implicit instructions and team selection. Next Saturday's home game against White Horse will provide us all with a much needed opportunity to bounce back.

3-4-3: GK: Ryan Jones, DF: Kristian Hewitt, Ryan Hurst, Sam Hewitt, RM: Dan Allen, CM: Mark Sanderson (Mark Reeves), Martyn Barnett (c), LM: Ali Ingram, CF: Ben Rowe (Paul Andrews), Chris Pye, Sam Schwodler

NB I have written about my experiences of living on the residential site of what was The Dell - Southampton FC's former home - in October's issue of When Saturday Comes Magazine, which is available in all good newsagents.

Comrades reserves 1-2 Burridge (after extra time)

2011-09-11T15:36:00.000+01:00

Burridge needed extra time to reach the second round of the Trophyman Senior League Cup at Wide Lane on Saturday afternoon. This blog was written while getting word that Burridge's Mark Reeves, who played yesterday, had completed his 83 mile bike ride from London to Southampton in six hours.

Paul Dyke has plenty to say at half-time. Dave Williams who is watching, condenses his description of the first-half to one word - gash. We sit on the wet grass, drinking tap water, as Dyke dissects our performance. He has no qualms betraying a confidence in order to get his point across to team captain, Martyn Barnett; who he thinks is having a quiet game. "It's no good texting me saying: skip's up for it today," says Dyke, "I want to see a captain's performance." By this point, Kristian Hewitt is sniggering. That Martyn had been texting his manager, not only in the third person, but in a shortened version of his new title, was the green light for what will surely be a prolonged spell of teasing.

We'd still had our moments during the first-half. Ryan Hurst won just about everything in the air from our corner kicks, and on another day Marc Judd would have almost certainly given us the lead. In the absence of both Lee Fielder and Ben Rowe, Judd was pushed up-front, alongside Sam Schwodler. Judd found himself through on Comrades' goal with only time and space for company. The amount of which at his disposal allowed him to consider the full raft of methods in which to score. Unfortunately, he was unable to reach a decision. What resulted was a combination of lob and strike which went some way over the crossbar. From there on in the service toward him dried up.

The second-half brings few obvious signs of improvement. Comrades then bring on a beanpole midfielder, who opens the scoring with fifteen minutes left. Various opportunities to clear our lines are missed, and the Comrades substitute, who had run from deep, hooks the ball well over Jones' head. By this time, we too had made both of our substitutions - bringing on Paul Andrews and Daniel Esfandiari - and reverting to a back three of Kristian Hewitt, Ryan Hurst and Dan Allen. Despite the change of both personnel and formation, an equaliser seems unlikely. The game is stretched, we looked tired and defeat seems inevitable.

Dan Allen has no shortage of suitors when he cuts in from the left with a little over five minutes remaining. Quite what he's doing outside Comrades' penalty area from his position in the back three is anyone's guess. He then evades the best efforts of two defenders; and, against the general consensus of his team mates, strikes a twenty-five yard right-footed strike that Comrade's goalkeeper doesn't see until it is in his net. Later, over two huge dinner plate of barbecue chicken wings at the West-End Brewery, there would be some debate on whether the 'keeper should have done better in stopping Dan's shot go in. On reflection, it was the speed in which he decided to shoot and the pace on the ball itself thatprobably beat the goalkeeper, who'd already demonstrated he wasn't clueless by somehow denying Chris Pye what looked certain to be a headed equaliser. Debates and discussions are the last thing on Dan's mind. He runs off, chased by the entire team, including either Mark Reeves or Sam Hewitt, who have abandoned their post as linesman to enjoy this moment.

There's a collective sense throughout our team that Comrades have blown their stack. Finally we have the much needed impetus to go on and win the game. During extra-time Paul Andrews plays a useful cameo up front, making himself a focal point in linking up play between midfield and attack. Barnett then repays his manger's faith, threading a thirty yards pass through to Sam Schwodler, who still has his work cut out when running through on goal. He gives the ball a good thump and sees it nestles in Comrades net. The relief is tangible.

To their credit, Comrades have one last throw of the dice, but much of their energy is put into cod psychology, specifically in their insistence that Kristian Hewitt doesn't want the ball ' back there,' despite various dips of shoulders and side stepping that seem to clearly demonstrate to the contrary in his new position of last line of our defence. There's still time for more goalscoring chances. Chris Pye, who proved a constant threat, is unfortunate to see his lob return into play from the underside of the crossbar. Once again, we hadn't played particularly well. Hard work and a moment of inspiration had got us over the line.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Other Trophyman cup results can be seen by clicking here. Also, anyone wishing to pass some time during their lunch hour can go to WH Smith, and most other newsagents, to read an article of mine about The Dell, which is published in the pages of this month's When Saturday Comes Magazine.

4-4-2: GK: Ryan Jones, LB: Dan Allen, CB: Sam Hewitt (Daniel Esfandiari) CB:Ryan Hurst, RB: Mark Reeves (Paul Andrews), LM: Kristian Hewitt, CM: Mark Sanderson, CM: Martyn Barnett (capt), RM; Chris Pye, CF: Marc Judd, CF: Sam Schwodler.

This changed to 3-4-3: GK: Ryan Jones, DF: Dan Allen, DF: Ryan Hurst, DF: Kristian Hewitt, RM:Daniel Esfandiari, CM: Mark Sanderson, CM: Martyn Barnett (capt), LM: Marc Judd, CF: Sam Schwodler, CF: Paul Andrews, CF: Chris Pye.

Burridge AFC 1-1 Netley Central Reserves

2011-09-05T11:13:00.000+01:00

Burridge kicked off the 2011/12 Southampton Football League season on Saturday 3 September, against Netley Central Reserves, at the Shed, Botley Road, Burridge. This blog was written on the electric daisy wheel of a Canon S200 typewriter, whilst listening to the soundtrack to the film, Inception, by Hans Zimmer.

During the first-half, one of Netley's centre-backs - who had quickly established himself as the game's voice, gave his own unique assessment on our defensive line: "They're awful at the back." His verdict of our defensive capabilities chose to omit any of his own shortcomings, which were later showcased in the sequence of play leading up to our equalising goal. By describing us as awful, I assumed he meant to gee up his attacking players, who looked frustrated at having to make, what they deemed, unscheduled runs deep into their own half to chase after Chris Pye and Dan Jackson."Keep working," he reassured his players, "we're not going to win ten-nil today." This statement would prove to be the height of his powers of perception.

Our opponents were defending Southampton senior division champions, Netley Central Reserves, who hit something of a glass ceiling by winning last season's championship. This is because the Southampton League does not allow reserves teams in the premier division - its highest level. One of the reasons being that if such a reserve side was seriously challenging for the title, they would be able to field players from its first team, who play at higher standards of football, which would serve only to undermine and compromise the integrity of the competition. Although there's nothing stopping Netley pulling in first teamers this year. So, here we were, a little under five months since we last played each other in a match in which we had snatched a two-all draw.

We were wearing our brand new kit. Manufactured by Nike, and sponsored by the West-End Brewery, the blue and black stripes have been the team's colours since 2003. (Prior to that we wore a very loose fitting red and white hooped outfit.) The blue stripes are a slightly lighter shade than previous incarnations, more in keeping with the Internazionale jersey worn by both Jurgen Klinsmann and Nicola Berti during the early 1990s. I'm happy to report that the thin and lightweight black stockings are a far cry from the thick Norwegian fishing socks that former manager, Colin Barfoot, provided us with back in the club's Meon-Valley League days at the turn of the century.

One of the many clear distinctions between playing for Burridge, in the fourteenth tier of the English pyramid structure, and the higher echelons of football, is how games are officiated. Southampton League games are allocated a referee, but his assistants - which tend to still be called linesmen at this level of football, are volunteers from each team. Usually one of the team's substitutes, and in this case the duty of responsibility fell on me. Once you get over the fact that both of the assistants have hugely vested interests in the game everyone can get on with giving them plenty of grief for making bad decisions, which ironically enough is exactly what seems to happen in professional football.

Our goalkeeper, Ryan Jones, was unhappy about Netley's goal. It came mid-way through the first-half, after an aerial challenge between himself and a Netley striker, who got to the ball fractionally earlier than Jones, who was left in heap, watching in vain as the ball trickled beyond his reach and over the goal line. Jones then made a memorable save as Netley pushed hard to increase their lead. A cross from their left was met by the head of an opposing striker, who as the coaching manuals suggest, headed the ball back towards the side of the goal it had arrived from. It is within these fleeting moments that Jones is in his element. In what looked as smooth as a choreographed stunt, he flung himself to his right, scooping the ball wide with the fingers of his right hand, when it seemed destined for the bottom corner of our net. It was of Netley's opinion that the game should have been dead and buried as we approached the final few minutes.

Dan Allen was partly responsible for our equalising goal. Hereplaced Dan Jackson at half-time, after the latter's strength had been sapped by the hot afternoon sun. This led Dyke to question if the nineteen year old had spent the previous evening out drinking. Eighty-eight minutes of the game had passed when Allen found himself with the ball on the edge of the penalty area, looking to create space for shot on goal. His attempt was only partially blocked by Netley's centre-back, and Sam Schwodler, who seconds earlier was cursing his luck at Dan's decision to shoot rather than pass, pounced onto the loose ball to score. It was vindication for Schwodler, who left the field during the first-half clutching his ear in pain after getting clattered. A rather drawn out verbal rally of fuck-off had followed between Schwodler and one or two of the opposition, who doubted the severity of his injury.

With the captain's armband pulled up around his bicep, Martyn Barnett, drove us on for a winner, in what was another confidant display in the centre of our midfield, which was dovetailed nicely by Kristian Hewitt, who played alongside him. Running on the fumes of his healthy appetite for goals, Barnett nearly won the game for us, surging beyond Netley's last defender at an angle that still favoured the goalkeeper's hands. His left foot shot looked set for the bottom corner, but sailed narrowly past the far post. A draw wasn't a bad start to the season. We hadn't set the world alight, but showed grit and resilience in the face of defeat with another late goal.

Those who left the West-End Brewery before 6pm missed out on a eye catching spread of food, including two large dinner large plates stacked high with fries and sausages, as well as an intimidating heap of buttered and thickly sliced white bread, which was all served with the best wishes of the pub landlord, who apologised for not getting down to catch the game. Next week we should have a photographer, so it will no longer be necessary to trawl through the club's extensive photographic archive in order to add some much needed colour to these match reports.

Burridge line-up: 4-4-2 - GK: Ryan Jones, LB: Marc Judd, CB: Sam Hewitt (Mark Sanderson), CB: Ryan Hurst, RB: Mark Reeves, LM: Chris Pye, CM: Martyn Barnett (captain), CM: Kristian Hewitt, RM: Dan Jackson (Dan Allen), CF: Ben Rowe, CF: Sam Schwodler.

Burridge AFC 7-1 Southampton BTC Vets

2011-08-28T10:24:00.002+01:00

Burridge finished their pre-season fixtures by scoring all eight goals in a 7-1 win over Southampton BTC Veterans at Botley Road on Wednesday night. This report was written shortly after blaming some inconsistent performances solely on the Adidas Adinovas I have worn seven times, and making an impulse buy of a pair of Adidas Kaiser Ligas from Sportshoes.com. You can get the very latest Burridge news by joining the club's Facebook page, here, and Twitter feed, which is here.

My two piece navy blue shell suit

I was met at Burridge by Martyn Barnett, who along with several other of our players, had finished putting up the goal nets. He had something to tell me.

“Chris Pye was on his backside,” he said, “it was me who laid on the goal.”

It took me a second to work out what Martyn meant. Then the penny dropped. He was referring to my previous match report, where I'd credited Chris Pye, and not himself for setting up our winning goal against Hedge-End Rangers reserves. Clearly someone was paying attention.

Once again, injuries had trimmed our eighteen man squad down to twelve fit players. Many of us arrived in the new Burridge tracksuits which club manager, Paul Dyke, had bought for just over a £100. I too had worn mine. It's a navy blue two piece shell suit made by Jani, which no doubt alerted the suspicion of the security guard inside Tesco on Burgess Road, when I stopped in for a Lucozade. Back in my car I heard a nasty ripping sound coming from the stitching in the garment's shoulder when I reached over to my glove compartment. Fortunately, no damage appears to have been done.

It's all referee's fault, says referee

I recognised our referee as he arrived in the club car-park and asked him how his pre-season has been going.

“You know what?" He said, “players just don't want to button it. The season hasn't started yet and I've already given four yellow cards and sent a player off.”

There was a slight delay when I asked if he was still enjoying refereeing.

“I dunno,” he said, working a mint around his jaw, “there's too much lip from players these days."

Just when I was ready for him to blame the dissent on a copy-cat culture of the Premier League teams, the conversation took an unexpected development, when he said:

"The thing is, most of it is the fault of referees.”

He was casting a portion of blame in regards to dissent at the door of the refereeing establishment.

“Too many referees don't take charge. Standards have dropped - they really have. If I ever do give up and become an assessor, that's the one question I'll be asking myself: does this referee take charge?”

There was no chance of the referee not taking charge tonight. From my experience, this referee didn't tolerate any dissent whatsoever. I'm always amazed when players chose to ignore this. BTC went down to ten men mid-way through the second-half, when one of their centre-halves talked himself into a red card. As he continued to argue over a penalty decision, I heard him say: “Well fucking send me off then.” The referee obliged, but the centre-half wasn't finished yet. "Know what, Gra? You used to be a good ref."

Given that this player was over the age of thirty-five, (that's the minimum age requirement to play veteran's football), and on first name terms with the referee, it seemed inconceivable he would get himself sent off. Surely he knew what was coming next when he effed and jeffed it out with the man in black. But that's the game sometimes. It doesn't matter how old you are, or how many games you've played - not many of us can look at ourselves in the mirror and say we haven't succumbed to our base instincts at some time or another during play. Kristian Hewitt then scored the first of two second-half penalties. This after Dan Jackson and then Chris Pye had given us a two-nil lead at half-time.

Friendly fire

At 2-0, nobody batted an eyelid when Sam Hewitt finished a sequence of possession amongst the back four with a pass back to goalkeeper, Ryan Jones. It was just another day at the office for the stand in centre-back, with an assured and composed performance. But then something freaky happened. His back pass skipped up high off the longish grass and arced over Jones' head. Now Jones had himself a problem. He was under attack from friendly fire and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. He chased after the ball, but ended up with it caught in the net like a prime catch of mackerel. We all stood there in a state of shock. Sam Schwodler broke the silence.

"I'd have been bollocked for doing something like that," he shouted.

He'd taken some fairly loud criticism during the game for getting caught offside, which he seemed to have taken personally. Sam Hewitt stood there trying to detach himself from events of the previous thirty seconds. After the lord mayor's show of the derby games with Hedge-End we had a pretty underwhelming attendance of what I estimated at two: the injured Kev Willsher and Martyn Barnett's girlfriend. So, Sam can count himself lucky that nobody was present to capture the moment on camera and stick it on YouTube. Not all footballers are as lucky as Sam. Remember Wayne Hatswell? He got himself into a real mess here. Match of the Day pundit and former Arsenal full-back, Lee Dixon, didn't cover himself in glory here.

Sam Hewitt, (in stripes), reflects on his 'friendly fire' on Burridge goalkeeper, Ryan Jones

Sam's own goal didn't effect the outcome of the game. By time we had a 4-1 lead, BTC were down to ten men. Space and further goals came from Sam Schwodler and Marc Judd, whose cameo appearance up-front resulted in two goals.

Burridge line-up (4-4-2): GK: Ryan Jones, LB: Mark Sanderson, CB: Dave Williams, CB: Sam Hewitt, RB: Mark Reeves, LM: Chris Pye, CM: Martyn Barnett(c), CM: Kristian Hewitt, RM: Dan Jackson, CF: Lee Fielder (Marc Judd), CF: Sam Schwodler.

Burridge kick-off their Southampton League season next Saturday at home to Netley Central.

Burridge AFC 1-0 Hedge-End Rangers Reserves

2011-08-21T12:10:00.010+01:00

The majority of this blog was written between 7:52 and 8:42am with a Holiday Inn ballpoint pen on a wet Thursday morning in McDonald's car-park, Hedge-End; the morning after Burridge's narrow 1-0 pre-season win over Hedge-End Rangers reserves. You can get the very latest Burridge news by joining the club's Facebook page, which you can find by clicking here, and Twitter feed, which is here.

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"What's wrong with playing left-back?” I asked Marc Judd and Kristian Hewitt. Both have featured there at some time or another during pre-season; and as we sat in the pub, assessing our latest performance over a bowl of chips, I wanted to know why neither of them enjoy playing there.

“It's boring,” shrugged Kristian. “Name me a left-back?”

“Ashley Cole?” I said, as Kristian looked down into his pint. “What about Paolo Maldini?”

Kristian didn't look convinced. His oldest brother, Marcus – who had once again refereed us, offered an explanation.

“They both know,” he said. Know what? I thought, as he moved forward and said, “that after left-back there's nowhere else to go.”

And there it was. Getting gradually withdrawn into a more and more defensive position was, in some people's opinion, nature's way of telling you that you were finished as a footballer.

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I had stopped off at Texaco on the way to Burridge for two packets of Airwaves gum, where I made a pact with myself to actually enjoy tonight's game. Two-and-half hours later, as Marcus Hewitt blew the final whistle, I remembered that a player's enjoyment of a game is measured by how well he plays in it. No amount of pacts in petrol station car parks was going to determine how much I enjoyed a game if I couldn't take a satisfactory throw-in.

Why? Or more importantly what was the chain of events that led this to happen?

During the game the ball soon came to symbolise a wayward stepson – few wanted it, fewer still were able to bring it under control, and pretty much everyone despised it. One of the great things about playing football is that once you're lost in a game you forget all of life's problems. Mainly because they are quickly replaced with a whole set of new ones. These problems are, admittedly, fairly superficial in comparison to paying the bills; but you try telling that to Kristian Hewitt when you've lost possession on the half-way line. In the first-half he carried on like a sales manager with a raging stomach ulcer - blaming his health on what he considered to be incompetent staff. Mark Reeves got an earful once or twice. As I have mentioned in a previous blog, I could empathise with Reeves.

(Pictured above) Hedge-End reserves manager, Rich Allan, during his days in the Burridge engine room. NB Mike's is a long-standing men's barbers in Hedge-End, Southampton.

Hedge-End's reserves play a couple of rungs down the Southampton League than us, (click here to see who they're up against this year), and judging by this performance it's clear they've bolstered their squad this season. They are managed by former Burridge midfielder, Rich Allan - who very nearly opened the scoring with a half volley from the edge of the box. As he made his way back into position I saw a big smile on his face - there's life in the old dog yet, especially if there's a chance of a goal.

We were without both our first choice centre-backs - Kev Willsher and Ryan Hurst, who were replaced by Sam Hewitt and Dave Williams, who brought a 'take no prisoners approach' to his work. Also missing due to injury were Lee Fielder, Ben Rowe, Paul Andrews and Dan Jackson. Not that Hedge-End had it all their own way so far as team selection go. They too were smarting from the loss of former Burridge full-back, Jay Schwodler, who is on holiday in Australia.

Hedge-End will wonder how they didn't score. They created a number of chances, most notably through Kev Judd, who created three opportunities for himself; so, perhaps the sight of his older brother lining up a free-kick with his left-foot may have got under his skin. He, along with his team mates, hotly disputed the referee's decision to give us a free-kick on edge of box.

"It's like the referee wants them to win," said Kev, realising that his older brother, and opponent - Marc, was capable of floating the ball into the net with his left foot. The free-kick didn't get past Hedge-End's defensive wall, and it was they who had further clear chances to score. It was Dan Allen who in provided the defining moment of the game. Under the quiet demeanour and mousy fringe lurks a young man who is only ever one drink away from breaking the law.

With Burridge goalkeeper -Jones, off his line, Dan had taken up a position on the goal line, which was crucial as a Hedge-End shot cleared Jones' reach, and would have ended up in our top corner had Dan not headed it off the line. It's highly unlikely he will be credited for any diligence or positional sense. People write the history they choose to believe in. The reasoning behind Dan's position will be many: people would rather believe he was dawdling there from Hedge-End's previous corner kick, or he was looking at the sky for clouds that looked like Cheryl Cole, or even he'd just found a good spot to eat worms.

It was Chris Pye, who was having a quiet game by his standards, who set up our winning goal ten minutes from time. He left his marker standing on the right and squared the ball for Ali Ingram to side foot the ball neatly past the goalkeeper's right. I received a text from Hedge-End's Bryn Schwodler later that evening, asking how we had got on. The final score surprised him, as he believed we would have enjoyed a more comfortable win. The win was far from comfortable, but maybe all the more beneficial as a pre-season exercise because of that.

Talking sheet

2011-08-19T09:56:00.002+01:00

This is the reaction from Mark Reeves having read the the last blog post. If you need any sheet metal work done,whether it be a bespoke stainless steel handrail, an industrial security grill, or maybe a marine bow roller, then Reeves is your man.

Help the aged

2011-08-17T11:03:00.000+01:00

I am still coming to terms with Marcus Hewitt being a referee.

*I imagine President Nixon had similar feelings when he caught his first glimpse of FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, wearing negligee. It would no doubt have been an unexpected development for the President; one that would have caused him to draw in a sharp intake of breath.

It's not that I don't support Marcus' decision to become a referee, it's just that I'm far more used to seeing him chase full-backs as a striker, a position he played in with distinction for AC Delco, Compton, Hedge-End and Ordnance Survey, over a period of fifteen years. I spoke with him after our 5-3 defeat at the West-End Brewery, which as well as being our post match watering hole, is also now our new sponsor. His gaze was fixed on the TV screen.

"Did I see a look of pity in your eyes when you saw me towards the end of the game?" I asked, offering him a dry roasted peanut.

Marcus nodded. Yes, he did think I looked laboured during the final fifteen minutes – no, he didn't want a peanut.

"Maybe I need to get out and start running?"

"God, no!" He said, making short work of his pint of lager. “Don't do that.”

He looked back toward the vidiprinter – Craig Makail-Smith had just scored for Brighton at Fratton Park. I didn't ask him exactly what he meant. Did he not think my body could handle a jog in between our sequence of games?

"Some of you lot looked a bit leggy today. You don't want to over do it.”

I am very close to turning 33, an age that Marcus believes firmly dictates whereabouts you can and cannot play. Holding midfield is okay, but playing on the wing is most certainly not. Up until recently I've always thought that being a slow runner was a blessing in disguise, under the assumption that when I got older I would notice no significant loss of pace. This theory has been proved wrong to me during each of the three pre-season games I have played in.

I had a further handicap to contend with whilst trying to keep up with Hedge-End's left-winger last Wednesday evening. This time instead of my legs it was my eyes which were causing me problems. Temporary blindness is not conducive to playing sport. I've now taken to lining my eyebrows with a smear of Vaseline to prevent sweat from washing the contact lenses out of my eyes.

In times of self pity it does well to remember that it could always be worse - I could be Mark Reeves. Despite being 35 he regularly gets chosen to play wide in midfield, which has always seemed a little cruel to me. You wouldn't send him out swimming for clams in shark infested waters. That wouldn't just be inhumane, it would be slaughter. And so it came to be last season on the April 23 against Hare & Hounds, with Reeves' performance being a clear argument in favour of euthanasia. I could empathise, because I knew in my bones that it could just have easily been me getting taken to the cleaners on that hot day at Cutbush Lane.

Reeves tried one or two tricks to slow that winger down, but in the end the only reason he wasn't sent off was because of time. He ran out of it having been substituted at half-time. (Incidentally, we did come back to draw that game 2-2.) Of course, Reeves took it like a man.

It's not that Reeves isn't fit. He regularly turns out very impressive times in 10k runs up and down Hampshire; however, it's not stamina that is lost to age, it's speed, and more specifically the ability to be able to accelerate away from an opponent over the distance of a yard or two. If Reeves reads this he may feel I'm pinning my own insecurities on him, after what was a good season for him in 2010/11. He'd probably be right.

Of course, there are always new things to look forward to. In this case it is a new Burridge home strip for the 2011/12 season, which will be our traditional blue and black striped shirts, black shorts and socks. Not sure when we will be first wearing it.

*It's alleged that J.Edgar Hoover, one of the founding fathers of the FBI, wore women's clothes.

Burridge's next game is this evening versus Hedge-End Rangers reserves.

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Bishopstoke 5-3 Burridge AFC

2011-08-15T10:36:00.007+01:00

Pre-season fixture 4 of 6: Saturday 13 August, Bishopstoke Rec

Paul Dyke let us have it at half-time. He wasn't convinced we were putting enough effort into the game, and if there is one thing guaranteed to push his buttons it's a dubious work ethic. He cited our full-backs as an example.

"At times we're just going through the motions," he said, standing up as we sat down on the grass drinking tap water. "When we're defending throws, then yeah, I want you stood in front of whoever our centre-back is marking, but if the ball goes back to the thrower then you run, and I mean run your bollocks off to close him down."

Although I can testify to there being greater effort in the second half, it was not reflected in the scoreline, with a further four goals being conceded. Kristian Hewitt had given us the lead from the spot. This was cancelled out by a Bishopstoke equaliser. Martyn Barnett and Ryan Hurst both scored to level the game at 2-2 and then 3-3, but as the game went on the pitch appeared to gradually increase in size, as we began to look more and more tired; a factor that was not helped by having to use both of our substitutes in the first-half, due to injuries to both Ben Rowe and Marc Judd.

Dyke was far more diplomatic in his post-match autopsy. He reminded us that Bishopstoke did contest last season in the Southampton Premier Division, which is one level higher than us - albeit that their season culminated in a last place finish. It's not entirely clear why they haven't been relegated, although that was besides the point. Next Saturday's pre-season fixture has been cancelled, which may well be a blessing in disguise - although before that we have a game with Hedge-End Rangers Reserves on Wednesday evening.

