Kristian Hewitt's Park Scratchings

Kristian Hewitt (number 4 in yellow) during a 3-0 defeat against Burridge Sports in September '05.

Kristian agreed that it would only take a single blow to the head with a shovel, or even a house brick, to kill the seagull. He brought the John Deere Gator to a halt on the driving range when his passenger, Luke Sanderson, noticed something slowly circling the grass in a nearby ditch over the road from the landfill site. On closer inspection they saw it was a seagull. It had a dark crimson hole where its wing used to be. Kristian looked over his shoulder at the shovel's squared off steel head laid out in the trailer and winced at the thought of bringing it down over his head with the force necessary to soak the grass beneath it a violent shade of red. With neither having the stomach for it they drove away up the fairway.

The cleaners have long since given up on the toilets in the mess room, so any green keeper at East Horton Golf Course struggling to contain the contents of his gut would do well to seek comfort of the white seated toilets of the clubhouse. During the winter months it gets too cold for Kristian to take off his quilted body warmer in the mess room, which after a few hours spent cutting greens is where he'd go for a tea break around about 9am. You'd normally find him sat on a plastic backed chair flicking through the pages of Nuts. Pictures of women are stuck to the painted white brick walls by rolled up balls of Blu-Tack. Some of them are so focused on getting your attention that they've forgotten to put on clothes.

Four years ago he turned towards the back of the Echo looking for the Park Scratchings feature on the Burridge derby game. Scanning the report with an index finger he found the familiar arrangement of letters that made up his name. “Match highlight,” he said, reading it out like a question. “Kristian Hewitt's 25-yarder, which left his right foot like a missile and was only stopped from finding the top corner by the goalkeeper's outstretched hand.” Older brother and head green keeper, Marcus, wasn't so easily impressed. Missiles didn't get saved by fat blokes who only play in goal because they can't run around. Kristian returned to the newspaper. He was man of the match in a 3-2 win over Burridge Sports. It said so on the pages in front of him and he enjoyed the satisfaction that it brought him, even though that he knew the credibility of being named so would always be called into question if the newspaper were prepared to report in the same feature that Paul Dyke was the club jester and Jay Schwodler was Burridge's best man marker.


This winter's weather's as wet as Kristian has known it in ten years spent cutting greens. There's much more chance of a stick in right now. You'll be out on the fourteenth on the rough cutter and suddenly your wheels will start sinking into the earth. Hitting the gas pedal will just drive your wheels deeper into the mud, so you have to get out and walk for help. Sometimes for fifteen minutes. You'll probably need the Bobcat to pull you out with a tethered chain. The question is how come Kristian hasn't had any stick ins himself this season? Like some wily old sailor he said, “I know all the bad spots.”

Gingergate

Is it because I'm ginger?

Paul Dyke's ginger hair got Burridge on national TV in 2007. He wrote 933 cross words in a letter to the Southern Daily Echo, asking what right referee, Mark Rayment, had in using his hair colour as means to verbally abuse him. Rayment had answered Dyke's latest offside appeal by saying, “oi ginger, shut up,” during the second half of Burridge's bad tempered 4-2 defeat at Bishopstoke on 23rd December 2006. Dyke thought he was being discriminated against because of his hair colour. He believed he had an argument. His team mates agreed. Unfortunately for Dyke they agreed with the referee.



Referees have come to expect an earful of abuse during a game. Sometimes worse. 4 years earlier Burridge locked a referee in the changing room. It was for his own safety and once he came round from the right hook thrown by one of the four Orca Marine players he'd already sent off during the first half of an abandoned cup tie, he was smuggled safely outside to his car. Burridge never saw that referee again, while whoever walloped him got two months inside. Incidents like this weren't isolated and the Football Association were forced to react. They put their weight behind a campaign called respect the ref, but Dyke thought that respect was a two way street and that punishment should be dished out to Rayment for what he'd said.



When the Echo ran the story about Dyke's hair on January 6th 2007 the Burridge dressing room was unanimous. Punishment should be swift and severe. And if there was any justice in the world Dyke would never be allowed within 500 yards of a typewriter ever again. The following Monday BBC South Today interviewed Dyke at his flat in Sholing about ginger discrimination, and later that evening BBC's current affairs programme, Newsnight, asked pro ginger lobbyists, Red and Proud, if ginger haired people were discriminated against, before interviewing Paul Dyke while the television pictures showed coverage of him kicking a ball around on his tarmac drive way.

When they cut back to the studio, presenter Gavin Esler's facial expression was that of a man questioning if such items would be broadcast if regular anchor Jeremy Paxman was presenting the show. That or he was appalled at Dyke's attempts to control a football. When the Daily Echo's news desk asked to send a photographer down to Burridge's next game to get pictures of Burridge players wearing ginger wigs there was one player opposed to the idea. “If I had turned up and there had been a photographer there, I would have walked away,” said Dyke. “And then there is no real story.”

Neither Burridge nor Dyke investigated whether or not Rayment was punished by the Hampshire Football Association. Not unless they'd planned for him to choke to death on his tongue. He was playing football for Southampton referees when his head accidentally collided with one of the opposition's shoulders. Down he went, out cold. Had Andy Dine, another referee, not stuck his hand down Rayment's throat and pulled his tongue free, Rayment would have died on the astro-turf at Wide Lane.



2 years have passed since Gingergate. Paul Dyke is still an accountant, but he no longer plays for Burridge, while Mark Rayment hasn't refereed a Burridge game since.