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Burridge AFC 1-3 Hedge-End Rangers

2011-08-14T19:29:00.002+01:00

Pre-season fixture 3 of 6: Wednesday 10 August, Botley Road, Burridge

Hedge-End's goalkeeper, Phil Kinally, stood defiantly in his six yard box. Martyn Barnett had given our penalty kick a good wallop, but Kinally dived low to save it. Any chance to make something of the rebound disappeared when the ball - a slightly worn Mitre, was cleared high behind the goal by a defender, who joined his team mates in whooping it up in a quickly assembled huddle around their goalkeeper, while members of our team began hopelessly searching for the ball amongst a tall patch of stinging nettles.

The penalty save maintained Hedge-End's 2-1 lead with around fifteen minutes left to play. It was vindication for Kinally, who had a spot of bother during the first-half, when he swung his fists like a drunk at Kristian Hewitt's thirty yard free kick. It was an element of good fortune, as opposed to judgement, which diverted the ball against the crossbar; although any rest bite was short lived, as Marc Judd followed in to acrobatically score an equalising goal. Hedge-End regained the lead in the second-half, leaving the game nicely poised for the final thirty minutes.

The penalty kick was awarded for hand ball against Hedge-End's left-back – a decision he was strongly opposed to. He appeared to lean into the ball with his upper arm. Four letter protests may have warranted further punishment, but referee, Marcus Hewitt, found himself in a fairly hopeless position. Not only is he related to two of our players, he was also referred to on several occasions by some of our players by his first name, which certainly didn't make his task any easier. Marcus recalled his telephone conversation earlier in the week, when he told the Southampton Refereeing Association that he was refereeing Burridge's friendly games. He was told, in no uncertain terms that: "There is no such thing as a friendly – only FA sanctioned matches."

This had been a much anticipated fixture, for many of us at least. Hedge-End are fresh from winning last season's Hampshire League. Although there is only three miles between our grounds, any rivalry between the two of us seems to exist mainly within our camp, and has been largely manufactured since former top scorer, Bryn Schwodler, left to join Hedge-End in 2010. Other than Ross Bryant, another former Burridge player, (who was turned out in a lovingly polished pair of Copa Mondials), and Kinally, Hedge-End's squad of twenty was made up of what was to me, a group of complete strangers, most of whom I imagine would have had no emotional connection to this fixture.

Regrettably, I have to accept a certain amount of responsibility for Hedge-End's third goal. Having made a meal of bringing a throw in under control, I then sold Dan Allen hopelessly short with a return pass, in what was the proverbial 'hospital' ball; which Hedge-End intercepted on their left wing. Our goalkeeper, Ryan Jones, exceeded expectations by making a reflex save from their attack, but he was still on the floor when the rebound was tucked away by Bryn Schwodler, who had the grace not to ruffle my hair on his return to the half-way line. By now, time, and the game as a contest, was all but over.

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Locks Heath Reserves 5-2 Burridge AFC

2011-08-07T15:19:00.000+01:00

Pre-season fixture 2 of 7: Saturday 6 August, Stoneham Park, Eastleigh

A prior engagement kept me away from Saturday's game; so, I have relied on the first hand accounts of those present at Stoneham Park, on Saturday morning, to piece this report together. Ryan Hurst was first to reply to my text message. He too was unable to play, although his absence, rather unfortunately, was due to an ankle injury he sustained in Wednesday's game with Sporting Bishops Waltham. This meant we were without our first choice centre halve pairing against Wessex League opponents, as Kev Willsher was also missing, having torn a shoulder muscle on Wednesday. Although Hurst's text didn't confirm the final score, it did heavily imply that we had lost: "We battled well, but so many playing out of position." 'But' was very much the operative word, and after some coaxing, Hurst did confirm that we had lost the game 5-2. Although what was rather more telling was that we were three goals down in the opening three minutes.

We are notoriously slow starters to games, a characteristic which may have been exemplified by the 10am kick-off. Lee Fielder tucked away nicely to make the half-time score far more respectable than many may have feared after the opening minutes. It was agreed that we were up against a good side. The reshuffled centre back pairing of Kristian Hewitt and his younger brother, Sam, was further tweaked when Sam went off at half-time with a knock. Marc Judd came into central defence from left back.

Locks Heath's quality was further highlighted when they scored a fourth from the edge of the box shortly after the restart. Four goals soon became five. This would be a result, that given the context of the game - missing players and quality of opposition - that most players will be able to shrug off. This couldn't be said for Martin Barnett. Not only is he based in Locks Heath, he is also one of their former players; so he would have been able to draw on these feelings to motivate himself for the match and score a goal I'm sad to have missed. Paul Dyke described it as Maradona-esque- an opinion endorsed by Ryan Hurst, who said Martin was full of nice touches in our midfield. I anticipate that we will have a larger squad for Wednesday's game with Hedge-End.

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Sporting Bishops Waltham Reserves 1-0 Burridge AFC

2011-08-04T19:00:00.001+01:00

Pre-season fixture 1 of 7: Wednesday 3 August, Priory Park, Bishops Waltham, south-east Hampshire

Wednesday evening marked the first of seven pre-season games for us during August. Opened windows did little to cool the away team dressing rooms at Priory Park; where, inside, thirteen of us jostled for adequate space in which to get changed. Kristian Hewitt had a look of concentration on his face as he searched the kit bag for a pair of extra large shorts. These days he is quick to dismiss his level of fitness; but judging on his performance in this fixture his words are merely a smokescreen. During the first-half, alongside Martin Barnett in the centre of our midfield, Hewitt showed large reserves of energy, demonstrated by several immaculately timed sweep tackles, where he slid in to dispossess his opponent before getting back to his feet with the ball in one rapid movement.

It was difficult to ascertain the exact stature of the opposition, who play in the Hampshire Premier League's Combination, which is somewhat of an anomaly, as it is made up of the Hampshire Premier League's reserve sides. However, by measuring that level on its own merits, Sporting's reserves had a good, if not ultimately frustrating season last term - losing the title on goal difference and the league cup final, after extra time to Liphook. Sporting had the better of the first fifteen minutes. Their passing was pleasing on the eye, without ever finding a clear route through to Ryan Jones' goal; mainly due to Ryan Hurst and Sam Hewitt - paired together in the centre of our defence, who consistently snuffed out their attacks, with a combination of poise and composure. This resulted in one or two cross words being exchanged between Sporting's midfield and attack, who seemed to have a distinct difference in opinion in how they should go about their business.

Sporting dominance faltered when we noticed they were playing a very high defensive line, which we exposed five or six times. Sam Schwodler and Lee Fielder both had several clear runs through on goal. Fielder reacted angrily when he missed the target, kicking the air in frustration. Debutant, Dan Jackson, went closest to breaking our duck, when his right footed strike cannoned powerfully back into play off of what seemed to be the underside of the metal crossbar. At this point it seemed an impending Burridge goal was inevitable. At half-time I heard several Sporting players discussing the first-half. They chose to ignore their defensive frailties, deciding instead to put the negative focus on our tactics, which they considered long ball. Far from being the kind of prehistoric anti-football, written about extensively in the pages of Charles Hughes' book, The Winning Formula, (which claims that the majority of goals are scored in under five passes), our approach was a calculated response to what we considered a weakness. Our passes were long, but they were also, mainly, accurate. This approach was highly effective in producing goalscoring chances - but unfortunately, no goals.

The frustration caused from not capitalising on our previous goalscoring opportunities seemed to accumulate in our collective consciousness; weighing heavy on the shoulders of whoever happened to have one of the many more chances we created in the second-half. Sam Schwodler was openly self critical, cursing himself with all the names under the sun. It was particularly odd that his goalscoring touch should desert him the day he finally wore suitable footwear, in the form of his new Adidas blades, specifically designed for these conditions. In the past Sam has worn metal studded boots all year round, irrespective of how hard the pitch is. Marc Judd then conceded a penalty. He was furious, and directed his anger towards the referee, whose decision appeared vindicated by the distinct lack of appeal against his judgement. Sporting scored from the resulting spot kick, which proved to be the decisive goal of the game.

Later, Lee Fielder sat in the corner of the changing room, saying that his missed chance would haunt his night's sleep. "Which one?" Replied Marc Judd. In truth, the only real negative aspect of the evening's play was an injury to captain, Kev Willsher - who was substituted after shepherding the ball over the byline from an opposing forward. He was somewhat distant after the game - perhaps lost in negative thoughts about the length of time he will be unable to play. It turned out he had torn a muscle in his shoulder, and as a consequence will be sidelined for four to six weeks. He did not join the majority of the squad to evaluate our performance in the garden of the nearby Priory pub. It was agreed that it had been an enjoyable game- with a great flat and expansive surface on which to play on, where everyone saw plenty of the ball; all that was missing was the result.

Burridge squad: Ryan Jones, Mark Reeves, Ryan Hurst, Sam Hewitt, Mark Sanderson, Marc Judd, Kristian Hewitt, Martin Barnett, Dan Jackson, Lee Fielder, Sam Schwodler, Kev Willsher, Paul Andrews

Burridge's next fixture is a 10am kick-off on Saturday 6 August, versus Locks Heath Reserves, at Stoneham Park Sports & Social Club, Stoneham Lane, Eastleigh, Southampton, SO50 9HT.

Many hands make light work

2011-07-21T14:53:00.004+01:00

Paul Dyke spent his Saturday afternoon alone, applying a thick coat of green paint to the Portakabin behind one of Burridge's goals. This was two weeks ago; and was not, however it may seem, part of any community service order; but instead, a conscious decision by the Burridge manager to donate his spare time in helping the football club. There have been times over the past few years when thick brambles have threatened to engulf the building, which is used to store one or two pieces of fairly inexpensive match-day equipment. Given the lengths Dyke took in painting it, one wonders what exactly is in store for the Portakabin: a tea hut, perhaps? Or maybe some form of treatment room, or gym? Or better still, a holding facility for Burridge striker Joe Hill, should he misbehave.

Burridge have continued their training for the forthcoming season with little incident, until last Saturday afternoon, when former top goal scorer, Bryn Schwodler - who was out drinking with his former colleagues in Portswood, decided to fan the flames prior to the pre-season friendly between Burridge and his new side, Hedge-End Rangers, by posting on Facebook. Alcohol may have clouded his judgement when he reacted to Sam Hewitt's teasing, with what was probably intended as nothing more than harmless fun, but the language used in his rallying call to his new team mates will do little to build relations between the two teams. As I have learnt from experience, taken out of context, words can provoke strong feelings in people. Whether or not 'little' Burridge believe they can beat Hedge-End Rangers is perhaps less pertinent than Burridge captain, Kev Willsher - who responded online. He felt Schwodler was being disrespectful to his former team. One hopes that this can all be swept to one side come match day, which is some time in mid-August, and that the game will be played out in a competitive, but sporting spirit.

Training was carried out last night in good spirits, although looking around, there were very few clues to it actually being July - muddy puddles have collected in the single lane track leading to the car-park. Further surveillance - although it would have to be extremely thorough – would uncover a rather hefty dollop of faeces. Suffering from a slightly upset stomach, no doubt aggravated further by the spicy chicken pasta from Tesco I'd eaten for lunch, I was in some serious difficulty whilst driving down Botley Road to Burridge. With the club house locked I was forced into swift and decisive action. I can at least testify that what I was resorted into doing was carried in a safe and responsible manner, in a discrete and hidden location. Once we began warming up it became apparent that it would have been quite feasible to have worn metal studded boots, such was the relatively soft going underfoot. Few chose to waste breath on conversation once Dyke put us through our paces. Ben Rowe was later welcomed to training with some light hearted abuse, having arrived and hour and a half late due to work commitments. The solitary sight of him jogging laps around the cricket pitch as we packed up and left for the evening carried with it a certain degree of sadness.

This photograph above is a rather wonderful juxtaposition of elegance and poise, demonstrated by Burridge's Mark Reeves. Notice his head is raised in awareness of both his team mates and the opposition. This helps Reeves to manipulate the game to dance to his own beat.

The meter's always running

2011-06-29T20:03:00.001+01:00

Burridge's second pre-season training session takes place tonight........

Kristian Hewitt called me earlier in the week to see if I was going pre-season training on Wednesday evening. He was on holiday in Wales during the first session, which I had also missed due to a touch of tendinitis in the feet and calves, which has led me to decide on taking a further two week's leave. Hewitt was slightly apprehensive about the prospect of running laps around the playing fields of Burridge. He knew it would be a long hard slog. Not just on Wednesday night, but for every week until the season begins in September.

Kristian Hewitt in action for Burridge, Sept 2010.

Training absentees are still able to contribute to the club. The penalty for missing a session, irrespective of the reasons why, is a fine of fifty pence, payable in cash to manager, Paul Dyke. As an accountant by profession, Dyke is extremely adept at keeping accurate records on who has outstanding fines to pay. Not that Dyke is mean. All the money goes towards the liquid refreshments at our end of season night-out. When taking escalating alcohol prices into consideration, the money is well spent.

Gordon Strachan said he was surprised at the poor level of fitness of the Southampton squad, when he took over as manager in 2001. This wasn't only an indictment on the previous regime of Stuart Gray, but also of the players themselves. Not that simply being able to run all day is necessarily an asset in itself to playing the game, but as Strachan said, the idea behind fitness is to allow players to perform their skills for a longer period of time, whether that be water carrying, decision making, or the seemingly simple task of passing the ball to another player's feet from a distance of five yards. None of which are a straight forward skill to execute if you are tired. Even in the Southampton Football League, a good level of fitness can often be the difference between an indifferent season and a good one. Naturally, there were one or two grumbles in the Burridge camp when Dyke kicked off his tenure as first team manager in the summer of 2010, with two-hour long weekly sessions of interval training; but, when assessing last season there's no doubting the value of the long hours spent on the training ground. There were come backs from two goals down on three separate occasions, most notably against eventual champions - Netley Central Reserves, and a last minute winning goal away to Forest Town, in a cracking game down by Fawley Power Station.

The Football Association's Full Time website has published the details for the 2011/12 Southampton Football League season. Click here for full details. Casting an eye over the teams whets the appetite further for the coming season. Alongside Burridge in the forthcoming season's senior division are many of the usual suspects, like Southampton BTC, Durley and Netley Central Reserves, who despite winning the double last season remain in the senior division, because the Southampton Premier League don't allow reserve teams to compete in it. (Although, rather tellingly, Netley's starting eleven has been vastly different in each of the past five seasons we have played against them.) The reward for the hard work in training will come in the form of seven pre-season fixtures that Dyke has booked through August.

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NB Any blog text in blue is a hyperlink, which you can click on to be taken to a relevant link elsewhere. For example, those who wanted to get a better idea of how Kristian Hewitt strikes a ball can click on the blue text his name apears in. PS For those of you who've been away on summer holidays during the off season, my thoughts on Diego Maradona's recent footballing appearance in the Russian region of Chechnya, appear on the website of Britain's finest football magazine, When Saturday Comes. To read it click here.

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The end of season 'do'

2011-06-05T15:28:00.002+01:00

Last night was Burridge's slightly belated end of season awards evening in Southampton.

I woke up this morning with a head full of bad dreams. My night's sleep had been interrupted with images of Burridge top goal scorer, Sam Schwodler and The Beatles, who were banging their fists into my pillows, whilst singing Helter Skelter. Looking at my phone I noticed I had a missed call from Schwodler at 3:11am. I got out of bed and made my way to the lounge, when I heard a faint whimper from my brother's room; it's an unusual arrangement, but we live together. Against my better judgement I opened the door. Many unpleasant smells greeted me along with an out stretched arm that appeared from under the covers.

“Have a good time last night?” I asked.

“Urrggggghhhhhh,” he murmured. “Give me.........water.”

I brought a pint glass of water back from the kitchen and put it on his bedside table. Seeing as he'd not gone to bed until gone 8am, it was highly unlikely he would resurface until Antiques Road show was on.

The source of my dreams became clear when I got to lounge. The floor was covered in Beatles records and empty bottles of Stella. Three fat cigar stumps had been extinguished in our Jesus ashtray. My brother, Schwodler, and no doubt others had enjoyed a night cap, which I had been oblivious to. I opened the door to the balcony to clear the smell of smoke, as I tried to piece the previous evening together. It was our end of season-do, that much I knew; but other questions remained unanswered: did Joe Hill pursue Lee Fielder's sister any further? Had Greg Baker made his early morning flight to Senegal with Arsenal's Johan Djourou? Just what exactly did Sam Schwodler have against sobriety? And, what was that substance daubed across the fly of Ryan Jones' trousers?

The vast majority of the squad had spent the day playing a round of golf at East Horton. I was one of the few who don't play. I have never been able to trust myself with a golf club since that day in 1997. I did what I could with the little money I earned from Currys to contribute in some way to Sergei Gotsmanov's dental bills, but the friendship between us was never the same again. It didn't matter, I would probably struggle to walk around the course at present. A niggling calf injury has prevented me from being able to run. I have compensated for the lack of cardio with a punishing regime, including reps of 50 push-ups, performed in the privacy of my bedroom, without any clothes. A push-up is not constituted unless my knob kisses the carpet, which in my books is a more than adequate press-up.

Paul Dyke had organised the the whole day. The evening began at Revolutions at 7:30pm. We had the first floor booked to ourselves. The fines Dyke had accrued from us all during the season had resulted in a decent sized kitty; some of which had funded the initial refreshments. Having to cough up fifty pence for arriving to games, even a minute late; or, a quid for clearing the perimeter fence at training during shooting practise, had now borne fruit. The tables were lined with ice buckets filled with bottles of beer and trays of shots. Dyke read from a sheet of paper, thanking us for our efforts during his inaugural season as Burridge manager, before handing out the end of season awards, which began with an arrangement of words I never thought I'd live to hear in the same sentence. They were: club man of the year, Sam Schwodler. Dyke has decided to give the award to the top goal scorer. Sam was the clear winner having scored nineteen this season.

Player's player of the year went to Ryan Hurst. He has built a solid partnership with Kev Willsher in the heart of our defence during his first season with the club. He accepted the applause of his team mates and received the club shield from Paul Dyke.

Kristian Hewitt turned to me and frowned, “Well, I didn't vote for him.”
“You don't have to necessarily be the best player to win it,” I said.
“I know that. Other wise your name wouldn't be on that shield,” is what I think he said,
"What was that?" I asked.
"Nothing. I just said I voted for Sam Schwodler."

Sam Hewitt was awarded manager's player of the year, having been narrowly pipped to the player's player award by one vote. Our evening continued at Reflex, a nightclub with a fixation with the 1980s. Dyke had arranged for us to jump the substantial queue, by putting our names of the guest list. Dyke plied us with more free alcohol, visiting the bar intermittently to return with armfuls of drink. This began to have an effect on Sam Hewitt. I knew he was in trouble when I saw him trying to dispense soap from the toilet attendant's crotch. He was still, somehow able to maintain a certain level of poise as he left the cubicle, that has come to be expected from his performances at right-back. Yes, he had a vacant expression on his face, but that was perfectly normal. However, to the sharper eye there was a tell-tale give away to his state, the main one being his shoes, which I could have sworn were were showered in flecks of vomit. I suspected most of it to be his.

“Well done,” I said, trying hard not to stare at his shoes.
“What?,” He jabbered, throwing his arms in wild directions in an effort to keep time with Kajagogoo.
“Err...well done on getting the award,” I repeated.
beens and how they better start pulling their weight next season. I smiled whilst simultaneously eyeing up the nearest fire exist. Fortunately, Sam ran off, climbing up the steel railings onto the dancing stage. It was the last I saw of him.

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The only man at Burridge with a Linked In profile

2011-06-02T09:37:00.003+01:00

Burridge manager, Paul Dyke visited me last week. He said no to my offer of either hot or cold drink; this was not a social call – he was here to talk football. There he was, sat on my sofa, a mostly teetotal accountant, and the only person at the club with a Linked-In profile. Google helped me to discover that Greg Baker also has one, but he no longer plays for Burridge. The daily commute from Southampton to London in his job as football partnership manager at Comic Relief, convinced him to move to Islington.

In losing Greg, the club lost a clinical penalty taker. All in all, Greg converted seventeen consecutive penalties. In his absence, Justin Newman, Kristian Hewitt and Marc Judd all failed too score from the spot, which managed to convince me that Greg wasn't a complete waste of space, with a tortoise necked style heading technique completley ill suited to playing anywhere on the pitch, as I have heard people say.

In his Linked In profile, Baker, unlike Dyke, had chosen to use a picture of himself not only without a tie, but wearing a t-shirt; that's the charity sector for you. Most players in the squad are blue collar workers, and as such have little need for an online professional networking site. Yes, I am a pen-pusher, but my CV isn't really worthy of Linked-In; and, although Kev Willsher is a graphic designer, he doesn't strike me as the business networking type.

This time last year Dyke stepped into the breach to become Burridge manager, but now, a good month after the dust has settled on a satisfactory season, in which Burridge finished in fourth place of the Drew Smith Southampton League senior division, it was his chance to perform an audit on the club's performance. I wondered how he felt about ageing central midfield players who scored no goals last season.

I would have to do plenty of water carrying to justify my position in the starting eleven next season. I knew about his special little book. I've seen him use it in the West End Brewery after games, making a note of not just the goalscorers, but the arrangement of the back four if and when we had kept a clean sheet, as well as a tally of who had provided the goal assists. I didn't get many of those either. They were all marked off neatly in a tally chart in black pen in that book.

Although, curiously enough, Dyke did pick me to start in all but one game last season. I remember that one game well. It was Forest Town away. Dyke had his own way of breaking the news to me. We all remember Glen Hoddle's method of letting Paul Gascoigne know he hadn't made the twenty-two man England squad for the 1998 World Cup in France. Glenn had Kenny Gee playing the background when he called Gascoigne into his office to break the bad news. Gazza then smashed it up.

Dyke chose to take me to one side, away from the other players. He knew I had it in me to make a terrible scene - and the sight of me sobbing uncontrollably might unsettle some of the younger lads. By taking me away from the crowd he knew I would be able to dry my eyes and gather myself in the toilet cubicle, before preparing to take the linesman flag for the first-half.

It was just as well we were discussing off the field matters. Unless, of course, he was easing me into take a more active role in my other position as club bursar. He was keen to stress the importance of keeping a close eye on the books. As a grass roots football club we are not a money making organisation. All the money we bring in goes on outgoings – referee and pitch costs, training hire, medical equipment, league registration fees, and despite popular opinion, not on my utility bills.

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Burridge AFC 5-0 Wellow

2011-05-05T14:23:00.003+01:00

Saturday 30 April, The Shed, Botley Road, Burridge, Southampton.

Burridge played their twentieth and final league game of the Drew Smith Southampton Football League season against Wellow.

When I turned around I saw blood on Mark Reeves' face. He'd been headbutted. I didn't see what happened; nor did the referee, but Paul Dyke and Sam Hewitt, who had, were shouting, and within seconds there was a crowd of angry players stood around the perpetrator. The referee called him over. He couldn't send him off for something he hadn't seen, and told him as much. Dyke decided to take action. "Sorry, Reevesy," he said, "you're coming off." Reeves didn't answer. He looked furious, walking off the pitch with a wad of cotton wool pressed against his nose and mouth to stop the flow of blood. Dyke was irritated Wellow hadn't done likewise. Whilst the perpetrator remained on the field of play the game threatened to turn nasty. He took Wellow's linesman to task. "You need to control your players." The linesman mumbled something back. Dyke wasn't finished, "If your lot had anything about you, you'd get him off." The linesman snapped, telling Dyke to fuck off, managing to summarise the mentality of a minority of his team-mates fairly succinctly.

Sam Schwodler side foots goal number five past Wellow, (pic taken by Luke Sanderson).

The player responsible for the spilt blood showed a good burst of pace to get away from Reeves, who chased after him. His heavily strapped right knee was a walking advertisement for revenge. However, the opportunity to deliver retribution never materialised, and rather than manufacture any such opportunity, we instead used the incident as a catalyst to score further goals. It was already two-nil; Marc Judd got the best out of Wellow's keeper, before giving us a first-half lead, Sam Schwodler then punished some indecisive defending with number two. By the time Schwodler got his second Wellow looked ready to go home. They stood with their hands on their hips, with no longer the energy or inclination to argue about whose fault the goal was. They have endured a miserable season, culminating in only one league win, which came by default, courtesy of Sholing Sports, who were unable to put a team out for their scheduled fixture in March. When Wellow did attack they demonstrated some woeful decision making. Both opposition centre-halves had made their way into our penalty area for a hotly anticpated free-kick on the right, which was a strike at goal so rash it resulted in our throw-in, several yards from the corner flag.

Sam Hewitt capped his season with a memorable individual goal, receiving the ball outside his penalty area, he ran the length of the field to exchange a one-two with Blayne Kinley, and with the whites of the goal posts in his sights, he had the presence of mind to compose himself with a well struck shot past Wellow's keeper. There was still time for Wellow to concede a penalty. In doing so they rediscovered their voice, complaining bitterly to the referee. He wasn't interested, perhaps subconsciously giving us the benefit of any decision since Mark Reeves' substitution. Usual penalty taker, Kristian Hewitt, allowed Sam Schwodler to complete his hat-trick, with his nineteenth goal of the season, which is a more notable achievement when you consider his wholly inappropriate choice of footwear for the entire season. Metal studded Adidas boots are ideal for the soft pitches between November and February, but serve only to give blisters on the firm pitches of the previous two months.

Sam's goal tally of nineteen is two shy of last season's top score, achieved by his brother, Bryn, who has since moved to Hedge-End, a club two miles down the road. Whether or not Hedge-End play at a higher standard of football than Burridge has been much debated in the past twelve months since Bryn's departure. Hedge-End play in the Magneta Hampshire League, which has become somewhat maligned of late, partly because it is featured so sparsely in the local newspapers, but mainly because it can be reached as easily by written application as opposed to promotion from the Southampton Premier League. Warsash Wasps successfully applied for the league after finishing fourth in our division only to drop out entirely earlier in the season. The league is also found wanting in terms of administration, with results not having been updated on the Football Association's website since last October, (click here); and although the league does have its own website, if their league table is anything to go by they have revolutionised a new points system - why else would Upham be leading the table with 92 points from 19 wins? Click here for the Hampshire League website.

Hedge-End's off the field progress has been scuppered by vandalisation to their new dug-outs. They play on a public recreation field next to an enourmous housing estate. Burridge, on the other hand, play on their own, secluded piece of land, which on the face of it, in terms of land and planning potential, is vastly superior. Unfortunatelty, Burridge's pitch does tend to hold water, meaning home games are often postponed. This has led to a somewhat nomadic existence. Many home games have tended to take place at Meadowside Leisure Centre in Whiteley, a ground thats minute changing rooms, and lack of personality, has never really felt like home. Investment is needed in the pitch's drainage, ideally from a sugar daddy from the local business community with an interest in football to match his bank balance. Until that day, Burridge players would do well to continue buying lottery tickets. Burridge now have a two month break until pre-season training begins, which will include a weigh-in for all players.

Burridge finished the season in fourth place of the Southampton senior division. Click here for the final Southampton Football League tables, and here for Burridge's results from the 2010/11 league campaign.

Burridge lined up in a 4-4-2 formation: GK:Jones, RB:S.Hewitt, CB:Willsher, CB:Hurst, LB:Wilson, RM:Reeves (Andrews), CM:Sanderson, CM:K.Hewitt, LM:Judd (Kinley), CF:Fielder, CF:Schwodler

Hare & Hounds 2-2 Burridge AFC

2011-04-29T10:26:00.001+01:00

Saturday 23 April, Cutbush Lane, Southampton, Hampshire

Burridge play mid-table Hare & Hounds in their penultimate game of the season, knowing a win cannot alter their position of fourth in the senior division of the Drew Smith Southampton League.

"They might be used to bad language,” the referee told me, pointing at his two kids, “but that doesn't mean I want to hear it - not here, in a public place.” A sense of shame stopped me answering him back. Giving Ben Rowe a piece of my mind may well have passed unnoticed had I chosen to express myself differently; but it was a hot day and we were losing by two, largely self inflicted, goals to nil, after only ten minutes of play; and I had reacted to something Ben said from his position up-front, something I no longer remember, by effing and jeffing loud enough for residents on the nearby estate of semi-detached houses to hear.

Click to enlarge: Self conscious man can't stop his dog being gripped by game. (Picture by Luke Sanderson)

I looked toward the referee's kids - sat on a blanket, drinking out of plastic beakers to the side of the pitch. If I wasn't mistaken they were feeding themselves from a Tupperware container. They were no more than seven or eight years old, sitting with who I presumed to be their mother. She couldn't have more than thirty-five; no crime in itself, but the referee, with what hair he had left, growing white from the back of his head, was sixty if he was a day. Not that the age gap was objectionable, just from my maudlin perspective she faced a significant chunk of her life without him. Today, the sun shone brightly; and tonight, perhaps during the slower bits of Casualty, there was time to discuss the complexities of the offside rule together, but what about tomorrow? Are there rainy days spent alone on the horizon? Frankly, I should have been more preoccupied with imposing a pressing game higher up the pitch, but playing in the heat always gets to me this way.

Our usual appetite for the game was missing. Kristian Hewitt summed it up on his arrival in the dressing room. “There's twenty things I'd rather do today than play football,” he said, dropping his green Adidas kit bag on the floor. He didn't say what those things were, although I suspected one or two of them were not playing at left-back, a position he has grown tired of playing in of late. He says it's boring. I don't know why he doesn't take his grievance up with management, who think he shores up the back four beautifully. The changing rooms at Cutbush Lane offered another cramped environment in which fourteen men tried to get changed in. Although, as Lee Fielder pointed out, the other half don't live any differently. He was sat rubbing his personal stash of liniment into his thighs, whilst recalling the tour of Brentford's Griffin Park, which was part of Scott Burnet's stag weekend. There we were, in the home dressing room, with not enough room to swing a cat, and Brentford's leading scorer, Charlie MacDonald, who had arrived early, for what turned out to be a wretched nil-nil draw with Rotheram, struggling to find space to unpack his bag. I could vouch further, having visited Exeter's St James' Park, as part of my work commitments. The changing rooms there were best described as cosy. Stubborn streaks of grime clung to the grouting, and the toilet seat was cold.

As per usual, the floor was covered in all kind of football paraphernalia – boots, medical equipment, water bottles, but mostly our team kit, which spewed in all directions out of a black holdall. Ben Rowe surveyed the wreckage for electrical tape. His hands glided in and along it like Han Solo looking for Luke Skywalker beneath the wee and poo of the Death Star's garbage unit. He cannot rest until he's wrapped the tape around his socks to hold his shin pads in place, but he couldn't find any, and he was letting everyone know about it, which, in that cramped changing room, was getting a bit much for me; maybe, subconsciously, that's why I let him have it.

Kev Willsher got a run for his money by Hare & Hounds' centre forward, a tall man whose hair was shaved at the back and sides. Although not much longer on top, he left nothing to chance, caking it in gel. Their players were very pleased with his contribution to the first-half, one of whom, whose torn neck of his red jersey, had been carefully repaired by seven or eight stitches, said he was doing us every time. Somehow, we pulled ourselves together. Lee Fielder scored twice. It was too hot to celebrate with any real imagination.

At half-time we sat in the shade underneath some trees. The club's plastic drink bottles sat in their carrier, which, frankly, is in a sorry state. The handle snapped long ago. I can't say I'm not disappointed, because it's made by Umbro, a manufacturer I have come to expect a little bit more from. Electrical tape had been wrapped around the fracture to hold it in place. Quite sad really. They didn't really deserve to be filled with anything other than luke warm tap water from the changing room toilets, but luke warm tap water is more than adequate when you are as thirsty as we all were. The second half was a test of endurance. Sam Schwodler saw his header come back into play from the underside of the crossbar. All in all it was another credible come back. The league table has a strange look about it, with everyone else having completed their fixtures, ourselves and WellowWellow's perspective it is a party they would like to get a taxi home from, because they are rock bottom. Their only league win from this season came when Sholing Sports failed to turn up for a game. Click here for the Southampton Football League tables.

Burridge lined up in a 4-4-2: GK: Jones, LB: K.Hewitt, CB:Willsher: CB:S.Hewitt (Allen), RB:Reeves (Wilson), LM: Judd (Hughes), CM:Barnett, CM:Sanderson, RM: Sam Schwodler, CF:Rowe, CF:Fielder

Hythe Aztecs 1-3 Burridge AFC

2011-04-22T14:16:00.004+01:00

Saturday 16 April, Clayfields Sports Centre, Claypits Lane, Dibden, Southampton, Hampshire.

There was twenty minutes left when the referee called me over by the number on the back of my shirt. Somewhere within the creases of his tired face was a mouth.“Come here, three,” he demanded, in the kind of creaking baritone I imagine oak trees would use if only they could speak. “That's your last warning, understand?” I nodded. Prior to the game I watched him jog a solitary lap around the pitch. Towards the end he showed signs of fatigue, slowing the pace to a gentle trot, before using a trellis fence as leverage for some rudimentary stretches to his hamstrings. He held his pencil to the sky. Once satisfied with the sharpness of its lead he sounded his whistle to begin the game. Both teams' appeals for decisions to go their way were dismissed with a groan to get on with it. Here was a man who had long since given up on a world where younger men bicker with one another during a football match nobody had come to see.

Click to enlarge: Sam Schwodler puts the ball through the goalkeeper's legs to make it three-nil (by Luke Sanderson).

The player I had fouled remained on the floor, looking surprised and disappointed that I had not been booked. What was once soil had been eroded into a fine brownish-grey sand. It clung to the kangaroo leather of his white Joma football boots, as well as covering most of the penalty area Hythe were about to attack. The free-kick, forty yards out from our goal, got the faintest of flicks off a head and into the back of our net. I had my suspicions about their number eleven from the start. He didn't let me down. Rather than congratulate his colleagues, he jogged alongside me on his way back to the half-way line. “Cheers mate, that's your fault,” he told me. For a brief moment I tried to summon up the wit of Oscar Wilde, but seeing as we were already winning by three goals to one, I made do with telling him to fuck off. He spent much of the game telling our centre-half, Ryan Hurst, how he was going to dribble around our defence and score. The wait continues.

There was still time for me to showcase some truly abysmal volleying. Twice in space of a minute the ball dropped out of a cloudy sky, begging to be tanned at Hythe's goal. My first attempt caused a delay to a Hythe throw-in. No sooner had the ball been retrieved from a thicket of bushes I had an opportunity to redeem myself. This time I made a marvellously clean connection. Unfortunately, the connection was with fresh air. Later, in the West End Brewery, I confided in Kristian Hewitt. Age was robbing me of my ability. Kristian offered some consolation. With his hand on my shoulder he told me that age wasn't a factor. "You've never been any good at shooting," he laughed.

I had arrived at Claypits Lane forty-five minutes before kick-off. The majority of our squad were congregated around a park bench on a small patch of grass outside the changing rooms. Some of them fretted about whether or not Hythe would turn up; but with the goal nets already up there was no great rush. In the car-park, a paper picture of Jesus lay abandoned at the foot of a sapling birch tree. His hair was significantly shorter than more traditional artistic interpretations, and rather curiously parted to one side. He was dressed in shades of mostly green – which is a far more traditional colour for a goalkeeping jersey than the mess I clapped eyes on later, in the veteran's game, which was taking place on the pitch adjacent to ours. On it stood a goalkeeper, whose size prevented him from playing anywhere else, wearing a jersey which I believed to be of mid to late 90's design. Purple and grey had collided on extra large nylon. It was finished off with spatters of yellow and green, which all came together to prove, if at all necessary, that the goalkeeping jersey is not suited for an homage to the art of Jackson Pollock.

Martin Barnett opened the scoring. Having taken a position outside the penalty area from a corner-kick he smashed into the corner. Ben Rowe made it two, out muscling a defender on his way to rolling the ball past the goalkeeper. With his stubble and shaven head, that has now grown long enough to gently comb back, he is beginning to resemble a young version of Popeye's nemesis, Bluto. In the second-half, Sam Schwodler caught Hythe's goalkeeper by surprise by putting the ball through his legs from a tight angle. It was his sixteenth goal of the season. We are still in fourth position in the league and will remain there irrespective of the outcome of our final two games. Not that our manager, Paul Dyke, will allow this to have any bearing on our motivation.

Click here for the Southampton League table

The Burridge line-up was: GK: C.Limburn, RB:S.Hewitt, CB:Hurst, CB:Willsher, LB:K.Hewitt, RM:Reeves (Hill), CM:Barnett, CM:Sanderson, LM:Judd (Andrews), CF:Rowe, CF:Schwodler

Burridge AFC 2-2 Netley Central Reserves

2011-04-13T15:39:00.003+01:00

Saturday 9 April, The Shed, Burridge, Botley Road - Burridge AFC hosted Drew Smith Southampton Senior League leaders, Netely Central Reserves, who would have sealed the league title with victory on a sunny afternoon in April.

There was barely time for Netley to restart the game after Ben Rowe's equalising goal. After sneaking the ball through a busy crowd of legs he was chased out of the penalty area by his team mates. He got as far as the half-way line before they caught up to offer their congratulations by wrestling him to the ground. It took two or three to knock him off balance, then he fell beneath the weight of the rest. Disappointment has been an unusual experience for Netley this season. Their players stood glued to the spot. Some of them looked down at the grass, others pointed fingers of blame at one another. It was odd to see them, a side who would have sealed the title with a win, succumbing to a last minute equaliser from a goal mouth scramble via a free-kick Kristian Hewitt admitted was far from his best. One of Netley's substitutes demanded they adopt a conservative strategy for the remainder of the game. “Keep the ball in the corners,” he screamed. There were five seconds of the match left.

Ben Rowe (number 9), runs off after equalising against Netley on Saturday afternoon.

Netley could have been forgiven for thinking the game was over at half-time. Having won sixteen of their previous eighteen league games, they can also include reigning Southampton Premier League champions, Bush Hill, as one of their scalps, having beaten them in the semi-finals of the Trophyman Cup. They trounced second placed Allbrook 4-0 last week in a game that went some way to decide who would win the divisional title. Perhaps the confidence they had taken from the victory turned to complacency in the spring sun. Our mood at the final whistle was in stark contrast to the silence of half-time. Although Paul Dyke reminded us that we had come back from two-nil down twice this season, albeit against inferior opposition, the statistic didn't seem to register with us. We looked embarrassed at having believed we could give Netley a run for their money.

Sometimes it is difficult to pinpoint the specific qualities required to make a comeback without entering the realms of cliché. While determination and self belief did have something to do with it, the transformation in our fortunes was largely due to a singular moment. It wasn't simply Martin Barnett's goal early in the second-half, but the manner in which it was scored - it gave us the impetus to believe we could compete with Netley on a level playing field. When the chips are down there can be a tendency to delegate responsibility in front of goal with a sideways pass. This can be fatal for momentum, and all to often a chance to shoot will wither away to nothing. Martin's opportunity came from Marc Judd's slightly shanked cross field ball, which one Netley spectator had described fairly loudly as a load of fucking crap. No sooner had the words left his mouth, Martin struck the pass past Netley's 'keeper with the potent combination of power and accuracy from the edge of the penalty area. The spectator had the presence of mind to keep any further opinions to himself for the rest of the game.

This was the fifth occasion we had scored a last minute goal to either win or avoid defeat; and the third time we had come back from two goals down. It was also vindication for Rowe, who had endured a fairly miserable afternoon in front of goal last week at Durley. With fifty points on the board Netley can now afford to lose their final game and still win the league by goal difference over Allbrook - not that you would have known it at around 4:10pm on Saturday. At the final whistle Netley players quickly disappeared into the dressing rooms. If there were any celebrations they were kept behind closed doors and somewhat muted. Perhaps it is because despite winning the title there will be no promotion. The Southampton Football League does not permit reserve teams in its Premier League. If the previous four years of playing against Netley Reserves have been anything to go by very few of these players will stick around next season when the fixture will take place once more. Whether or not that fixture is against an entirely different set of personnel, it is unlikely to produce a game as exciting as what took place on Saturday.

Burridge played in a 4-4-2 formation:
GK: Ryan Jones, LB: Kristian Hewitt, CB: Ryan Hurst, CB: Kev Willsher, RB: Sam Hewitt, LM: Chris Pye, CM: Martin Barnett, CM: Mark Sanderson (Mark Reeves), RM: Marc Judd (Joe Hill), CF: Lee Fielder (Ben Rowe), CF: Sam Schwodler

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Durley Reserves 0-3 Burridge AFC

2011-04-05T18:24:00.002+01:00

Saturday 2nd April, Durley Reacreation Ground, Kytes Lane

I drove to Durley with the window down and my radio tuned to BBC Radio Five Live. Manchester United were making hard work of a visit to Upton Park. Graham Taylor, who earns his living as a pundit these days, couldn't see any way back for them at two-nil down. "They don't have any leaders on the field," he said, seemingly oblivious to both West Ham's indifferent season and the possibility of the four goals Manchester United would go on to score.

Lee Fielder predicted the comeback. His blind spot was the exact location of Durley Recreation Ground, which remains a mystery to some of our players. Playing there on each of the previous four seasons does little to jog memories. Lee sat in my back seat and admitted having no idea how to get there. Kev Willsher did not fare much better. We passed through West-End, over the M27 and past the Southampton Arms; a pub that, as the crow flies, is no more than two miles away from his childhood home, which until this precise moment Kev had no previous knowledge of.

It was clear to me from this observation that no matter how implicitly I trusted Kev's abilities to head a football, I would require his services as an explorer no more than I would need Fielder's as a navigator. I suggested dropping Fielder off in the Durley countryside to make his own way home, much like Richard Branson's parents did to their eight year old son; but not wanting manslaughter on my conscience, I resisted.

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Kristian Hewitt scores his second penalty kick in successive weeks

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Luke Sanderson arrived shortly after kick-off. Dressed in a pair of sack cloth coloured trousers, with an expensive looking Olympus camera slung casually over his shoulder, he could have easily passed as a photographer commissioned by the Pink for some action shots to brighten up its stilted match-reports. He took up a position behind Durley's goal, which clearly wasn't something their 'keeper was entirely comfortable with.

For whatever reason the goalkeeper felt it necessary to make a confession, not so much to Luke, but to his lens. He admitted to being the manager of BTC Reserves, and continued to stress that far from being a 'ringer,' he was registered legitimately for Durley, who are his local team, having signed for them at the beginning of the season. Quite what the chain of events leading him to simultaneously becoming BTC reserves' manager was a complete mystery to me.

Regardless of whether or not he was operating within the rules, a picture in the much read Pink, (which is a weekly sports newspaper that comes out on Saturday nights in the Southampton area), of him playing in goal for a side who are two points ahead of the team he is managing, would severely compromise his integrity, as well as being very confusing. As I cast my mind back I remember him hurling a water bottle in anger, after his left-back made a blind back-pass that put Sam Hewitt clean through to score a last minute equaliser at BTC. He did not have a much better afternoon today.

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The first-half followed a fairly rigid pattern of set pieces. I lost count of the number of corner-kicks we had. On each occasion I would fill in for our central defensive pair of Ryan Hurst and Kev Willsher on the half-way line as they took their place in Durley's penalty area. It was from one of these corners we eventually took the lead. There was some initial speculation on who would be credited with scoring the goal. This wasn't helped by two Durley defenders who made a dog's dinner of clearing the ball off the goal-line. Between them they carried out an inquest, while Kev Willsher jogged back to the half-way line with his arm raised in celebration. There was no doubt in his mind that it was his goal. Although one goal alone wasn't enough to neuter Durley

Kristian Hewitt is not usually an advocate of refereeing decisions, but on this occasion he was willing to make an exception. “That is just dumb,” he said, shaking his head in reaction to his younger brother's yellow card. Having conceded a free-kick on the half-way line I attempted to prevent any initiative Durley hoped to gain from a quickly taken set piece by gently kicking the ball away towards our goal. Dan Allen had other ideas. At only seventeen he is still a little wet behind the ears. He got in my way, giving the ball straight back to Durley. “That's your fault, Dan!” shouted manager, Paul Dyke, in reference to Sam's booking. His voice, loud as a klaxon, managed to convey a sense of injustice at all times. Dan's naivety drew Sam Hewitt into the evasive action. Although his intention was no different from mine, his execution was weighty, sending the ball too far away and therefore rendering his strategy to slow things down obvious to all and sundry. That my greatest assets were acts of cynicism and gamesmanship said all that was needed about my contribution to the team. Unlike Dan Allen I have had plenty of practice to hone my craft.

Durley could count themselves unlucky to not have scored from the one opportunity they created during the first-half. Ryan Jones sprung to life and finger tipped the ball over the cross bar. In hindsight this may have knocked the wind out of Durley's sails. I was having another fairly indifferent afternoon with the ball, and it wasn't long before the referee asked for a quiet word. I wasn't entirely sure what I had done until I saw an opponent limp off the field. I cannot say I was unhappy at seeing him do so. It looked as though I had caught him in the small of the back after jumping to head the ball clear. I remained silent while the referee spoke to me. This had nothing to do with respect, I just consider it beneath my dignity to argue with those in authority. “I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, but any more and it will be a yellow card.” So much for the benefit of the doubt, I thought. At half-time Durley served us with freshly brewed tea in plastic white beakers. I loaded mine with two sugar cubes and sat on the grass.

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Sam Schwodler scores his fifteenth goal of the season

This was a weaker reserve team than we had faced in previous years, which wasn't to say Durley were without any capable players, but as the second-half progressed it was clear we had the legs over our opponents. Kristian Hewitt's precise through ball found Lee Fielder, who managed to remain on his feet despite being frisked by an on rushing goalkeeper. The referee gave us a penalty and Kristian Hewitt tucked in his third goal in two games. Sam Schwodler followed this up with his fifteenth goal of the season. When Sam Schwodler has time and space on his hands his instinct takes over, usually the instinct to be flamboyant. He's never been one to be put off by a one-on-one situation with the goalkeeper, even if that means an attempted lob ending up safely in the 'keeper's hands. This time he was sensible enough to choose power over nonchalance. Dan Allen nearly supplied the icing on the cake with a pile driver which whistled just over the crossbar.

I felt I had cause for complaint for being booked. Whilst there was no waving of imaginary yellow cards from Durley players, it was doubtful I would have been punished if several of them had not made a song and dance about a tackle their left-back called disgusting. The referee called me over rather belatedly. In my opinion the coming together of legs was a minor indiscretion, but Durley wanted their pound of flesh. What they seemed to forget was that with a good fifteen minutes still left to play the question was not would I be disciplined enough stay on the field, but would they be able to walk on Monday. I fought manfully against the impulse to do something silly.

Ben Rowe made a cameo appearance from the substitute bench. On another day he could well have scored three, maybe even four goals. His afternoon, and perhaps even the latter part of his season, was summed up when he skewed the ball wide six yards from goal. A goal would have been the ideal tonic for his current lack of self belief. Some spectators may have gone home thinking his contribution amounted to nothing more than a series of botched goal scoring opportunities, but the more shrewd would have understood that these opportunities were of his own making.

Unlike Lee Fielder, who is an out an out goal poacher, and Sam Schwodler, who is something of an opportunist, Rowe offers the team something different. He demonstrated the ability to win the ball from deep and run forward with both power and purpose. His first miss gave him sufficient reason to retreat into his shell. What a shame then that the courage he showed in pursuing a goal led only to more snatched attempts at goal. It was a sad sight to see him at end of game, laid out on the floor with his jersey covering his face. It would be a great shame if he was not able to harness his undoubted ability once more for Burridge this season. There is still time. Third place is still a possibility, but we will have to win all of our remaining four games. What better incentive to beat league leaders, Netley Central, at home this Saturday afternoon.

Burridge beat Durley Reserves three-nil in a 4-4-2 formation:

GK: Ryan Jones, LB: Sam Hewitt, CB: Kev Willsher, CB: Ryan Hurst, RB: Dan Allen, LM: Marc Judd (Martin Barnett), CM: Kristian Hewitt, CM: Mark Sanderson, RM: Mark Reeves (Ben Rowe), CF: Sam Schwodler (Paul Andrews), CF: Lee Fielder

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Wellow 0-6 Burridge AFC

2011-03-29T21:57:00.002+01:00

Saturday 26th March, Hatches Farm, Romsey Road, East Wellow

Wellow are marooned at the bottom of the senior division of the Drew Smith Group Southampton Football League table. The only respite from a wretched season, in which they have lost twelve of their previous fourteen league games, came in drawn matches with Durley and Michelmersh. Prior to kick-off we trotted out the usual clichés about there being no easy games, but you can never be completely sure if an element of complacency is lurking beneath the surface of your team's pre-match preparations. Wellow's track record this season suggested they were nothing but relegation fodder, although as Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, was keen to emphasise - this would not be an easy game for us. We were without Jason Wilson, Ben Rowe (who was in Switzerland,) and Mark Reeves, (who had been struck down by a bout of diarrhoea). Chris Pye and Dan Allen were picked in the starting line-up, with the substitute bench bolstered by Joe Hill and Martin Barnett.

The afternoon began with a misunderstanding. Wellow thought the game was kicking-off at 2pm. So did the referee. Paul Dyke on the other hand had been told 2:30pm. I passed Dyke outside the dressing rooms as he showed Wellow's manager, a large bald man, who was short on hair and big in muscle, the text message from our club secretary. Between the two they negotiated a 2:15pm kick-off. There was still time for us to warm-up, although not as much as both Lee Fielder and Kev Willsher would have liked. The referee was stood in the centre-circle getting tetchy. “Come on,” he shouted, “we agreed 2:15, it's 2:20 now”. He was particularly unhappy about the delayed kick-off. His wife would now have to suffer the indignity of catching the bus home from a Women's Institute meeting, rather than getting collected by her husband.

Wellow were not as bad a side as their league position suggests; a little indisciplined perhaps in terms of positional sense, but with several players who knew what to do with a football. One of whom I was marking in central midfield. He rarely failed to bring the ball under close control or scowl at some of his team mates when they were unable to do likewise. Unfortunately for them, their individual talent was unable to knit together in any kind of cohesive unit. This meant the long ball over the top of their defence worked a treat. Marc Judd was involved in our first meaningful attack, albeit from a rather unlikely source. The ball bounced invitingly to his right inside the penalty area. Although predominately left footed, the urge to strike, even on his seldom used right foot, was too strong to ignore. His shot ricocheted off the goalkeeper's left hand-post straight to Lee Fielder, who ballooned the ball high over an open goal. Fielder did not let this unpleasant incident phase him. Moments later he smashed in Sam Schwodler's right-wing cross. Kev Willsher then did what he had been threatening to do for the previous handful of set pieces by heading in a corner-kick. It was then goalkeeper, Ryan Jones' turn to get in on the act. His punted clearance was side footed neatly past Wellow's oncoming goalkeeper by Chris Pye, who was starting his first game for Burridge.

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Kev Willsher and Ryan Hurst believed the opening minutes of the second-half had come to be something of an Achilles' heel for us over the last few games. During half-time they spoke of the need for us to approach the second forty-five minutes in the right frame of mind in order to avoid making any careless mistakes. Identifying this problem did nothing to help either Hurst or Willsher to solve it. I do not think it is an enormous exaggeration to suggest we have grown as dependent upon Kev Willsher's performances in the centre of defence as we are on water coming from the kitchen tap. So there was a sense of genuine bewilderment from the rest of us to see him fluff his lines in a series of botched and scuffed clearances, minutes within the restart. The idea he was cast under the spell of some self fulfilling prophecy seemed more feasible than the reality of him being prone to human error.

Sam Schwodler laid back to Kristian Hewitt, who made it four-nil, with what was by his standards a scuffed shot; although scuffed or not it rolled nicely into the 'keeper's bottom left hand corner. Schwodler was then hacked down by a rather malicious looking tackle, which the referee punished with a penalty-kick. Wellow complained bitterly about diving, with some of their players making rather lazy comparisons with the cynical aspects of Cristiano Ronaldo's play. Hewitt scored his second of the game from the penalty spot with a self assured strike straight from from the Teddy Sheringham manual of finishing. The scoring was complete when Martin Barnett, fresh from the bench, played a ball through to Marc Judd, who had an unusual amount of time and space to find a suitable angle on which to finish with his left foot.

The comfortable scoreline was of little consolation to Sam Schwodler. He had spoken freely of the goals he hoped to score against Wellow. The disappointment in not doing so seemed to sag heavily on his shoulders. He sat half-dressed in the dressing-rooms after the game, weighing up whether or not he could make it back to Burridge for Wednesday evening's mid-week game, from Cardiff, where he is working at present. The prospect of rectifying Saturday's goal drought against Wellow clouded Schwodler's grasp of distance and time. The fixture has since been re-scheduled for 30 April, sparing Schwodler around two-hundred pounds air fare, or the equivalent in speeding fines down the M4.

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Burridge AFC lined up in a 4-4-2 formation:
GK: Jones, LB:S.Hewitt, CB:Hurst, CB:Willsher, RB:Allen (Barnett), LM:Pye (Hill), CM:K.Hewitt, CM:Sanderson, RM:Judd, CF:Fielder (Andrews), CF:Schwodler

A year on from the end

2011-03-23T09:45:00.001Z

We did not play on Saturday. The vast majority of us were in Brighton for Jay Schwodler's Stag Weekend. It was there that our manager, Paul Dyke, was shoved off balance by a doorman on the concrete steps outside Revolutions. Ryan Jones, along with a handful of others, saw what happened and threatened the doorman. This public show of unity - albeit from a safe distance and aided by a belly full of lager - was in stark contrast to the mood last May, when Pete Lyons decided to step down as manager after four happy seasons. Without a manager the situation begged the question - did the club have a future? The silence that followed from the players, me included, was ominous.

Some were going pre-season training with Hedge-End. In what I now recognise as a fit of pique I decided on a fresh start with BTC. My rationale behind this decision was based almost entirely around the short distance to their ground on Stoneham Lane. I would be able to watch all of Football Focus on a Saturday afternoon then cycle to home games and still have time to spare. I recall sitting in Southampton Common on a warm May afternoon having come to accept that in playing my last game for Burridge, the opportunities to see many of my friends would be reduced by our busy lives to the occasional get-together.

It was on that same afternoon I saw Paul Andrews. The heat had done little to compromise his dress sense. Although he wore shorts, his buttoned shirt made me, with my bare chest, feel somewhat under dressed, even for drinking lager in the park. He was looking for an ice-cream van; I told him I was looking for a new team to play for. When I explained the extent of the situation he was as surprised and disappointed as I could have expected Paul Andrews to be. He wondered off into the horizon looking for ice-cream with a sheepish look on his face.

Within a few weeks Paul Dyke returned from holiday in New York and everything fell into place. He was willing to stop playing in order to concentrate solely on managing the team. There was a brief meeting at the Shamblehurst Barn and off we went. Fast forward nearly twelve months and we have an experienced group of players complemented nicely with a crop of youngsters. With six games to go third place is still within our grasp. If we win our three games in hand it will only be a better goal difference keeping Forest Town ahead of us.

Click here for last week's results and the current league tables.

NB You can join Burridge's Facebook page by clicking here.

Burridge AFC 2-3 Allbrook FC

2011-03-13T17:09:00.001Z

Saturday 12 March, Burridge, Botley Road - Burridge run league leaders close.

Getting caught short at Burridge can be an undignified experience. Dimly lit cubicles and a lack of toilet paper require an element of improvisation, which in Jason Wilson's case meant using the ample supply of paper towels. He confessed to one or two pre-match nerves, which was not unusual for him, or anybody else; although he blamed the curry from Tescos he had eaten the previous evening for the wretched smell.

He would have been far better off walking further up the corridor to the ladies, as I did. There you will find a bright and roomy space with a reassuring snow white porcelain bowl and several rolls of quilted toilet tissue. On this occasion my churning stomach had given me a false alarm, but one can never be too sure during the hour or so of limbo otherwise known as pre-match preparation. I am still haunted by the memory of former Burridge captain, Scott Burnet, who in deepest darkest Portsmouth, once had to rely on a modest handful of scrunched up receipts to wipe with. It is testament to the man's character that he got on stoically with the task in hand.

It felt good to be back amongst familiar surroundings. Cold and wet weather had prevented us playing at Burridge since early November. I urinated freely on a knot of tangled grass twenty yards away from the pitch. A rabbit scurried out from some nearby bushes, as all number of birds, none of which I could identify, sang their songs. The air was cool and the sky was overcast - it was a fine day for football.

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Come Sunday morning I was slightly miffed with the Southampton Sports Echo's summary of last week's 1-1 draw with today's opposition, in which they reported Allbrook were held by Burridge. I read on hoping to find further details about the spirited part we played in the game. When this was not forthcoming I decided to leave the paper in toiletry aisle of Tesco Express rather than part with 50 pence. Last week's game against Allbrook had become heated. So, when a strange quirk in the fixture list pitted us against them for the second week running, nobody would have been surprised at the spirit this game would be played out in.

The bad feeling was brought to the surface, in my opinion at least, by just two players. Firstly, by one of Allbrook's defenders, who I think wore the number five shirt. He only ever seemed to open his mouth to seek conflict, irrespective of whether or not it was with us, the referee, or one of his own team mates. The Chinese symbols tattooed on his arm had the dated look of a pair of Ellesse shoes, once all the rage, but now resigned to a place in the past. It was curious that somebody with a fairly basic grasp of English would choose such an incomprehensible language to have inked permanently into his arm. Of course, he could well have been, for all I knew, a multi-linguist, but every time he opened his mouth he gave me further reason to doubt that.

Allbrook's number seven was their other guilty party. Tall, talented and almost entirely pre-occupied with complaining, mostly to the referee about not being protected from the tackling of Mark Reeves and Jason Wilson, his defence mechanism was to broadcast several threats of violence, none of which he got around to carrying out. He demanded respect from everyone whilst giving none to anyone. In truth it wasn't our midfield, the referee, or his team mates he had a problem with - it was the entire world. Both players ended up in the referee's notebook. Number five could count himself lucky to still be on the field after wrestling Sam Schwodler to the ground and denying him a run through on goal.

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I had left the dressing room in rubber studs, which was perhaps no less optimistic than arriving to Burridge, as I had, dressed in shorts. The boots were made by Puma; the instep of which had been worn away to a thin under layer of non-descript material. They would not last to see next season, but at £24.99 from Sport Direct, inclusive of delivery charge, I wasn't going to quibble. Adidas, in my experience, always last longer than Puma. The pitch was still a little soft underfoot in places, so I fetched my metal studded Adidas, which I would go on to change into at half-time.

Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, was in his day an uncomplicated defender who held organisational skills in higher esteem than anything else. Therefore he would not have been pleased in the manner which we conceded our first goal. It came direct from a corner-kick at the near post. A spot of bickering between us followed and we did well to pick ourselves up and equalise when Lee Fielder overcame the frustration of an earlier disallowed goal to tuck away nicely.

So, it was a real shame to concede once more so close to half-time. Some voiced their disappointment at goalkeeper, Ryan Jones, for not coming off his goal line to narrow down the angle of the striker. Dyke, perhaps still sore from the first goal, picked up on this at half-time. “I don't know who did it,” he said, “but you don't call for your goalkeeper.” If Sam Schwodler believed he was defusing the mood by owning up he was sorely mistaken. He tried to explain his rationale, but it was drowned out by the sound of Dyke, who was now fast approaching Sir Ben Kingsley Sexy Beast mode. (Those not familiar with that reference need only click here.)

Allbrook went further ahead in the second half from another corner, this time via a near post header. Sam Hewitt seemed to be shouldering most of the responsibility. Later, in the West End Brewery, he called his performance a bad day at the office. What seemed to cheese him off most was not being able to replicate the shooting drills we had carried out during Thursday night's training session. He, along with everyone else, showed good character by digging in to create several good goal scoring chances. One of which fell to Chris Pye, who was finally making his debut after recovering from a long standing ankle injury. His close range header got stuck in the sandy goalmouth. He did, however, lay on another well taken goal for Sam Schwodler, which set up a good old fashioned grand stand finale, but unfortunately, on this occasion there was to be no last minute Burridge come-back. As Paul Dyke later remarked in the Burridge dressing room - it's difficult to win a game when you gift the opposition sloppy goals.

4-4-2: GK:Jones, RB:S.Hewitt, CB:Willsher, CB:Hurst, LB:K.Hewitt, RM:Reeves (Pye), CM:Wilson, CM:Sanderson, LM:Judd (Rowe), CF:Fielder (Andrews), CF:Schwodler

Allbrook 1-1 Burridge AFC

2011-03-06T17:24:00.273Z

In which Ben Rowe's last minute goal puts a spanner in the works of the league leader's title winning campaign.

I was not prepared to invest the energy required in daring to hope for any other outcome than a scored Allbrook penalty. Time was running out and we were already losing 1-0 when the referee blew his whistle and pointed to our penalty spot. Sam Hewitt was preparing to defend a corner-kick as a consequence of stopping an Allbrook attack by heading the football safely over our crossbar. Once he realised the referee thought he had done so illegally, with his hands, the circus began.

Prior to this match, Allbrook led the league table over second placed Netley Central Reserves by means of superior goal difference. Click here to see the league tables going into this game. To my recollection, not a single Allbrook player appealed for a penalty. There were no shouts of handball from the touchline either, which spoke volumes to whether or not Sam Hewitt had used his hands, because as the game reached its climax and with only a single goal separating us, both teams demonstrated an eagerness to show off their sopranos, with loud cries of our ball, for something as seemingly inconsequential as a throw-in on the half-way line, let alone a penalty.

Sam Hewitt remonstrated with the referee, which is a mostly pointless exercise. It is inevitable that referees, much like players, are going to make mistakes, but they are not in the business of changing their minds, even if they do on occasions come to some rather baffling conclusions.

By now the referee was surrounded by a pack of my team mates. Whether or not it was the earnestness of their complaints, or that the referee just wanted to put a stop to their whining, he caved in and consulted the linesman, who in this case was the recently substituted Mark Reeves, who gave the referee his own, fairly subjective recollection of events. Although there was no question it should not have been a penalty, once one has been awarded the idea of going back on a decision is a shady practise. When the referee did so Allbrook were furious.

The only thing clear to me at this point was I had seriously underestimated our team's powers of negotiation. In terms of authority the referee had now effectively tendered his resignation; and without a strong presence to enforce the law the atmosphere turned sour.

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I was relieved to hear the whistle for the end of the first-half. What little contribution I had made amounted to nothing more than a series of scuffed clearances, careless passes and most notably, a slip in our penalty area whilst defending a corner-kick which led to Allbrook taking the lead. We were fortunate not to be a goal down as early as the opening minute, when Allbrook tore through us in a quick passing motion ending with a clipped shot grazing our crossbar. As our net bulged it dawned on me just what a long afternoon we could have been in store for.

Allbrook's number five was far from complementary about our brand of football, which he described as long ball. “It's all they got,” he repeated. I took an almost immediate dislike to him, mainly, I think, because he thought he had the measure of us. What he failed to recognise was this so called only tactic of ours was causing him respiratory problems. The sight of him breathing heavily with his hands on his knees after trying to keep pace with our striking duo of Sam Schwodler and Lee Fielder was a real shot in the arm to the rest of us. They both walked off the pitch at half-time believing they could have done better with the few chances they had.

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One of the opposition, a tall man with a black receding hairline and pink laces zigzagged in his white Adidas boots complained about the lack of protection the referee was giving his ankles from what he considered our continuous fouling. “What happens when we can't go to work on Monday,” he said. The seven or eight making up Allbrook's spectating contingent began laughing. “Where you working Monday, then?” The referee did eventually take his yellow card from his pocket. Sam Schwodler the guilty party after one late tackle too many.

Ben Rowe was put on as substitute. Free from the shackles of the fluorescent lime shirt, worn to each training session by the previous week's worst trainer, and fairly often by Rowe of late, he seemed to take pride in successfully winding up the man with pink laces. He did so by channelling the Kent of his teenage years; which I'm led to believe was spent dressed in tracksuit trousers tucked into white socks, whilst MCing over two-step beats in dingy nightclubs. All of which proved to be a useful grounding for a game of this sort. There was little Allbrook's goalkeeper could do about Ben Rowe's goal. Having already made two promising visits into Allbrook's penalty area, Rowe produced some eagerly awaited end product. A defender tried stopping his shot from reaching its destination with a wild swing, which sliced the ball behind him, and rather unfortunately, in the opposite direction in which his goalkeeper had already dived.

The defender stood glued to the spot with his head in his hands, reflecting on the significant contribution he had made to our equalising goal. As if this wasn't embarrassment enough, he had also shown scant regard to the dress code of royal blue shorts his team mates had adhered to so fastidiously. A yellow jersey flapped outside his pair of black baggy shorts, which served as a further, but unnecessary means of his identification. In all the commotion I hadn't noticed Dan Allen come on as substitute. He looked so vulnerable stood there trying to keep his hands warm by burying them deep within his pockets. Women of a certain age would no doubt melt at the sight of his angelic face, gather him up in a blanket and wean him back to health on a diet of warm milk. As the final whistle blew, I walked towards the changing rooms, noticing the referee behind me surrounded by yellow shirts.

The Burridge team facing Allbrook at Cutbush Lane on Saturday 5th March were:

GK:Jones, RB:S.Hewitt, CB:Hurst, CB:Willsher, LB:K.Hewitt, RM:Reeves, CM:Sanderson, CM:Wilson, LM:Judd, CF:Fielder, CF:Schwodler. (Subs: Allen, Andrews, Rowe)

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BTC Reserves 1-3 Burridge AFC

2011-03-01T07:41:00.003Z

Saturday 26th February at Stoneham Lane: Burridge play their third game in seventeen weeks

It had been another wet week in Southampton. Although the sun had shown its face on Thursday afternoon, the streets were still dotted with puddles. This did not bode well for the chances of our home game with BTC Reserves going ahead as scheduled. My weekend began shortly after 10am with the muffled ring tone of my mobile coming from beneath my pillow. It was Burridge chairman, Barrie Becheley. Our pitches were still waterlogged so he arranged for our game to be switched to BTC's ground. BTC's pitch fairs better than most. They have not only the machinery to maintain it, but also, more crucially, the volunteers prepared to give up their spare time to operate that machinery.

I arrived five minutes earlier than our manager had requested. Some BTC players were already limbering up on the grass, fully kitted up in their blue and white stripped kit. Many of ours might have been doing likewise had I not had our kit in the boot of my car. They sat crammed in the small away team changing room, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the kit bag, in which they would dive into and try and fish out the best pairs of shorts, and not the discounted silky ones Paul Dyke had ordered at the beginning of the season.

BTC's toilets surpassed my low expectations. During previous years I have been left to make do with rinsing my hands under the cold tap before drying them on the back of my shorts. On this occasion I was pleasantly surprised after pressing the soap dispenser to see a dollop of pink gel squirt into the palm of my hand. There was also a full complement of green paper towels. When I returned to the dressing room most people had changed and gone outside to warm up. Of the few shirts left on the floor, one was the number ten, which is synonymous with some of the creative greats of world football, the names of Maradona and Pele springing to mind as the most obvious examples. Wearing it comes with a weight of expectation to be able to give a competent and skillful display. I, however, decided to go against tradition and wear it myself.

BTC joined together in a huddle before kick-off. This was in stark contrast to how we stood alone in our separate positions. BTC's public show of unity was put to the test in the first ten minutes of play, as we managed to keep them penned in their own half through a combination of neat passing, hard work, and in my case, dirty play.

Chasing an opponent down our left wing seemed like the perfect opportunity for a sliding tackle. The referee wasn't impressed and gave me a good ticking off. “You have left the ground with your studs raised,” he said, describing events in some form of the present perfect tense footballers like to use when discussing their goals in post-match interviews. “Keep on and you'll be having an early bath.” Confidence in keeping my nose clean for the remaining eighty minutes of the game was dented when the referee beat me in a five yard race to retrieve the ball for a free-kick. This wouldn't have been quite so crushingly disappointing had he not been at least 70 years old. His a trimmed white moustache and friendly face made him a Werthers Original advert casting director's wet dream. (Anyone not familiar with those adverts can click here.)

If, for the sake of argument, the referee was 70, he could well have been refereeing since 1970. It beggars belief just how many times a man could be told to fuck-off during the course of those forty-one years. If, for example, he's been told to fuck off on average ten times per game, which is I'm sure you'll agree is a fairly conservative estimate, and refereed around twenty-five games per season, he is on course to be told to fuck off a total of 250 times per season. Multiply that by 41 years would mean he's been told to fuck off ten-thousand two-hundred and fifty times, throughout the decades by people in a variety of different hair cuts and fashions and trends.

Our front two of Lee Fielder and Sam Schwodler provided a valuable outlet for our midfield of myself, Jason Wilson, Marc Judd and Mark Reeves, whose accumulative age is something in the region of 120 plus. Sam Schwodler's tenacity turned my speculative hoofed clearance into a half decent through ball. Schwodler was barged off the ball in the penalty area. Nobody on our side appealed, but the referee gave us a penalty kick anyway. Kristian Hewitt trotted up field from his position of left-back and casually side footed the penalty into the goalkeeper's bottom right corner. As always, it is considered something of a faux-pas to concede a goal so soon after scoring one of your own. So when we gave away a disputed free-kick on the edge of our penalty area, naturally, we became rattled. This demonstrated itself in the curious sight of a throng of our players haranguing a 70 year old referee. Even more curious was the sight of Marc Judd, who is normally more than capable of getting a yellow card when doing something as innocuous as taking a throw-in, advising players to bite their tongue. Almost inevitably BTC scored from the free-kick with a well executed shot over our wall and into Ryan Jones' top left hand corner.

It was a great relief when Lee Fielder scored our second. Sam Schwodler was involved again, laying the ball onto Lee, who still had plenty to do before he rounded the goalkeeper and rolled the ball into an empty net. He is in his elemenet in these situations; and while on occassions he does miss, like he did in the second half when he shanked a shot high over the cross bar, he does not shy away from the responsibility of trying to score, which is something he does not get credit for. Many of his colleagues tend to focus on other aspects of his character; particularly his dress sense, which has drawn some to make comparisons with teenage boybands.

Thirty-something Mark Reeves is currently Burridge's oldest player. He threatened to score our third goal by killing a cross field ball dead with his right foot and jinking inside to his left with the poise and elegance of an Olympic skier. This alone was enough for myself and Kristian Hewitt to show our appreciation for Reeves' skill with the kind of involuntary groans not becoming of grown men outside of the bedroom. Reeves has shed the pounds and reinvented himself as a wide midfielder this season. Last Sunday he beat his personal best 10k time in Winchester's annual race with 43:54, but had his thunder rather stolen from him by Jason Wilson, who broke the 40 minute barrier. Scuffing his volley took nothing away from the split second Reeves threatened to step out of Jason Wilson's shadow. Wilson's midfield performance epitomised Dyke's footballing philosophy . He didn't so much play the game, but spoil it for BTC. Rather like a small dog who has decided to intrude on a kick-about at the park, as an opponent you admire his tenacity for getting to the ball, but you really wish he would go away. Sam Schwodler scored the third with a goal his performance merited to seal a hard fought win, which nestles us nicely into fourth place.

4-4-2: GK:Jones, RB:S.Hewitt, CB:Hurst, CB:Willsher, LB:K.Hewitt, RM:Reeves (Allen), CM:Sanderson, CM:Wilson, LM:Judd (Rowe), CF:Fielder (Andrews), CF:Schwodler

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Harpic 100% limescale remover 1-0 Bathroom limescale

2011-02-20T12:19:00.000Z

It was midnight when a friend tried tempting me to stay out with a small bindle of MDMA. Accepting his offer would mean no football tomorrow; so, feeling tired from the diligence it takes to restrict a Friday night out with friends to four bottles of lager, I said my goodbyes and walked home. It was cold outside.

I was pleased to not be woken up on Saturday morning by a text message from Paul Dyke. If a game has been postponed he normally texts us between nine and eleven in the morning. This gives us time to make alternative plans for our Saturday afternoons. The BBC five day weather forecast had hedged its bets this week with promises of sunny intervals. The type of clothes I would need between these intervals was left entirely to my discretion. It rained hard on Tuesday. Wednesday was much the same. Thursday and Friday were dry, but it had rained during the early hours of Saturday.

We were scheduled to play Hythe Aztecs at Claypits Lane Sports Ground in Dibden. If ever anybody needs reminding where that is they are told something like, “You go past Staplewood, where Southampton train, then left at the round-about. You know, the one with good drainage,” and that will usually be enough to trigger a response like, “Yes, that's not a bad pitch. It has good drainage.”

The first thing I saw when I stepped out of my car at Claypits Lane Sports Ground was Paul Dyke, walking in the centre-circle of the pitch alongside who I guessed was the referee. Once they'd finished talking Dyke walked towards the car-park and sliced his palm in front of his throat. The game was off. The referee said there was too much surface water on the pitch. I joined the rest of our squad who were stood outside the clubhouse looking out toward the pitch longingly like fisherman looking out to sea.

Sam Schwolder arrived with his kit bag slung over his shoulder. Someone told him the game was off. He quickly identified a grey moustached man from the opposition's management who he could take his frustration out on.
“What the fuck's this all about then?”
“It's not us, it's the referee.” protested the moustached man.
“Wouldn't have taken much to check it this morning, would it?” Said Ryan Jones, who echoed our belief that it is the home side's responsibility to inspect their pitch first thing on a Saturday morning to see if it passes muster for play.

Driving home I wondered how to fill the two and a half hour chasm until Manchester United played Crawley Town on ITV. I decided to clean my bathroom. When I was done it looked as good as any you would see in a Barratt show home. This gave me as much satisfaction as I get from connecting cleanly with a volley, or making an important sliding tackle. It was at this moment I came to realise that middle-age was less of a giant leap and more of a gradual transition.

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Paul Andrews' confession

2011-02-13T17:16:00.001Z

There was no game last week and there was no game this week either; but Burridge can move alongside third placed Forest Town if they win their games in hand.

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The smell came from the trunk of Kev's Ford Focus. Sweat had eaten into the nylon yellow bibs we wear in order to tell the difference between teams during our Thursday night training sessions. I had left them there last week, stuffed inside a giant black sack of club footballs, mainly because I was too cold and knackered to face the delay that chucking them into my basement locker would have on taking a long hot shower. Each layer of kit I peeled off was followed by the sound of sand lightly dusting my bedroom carpet. The sand helps drainage to the artificial pitch we train on, that our players can sometimes be heard complaining about how running on it is killing their knees. Having spent over an hour lost in a pair of skin tight cycling shorts my penis looked much like I felt - withered and hopeless.

We didn't play last Saturday. Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, text us all the night before about our scheduled opponents, Sholing Sports, not being able to get a team together. There's really only so many times a side can take the kind of 9-1 beating they got from Hare & Hounds a fortnight ago, without some players going AWOL, dreaming up new injuries that prevent them from playing, or even deciding it's about time they reconsidered their wives or girlfriends' invitation to finish redecorating the downstairs toilet. It's better to waste your time in private than on a public sports field.

First thing Burridge captain, Kev Willsher, will do when receiving a text about a postponed game is shake his head, and give the screen of his iPhone a quizzical look, as though there's an ongoing conspiracy to prevent his body and soul from completely escaping the stuffy office he spends the week doing graphic design in. Although this Saturday he, along with leading scorer Sam Schwodler and goalkeeper, Ryan Jones, was skiing in Andorra. Kev told his flat-mate, Lee Fielder, that he wasn't getting on that plane if we had league-leaders, Netley, this week. He keeps himself in shape by running along the streets of Southampton after work. He is a man who doesn't like missing football, having playing through the discomfort of injuries to his back and knee this season, but when it comes to the crunch he must love snow boarding that little bit more than he hates missing a Burridge game.

Thursday had come around again and the bibs hadn't been washed. They stayed as I had left them in the big black sack of Mitre footballs. I rested them against the fence of the training pitch at Hamble school. Marc Judd was one of the first to arrive. He gave his crotch a quick scratch, blew the last smoke from his cigarette into the night air and handed me his three quid training money. Ben Rowe leant against the fence stretching his ham-strings. “Have we bought some new footballs yet,” he asked. “Or are we still using those ones from the 1970s?” Those ones from the 1970s were a batch of Mitre, what were once considered the finest footballs around, that the club had bought in the summer. Rowe didn't mind anyone knowing that he thought they were no better than kicking rocks, as though he wanted them held partly responsible for his self proclaimed lack of form. I was pleasantly surprised that nobody with a bib asked if I'd been using cat piss for washing detergent. Rowe's excuse was a blocked nose. I couldn't speak for the others.

After training we walked to our cars with that rubber legged feeling I have become used to under Paul Dyke's management. Paul Andrews drove me home in his white van that has his name painted in a friendly red font on the slide door. “Don't know about you,” he said, "but Friday's are a write off for me after training." We stopped at a red light and he looked dead ahead in silence before saying, "gotta to go to church on Sunday." The words fell out of his mouth like he was 'fessing up to some dark secret that weighed heavy on his conscious, which in many ways he was. He is getting married next year and his girlfriend wants the wedding at a church in the sticks, so it has been necessary for Paul to grease the wheels into motion by getting up far earlier than he is accustomed to on a Sunday morning to fold his six foot plus frame into a creaking wooden pew and listen to words from the good book.

It was around 7pm on Friday and I was putting my groceries away when the I received the text from Paul Dyke. Saturday's game was off. All three pitches we had lined up to play on were waterlogged. He signed off his text with a sad face symbol and a kiss. For once Kev Willsher would be pleased.

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Burridge AFC 3-1 Hare & Hounds

2011-02-02T13:55:00.002Z

Saturday 29th January - Burridge win in the mud again

I could hear Lee Fielder working a pellet of Airwaves around his jaw. He sat in the back seat of my car as we headed east on the M27 towards Whiteley, to play against Hare & Hounds, a pub on a council estate in Harefield, in the eastern fringe of Southampton. Despite having driven past it many times, I have never stopped there for a drink.

Hare & Hounds' red and white shirts matched the colours of the large flag of St George that is flown from a thin metal mast outside their premises. The colours were arranged like Arsenal's, red bodied with white arms. Ben Rowe, a Burridge striker and Tottenham Hotspur supporter, looked at the opposition as they warmed up for the game, jogging from one side of the pitch to the other. He said, “I hate everything about that kit.” He spoke softly, but the word 'that' was spat from his lips.

Fellow Burridge striker, Lee Fielder, who seldom ignores the opportunity to dismiss Rowe, usually about his Christian beliefs, said that under Arsene Wenger's leadership the shirt has become a symbol for an attractive style of football. Rowe cut him short. “What? Pass the ball around outside the box without ever scoring a goal?” He shook his head, as Paul Dyke divvied out bibs before our pre-match warm up routine.

The playing surface at Whiteley wasn't suitable for Hare & Hounds to emulate Arsenal's passing game. The conditions were very similar to last Saturday, with the centre of the pitch similar in texture, if not taste, to a bowl of treacle pudding, as I discovered when closing down an opponent, who in swinging his boot to clear the ball up field, dislodged a fresh clump of the pitch from the sole of his boot that found its way into my mouth.

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During the first-half I bungled two good goalscoring opportunities. The first of which when the opposing goalkeeper committed himself to blocking Lee Fielder, which resulted in the ball rolling towards me outside the penalty area. Although my shot was on target, it was hit weakly. A Hare & Hounds defender, who in preparing for the worst case scenario by getting back onto the goal line, had no difficulty booting the ball to safety.

My second chance came after some slick interplay ending when Marc Judd, whose run had taken a defender away from me, back heeled the ball into my path. On receiving the ball, imaginary commentary from David Coleman buzzed in my ears as I became acutely aware of the stunning goal that I was no doubt about to score. A collective sigh of anti-climax could be heard shortly after I hit the ball harmlessly over the crossbar. Lee Fielder was having a better afternoon. He scored his first after breaking free from the Hare & Hounds defence and stroking home. Within ten minutes he had his second, volleying in Schwodler's cross from close range.

******************

Hare & Hounds began the second-half with purpose, scoring pretty much straight away. One or two of us appealed for a free-kick against goalkeeper, Ryan Jones, but the referee was having none of it, shaking his head. Their bearded centre-back left his defensive duties behind to play a more attacking role, meeting a bouncing ball forty-yards from goal with a dipping volley you couldn't help but admire. I entirely expected to see the ball stopped by our royal blue goal netting. It flashed narrowly over the crossbar.

Sam Hewitt had already had it in the ear from his older brother for not getting rid of the ball quickly enough. Now it was his turn to let off some steam. “Sandy, Jase,” he shouted, to me and my midfield partner, Jason Wilson. “You're just standing there." Sam didn't think that we were pulling our weight. His voice was not quite as high as Paul Andrews when he loses his rag, but slightly higher than usual, all the seem. I turned around and looked at him stood twenty or so yards away. The fact I did not bite back had as much to do with me being preoccupied with getting my breath back, as much as any new found zen-ness.

Hare & Hounds' gung-ho strategy left them exposed to our counter attacks, led by Sam Schwodler, who kept himself busy by sniffing after a goal his performance deserved. His left wing cross was hit on the volley by Mark Reeves, who stood marginally inside the penalty area. When the ball crossed the line it was met with relief tinged with a touch of surprise that such a delicate finish was supplied by Reeves, a player normally associated with the rough house aspects of the game. It was a goal that effectively sealed our win.

Victory was marked by an unfortunate but timely block by Sam Hewitt, whose testicles took the full brunt of a cleanly hit goal bound shot. The referee stopped play as Hewitt lay on touchline to the right of Ryan Jones' goal, with one arm covering his eyes, the other reaching down inside his black shorts. Our manager, Paul Dyke, ran onto pitch, lifted Hewitt's legs by the ankles and slowly drew them in toward his body in a repeated motion in an effort to relieve him off the sting. There were twenty seconds left.

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Burridge AFC 3-1 Durley Reserves

2011-01-24T17:01:00.010Z

Saturday 22nd January: Burridge play their first game of 2011 in boggy conditions at Whiteley.

Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, marched up and down the centre-circle, inspecting the mud beneath his feet. Our last game was a 1-1 draw with Forest Town at Burridge on November 6th. Eleven weeks later and our pitch is still waterlogged. Dyke's black outfit of tracksuit trousers and thick quilted jacket made his white Adidas trainers stand out clearly from my view, sixty or so yards away, in the back seat of Kev Willsher's Ford Focus, as we arrived in the car-park shortly before 12:45pm. Dyke's trainers have seen better days, which was just as well, because within the first ten minutes of the game my boot laces were no longer visible under a layer of mud.

We were at Meadowside Leisure Centre in Whiteley, a shopping outlet tucked away in a dead end off junction 9 of the M27, almost four miles south-east from Burridge. The middle of the pitch was more like a swamp than a football pitch. Great fun to slide tackle in, but not ideal to pass or indeed run upon. This was, to me at least, further evidence, if necessary, to run the Southampton Football League season between March and September. I was surprised to read that the head of UEFA, Michel Platini, shares my views. Well, not with the Southampton Football League, but with the sport in general.

The perception that Platini has a vendetta against English football has been voiced regularly throughout the sports media, so that anything he says is treated with a certain amount of subjectivity. Mark Irwin of The Sun, was pretty sure were he stood if his headline from Friday's edition was anything to go by. It read, Michel is such a stupid Plat. You can read Mark Irwin's report by clicking here. The fifty-seven comments that followed the online copy echoed his sentiment unanimously. Although the more balanced comments asked what we, the football fan, would be left to look forward to during a long cold winter without the game. It's a good point.

My ideas differ slightly from Platini's. I am not calling for all football to be played between March and September, just local football. Burridge's fixtures have been decimated by bad weather during the winter months over the last five years. Some leagues in England are already addressing the situation. On Wednesday, representatives of the 150 teams in the Russell Foster Tyne and Wear Youth League will decide whether to begin their season on June 1st, starting this year. Click here for the full report. John Topping, secretary of the Durham FA expects an overwhelming majority to back summer football. In Saturday's Guardian, he was quoted as saying that, “there is widespread frustration with bitterly cold winters that are disrupting almost all matches between November and February.” A view that Burridge leading goal scorer, Sam Schwolder, echoed at a table in Pilgrim House Chinese restaurant last Saturday night.

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Daniel Esfandiari, or Essy as he is commonly known, received by far and away the most attention from the rest of the squad before the game. He is going skiing in France with a holiday rep, a women I might add, with his girlfriend's blessing. Tit-bits like this are food and drink to the likes of Kristian Hewitt and Paul Dyke, who were on his case the moment he arrived in the dressing room. The crux of their teasing was based on whether or not Essy intended to have sex with this women, with obviously, the concept that a man and a women could go on holiday without doing so being even more preposterous than my summer football idea. Essy took the ribbing in good spirit. Hewitt had the last word on the matter, “just make sure to stick a condom on,” he said. “She's bound to have something.”

I put our shining white Mitre football and placed it in the mud, where the painted white centre-circle once stood, before Dyke supervised an extensive pre-match warm-up. Kristian Hewitt complained that he still ached from Thursday night's training session. Jason Wilson was more concerned with his fringe, which if not swept back, fell into his eyes. “I don't suppose anyone's got an Alice band?” He asked. Kristian Hewitt looked at him with a facial expression of his that I've come to recognise over the last decade, that suggests he's lost all hope in the human race, before suggesting to Wilson he get his hair cut.

The referee walked from the changing rooms up the shallow bank to the pitch. As he approached I heard Hewitt mutter, “Oh no, not him.” In truth, Hewitt's concerns could apply to scores of local referees. I put this to him by asking if there were any referees he would be pleased to see. “There's one or two.” he insisted, but I knew there were none he liked.

Durley were dressed in their familiar red and white jerseys. One or two of their players looked overdue for being put out to pasture in the veteran league; although one of which, at 43 years of age, was probably their best player. I was up against a far taller opponent in central midfield. He had the ruddy complexion that many with strawberry blond hair are cursed with. His shoulder length hair drew some of my team-mates to compare his appearance to that of Robbie Savage.

I was soon to discover that his lack of self awareness was not limited to his choice of haircut. I was impressed with his ability to continually convince himself that he was having any influence on the game. Fairly ineffectual in the air for a man of six foot plus, he was prepared to overlook his own short comings in order to concentrate on his team mates'. He spent the majority of the first-half stood on the half-way line with his arms held high above his head demanding the ball When it wasn't he would complain, when it was he was kind enough to return it to us.

Sam Schwodler gave us a one-nil lead mid-way through the first-half. His appetite for goals is all the motivation he needs to get himself into goalscoring positions. Although Marc Judd's twenty-five yard free-kick had neither the pace nor the direction to cause Durley's goalkeeper any problems, Schwodler was prepared to take a chance by following it towards goal. When it was fumbled by Durley's goalkeeper, Schwodler had the relatively simple task of tapping the ball in. This goal owed much to his willingness to take a chance on what might only occur on one or two occassions in twenty. Durley's 'keeper wore a bright fluorescent orange jersey which was in stark contrast to the grey skies, while his woolly hat kept his hair a secret. He denied Schwodler a second goal with a decent save, but in doing so he pushed the ball into the path of Lee Fielder, who stood seven yards away from an unprotected goal. Instead of ending up in the back of the blue net, the ball landed in somebody's driveway.

Half-time score: Burridge AFC 1-0 Durley Reserves

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Marc Judd provided us with some much needed breathing space in the second-half, when a Schwodler cross missed its intended target of Lee Fielder. Judd, who'd been screaming for the ball from his oncoming position on the left-wing, gathered the ball in his stride and struck it low into the bottom right hand corner with his trusty left foot. Sam Schwodler made it three-nil with a well executed strike from the edge of the eighteen yard box, gathering Jason Wilson's pass, after some purposeful build up play led by Sam Hewitt.

There was some light hearted debate in the dressing room after game about who was at fault for Durley's goal. It came as a result of their right-back running unopposed down the slight slope for a distance of fifty or so yards, before slipping a perfectly weighted ball into the path of a Durley striker, who tucked it neatly inside Ryan Jones' right hand post. What hair the right-back had left was grey. If I were to hazard a conservative guess at his age I would say he is between 48 and 52 , but on the evidence seen this afternoon, still more than capable of outpacing either Marc Judd or Kristian Hewitt on the wing. Although it's worth noting that by this stage Durley had thrown whatever strategy they had arrived with in the waste paper basket, throwing men forward in order to try and get back into the game. By doing so they left plenty of space for us to exploit. It was perhaps of lack of match practice that prevented us from adding to our tally of three goals.

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An audience with Burridge striker, Sam Schwodler

2011-01-18T19:22:00.005Z

Once again, the weather denies Burridge's leading goalscorer the chance to get a game in, so is it time for local football leagues to be played at a different time of the year?

I had my reservations about sitting opposite Sam Schwodler in a restaurant that served Stella Artois. He has a reputation for getting lively where alcohol is concerned, often seen topping up his lager with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice. He was sat in-between his mother and Burridge midfielder, Kristian Hewitt, at Pilgrim House, a Chinese restaurant offering an all you can eat buffet, situated on Canute Road, that backs onto Southampton's eastern docks, for Bryn Schwodler and Luke Sanderson's joint birthday celebrations. I needn't have worried. Over the course of the following three hours, Schwodler provided excellent company.

Dressed stylishly in a dark blazer and scarf, which was tied neatly, under which he wore a light blue shirt beneath a thin navy sweater, an outfit which drew Hewitt in telling Sam he looked like David Essex. “Well, I thought it was posh here” replied Sam, looking momentarily self conscious as he helped himself to more noodles. Sam went onto share his insight on a wide spectrum of topics that his almost twenty-nine years have experienced, including fatherhood, plumbing, goalscoring and prison. Earlier, his eighteen month old son, Lennon, had mistaken the white walls of his flat as a blank canvass on which Sam had caught him enthusiastically drawing upon with crayon. Shouting at him to stop made Lennon cry, which Sam regretted, as much as he did picking him up to console him. “You shouldn't really do that after you tell them off,” he told me.

When asked about his short spell in prison, he spoke about the crushing boredom of being locked in a cell for all but an hour of the day. Refusing to dwell on the negative aspects of the experience he confessed to honing his pool game to such a degree he had to start letting some of the hard cases win for fear of retribution. Being voted the worst trainer by his fellow team mates on Thursday evening was still a matter for debate as far as Sam was concerned. Arriving twenty minutes late didn't help his cause, although he had warned Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, in advance, it cut no ice with the victors of the end of session six-a-side game, who cast their votes in Schwodler's favour unanimously. His reward will be to wear the fluorescent yellow jersey, that bears the name of previous winners in black marker pen, during our next training session. Whether or not previous winner, Joe Hill, has incurred the £3 fine that comes with washing it, is unclear.

The frustration at not having played since November 6th was compounded by his Dad, Pete, and oldest brother, Jay, playing that afternoon for Wildern Old Boys and Hedge-End Rangers Reserves, respectively. Both games took place at Wide Lane, over the road from Southampton airport. Pete Schwodler had his own theory on the glut of postponed matches. “They call games off too early,” he said, between sips of Stella.”Our pitch was absolutely fine.” Although Jay came on and played for half an hour, he suffered the indignity of being dropped to the substitute bench by Rich Allan, who will be best man at Jay's forthcoming wedding. On getting wind of this, Kristian Hewitt very nearly choked on his crispy duck. Hewitt had long taken rise out of Jay during many years playing alongside. Since Jay left in the summer, Hewitt has turned his attention to Marc Judd, who Hewitt can often be heard taunting, at both the training ground and the pub.

Another season hampered by wet and freezing weather will no doubt result in a last minute scramble to try and squeeze games in during the last two months of the season. This has been a familiar pattern over the past five years, when the months of December and January effectively become off season. Those with short memories can see how bad weather has disrupted Burridge's season over the last five years.

2006/2007: 5 games played between November 13th and March 11th.
2007/2008: 4 games played in December and January.
2008/2009: 4 games played in December and January.
2009/2010: 2 games played in December and January.
2010/2011: No game played since November 6th.

The solution seems simple. We can begin playing games on artificial surfaces once the weather worsens. Fleming Park, Hamble School, Southampton Sports Centre, and Wide Lane all have full size synthetic pitches. My gut feeling is that many players would be unhappy playing on all weather pitches, because both the run and bounce of the ball are completely different to that of a grass, or muddy, pitch. Therefore, is it time to beg the question for local leagues to be played during Summer? The season could be played during warmer months between March and August.

Some would say Summer is the holiday season rather than the football season, but that argument falls a little flat as a significant proportion of our team go on regular winter holidays. During the hotter months of June, July and August games could kick-off in the morning, which would also leave a larger part of the day free. There would also be the potential for regular mid-week games, that would be a more appealing prospect for casual spectators on a pleasant spring or summer evening. Most importantly, a summer season would allow teams to actually do what they really want to do - play regular games of football. Is it time to revert to a summer season?

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No credit

2011-01-11T18:52:00.001Z

The weather's not getting any better so the chances of Burridge playing this Saturday are slim.

There was a letter waiting for me when I got home from work. It was unnecessary to open the envelope in order to find out who it was from, I recognised the rounded consonants my name and address had been written in. It was January's invoice from Hamble School, whose synthetic sports pitch facilities we use for our training sessions for an hour each week on Thursday evenings. It is £160 in total for four sessions. Missing in the envelope was any credit note for the two sessions the school cancelled in December due to sub-zero weather conditions that had frozen the pitch. Maybe my request for that credit note had not been taken seriously because it was written in green felt tip pen. If they'd rather it came printed off in Times New Roman, then fine, £80 is still £80.

Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, had requested Saturday 8th's game to be postponed as a significant chunk of our squad, including goalkeeper Ryan Jones, were in Disneyland, Paris, to celebrate Ryan Hurst's twenty-first birthday. Years ago, my peers and I were satisfied in marking the occasion by going drinking in town and ending the evening hugging the toilet bowl in a nightclub cubicle. Clearly things have altered since we reached that landmark age. We have the opportunity to improve on our current position of seventh place, with games in hand on all teams placed above us in the Senior Division of the Southampton Football League.

My drive home from work at around five-thirty was marred by poor visibility, as my windscreen was forever steaming up. This was a result of various items of football kit in the boot, much of it that had been there for some time, the guilty parties being a pair of size eight and half metal studded Adidas, and a set of shin pads, all left to fester in a Nike sports holdall that is slung deep in boot of my car underneath a canvass bag of leather Mitre footballs. The boots need the attention of a good clean that I have been delaying for over a month.

I drove down Basset Avenue alongside the Common and tried to ignore the partially blocked windscreen, the thought of my filthy boots, as well as my fuel gage, that once has once again dropped perilously close to empty. As per usual I will wait as long as possible to part with hard earned cash to fill the tank with diesel. During my short walk from my car to my flat the roads and pavements were testament to the day's weather forecast, with any slight camber or dip filled to the brim with rainwater. With further heavy rain forecast for the remainder of the week it is unlikely that the opportunity to improve on seventh place will arrive this coming Saturday.

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Back in the saddle

2011-01-08T19:14:00.006Z

Burridge returned to training on Thursday 6th January, bringing with them an enthusiasm, although given the Christmas break perhaps not a high level of fitness.

Lee Fielder hunched over the low wooden picket fence that separates the pathway leading to the astroturf at Hamble School from a bunch of fragile looking shrubbery, and tried to vomit. Hearing the dry heave from behind him, Ryan Hurst turned around, “You alright, mate?” He asked, all the while being sure to keep his distance. “I've definitely got a puke in me,” said Lee, his eyes fixed downwards towards the wet grass. We had just finished our first training session of 2011, after a fortnight off over Christmas and New Year. Manager, Paul Dyke, had put us through a gruelling session, with circuit runs around half of a full size pitch, whereby he'd call out a number between one and four, in relation to the number of sides of the pitch he wanted us to sprint around. We did this exercise for what seemed a very long time. It was in fact for ten minutes.

Further circuit training continued, on each exercise Dyke would periodically glance at his stop watch, assuring us that we were nearly done. Of course, all this running around is for our own good. Even here, in the depths of the thirteenth tier of the English football pyramid system, a good level of fitness is paramount, especially seeing as many of our bellies were still full from the excess food and drink of the Christmas holidays.

This session was the first in my new yellow and green Adidas Adi-5 trainers, the colour of which were described by some manufacturers as lemon fizz and fairway green. This was topped off with a bright yellow snood, the much maligned piece of clothing worn around the neck by some Premier League footballers to keep warm. To my surprise, these two items drew less attention than my new dark turquoise Umbro shorts, that I found whilst scouring the sale racks at JJB's warehouse outlet in Southampton. Despite being medium boys' size, with an inner pant lining, I managed to squeeze into them quite snugly; or so I thought. Kristian Hewitt wasn't impressed. He said I looked like Mr Motivator, the fitness instructor who became famous for his daily appearances on the breakfast television show GMTV, dressed in skin tight and highly colourful spandex. I insisted that the tightness of the short was the style. Kristian wasn't convinced.

Reward for our hard work was the end of session six-a-side game. Dyke granted us a few moments to traipse behind the goal and fish out refreshments from our sports bags. I reached into my battered old black ruck sack and pulled out a plastic bottle filled with almost a litre of Asda's orange and mango juice, which was enough to make Joe Hill, stood behind me in a black Southampton shirt, that was letting off more steam than a Corby trouser press, to pretty much beg me for a sip. I obliged. Two full calendar months have now passed without a Burridge game, for which every player is chomping at the bit for.

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Letting yourself go

2010-12-29T16:35:00.003Z

Keeping fit often feels like a losing battle, especially during Christmas time.

Each step up Lordswood Road's forty-five degree incline made me pay dearly in oxygen for every slice of dripping on toast I'd eaten, along with everything else, during the previous three days. It was a grey Monday afternoon and I had been out running up Hill Lane towards the Sports Centre in Southampton. Other than three kids having a kick about on the grass, and a thin scattering of obligatory dog walkers, it was pretty much empty. When I finally wheezed my way up to Lordswood Road's summit I was forced into realising that I wasn't as fit as I liked to believe.

It seemed like only yesterday when I was winning the Burridge cross country runs; but when I cast my mind back, yesterday was actually a balmy May evening in 2005, when I was forced into stopping in on the Humble Plumb, in Bitterne, and drink heartily from the cold water tap of the gents, during a two hour run, in preparation for the Siberian Marathon. Back then I could beat Kev Willsher, nowadays I'm getting fed up of seeing his back gradually disappear into the horizon.

Theoretically, there will be ample time for all players to keep (or get) fit, and avoid any nasty shock to the nervous system when we play again. No doubt Kev has been pounding the roads, increasing his lung capacity further, which considering his fondness for the smokes is a real two fingers up to the National Health Service. One player to benefit from the weather enforced break is Kristian Hewitt, who's not been able to play since October, after pulling up in training with a dodgy hamstring. As luck would have it, Burridge haven't played since November 6, meaning that Hewitt has only missed a single game.

Hewitt returned to training on the Thursday before Christmas, leaving the training field pretty content with his night's work. Stopping alongside Ryan Hurst, who was playing against Hewitt in a six-a-side game of young versus old, Hewitt's older team had run out 10-6 winners, and Hewitt had smashed in most of the goals. He acknowledged Hurst with a quick glance and said, “Don't worry, on days like this I'm unplayable.” He may have been teasing, but there was truth to what he said.

Thirty-nine minutes and seven seconds of discomfort was brought to an end when I ran within two hundred yards of my flat. I saw a pair of white canvass baseball boots, their laces tied together, that had been slung over a telephone wire that passed over the street, which if what I've heard is led to be believed, is a sign that either drug dealers are in town with a fresh supply, or they're marking their territory. As I regained my breath and walked home, I wondered if they had anything suitable for me. The one that's popular with cyclists, Ephedrine, sprang to mind.

Click here to see how each Burridge player did in the 2010 review.

Snow way to behave

2010-12-21T21:34:00.005Z

Saturday's game at Hatches Farm with Wellow was postponed due to a frozen pitch, but that didn't stop Burridge enjoying an evening out in Bournemouth.

It is 7pm on Saturday evening and Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, is going through his pockets whilst sat in the driving seat of a hired mini bus. He has volunteered to drive us, the Burridge squad, down the M27 to Bournemouth for our Christmas night out, which he has organised. We are parked in a lay-by outside the West End Brewery, a pub in the eastern suburbs of Southampton, that we have just left, having spent the previous two hours in, stopping from time to time to point at the TV screen showing Ipswich Town play in a snow blizzard against Leicester City, whose manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson, with the hood of his jacket pulled up over his head, looked unlikely to find the strength to make it through the night. We talk loudly between ourselves whilst jostling for a seat, and helping ourselves to cans of Fosters from the front seat, waiting for Dykey to set off; there's just one problem, he cannot find the keys to the ignition.

Wearing a green short sleeved shirt, despite the sub zero conditions, Dyke quickly singles out Ben Rowe, who is sat at the back of the bus, as his prime suspect. Rowe strongly denies all knowledge of the whereabouts of the keys, insisting that the bus had been left unlocked. The squabble that follows between us all serves as a cast iron certainty that the 36 mile journey from West End to Bournemouth is going to be an arduous one, if indeed it gets going at all. Missing from the trip is Dan Allen, who is too young to drink, Kristian Hewitt, who is bed ridden with flu, and Paul Andrews, whose frank assessment was he really didn't fancy getting a mini-bus home at three in the morning with us lot. We are one passenger light in Dan Esfandiari, who after much deliberation finally decided on having a dump in the pub before setting off. On his way out he noticed the keys to the mini bus laying alongside the empty pint glasses on the dark pine table that we had stood surrounded around only minutes earlier. He handed them to Dyke through the driver side window. Finally we could get on with a night of reckless excess.

Bournemouth was chosen as our destination to minimise the chances of any Irish good-byes, whereupon those too drunk to continue their evening disappear into the night without so much as any warning or a reply on their mobile. We were bound together for the duration of the evening, for good or ill. Dyke remained adamant that if a single snow flake fell he would be obliged for reasons of safety to drive back. It didn't snow, but the conditions on the roads were still dicey after the dusting of snow we'd had earlier in the day, and at times our vehicle's tyres struggled to maintain any grip onto the road. Driving in these conditions can be a cause for concern for the driver, but with a bus full of drunk passengers on board you don't worry about having an accident, you fantasise about it.

The first place we visited was called the Brass House, a large bar thats lack of any other people inside it minimised the chances of getting into any bother. Kev Willsher fought manfully for the prize of most inappropriate footwear, in a pair of thin white canvass plimsolls, but narrowly lost out to Jason Wilson's black espadrilles, that naturally, he wore without any sock. Whilst they looked sharp with his non pleated cream chinos, they offered little to no grip on the pavements, that due to the weather conditions were closer in resemblance to an ice rink. The rest of the evening rapidly descended into the usual alcohol induced race to oblivion, so regrettably I am unable to divulge any further information. Hopefully, there will be some football to report on in the New Year. Happy Christmas.

Click here to see how each Burridge player faired in 2010.

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Burridge in 2010

2010-12-17T17:27:00.010Z

A change of manager, an injection of youth, and what some players are calling a fairly draconian penalty fine system have re-galvanised Burridge this year. So as 2010 draws to a close 90 Minutes of Burridge takes a look at what exactly each one of the current squad brings to the table.NB Saturday's game with Wellow at Hatches Farm has been postponed because of the snow, which means that our 1-1 draw at home to Forest Town on November 6th was effectively our last game of 2010. Click here to remind yourself of what a match report looked like.

Dan Allen
17 year old midfielder or full-back in the mould of Bayern Munich's Philipp Lahm.

A quiet young man who maintains a strong social media presence on Facebook, with status updates you can rely upon for weighty insight into his inner most thoughts, like just how much Dan is looking forward to football training. It is here online, via the comments section, where he has developed a cutting put-down technique. We look forward to the day he's able to transfer these social skills into real life. Dan joined the club in the summer, and has demonstrated a surprising ability to drop his shoulder in order to beat his man. Rumoured to get a bit lively after one or two WKDs, the end of season night out will coincide nicely with his eighteenth birthday.

Paul Andrews
31 year old centre forward similar in grace to former German international, Carsten Janker.

Employed with his family plumbing business, Paul has had a good year off the field after recently announcing he is soon to marry his beautiful fiancée, Kate. On the field he has not been so fortunate, with regular ailments to his back and knees limiting the wily old poacher to a handful of appearances. Did manage to make an impact in those games, scoring the winning goal against Warsash Wasps in April, as well as stepping into the breach when we needed a replacement goalkeeper at Hiltingbury. Still remains a dangerous customer in front of goal on the training pitch though, especially if you're a row of birch saplings growing the wrong side of the twenty-odd foot high perimeter fence at Hamble School. It's a little known fact that Andrews scored one of the greatest Burridge goals of all time, when he scored direct from the half-way line at Priory Park against Bishops Waltham during the Meon Valley Sunday League years, back in the days he played as right-back before reinventing himself as centre forward. 2011 will be his fourteenth year with the club.

Paul Dyke
31 year old manager with the hands on style used by the likes of a young non racist Big Ron Atkinson.

Teetotal accountant are not the juxtaposition of words that spring to mind when describing anything remotely exciting. However, Dyke is the exception to the rule. He hung up his size nine boots to concentrate on managing Burridge, a position he volunteered for after Pete Lyons' retirement at the end of last season. With a Facebook message thread between the players proving wholly inadequate in reaching any kind of decision to the club's future, Dyke's commitment in taking the vacant Burridge manager position on his return from holiday in New York was the difference between the side continuing or folding. He quickly arranged a meeting between a handful of core players on a Thursday evening in May at the Shamblehurst Barn, a Hungry Horse chain situated deep within the ever expanding housing estate of Grange Park. It was there over pints of Fosters and bags of Walkers crisps that Dyke successfully convinced those players that Burridge was a club worth staying at with him at the helm. He has since brought in a number of new younger players, and put us through our paces during a punishing, but rewarding pre-season training regime. He has been known to break his abstinence to get on it during stag weekends.

Daniel Esfandiari
21 year old midfielder who invokes memories of former Portuguese international Rui Costa.

With his neatly combed head of luscious dark hair and well turned out appearance, Essy, as he is known, seems a little too flamboyant to work as a mechanic. Tall, athletic, toned, and completely ill equipped to deal with any physical aspect of game, Essy is living proof that no book should ever be judged by its cover. He prefers to operate in the skillful side of the game, and has a genuine ability to send Beckham-esque deliveries into opponent's penalty areas from either flank, which is a weapon that as a team we really ought to capitalise, (not to mention utilise) far more often.

Lee Fielder
31 year old striker who plays of the defender's shoulder like Italian, Filippo Inzaghi.

The fact he excels in both the long and short distance running exercises in training only serves to fuel the ridicule from his fellow players for his inability to play for the full ninety minutes of Burridge matches. A series of niggling injuries accumulated over the years being the root cause of this. Full of questions, usually for Ben Rowe, who can often be heard at the West End Brewery explaining his Christian beliefs to Fielder, who for those that don't know him well enough might be led to believe from the series of low cut tight T-shirts he wears, that his own beliefs don't stretch to anything other than his reflection in the mirror. A good finisher.

Kristian Hewitt
31 year old all rounder who strikes the ball like Johnny Metgod but dribbles like Michael Laudrup.

Has scored a fine collection of truly wonderful goals in his thirteen years playing with Burridge. They tend to be hit with power from long range. I remember his first special goal for the club. It came from thirty-five yards in Waterlooville on a sunny Sunday afternoon against Lynx. I was the first to congratulate, and failed miserably to life him from the ground. The South Hants Weekly were moved to call it the goal of the game in their 175 word report. That newspaper is no longer in print.

Sam Hewitt
21 year old like Chris Waddle in his Marseille hay-day if he was a full-back rather than a winger.

It took Sam, the youngest of the four Hewitt brothers, a little time to discover his best position. He was plying his trade as a budding centre forward when 2008 became 2009, during which time he was some distance from reaching his goal target of twenty, that he had set in the presence of his brother, Jamie, during the previous summer. In actual fact, Sam didn't open his account for the season until February at Hatches Farm against Wellow, with a goal that put him level in the scoring charts with Mark Reeves. It was his ability to read the game and weave past opponents that has allowed him to slot very nicely into the right-back position. Has also put in strong performance across the midfield. At 21 Sam finds himself with four years of Burridge playing experience in his locker.

Joe Hill
28 year old striker whose performances remind of Jon Dahl Tomasson, when he was at Newcastle.

A pest, both on and off the field, this painter and decorator by day, but striker come Saturday afternoon, is a friendly sort who is packed to the rafters with an abundance of confidence. To the causal passer by watching us play this level of confidence might seem a bit misplaced. Deceptively quick over ten yards, Joe would have had more goals to his name had it not been for a combination of the woodwork and some fairly wayward finishing. Another of Dyke's summer acquisitions, Joe has been unfortunate enough to see his strikes rebound of the underside of the bar and post three times already this season.

Ryan Hurst

20 year old centre-half in the mould of Barcelona's Gerard Pique.

Alongside Kev Willsher, Hursty makes up the fulcrum of central defence. Opened his scoring account with a fine headed equaliser at Gang Warily against Forest Town; a shame then that it was scored in his own net. Thought long and hard about what he would get done for his first tattoo, then after all that he decided to get LUFC, the initials of Leeds United Football Club, inked on his arm. He continues to acquit himself well in his debut season with the club.

Ryan Jones

20 year old goalkeeper whose performances very reminiscent of a young Fabian Barthez

His 2009/10 season came to a premature end on an overcast Wednesday evening in May, at Green Park, Millbrook. Those not there that night need only to remind themselves of the scene in the Empire Strikes Back, when Chewbacca gathers together the broken pieces of C-3P0 on Bespin Cloud city, to get an idea of what happened to Jonesy during that game with Redbridge. He originally decided to pack in the goalkeeping game, but soon turned his back on the advice of the medial profession, coming back to pre-season stacked, after regular visits to the gym. Although his recent tendency to go totally bat shit when team mates don't track back to help defend has caused some to wonder if he washing down those gym visits with a handful of the 'roids. Great reflexes, fond of karaoke, and very popular with the the cougars.

Marc Judd

30 year old midfielder with the deft touch and mean streak of Hristo Stoichkov.

Burridge's little ray of sunshine is seldom seen without a lit cigarette hanging from his lips. His tremendous left foot was once responsible for a pitch invasion. This after he had scored a free-kick at Whiteley against Durley to tie the score at 4-4 that completed an astonishing Burridge come back in a game that they were losing four goals to nil at the back end of last season. (NB Five drunk men running onto the field of play constitutes a pitch invasion in the Southampton League.) Often on the receiving end of Kristian Hewitt's taunts. Drives a giant yellow DHL van, but unless I hear differently this is not a motivating factor for Hewitt.

Mark Reeves

30-something midfield war horse who reminds me of Steve McMahon.

With his black Adidas Copa Mundial size nines, Reevesy is a tough tackling member of the old school. On a purely personal level I still feel violated from being nutmegged by Reeves down on the left flank in a training game amongst ourselves and Wildern Old Boys during pre-season. Just to prove that this wasn't a fluke Reeves nutmegged again shortly after coming on as a substitute against league leaders Netley, a feat that surprised several teenage spectators, if their audible gasps where anything to go by, as well as Reeves himself.

Ben Rowe

27 year old striker like Adriano without the unsavoury nightclub incidents.

The former estate agent from Kent hasn't looked back since making his debut at Allotment Road against Priory Rovers in early 2006. The almost five years since have passed by in the blink of an eye. A big, powerful centre forward, once he's built up a head of steam Rowe is very difficult to stop without the use of a tranquillizer dart. Very often forgets to bring his own toiletries with him, leaving him to rely on the kindness of strangers in the post match shower.

Sam Schwodler
28 year old striker plays in the spirit of Stan Bowles and Rodney Marsh.

Facebook status often reads as 'scores goals,' whereby when I log into Facebook I'm told by none other than Sam Schwodler himself, that Sam Schwodler scores goals. This posting tends to draw a fair bit of traffic to his Facebook page, with friends replying with comments like, 'at an appalling ratio of shots.' Bagged his best ever total of goals last season with 15, has 10 already this season. Found a new way to be sent off after getting a red card for simulation, which in old money means diving.

Kev Willsher

32 year old centre back and club captain in shape of 1990 world cup winner Jurgen Kohler.

Remains quite insistent on not eating beef, but never been known to shirk any kind of challenge on the field of play. His silver Ford Focus still patiently awaits a replacement passenger side wing mirror. Kev likes Nurofen almost as much as likes strong lager, and I've grown to get sick of the sight of his back as he has continued to beat me comfortably in every single one of 2010's Burridge training runs. This year Kev has bled more than a gangtsa rapper after a drive by; found himself in the wars, with one memorable concussion down at Green Park.

Jason Wilson
30 year old midfielder who plays just like Rino Gattuso.

Water carrier, ankle biter, and midfield anchor man; rumour has it that Jason owes his cardiovascular stamina to running his daily post round with his heavy Royal Mail pack on his back. Daniel Esfandiari caught sight of Wilson on the job last week delivering around Thornhill in his shorts and T-shirt. Unfortunately he wasn't able to able to confirm the rumour, because according to Essy, Wilson had emptied the contents of his sack onto the pavement, and was busy bent over trying to clear up his mess. A problem many gentleman can identify with I'm sure.

Road runner

2010-12-09T23:36:00.006Z

Whereby training at Hamble School was cancelled for the second consecutive week because of the frozen conditions.....

My penis is the size of a walnut after the cold shower I've just had. It's 8:30pm and probably too late to make another telephone call to Solitaire, the property management company in charge of the maintenance of my block flats, who have already exposed their indifference to geothermal power's failure to run hot water to my shower during any spell of cold weather. Rather than fix the problem Solitaire far prefer writing letters to me about how to dispose refuse correctly, that always begin – Dear Resident.

Hamble school telephoned me out of courtesy this afternoon to say they were cancelling this evening's training session for the second week running because their Astro-Turf pitch was frozen. The caller, who did not give me the benefit of their surname, was quick to duck all responsibility when I enquired about a credit note for the previous two cancelled sessions we have already paid for. He instead referred me to Linda Heaver, whom I have never met, but have reason to believe is reliable, if her regular posted correspondence is anything to go by. Invoices have been sent to me in good time, as have reminders of our contract, stating that the wearing of any kind of studded footwear on the Astro-Turf would result in immediate cancellation of our booking. Whether she studies CCTV footage or relies upon a team of moles to spy upon us from the bushes in order to discover anyone wearing studded footwear remains a mystery. She had signed off by wishing us a Merry Christmas and successful New Year. Linda was now on leave.

Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, text us with alternative training arrangements. We would meet at Botley Recreation Ground at 7:30pm for what he described as a good old fashioned road run. This is a tough sell. Without a football in sight I was intrigued to see who would turn up. Not that this session was optional. We've nicked a number of last minute goals this season – Sam Schwodler's winner at Gang Warily against Forest Town, Sam Hewitt's equaliser at BTC, and Dan Esfandiari's late goal at home to Hythe Aztecs; none of which came as any coincidence to Paul Dyke, who takes pride in our fitness, which has been gained through five months of regular sessions. He wasn't going to allow a spot of bad weather whittle away the team's fitness to nothing.

Dyke knows that fitness is a personal responsibility, and therein often lies the root of the problem. I'm lucky enough to have access to a communal gym, situated in the bowels of my flat complex, but I seldom use it. The experience of running on a treadmill, which is effectively running on the spot in front of a mirror, is something I find extremely unrewarding. One of my neighbours knocked on my door for the code to get into this gym, which is strange as he normally goes to reasonable lengths to avoid all conversation with me. With his usual gym closed due to bad weather he was forced to get his fitness fix queuing up with all the other residents. I prefer to run outdoors, you can go whenever you want and there's no membership fee. Although until the last few days running outside would have been dangerous without a pair of tennis rackets attached to the soles of my shoes.

I went to collect the training gear from Kev Willsher on Monday night. It had been in his car for well over a week. Seeing the yellow training bibs spilling out the football bag in the back seat of his Ford Focus led me to assume that either he'd been cycling to work or he has no sense of smell. Kev was at work. He told me to pop across the street to his flat and get his car keys from his bedroom. They were on a chest of drawers alongside a post-it note, two lighters and a packet of cigarettes. It's no secret that Kev is fond of an occasional puff, much like Zinedine Zidane and Johan Cruyff, but what with it only being a ten pack of Benson and Hedges, and that he hadn't taken them to work confirmed that smoking was merely a recreational pursuit. Not that smoking effected Kev, he still left me for dead in tonight's running.

The ten to arrive at Botley were, Dan Allen, Paul Dyke, Lee Fielder, Kristian Hewitt, Marc Judd, Mark Reeves, Ben Rowe, Kev Willsher, Jason Wilson and myself. A pretty reasonable showing. Marc Judd rubbished me for wearing tracksters beneath my shorts, which to the uninitiated are skin tight Lycra running trousers. There's safety in numbers, so I was pleased to see both Jason Wilson and Mark Reeves wear similar items.We ran a brisk pace of two laps around the village, which came to just under three miles, the second lap of which felt considerably tougher on my calf muscles than the first when trying to keep up with the chasing pack of Jason Wilson, Kev Willsher, Lee Fielder and Dan Allen. This was followed by a flat out kilometre dash to Texaco, on the Maypole round-about and back again. Jason Wilson led from the front in both races. On completion, Dyke fed us all with Haribo sweets, (apparently they release sugar that's good for recovery. They taste nice too). We're due to host Durley on Saturday, but with frosty conditions forecast it's unclear if play will go ahead.

Verdict: 17/20

Scores: 1-9 time to take a long hard look at yourself, 10-11 get Paul Andrews back in the squad, pronto, 12 ok, 13 respectable, 14 worked hard, 15 good - Dejan Savicevic, 16 touch of class - Socrates, 17 capable of greatness - Michael Laudrup, 18 wonderful - Marco Van Basten , memorable - Johan Cruyff, 20 as good as it gets

Anyone have any toilet paper?

2010-12-01T12:48:00.002Z

Whereupon I review the facilities on offer at a football ground.

This week: Green Park, Millbrook

No football playing experience in Southampton is truly complete without a visit to Millbrook's Green Park. As well as playing for Burridge on Saturday afternoons, I also ply my trade turning out on Sunday Mornings for CFC Hillyfields, who just so happened to be playing at Green Park a few days ago, which encouraged me to review the council owned ground with some degree of objectivity it never seems to get from so many other local footballers who choose to vilify the place as nothing but pikey. Situated off the A33 flyover in Millbrook, the ground has four pitches that are home to all number of teams, who have no real ground of their own to speak of. So, let's take a look at what Green Park has to offer:

Toilets

First thing I like to do when I get to Green Park is have a crap. Like the vast majority of Sunday morning players, I had got out of bed only minutes before driving to the ground. The previous night's consumption of wood pigeon (starter), steak (cooked rare), and goats cheese (dessert), washed down with Guinness and red wine, made this particular morning's visit absolutely imperative.

Plaudits must be given to the council for including a disabled toilet in their changing room designs, which is one of two toilet cubicles on offer. It certainly gets well used if the pebble dashed stains all over the basins are anything to go by. The locks work too, which is by no means a given at all local football grounds.

Toilet paper is scarce in these parts, so you would do well to bring your own. I hadn't. In the past I've been fortunate. A good friend of mine, Andrew Jopling, once sacrificed one of his Donnay socks, the left if memory serves, that he passed underneath the partition wall in order for me to carry out my necessary duties. This kind of generosity is unusual and should not be relied upon. Socks were unnecessary on this occasion.

Changing rooms

The high barred windows give off a vibe of mock 70's prison chic, which is set off against the delicious irony of the premise's relaxed security. It's worth reminding yourself that it's best to take any valuables with you if you wish to ever set eyes on them again.

The five by five foot shower tray gives you ample opportunity to mix with players from all eight teams. Wash the mud off to your heart's content whilst listening to local raconteurs discussing various criminal activity from petty violence to full blown GBH. It's strongly recommended you don't leave your shower gel bottles on the floor if you're at all squeamish about having a stranger's penis flapping around in your face.

Eating out and entertainment

If you have been drinking you may feel peckish, in which case you're in luck, as there are a two very well known restaurants within easy walking distance, both of which offer the local delicacy; they are McDonald's, (feeling a bit ropey you can always get a sausage and egg mcmuffin down you before kick-off), and for the more adventurous amongst you - KFC. If you're very lucky you may even catch a glimpse of one of the many locals. Sunday's game was momentarily halted in the second half as two masked men charged across the pitch on motorbikes, pulling wheelies. Sadly, no one was killed.

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Unofficial winter break

2010-11-27T17:54:00.000Z

No game for a third straight week for Burridge AFC

It was gone two on Saturday afternoon and a single degree shy of freezing outside, good enough reason to turn down my brother's offer of driving down the M27 to watch last season's Burridge top scorer, Bryn Schwodler, play for Hedge End. One look outside showed few people had left home without a woolly hat of some kind. I have a fur deerstalker for such occasions, but saw no reason in using it today when there was a Lion bar in the kitchen cupboard and a warm place on the sofa with my name on it.

Burridge captain, Kev Willsher, took my brother up on his offer. Being glued to the Ashes series has bitten a large chunk out of his sleep, resulting in him arriving at the office for a day's graphic designing on little more than four hour's shut eye. I called him to see how Bryn was doing. It was half-time and Kev was sat in the car. Burridge centre forward, Sam Schwodler, was parked alongside in his burgundy Fiesta, inappropriately dressed for the weather in a thin jacket. Apparently Bryn looked lively and had a few goalscoring chances.

Bryn left Burridge in the close season to try his hand playing at a higher level. The bitter weather had made some spectators think twice about coming to the Rodway; but being both a Hampshire League game, and a local derby with Botley, there were still more people watching then we tend to get on any given Saturday afternoon. I remember ten years ago and more, going on holiday with Bryn to places like Magaluf and Faliraki, when we'd be goofing around by the pool, and how it was virtually impossible to push Bryn into the water. Gifted with a low centre of gravity he was always able to pivot off of the ball of either foot and scamper away to safety. Kev reserved his most damning criticism for a Botley centre back for wearing a snood around his neck. Hedge-end went three up in the ten minutes before half-time. Sam Schwodler had disappeared to the pub by the time Hedge End had scored a fourth. My brother and Kev followed shortly. Coming home and warming their arses on the radiator.

This unofficial annual break recharges our batteries, as well as giving players the chance to get totally ratted on a Friday evening without fear of the consequences. Although today it was just a break in the schedule rather than bad weather that stopped us from playing. A quick glance at the Southampton league tables shows we are where we always seem to be – smack bang in the middle. Netley are top, having played the same amount of games as us and double the points. Michelmersh Reserves have turned their back on a history of being hopeless. Last season they lost 23 of their 24 league games. So far in 2010/11 they've won more games than we have. Not that the past should count for anything, but once you do something, even for a short period of time, the public start expecting it of you forever.

I had missed Thursday night's training session. Dykey ran the guys into ground while I ate steak and drank whiskey with my dad to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. I subsequently learnt that during the end of session game, Jonesy had launched into a four letter word fuelled rant at team mates for not tracking back to help defend his goal. The twenty year old now has the final characteristic of the greatest goalkeepers, cantankerism. Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, never one to waste an opportunity, had spent the afternoon checking out Netley against Hare and Hounds, and Allbrook versus Sholing. In the cut and thrust of the Southampton League there is no rest for the manager.

Click here so see the current Southampton League tables.

November Rain

2010-11-22T21:22:00.005Z

It was the telephone that woke me at around 11:30 on Saturday morning. It was a text message from Burridge manager, Paul Dyke. The game was off. The game was off last week too. It tends to rain a lot at this time of year, and the pitch was waterlogged. The phone rang before I could go back to sleep. The moment to bask in this newly found popularity passed me by as I noticed I'd left my phone on the radiator over night. Blackberries are nothing if not resilient, but the thing was never destined to be the same again. Do mobile phone manufacturers ever test their products on radiators? Probably not. I scribbled this idea down and put it with all my others:

Tell Puma their football boots really ought to be able to last more than two months.
Write back to Ann Wallace, editor of Flybe's in-flight magazine, and ask her to reconsider my proposed article on the best places to play Russian roulette on New Year's Eve in Malaga.
Pitch your idea to Coca-Cola, on a largely untapped market, about a collaboration with Jack Daniels to release the JD and Coke in a can. (Not to my tastes, but I think it would sell.)

There were plenty of other ideas too, just that I couldn't read the rest of my hand-writing. It was Barrie Becheley on the telephone. He's the Burridge chairman. He formed the club back in 1989, and wanted to make sure that Paul Dyke got his message that the game was off. I said he had. Barrie runs the Burridge Sunday morning side. They have the Burridge crest on the chest of their shirts. The Burridge crest is a red brick castle. I was curious what business red brick castles had on Burridge shirts. Barrie told me that the word Burridge actually means fortress, which is kind of like a castle. I told Barrie I'd drop his money off to him soon. He said there was no rush.

I collect our team's subscription fees. They cover our running costs; things like pitch and referee fees, medical equipment and stuff like that. I've even got a bank account with HSBC to pay the money into. I don't know if it's my sheepskin jacket, or on this occasion, the four-pack of Fosters in a carrier bag that I rested upon on the counter, but once again the staff at HSBC asked if I was a signature on the account. They speak in the same slow tone I imagine custom officers do when asking if you've packed your bag, knowing full well you've got an ounce of Afghan Whig stashed in the lining of the side pocket. I tell them I am the only signature on the account. This being true doesn't stop me from getting nervous. I usually end up twiddling the thin silver chain that holds their Biros prisoner to the counter. I usually have to sign a bit of paper to prove I'm legit.

Despite having a signature with all the imagination of a straight line, one look at it is enough to satisfy HSBC. By this time the queue behind me is massive. It's not just the bank, they're not crazy about me at Co-op. Even in the heady days of 2010, some people get ants in their pants when you ask for large silver Rizla and a bottle of red before eleven in the morning. Neither items were for me, I hasten to add. Not that that old chestnuts holds any water with these puritans. And Bukowski thought he had it tough in Post Office.

Barrie's friendly manner may have taken a slight turn had he known that the only thing keeping me from what I consider naked was a pair of thick winter socks. I didn't drop that into our conversation. I was no more likely to share that information than I was revealing to him that whilst we spoke, albeit on the phone, I had a rather stubborn half mast. I'd rather that hadn't happened, but there it was, gaining height and all the while robbing me of my dignity as I tried my utmost to maintain pleasantries with our chairman.

With no game I had time on my hands. I put on some music and some clothes and went out, stopping by at my local off license. They're called Cloud Wine. An independent store with a nice vibe about the place so when you do buy hard liquor you don't get made to feel like you have a problem, that in my experience you are made to feel like at say Threshers. Cloud Wine do this BY creating an atmosphere. Beethoven's fourth symphony was followed by the Misfits. I think it was Hybrid Moments. Sadly, they no longer have the monopoly on the Bedford Place area of Southampton. As well as a mini Tesco and Sainsbury's to contend with, there's also a Champagne Charlies down the road. This is a big draw for the students because they're open until midnight. Not that I would know because I have never set foot in the place.

I know the guys at Cloud Wine. With his thick dark beard, Justin is a living answer for anyone wondering what Brian Blessed would have looked like if he joined The Doors. I hovered around the cash register eyeing up the Monkey Shoulder. Justin told me to keep my eyes peeled as they were bringing in a batch of Japanese whiskey in a week or so. I asked if it was any good. He told me by all accounts it was very good. He was fresh out of a fortnight spent in Southampton General with blood poisoning in his arm. His boredom was cured when his girlfriend brought in his laptop so he could watch the last series of The Wire. I left Cloud Wine empty handed.

If nothing else, this week has taught me how to rattle Burridge skipper, Kev Willsher. Drive like an arsehole. It was on the way to training, and I was making a right turn out of Portsmouth Road toward Hamble. I was let out by an oncoming vehicle. My windows were a little steamed up so I couldn't see what was driving on the outside of that vehicle, but being an optimist, I felt my chances were as good as fifty-fifty, so I pulled out; the result of which was two-fold. The car passing on the blind side had to hit the breaks, and Kev was left jabbering like a nervous wreck.

Click on any words in blue to go to something that might go some way to explain what I'm talking about. That just about leaves time for me to say Happy Twenty-First Birthday, to Burridge superstar - Sammy Hewitt (pictured to the right of Burridge centre-half, Ryan Hurst). Just where does the time go?

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Burridge AFC 1-1 Forest Town

2010-11-13T13:08:00.005Z

Saturday 6th November, Southampton Senior Division One, The Shed, Botley Road, Burridge

Kev Willsher told me to try and be ready for 12:20pm. His eyes are still black from getting kicked in the face during last week's game with Michelmersh. He's been lying low ever since; flicking through the sports pages of the tabloids with the lounge curtains shut tight. Strangers draw their own conclusions when they see a man with the bridge of his nose taped together. That doesn't sit well with Kev. A few weeks back he burnt a layer of flesh clean off his wrist after leaning down on his kitchen stove. Some, including himself, say it was an accident; but I have my reservations. I know he holds a grudge with his iPhone. The top of the screen is caved in. It never stood a chance against concrete. When people notice the state of his phone they ask if he's going to get it fixed. He always says no. If you're going to cross him be prepared to wear the scars. To put it simply, Kev Willsher is not a man to be fucked with. When he said try and be ready for 12:20pm, I made sure I was.

Marc Judd has his penalty kicked saved in the first half (pic by LDS)

I like to spend Saturday mornings lying in bed listening to the cars go by outside. Today was different. It was time to get dressed and remember what money smelt like. I forgot my PIN number three weeks ago, so HSBC posted it to me in a letter. They needn't have bothered, it didn't work. No matter, I thought. So what if the contents of my kitchen cupboards amount to little more than half a bag of monkey nuts and a jar of peanut butter. A trolley load of groceries were small beans compared to putting one up Forest Town. Here was a team used to getting their own way. The Southampton Football Association have allowed them to keep the Southampton Junior Cup after they won it for the third successive year in April. No team has done that in 100 years of competition. We'd beaten them 3-2 a few weeks ago. They didn't like it and one or two of them had tickets on themselves. One even played wearing a pair of black gloves. I'd sooner wear lingerie, at least I'd get something from it.

Men in suits on the TV are calling this the age of austerity. It turned out I needed a dictionary a great deal more than a man in a suit describing the weather outside my window. Even so, less money has led to a change in our shopping habits: you've ditched Asda for Netto, toilet paper is less durable than it used to be, and things like kitchen roll are just an extravagance of the past. Just what would we do without Primark? In the case of Forest Town's goalkeeper the answer would be playing football in underpants. His green goalkeeping jersey was tucked into a pair of grey jogging pants, which drew many Burridge followers, including the injured Kristian Hewitt, into flat out laughing at him. Tracksuit bottoms have come a long way since Rocky. He wore them because he had little other choice, Sport Direct didn't exist yet. In the years since the jogging pant has come to represent not sporting endeavour, but a combination of blim holes, low quality hash and daytime TV.

Essy has words with the referee. The referee wins.

Sam Schwodler got every Forest Town player's back up when he found one of their legs to fall over. They said it was cheating. The referee said it was a penalty. When Greg Baker was around this meant a certain Burridge goal. He never missed. Sixteen straight penalties all scored. There are only two yards of green carpet that separate the front door of his flat from mine. It was the Tuesday after the Forest Town game and I was back from a run, coughing my guts up as I walked back down our corridor. There it was on the floor outside his front door, all what was left of Greg's stuff. A cardboard box filled with coat hangers. His dad was clearing out the last of Greg's stuff before he moves to London. Greg's dad used to referee our games as kids. There in the corridor we spoke about the flats' thermostat, (that neither Greg nor I have the faintest idea how to work), and the management company of the flats, Solitaire, who the fire department threatened with closing our block of flats down if they didn't fix something that could have killed us all but was never fully explained in the subsequent paperwork.

All the while I was stuck with the image of his Dad's cock. Greg had told me, with that snorting laughter of his, how he'd been flicking through his parent's holiday snaps - innocuous shots of this and that, then all of a sudden bingo, bold as brass, there it was, a photo of his Dad in his hotel room with his mouse out the house. It still raises a smile whenever I mention it to Greg, but I chose not to mention it to his Dad on this occasion. Greg has missed a lot of games due to work. Now he has finally moved to London. In his absence Justin Newman, Kristian Hewitt and now Marc Judd have all failed to score a penalty. Ten years ago Judd was playing for Bashley alongside Jimmy Case and Wade Elliott. (Click here to see Jimmy in his pomp.) Judd hit his penalty kick well enough, smacking it with his trusty left foot, but Forest Town's 'keeper dived low to his left and pushed the ball away.

It was tough luck on Martin Barnet, starting his first game for us, who headed the ball into his own net to make the score 1-1. This goal was the result of umpteen corner kicks and crosses into our penalty area, during which our every tackle on Forest Town caused them to crowd around the referee and pester him for our players to be booked. All in all a draw was probably fair. Few were happy with the temperature of the post match showers, which were described by some of our players as freezing cold. I prefer to call them bracing. They provided an invigorating experience, the perfect tonic to anyone battling with rising sap. Once we'd cleaned up we headed to The West End Brewery. They cooked us up a big plate load of beef-burgers and chips. This didn't fit with Kev Willsher's dietary requirements. Kev doesn't eat beef. He made do with a plate full of chips. I really ought to warn the chef.

Click here for the current Southampton Senior Division league tables.

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Michelmersh & Timsbury 3-2 Burridge AFC

2010-11-06T10:47:00.001Z

Saturday 30th October, Timsbury Recreation Ground

By the time the game was over the rain had passed. I was struggling to peel my shirt off when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was from a man with a head full of swept back white hair. Alongside him stood the referee, who'd warned me three times during the game before eventually showing me a yellow card. She was much younger than he was. Either she was his daughter or there was a more sinister element to their relationship, all aside one that had my full approval.

Michelmersh score very late on (pic by LDS)

As anyone will tell you, I have a high moral code on the football pitch and conduct myself in the manner of a gentleman. So naturally my booking wasn't for something as unsavoury as bad language. It was for persistent foul play. She had a pencil with a pink eraser on one end. As she booked me I watched her write my name in her little black notebook. Not only did she ignore the lines in her notebook, she didn't press the lead down very hard on the paper either, leaving my name scrawled sideways in faint capitals. She even apologised, which I thought was nice. In my opinion, any referee gung-ho enough to just jot my name down willy-nilly with something as temporary as a pencil, is probably capable of going to bed with a far older man. There was no doubt in my mind, she was a maverick.

Unfortunately, we live in a world whereby a man cannot be tapped on the shoulder without suspicion of impending violence. Without so much as a set of keys I put my faith in my bare hands. My mind was put at ease when I noticed he was armed only with a Thermos flask. In my experience those who use Thermos flasks are a gentle people. My intuition served me well and I relaxed in the knowledge I didn't have to fight with an old man after ninety gruelling minutes of football. Losing would have been difficult for my ego.

“Just how did you lose that game?” He asked me. At first I wondered if he was taking the piss, then I remembered he was carrying a Thermos flask. As a rule those who use Thermos aren't ones to make snide remarks. I shrugged. I didn't know the answer. I ended up giving him a really boring reply like some of the jerk footballers on the telly. “You completely monopolised the second half,” he continued, as we made our way to Michelmersh's timber clubhouse. That was true. “If Michelmersh's keeper hadn't of made those cracking saves it might have been different.” Michelmersh's first came after about fifteen seconds. The player who scored it will not hit one sweeter this season. Maybe not ever. From then on their peckers were well and truly up, which in my opinion is the best way to have them. We had our work cut out.

Kev Willsher is Burridge captain. He's an uncompromising footballer who leads by example, but in my opinion he'd make a lousy boxer, he bleeds way to easy. It's becoming an almost weekly occurrence. On reflection it's what tends to happen when you throw your head where people are kicking their feet. If the blood running down his face represents his commitment to the cause, then his nose is his Victoria cross. That conk of his has seen plenty of action. Marc Judd had equalised twice and was very unfortunate not to complete his hat-trick, as he saw his header bounce back off Michelmersh's crossbar. We'd all live to rue that because Michelmersh scored a third late on. Time was our enemy.

Some of the younger lads took the defeat hard. I remember when I was their age. It was ten years ago and I was working in a call centre for a large health insurance company where vaginal prolapse and adult circumcision were a daily occurrence. The job wasn't all laughs though. Having my days filled with calls from other seriously ill people provided my young self with unwelcome stress. As a consequence I hit the bottle. Some days I'd be unable to face anymore calls, so I'd sit at my desk with my headset on but unplugged, making conversations up with imaginary policy holders as to appear busy. If memory serves I got quite good at it.

There was a man who worked with me who was undergoing chemotherapy. He got a lot of time off. The sympathy ran dry when it turned out he had made the whole thing up. People in the office were really angry when they found out. I thought if anything it showed he was far sicker than any of us ever imagined. Despite it all, I still liked him; he had charisma. He was fired on the spot and I never saw him again. If there's any wisdom I picked up from that period of my life, it's don't take acid on a cold Tuesday night in November. Getting sent home from work the next day won't stop spoons from judging you. I didn't pass this nugget on to our younger players, I didn't think it was appropriate. We went back to the West End Brewery for our sausage and chips.

Burridge AFC 2-2 Hythe Aztecs

2010-10-30T12:31:00.001+01:00

Saturday 23rd October, The Shed, Burridge

Jason Wilson's toenails glistened like a shoal of tropical fish against the brown backdrop of nylon carpet. He pulled off his Converse All-Stars, looked down at his feet, and lapsed into a momentary bout of self consciousness. To his left was our club medical bag, its plastic zipper broken long ago by the crammed contents of mostly empty cannisters of pharmaceuticals, all manufactured to mask pain, not remove nail polish. He had chosen a subtle blend of light blue and orange shades; the kind that say: I believe in the healing power of crystals.

Wilson stood in front of the showers waiting for an interrogation from his fellow players. It never came. Perhaps for fear of what answers it might dig up. So one man's attempt at injecting a little of the bohemian spirit into the dressing room was ignored. Probably for the best. It could take some time before it catches on with the likes of Sam Hewitt, who is far more at home with an Elizabeth Duke bicycle chain around his neck, than he is raiding his girlfriend's make-up drawers for blusher.

An iPod nano sat in its docking bay on the dressing room's high window sill. Despite singing about sex and drugs, Mick Jagger wasn't getting through to the younger lads, so Kristian Hewitt stuck the Rocky soundtrack on. Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, was forced into shuffling his pack. A dodgy knee sustained against Sholing prevented Ryan Hurst from playing, while Ben Rowe's hamstring tweak was a good week or so from full repair. Aztecs bought with them down the M27 a cavalier and attractive style of play, but whether or not they were worth a first-half 1-0 lead was dubious as we fluffed a slew of reasonably good goal scoring chances. The frustration at not taking any of these opportunities began spilling out in cross words between us. But just where else can you call friends useless fucking wankers at the top of your voice for missing the target? In an ever dwindling list the football pitch remains a reliable outlet for doing so.

Going up from eight to ten quid has done nothing to stop our lot incurring the Hampshire Football Association's fine for getting booked by referees. Marc Judd, Kristian Hewitt ad Sam Schwodler had all been given yellow cards for dissent, when Mark Reeves was given what he later described as the worst booking he's ever received, and a complete waste of £10. He could have given me the money and I would have washed his car, or better still darned his underpants, for the white pair with red piping he chooses to wear for football matches leave very little to the imagination, but do at least provide an ample view of the soft pink wrinkles of his scrotum.

Reeves, who my brother and I have already decided would be played by Matt Damon in Burridge the Movie, (it's all there in the eyes and the cheeks, if not the hair), got involved in a bitchy conversation with the referee. With both parties eager to get in the last word, it went something like this:

Referee: “Why don't you put a lid on it?”
Reeves: “Tell you what, why don't we both stop?”
Referee: “No, why don't you stop?”
Reeves: “Like I said, why don't we both stop?” It ended with the referee asking for Reeves' name and giving him a yellow card. In some countries this technique is called foreplay, and it certainly did Tom Hanks' character no harm in films like You Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle.

It was Reeves who took the photograph of me in this post with his smart phone. Opposition don't tend to like going near blood. The bleeding all came from an innocuous bash to head. Paul Dyke was kind enough to stick two bits of bandage up my hooter and off I went. Bleeding in sport has much the same effect of being naked in public, as my brother was in the early hours on the the rather grotty beach in Kavos seven years ago. Another holiday maker, not as liberal as our intoxicated rabble of anything-goers, was disgusted to the extent he wanted to fight my brother, who, delighted in this proposition, span his todger round and round like a propeller blade, and promptly chased the man down the beach. Nobody wants to fight the naked man.

One Hythe goal became two after a neat volley. I spared Ryan Jones the indignity of picking the ball from his own net. I could see Kristian Hewitt out the corner of my eye about to blow his top. Running around the astroturf at Hamble School on Thursday evenings now means that shooting up the slope against a two-nil deficit with twenty minutes left is not an impossible task. With the finishing line in sight, Hythe capitulated in the autumn sun. Sam Schwodler, who else, who scored his tenth goal of the season. We dashed back to half way line. Both teams asked the referee how long was left. Not long. A Hythe defender, partially blinded by panic made the mistake of hitting the ball towards his own keeper. The ball ricocheted out to Esfandiari, who guided the ball toward goal. It rolled over the unguarded line in slow motion.

Sam Schwodler now had the bit between his teeth. He sauntered past the goalkeeper and fell over. The referee ran towards him and pulled out his yellow card, Sam's second of game, followed by his red and sent Sam off. The referee got a good old earful after that. How could be certain that Sam had dived? The final whistle went to sound another spirited Burridge come back. Hythe's linesman had our sympathy, insisting that it was definite a penalty. Hythe's centre half disagreed, promising me that Schwodler had taken a dive. Taking into consideration the referee's fee, and our bookings, it was a good £75 down the swanny, but a vital point gained.

Burridge lined up in a 4-4-2 formation:

GK:Jones, LB:K.Hewitt, CB:S.Hewitt, CB:Willsher, RB: Sanderson (Allen), RM:Reeves (Barnett), CM:Wilson, CM:Esfandiari, LM: Judd, CF:Schwodler, CF:Hill (Fielder)

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Burridge AFC 4-0 Sholing Sports

2010-10-24T19:42:00.002+01:00

Saturday 16th October, The Shed, Burridge

Burridge played hosts to Sholing Sports, who much like ourselves, have introduced many new personel since their last meeting on a Monday evening in April.

It was a little after five on Saturday morning when Sam Schwodler decided to call it a night. He chose Marc Judd's bed. It was empty. He'd spent the previous evening drinking with Judd's brother, Kev, at the Dolphin; a Hungry Horse chain pub in Botley High-Street, whose every conceivable surface is currently being used to advertise their Christmas menu, featuring all the traditional dishes, as well as a 10 ounce rump steak, all seasoned with a liberal sprinkling of exclamation marks and terms and conditions.

Schwodler woke up at around seven. He went home, packed his size eleven Adidas football boots into his kit bag, along with a vague sense of hope, rather than expectation, that October might give Burridge's football pitch its blessing and allow his metal studs to sink into its clay based earth, sparing the soles of his feet yet more blisters. Paul Dyke named him in his starting line-up to play up-front with Ben Rowe. Schwodler went out and stretched like the rest of us, tested the strength of our goal nets with one or two pre-game strikes, then proceeded to score three of our four goals that afternoon. On the evidence presented on this bright Autumn Saturday afternoon, one would have to concede that Sam Schwodler's desire for sleep is secondary in his pursuit of goals.

One of the first things he does after the game, if he has scored, is momentarily lose himself in the deep concentration of thumbing out a text message to his older brother Bryn. Bryn was our top goalscorer last season. He now lives high on the hog, playing for Hedge-End Rangers in the Hampshire League, where at half-time he'll be served a cup of tea, a wholly useless liquid for re-hydrating after 45 minutes haring around a football pitch, but confirmation, if needed, that he is playing at a higher echelon, where the hosts consider the needs of visiting teams. Bryn's enjoying his football at Hedge-End, and by all accounts he's playing well, but he's not scoring as many as Sam. Few are.

Sam has begun this season in much the same way he finished the last, carrying out his duties in a hurry, but with a clear sense of purpose - like a man laden with his wife's shopping bags and desperate to get back to his car. His long sleeved Burridge jersey hangs untucked outside of his shorts and short wisps of fair hair dance in the breeze, demanding the ball in a grunt coming from somewhere deep within his gut. Ben Rowe scored the first. It was a trade-mark wallop with his right foot. Sadly, he was unable to complete the game after aggravating a hamstring injury. By half-time Schwodler had two goals to his name, as Sholing demonstrated a refusal to acknowledge that their defensive offside trap strategy was as about as effective as European immigration control. Our game was all the better for it.

His third goal came in the second-half, after collecting a side-footed pass down the slope from Sam Hewitt and toe poking the ball past the oncoming goalkeeper. The handful of spectators, with their push chairs and winter coats, dotting the touchline, did nothing to dampen Schwodler's celebrations. His pleasure at completing his hat-trick, perhaps emancipated by a lack of any real sleep, brought new life into the swagger of a bygone era of Charlie George and Stan Bowles.

Later, in changing rooms, I spoke to Sam. “Well done, Schwods,” I said, drying myself with a towel marketing the positive aspects of holidaying in Majorca. Threadbare and ridiculous, it is now better fit for the rubbish bin rather than drying the lonely crevices of my skinny body. “That's eight now isn't it?”
“Nine,” replied Sam proudly. He pulled a crumpled five pound note from his pocket and gave it to me. I didn't let my lack of clothes stand in the way of collecting his match subscription. There was a time when getting it was like getting blood out of stone. Not anymore. I spoke to his Dad, Pete, about Sam's hat-trick at the West End Brewery. He leant over the dark wooden banister slats with a pint in his hand, dressed in trendy knitwear, smelling nice and drawing guffaws from the rest of the lads sat behind me when he told us that he'd played full-back earlier that afternoon. Fifty-odd years of age and still playing for Wildern Old Boys in a six-nil win.

After a difficult start in the intermediate cups, we are beginning to justify the Sports Echo's faith in predicting that we would be there or there abouts in this season's Southampton Senior Division title race. Currently nestled behind Forest Town and Netley Central Sports in third place it is still early days, but the foundations are being laid for a solid season.

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Forest Town 2-3 Burridge AFC

2010-10-17T19:34:00.002+01:00

Saturday 9th October, Gang Warily, Blackfield

"Forest Town suffered a shock defeat to Burridge AFC." Southampton Sports Echo, Saturday 16th October.

The concrete chimneys of Fawley Power Station climb high above the deciduous trees that separate it from Gang Warily. We stood far below the fumes disappearing into a deep blue sky, listening to Paul Dyke's pep talk. The referee blew hard on his whistle and waved both teams toward him. He was ready to get the game started.
“In a minute ref,” Dyke shouted back to him. Then he began speaking to us again. “Right fellas, we've been playing okay for eighty minutes, but I.....”
“Phweeeeeeeeppp...,” the referee blew Dyke's sentence dead with another whistle blast. He wanted to make one thing crystal clear; he was the star of the show. If you didn't like it, he put that plastic red whistle to his lips and blew.
“Go on then,” Dyke told us, looking at the face of his watch and shaking his head. There were five minutes until kick-off, but the chance to finish what he had to say to us was gone. Not a single hair sprouted from the referee's scalp. He got us to stand in a line facing him, then he gave us his spiel. “I won't accept any bad language, nor the wearing of any jewellery,” he told us, speaking with his hands as much as his mouth. Then he got both teams to shake hands. It was clear from the start that a beige streak of Graham Poll coursed deep through his veins.

Earlier, Marc Judd was laying back on the black leather dressing-room treatment table. He fished around his jean pockets for a cigarette. “I'm giving them up,” he said, starring into space, “once this packet's done.” His son wants him to stop smoking. His son's name is stitched into the blue tongue of his Adidas football boots, the boots that referees tend to show concern about during the pre-match stud check, worried that the length of the blue blades might have a sharp edge that could open up a leg like a tin of sardines. It was Judd's left boot that did the damage. He hit a diagonal pass right into the path of Ben Rowe. Forest Town's goalkeeper came rushing out of his penalty area for a handful of leather. All he got was fresh air. Rowe side footed the ball over his head. Forest Town's manager watched his goalkeeper bend down and pick up the ball from out of his own net. Somebody next to him asked if it had been too easy for Rowe to muscle his way through their defence. “Yep,” he nodded, bringing his hand down through his strawberry blond whiskers, “but, they're a big physical side.”

I've only heard Ben Rowe swear once. It was two summer's ago after he had twisted his knee in training. He stands over six feet tall, with three days stubble matching the length of his shaved head. We call him, Ox. On Sunday morning he goes to church, but Saturday afternoons are for scoring goals. Seldom has he lived up to his nickname so effectively when he bulldozed past two Forest Town defenders on his way to burying his second goal. When Forest Town pulled a goal back, one voice could be heard over everything else. I could hear its Southampton twang hang from every vowel. Marc Judd could hear it too. It belonged to Paul Dyke. Judd gritted his teeth and looked at me. He didn't want to face Dyke, who was cursing him for not getting back into the defensive position in time to stop Forest Town scoring. Then things got worse. Ryan Hurst has played well this season. Blond, fresh-faced and getting better with each game - these days, he can even beat Kev Willsher to the ball in the air, something I would need a step ladder and a large blotter loaded with chloroform to do. What a shame then, that the sheen was taken from Hurst's feat when his header finished in our net. It was now 2-2.

The collage of photographs that make up the mast head of this blog have been interpreted, by some, as a homo-erotic monument to Jason Wilson; with his hobo beard and jail-house tattoos, it his picture, to the left, with his arms outstretched in a red Burridge jersey, that features most prominently. In actual fact, the collage is the result of several hours spent hunched over my laptop, failing to grasp the finer points of Photoshop. When Wilson was hacked down by a mistimed and high Forest Town tackle it gave us the opportunity to get to know our opposition better, much better; at the kind of point blank range you wouldn't normally expect until a third or fourth date, as opposed to eighty or so minutes of football. Once the heavy-petting was over it was back to football. Hurst placed the ball, ready to hit the free-kick. Kev Willsher told him to aim for Essy. Twelve long years separate the two men, and as a result, Hurst respects Kev, taking on board most of what he has to say, but on this occasion he frowned back at Kev as if the old warhorse had taken one too many bludgeons to the head. Essy has many qualities - good dentistry and nice hair being some of them, but attacking the football with his head is not something he's renowned for. Hursty did it regardless. Essy closed his eyes and let his dark brown fringe do the rest. The ball reached Sam Schwodler who made it 3-2.

There wasn't long left. Three minutes to be precise. It may as well have been 3 days. We'd been chewing the referee's ear off all afternoon. As with everything else, he got the wrong end of the stick, thinking we wanted an encore, rather than his head. The resulting 7 minutes of injury-time passed slower than the time I had to do the night shift at a printing factory with an older, bigger, stronger man whose marriage did little to prevent word getting out that he had previous when it came to cottaging. Dan Allen is 17, which is not far off the same number of words he's said since joining the club in the summer. The closing minutes of this game were almost a rite of passage for him. I say almost because I sense his true rite of passage will come on his forthcoming eighteenth birthday. As a 32 year old, I am very much looking forward to the party. Sam Schwodler and myself were faffing over who of the opposition to mark. Dan put us straight, pointing his index finger and giving us, what was by Sam Schwodler's standards, nothing more than asking strangers for directions, but by his, there were no two ways about it, it was a bollocking. The final whistle was a relief. It was the day after Kev Willsher's birthday, so we went out into the bars of Southampton and drank what we could. Which turned out to be, with the help of a golf ball, enough to make everyone pretty far gone.

The Burridge line up:

4-4-2: GK:Jones, LB:K.Hewitt(Sanderson), CB:Willsher, CB:Hurst, RB:S.Hewitt, RM:Reeves(Allen), CM:Esfandiari, CM:Wilson, LM:Judd, CF:Schwodler, CF:Rowe

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Southampton BTC 2-2 Burridge AFC

2010-10-07T22:04:00.003+01:00

Saturday 3rd October, BTC Sports Ground, Stoneham Lane, Southampton

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way - it does not exist.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher, writer, and as far as I'm aware not at all interested in football.

No dogs; that's what the sign-post at BTC sports ground said. Fallen brown leaves drowned in deep puddles on the road outside the steel blue gated entrance of a football club who are very particular about their three pitches. They forbid anyone to use them prior to kick-off, not even those who are due to be playing in those matches; so, we did our pre-match warm-up down by the ground's disused tennis courts. The rules that had kept the dogs away had done nothing to deter the foxes. What looked like a couple of sun baked liquorice toffees were what Kristian Hewitt identified to us as fox turds. With twelve years behind him spent keeping greens at East Horton Golf Club, time has taught Hewitt the difference between the faeces of a badger and a fox, or anything else with four, or even two legs.

BTC were dressed in their familiar royal blue and white striped shirts. One of their midfield players, perhaps wanting to gauge their first-half performance, asked me how we had got on last week. His blond fringe owed much to current teen heart throb Justin Bieber. It wasn't enough for me to tell him we had lost to Redbridge. I felt the need to put that defeat into context by adding that Redbridge play in the Southampton Premier League. Context was on Bieber's mind, too. The published results on the back pages of last week's Sports Echo had printed the score: Netley Central 8-2 BTC. They had neglected to make any mention of BTC playing the duration of the game with only eight men. I didn't ask why three players hadn't shown up. Maybe Bieber thought I might have given his boys a round of applause for their bravery. Whilst their shortfall went some way to explaining the score, I remained unmoved. Bravery is one thing, but stupidity is quite another. Our first-half performance against BTC amounted to what Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, described as the worst he'd seen us play this season. Disappointment could be heard in his voice, which was slightly hoarse, from forty-five minutes spent shouting out instructions to us.

Joe Hill's contribution to the second half came in three parts. Firstly, he pulled rank on Marc Judd's left foot. The ball had sat up nicely for Judd to test BTC goalkeeper's reflexes. At the moment Judd was about to strike, Hill got in his way. Judd was furious. Whether or not Hill meant to shoot for goal from the right-wing shortly afterwards, did not detract from our frustration at the ball not ending up in the net. Instead, BTC watched it bounce away having struck the underside of their cross-bar. Hill's reward came when he reached the ball a fraction before his opponent, taking the full impact of an opponent's swinging boot. By my estimations it was a size ten, with the clear objective of hoofing the ball sixty yards up field. It made do with Hill, who writhed on the floor with his face buried flat in the grass. Say what you like about Hill, and people normally do, but things are never straightforward when he's around. He was unable to continue.

When the ball dropped to Daniel Esfandiari from a corner kick it seemed certain that he was about to score with a controlled, powerful and well struck strike. BTC's goalkeeper was on the floor having fallen over his own feet, and knew nothing about how he'd saved the ball with his back. He was a large man who looked to be 240 pounds heavy, who by wearing a yellow flecked pink goalkeeping jersey was like some dirty great blancmange standing between us and a certain goal. BTC's second goal brought a look of resignation on our faces. With five minutes left to play I would have forgiven anyone in Burridge colours wishing the referee had put us out of our misery and blown his final whistle early.

BTC had opportunities at both ends of the pitch to finish the game off, each of which they squandered with the careless abandon of a newly discovered complacency. BTC's goalkeeper dropped Sam Schwodler's header. Marc Judd got to the loose ball first, knocking it over the goal line. BTC's linesman waved his flag out of desperation on the far side of the pitch. The referee had a long conversation with him, but ignored his subjective advice. The goal stood. With a minute left to play and the ball at his feet, BTC's left-back had a world of possibilities in front of him, but with freedom comes responsibility and more tellingly, consequence. Sam Hewitt was breathing down his neck. His poked and hesitant back pass inadvertently became the perfectly weighted through ball that had eluded us for the entirety of the game.

Sam Hewitt now had a clear run through on goal. His legs felt dead, but he had time; time to think back to the last goal he had scored for Burridge. It was over a year ago. A brief silence was perfectly observed as the ball left Hewitt's foot. Then the ball was in BTC's net. Paul Dyke ran onto the pitch, shouting and pumping his fists. BTC's manager let out a falsetto howl. His plastic bottle of mineral water bore the brunt of his anger, sending it crashing against the painted white brick wall of his dug-out. BTC's left-back stood with his hands on his hips and a blank expression on his face. Whilst there may not be a definitive right way to do things, there is always a wrong way.

Burridge lined up in a 4-4-2 formation.

GK: Jones, RB: S.Hewitt, CB: Willsher, CB: Hurst, LB: K.Hewitt, RM: Sanderson (Allen), CM: Esfandiari, CM: Wilson, LM: Judd, CF:Hill (Reeves), CF:Schwodler

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Burridge 1-3 Redbridge

2010-09-30T23:12:00.004+01:00

Saturday 25th September, Trophyman Cup, Burridge, Botley Road

"Burridge AFC always flirt around the edge. They might go one further this year."

Quote taken from page 36 of Saturday 18th September's Sports Echo, reporting on Burridge's chances of promotion from the Southampton Senior Division.

Stung in the bushes

I was surrounded by stinging nettles when Lee Fielder got whacked. My involvement in the game had ended after being replaced by Dan Allen after an hour. We were losing three-nil. As I jogged off the pitch, Dyke said: “You were starting to look tired out there, Sandy.” I made myself useful by searching for one of our footballs. A stray pass had embedded it within a tangle of unkempt plants that cover the slope that runs adjacent to our pitch. I tried convincing myself that I was not tired as I shimmied down it's steep bank. My Granddad is 84 and tells me he feels no different to when he was a young man. Last week I sat with him in his lounge eating a chip butty, whilst he urinated into a Tupperware container held close to the open fly of his pyjama bottoms. Neither of us are young men any more.

Once I found the ball I made my way back up the slope with it in my hands. Loose stems clung to my black football socks and the stinging nettles had made no concession for my bare legs. The game had stopped. I noticed one of our players was laid on the grass on the other side of pitch. Players from both sides congregated either side of his body to exchange bad language as Kev Willsher's Dad and I stood side by side trying to identify which of our players was laid out. Whoever it was was wearing the number eleven. Kev Willsher's Dad's initial concern evaporated once he realised that number eleven was Lee Fielder. He'd seen Lee Fielder laying in the grass many times before. The referee hadn't seen Lee getting kicked. Nor had we.

First-half: back on home turf

This was our first game of the season at Burridge. The grass stood tall and thick like an overgrown crew-cut, then the wind picked up and Redbridge threatened to make the game an anti-climax by scoring two quick goals. The first came from a long thrown in from the right flank that flicked off a head and into the far corner of the net. The second was a long range strike that skimmed off Kev Willsher's leg on its way past Ryan Jones. Ben Rowe rolled the ball against Redbridge's goalpost, then Marc Judd surrendered to the stereotype of his shaven head. The referee was happy to oblige him with a yellow card for dissent.

Redbridge had a central defender who I would hesitate to call fat, in case he read this and wanted to kill me. His yellow jersey stretched tight around his gut. He used chunks of the first-half to demonstrate his long range passing abilities. During a stoppage in play I took the opportunity to listen to him complain to one of his team-mates about how lazy their centre forward was. I was stood very close. I looked down at the grass so as not to appear nosy. It seemed too work. I couldn't help noticing that the defender's colleague wore Adidas football boots. One of his boot laces had shed free of its aglet. It's frayed end hung limply on the boot's red leather tongue. The defender's team-mate limited his communication to a nod of the head. Happiness didn't seem to be a mood that suited him.

Linesman etiquette

Redbridge's third goal almost drew my applause. It came from a hard shot from outside the penalty area. It always seems so final when a ball that's travelling so fast is stopped by what is essentially string. I remember telling Ryan Hurst that I thought it was a good goal. Ryan wasn't ready to clap other teams' goals. On my return from the stinging nettles I took over as linesman from Joe Hill. I took my position a yard or so in front of the seven or eight who had come to watch Redbridge. I tried lightening the ugly mood that had taken hold of the game by asking them what I had missed whilst rooting through the undergrowth. Where they came from, they told me, they didn't talk about things like that. I left it at that, feeling fairly certain that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon a group of people who described themselves to me as thugs.

Lee Fielder's perpetrator was then substituted. He pulled off his shirt, complaining bitterly to himself about being kicked all afternoon. Tempting as it was, I decided against questioning him on the thought process behind swinging for Lee. I'm not sure there was one. Joe Hill had a shot that hit the inside of both of Redbridge's goal posts. It rolled toward Sam Schwodler who scored his fifth goal of the season. It looked odd to see Ben Hutton, a Burridge player of four years as recently as two weeks ago, coming on as striker for Redbridge. We hadn't just lost a versatile player - with his wife, Roz, no longer coming to games, we'd lost our photographer too. It was that kind of day.

Burridge (4-4-2): GK: Jones, RB: S.Hewitt, CB: Hurst, CB: Willsher, LB: K.Hewitt, LM: Judd (Fielder), CM: Wilson, CM: Sanderson (Allen), RM: Reeves, CF: Rowe (Hill), CF: Schwodler.

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Totton & Eling Reserves 4-1 Burridge AFC

2010-09-22T20:20:00.006+01:00

Saturday 18th September, Southern Gardens, Totton

Paul Dyke starred down hard at the face of his digital watch. He was stood on the wooden balcony outside Totton & Eling's first floor changing rooms, with his back turned against the view of the well maintained suburban gardens that hug the sports ground's perimeter. Flowering petunias weren't his concern; time was.

Totton's sports ground in distance

We were due to meet at 1:40pm, and it was very nearly so. His eyes darted from his watch to the top of the staircase, and as the seconds ticked he began counting down out loud, “five, four, three, two, one.” Satisfied that time was up he walked out of the sun into the away team dressing room. “Right, anyone who arrives now is late.” Under Dyke's management, arriving late carries a fifty pence penalty fine. Today the club's coffers swelled to £4.

Dyke had given the latecomers a fighting chance, but his texted warning of delays on the motorway didn't stop Dan Allan, Sam Hewitt, Kristian Hewitt, Ryan Hurst, Ryan Jones, Ben Rowe, Sam Schwodler and Jason Wilson, all crawling to Totton along an M275 laden heavy with traffic headed for the Southampton Boat Show.

Standing in our way of a place in the second round of the Southampton Senior Cup were Totton & Eling reserves. Some might classify the term 'reserves' as inferior. This would be incorrect. Being in the Southampton Senior Division, we represent the lowest tier of sides in the competition amongst teams from the Southampton Premier League, the Hampshire Leagues and the Wessex Reserve Leagues, all of which will eventually be whittled down to two teams in the final at Southampton's St Mary's stadium.


Ryan Hurst heads clear another Totton & Eling attack

The topic of conversation within the Burridge changing room is varied, but although far from being a cultural wasteland it does sometimes fall short in content when compared to the likes of the Southbank Show, or even Newsround. Despite this, the Pope's visit to the UK hadn't gone unnoticed to some of the Burridge squad, which exposed one or or two holes in some players' general knowledge.

Once that it was established that the Pope wasn't the head of the Anglican church, further questions were raised, such as: do Catholics believe in the Jesus thing? A moot opening question that was sadly never fully debated. There were more pressing questions to grapple with, like: where have all the kit's black socks gone? Will the changing rooms be locked? And the perennial rhetoric that Burridge players have struggled with since the start of the club as we know it, which is: if indeed we're to leave our belongings in the changing rooms, is there a separate place, perhaps a bag of some sorts, that we can keep are valuables safe in during the game? Answers to all of which were once again provided, but no doubt wiped clean from collective memory banks by next Saturday afternoon.

As is customary, the referee asked to check the soles of our football boots for any sharp studs. Lee Fielder wore white Nike cleats. Black rubber blades jutted from their soles like the blunt teeth of a herbivores mammal. “Blades,” said the ref, raising his scrawny grey eyebrows. “Never tried them. What are they like?” Lee seemed keener to get warmed up than enter into a conversation with a referee about footwear. “Yeah, they're fine.” The referee wore a pair of non gripped black trainers, the make of which I couldn't decipher without sinking down to his feet. He pointed down at his shoes, “these flats are perfect for this time of year.” This strangely friendly attitude showed no evidence of quite how irritable he can and would become during play.

It was clear from kick-off that Totton & Eling wanted to flex their Wessex League muscles. They made quick passes with tidy ball control. In an eagerness to stamp their mark on the game further, one of their defenders mistook technical superiority with incompetence. Defenders aren't there to ponce about, their primary function is to destroy. Their defender's careless pass across his penalty area was seized upon by Ben Rowe who poked us into the lead. Totton & Eling didn't let this mishap stifle their confidence, and at times their quick play tied us in knots. By half-time they were 2-1 up, which was a fair reflection of the half.

We stayed outside at half-time and sat under the shade of a tree. Dyke emptied a carrier bag full of Mars Bar Duos onto the grass in front of us. Several players tucked in. I stuck to water. Our efforts continued to be commendable in the second-half, but getting the run around on a warm September afternoon isn't always conducive to maintaining good relations with one another. Baiting or indeed any other general unpleasantness amongst ourselves was kept to a minimum. By in large it was a good spirited game between the two teams, which is always a bit of a shame.

Totton did not take their foot off the pedal and we were unable to prevent them from scoring two further goals in the second half. It was during a stoppage in play that I offered the referee a swig of water from one of our bottles that lay on the dry grass beyond the touchline. I don't know what came over me, it must have been the heat. As he guzzled from it, low guttural sounds resonated from somewhere deep in his throat. It sounded as though he were trying to sink a particularly stubborn handful of Mandrax.

He only stopped mouthing the bottle's yellow plastic teat after noticing a far younger blond women sat on a bench beyond the perimeter's fence; one he seemed to know. "What are you up to," he asked in an all to familiar tone of voice. The women took her eyes off her mobile phone screen to look up towards him for the briefest of moments. "Sudoku," she replied. Obviously. There are some things that aren't meant to be understood by man.

Click here to see full results from the first round of the Southampton Senior Cup

Burridge line up: GK: Ryan Jones, LB: Sam Hewitt, CB: Kev Willsher, CB: Ryan Hurst, RB: Dan Allen (Greg Baker), RM: Sam Schwodler, CM: Mark Sanderson (Joe Hill), CM: Jason Wilson, CM: Kristian Hewitt, LM: Marc Judd, CF: Ben Rowe (Lee Fielder)

Burridge goalkeeper Ryan Jones, shortly before making an athletic save from a Totton free-kick

Annual predictions

The annual Southampton League prediction were on page 36 of Saturday's edition of The Sports Pink. There it was, one page after a voucher for Tosca's Italian restaurant on Commercial Road, predictions for the top three in each of the eight divisions.

This season Burridge have been given the wild-card, and I quote:

“Burridge AFC always flirt around the edge and might go one better this time around.”

Netley Central Reserves are predicted to win the title
with Forest Town in second,
and Allbrook in third.

Netley Central Reserves 3-1 Burridge AFC

2010-09-15T22:42:00.017+01:00

Saturday 11th September, Station Road, Netley

My brother was strangled in his car. He heard shouting as he parked next to a grass verge alongside a block of terraced houses, so he wound down his window to get a better listen. It was coming from an old man, who was coming closer. He looked about sixty. He looked angry too; then he reached in and tightened his cold hands around my brother's throat. My brother pulled himself free and got out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

What the fuck are you doing?” He shouted.
The old man kept telling my brother to move his bloody car.
"You can't just go doing things like that,” said my brother. “You're an old man.”
The old man took this as an invitation to fight. “Come on then,” he said, raising his fists. My brother shook his head and moved his car, as the old man stormed off back inside his house.

Fear of the old man conking out with a heart attack weakened my brother's desire to retaliate; but noticing the old man had left his front door open, my brother walked toward it. “Hey you,” he shouted. “I'm calling the police.”

The old man appeared looking startled. “I've already done it,” he insisted, and with that he shut his front door behind him. My brother had come to watch us play. Little did he know that this would be the only funny thing to happen all afternoon.

Jason Wilson

I hadn't even had a kick by the time Netley scored their first goal. Exactly the same thing happened last season. The deja-vu was appalling. It wasn't long before Netley went two-nil up. A right wing cross skipped up in the dirt onto Dan Allen's arm. The referee took a second to assess the situation, which seemed to involve a brief study of Dan Allen's face, and with injustice missing from his facial expression the referee sounded his whistle and pointed to the penalty spot. Burridge manager, Paul Dyke, wasn't impressed. “He's not going to appeal, ref,” shouted Dyke, from his position stood on the touchline. “I've only just got him to say a word in training.” The referee didn't see fit to give Dyke a similar examination.

Burridge goalkeeper Ryan Jones likes to follow a routine before a penalty is taken against him. As the taker picks up ball, Jones fetches his water bottle from behind his goal line and takes it with him for a twelve yard stroll to the penalty spot. He likes to delay the taking of the kick with a quick swig, then he spits a mouthful out into the mud near the taker's feet, has a long hard look into their eyes, then slowly walk backs to his goal-line. On this occasion it didn't seem to do the trick. Later that evening Jones was stood by the bar, sipping another rum and coke, complaining that he never was quite ready for that penalty. Dan Esfandiari provided us with the greatest goalscoring threat by hitting a beautiful ball across Netley's penalty area. It deserved better far better than ending up in a bush. Essy held his arms out by his side to vent his frustration at none of us being able to get on end of his delivery. Sam Schwodler benefited from another whipped in cross from Essy by scoring with his head. We were back in the game, or so it seemed.

I was on the left with the ball at my feet when it happened. All I had to do was smash it up field; instead I chose to dilly-dally. This pleased the opposition no end, who having taken the ball from me, broke away to score a third goal, and with it perhaps momentarily puncturing any genuine belief we had in coming back into the game. Cock ups like this were a serious threat to my position as a self proclaimed pillar of the Burridge fraternity. At half-time we retreated to the quiet of the away team dressing room. Rather then send us out with a flea in our ear, Dyke reminded us that we still had 45 minutes to play and that was a long time in football. He was right.

Paul Dyke touches up Jason Wilson's make-up

I was replaced by Mark Reeves early in the second half. Reeves lasting contribution to the game was duly noted by several teenage spectators sat behind me, when seemingly trapped by the touchline, Reeves nutmegged his opponent - which is the skill of pushing the ball between another player's legs and collecting it on the other side – shouting 'nuts' as he jogged away with the ball. This is the ultimate indignity, and rather like being slapped around the chops with a wet trout.

One of the teenagers lit a cigarette and pointed at Reeves. “He don't look like the sort to do skill,” his friends nodded in agreement. “He looks like the kind of bloke who would go through you.” Reeves' shaven head and cold blue eyes were enough to convince a handful of young lads that he was a hard-case. Burridge's first half mistakes were enough to make Netley believe they were better than us. Whether Burridge believe that is unclear.

GK: Ryan Jones
RB: Dan Allen (Jo Hill)

CB: Kev Willsher

CB: Ryan Hurst

LB: Mark Sanderson (Mark Reeves)

RM: Sam Hewitt

CM: Jason Wilson

CM: Daniel Esfandiari

LM: Kristian Hewitt

CF: Ben Rowe (Lee Fielder)

CF: Sam Schwodler

Marc Judd was there too.

Click here for other Southampton league results.
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Andover Reserves 1-0 Burridge AFC

2010-09-06T22:16:00.008+01:00

Saturday 4th September
Hampshire Intermediate Cup Round One

Charlton Athletic Track, Andover

On me head son

Kev Willsher lay still on the grass in the D of the penalty area. The referee blew his whistle to stop the game and allow Paul Dyke onto the field with the medical bag, while I wondered just how an ambulance planned on finding a way through the wire mesh fence and across the six lane running track that surrounded the pitch, so that they could rush Kev to hospital and put his face back together.

Dyke knelt down beside Kev and after rooting through the jumbled contents of our medical bag, decided on a combination of reassuring words and the wet sponge to treat our captain with. The sponge has seen better days, with one side of it deeply absorbed with blood of seasons' past.

Dyke used it firstly to wipe away the white spittle congealed into a thin paste in each corner of Kev's lips, then his eye socket, that had swollen in the brief moments since he had been struck in the temple by an Andover elbow. Groggy, but in need of no further medical assistance, Kev got back to his feet.

Rabbit holes

We were at Charlton Athletic Track to play Andover Reserves in the first round of the Hampshire Intermediate Cup, having had the opportunity to play at their Portway stadium taken from us by rabbits; who have become non paying tenants of Andover's premises, since digging a series of trenches across the pitch.

The infestation was first reported in June, leading the Southern League into scheduling the Andover first team to play their first four league games away from home, no doubt hoping the rabbits would have moved on by early September; but, despite Andover ground staff's efforts, officials from the Southern League failed a Tuesday morning pitch inspection.

Seven games away from Old Trafford

Having beaten Sittingbourne, Andover will play Chertsey Town for a purse of £3,000 in their forthcoming home FA Cup first round qualifying tie, in nearby Whitchurch. Nonsensical Southern League rules do not permit the reversal of fixtures, forcing Andover to postpone last Friday's home league game with North Leigh.

Nevertheless, Andover's first eleven are a mere seven cup ties away from reaching the draw for the FA Cup third round, and with it the possibility of facing perhaps even Manchester United; a mouth watering possibility that five of Andover's players had to put to one side, because without a first team fixture, they were drafted into the reserves to face up to the altogether different prospect of plying their trade against Burridge AFC.

Although failing to meet several of the criteria for category E of the Football Association's ground grading that Southern League football demands, the facilities at Charlton Athletic track were pleasant enough. Floodlit, surrounded by a running track and flanked by a grassy bank for spectators to sit upon on one side, it also had a seldom seen hammer throw cage at one end behind the goal.

Dyke drove majority of us up the M3 in the club mini-bus, a former Royal Mail truck LDV pilot, that has been sprayed black and bears the club name on its side. He put its grunt to the test by pulling off daring manoeuvre on the fast lane of the M3, by overtaking a Wiseman Fresh Milk Dairies truck that was hogging the middle lane at a conservative 70 miles per hour.

Clinical match analysis

Andover's right-winger, who as Burridge left-back, it was my job to stop, looked considerably younger than myself, although as time passes this has become less an observation and more a weekly occurrence. What I first took for an enormous shirt collar label, was in fact a peroxide blond rat's tail, about an inch in length, protruding from the nape of his otherwise scissor short brown hair, which gave him the appearance of a member of the eighteenth century French aristocracy.

Isolated and on occasions alone on Andover's right-wing, I could often hear him muttering to himself in frustration. He did however get the better of me, in terms of speed down their right in what turned out to be the only goal of a closely fought game. His cross was met by a strike that Ryan Jones did well to palm away, but the rebound was side-footed comfortably into an unguarded net.

Andover's two centre forwards kept Hurst and Willsher fully occupied during the first-half. One, a giant of a man, in the Efan Ekoku mould, was accidentally responsible for Kev Willsher's makeover. The giant was later taken off and given linesman duties; a responsibility he acted out with little relish. On the occasions he was called upon to point or move his flag, he did so slowly and gently, as though handling explosives rather than a plastic tube with a fluorescent flag attached to its end.

Daniel Esfandiari, or Essy as he is more commonly known was put on by Dyke at half-time. Essy's shin pads have been subject of much debate during his first few months at the club. Small, an on initial inspection, looking as though they offer no more protection from a late tackle than a pair of credit cards slipped down each sock, they are what Essy feels comfortable in. And that is the most important thing.

Well contested

The game, in the most parts, was conducted in good spirits and the referee had very little cause to intervene, although a few Andover players did betray an attitude not uncommon from players of the Hampshire, Wessex and Southern League, when facing so called 'lesser' opponents, reacting to some of our physical tactics with a wave of the hand and a quick dismissal of our abilities.

This can only breed contempt in the heart of the opposition, and with the score remaining close, most of the Andover side did well to avoid trying to rub our noses in it. Although, in hindsight we did give them a kicking at times; it was afterall a game of commitment if perhaps not skill, with Burridge, in the second half at least, at full tilt in terms of effort. It was not enough to get a result at Andover, but similar efforts will stand us in good stead in the coming weeks with games against unforgiving opponents.

Much later on I was sprawled out on the sofa of my flat, exhausted and contemplating bed some way shy of 9pm. The words of Murtaugh, Danny Glover's character in Lethal Weapon, rang loudly in my ears. Click here for what is fast becoming my new catchphrase.

Paul Dyke picked a 4-4-2 formation:

GK: Ryan Jones
RB: Dan Allen (Daniel Esfandiari)
CB: Kev Willsher (c )
CB: Ryan Hurst
LB: Mark Sanderson
RM: Sam Hewitt
CM: Jason Wilson
CM: Kristian Hewitt
LM: Mark Reeves (Ben Hutton)
CF: Joe Hill (Ben Rowe)
CF: Sam Schwodler

Loyal lonely spectator: Marc Judd

Click here for results from the 1st round of the Hampshire Cup.

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The Hampshire Cup/ Jersey of No Mercy

2010-09-01T22:05:00.008+01:00

The Hampshire Cup can throw up the opportunity to indulge oneself into delusions of grandeur. Among the 110 teams in the draw for the first round are AFC Totton, who have what I consider to be a proper football ground - one with a corrugated roof terrace and a set of floodlights, so that they can play games during winter evenings to their heart's content.

Being drawn to play Andover Reserves of the Magnata Care Hampshire League would at first seem to combine the best of both worlds, seeing as they lost 4-1 to Paul King's Winchester Crusaders they are opposition that we feel we can compete equally against; but rather more crucially, their Portway Stadium is rumoured by none other than Wikipedia to have a capacity of 3,000. Not that I imagine the promise of seeing the likes of Mark Reeves and Sam Schwodler will be enough to attract even a fraction of that amount of people.

So, with all things considered it is a shame that Andover's first team are scheduled to play a home game on Saturday afternoon, (although other sources say Friday evening). Assuming that the club's website is to be relied upon as a valid source for news, our fixture is pencilled in for Charlton Leisure Centre. While the exact details of this venue remain to be seen, the term 'leisure centre', conjures up images of poorly maintained council pitches, much like the dog-mess littered Fleming Park. We will just have to wait and see what facilities will await us.

Click here to see the full draw for the 2010/11 Hampshire Saturday Intermediate Cup.

The 2010/11 Jersey of No Mercy: It is never to be washed.

Paul Dyke took us training at Burridge this evening, during which he introduced a new initiative, derived to encourage both competition and team spirit. The initiative is by no means a new one, with many professional teams having done likewise in the past, but Dyke's is called the 'Jersey of No Mercy,' whereby the winning team from the end of session game will vote for the worst trainer of that session. The winner is destined to wear the 'Jersey of No Mercy' during the entirety of the following week's training. It is never to be washed. This week's winner was me, taking over from the shirt's inaugural champion, Marc Judd, who swung the vote by missing every pre-season game due to holidays.

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