Bemerton Heath Harlequins 6 Alresford Town 0 (29th October 2022)
What’s in a name? There are a few reasons why I opted for this game in the Wessex League, over the Nuneaton v Alvechurch FA Trophy tie I also had by eye on. One was laziness, with a sub 1.5 hours drive (traffic crawling past Stonehenge permitting) being better than one of at least two hours up the dreary M40, but I love a quirky name. Had the club just been called Bemerton Heath, I’d possibly been making that Nuneaton trip, but add ‘Harlequins’ on the end, and such a superficial difference is enough to tempt me.
Moon Park, as the ground is gloriously called (after one of three clubs involved in the merger that formed the current club) is one of those made by the setting of the ground rather than its stands, of which there were only two, both down one side.
Two sides of the ground are enclosed by tall hedges and trees, giving a sense of enclose that the open sides otherwise wouldn’t have. The beheaded remains of trees down one other side, and partially behind the goal, show this enclosure used to be even more thorough not so long ago. It does at least allow a glimpse of Salisbury Cathedral from the back of the raised terracing now, but for those used to three sides of tall foliage, it must seem rather bare.
The other end had the clubhouse, with a hill sloping behind. Many would stroll down the hill, and spend a few minutes enjoying the free view of the game the slope offered, before moving on. If only a few more could be tempted towards the turnstiles…
It’s always going to be hard being the 2nd team of a town that isn’t huge anyway, but not too many of the folk of Salisbury share my enthusiasm for a quirky name, it seems. This game would draw a season high, but a high of just 78, and for a club that’s top of the table, that must be a little disappointing.
Alresford Town, bottom of the table after this result, don’t exactly have a huge number of fans either, so why this fixture grabbed the (limited) attention of the locals isn’t entirely clear. Maybe it was the other reason I was tempted – a match up between the division’s highest scorers against the division’s worst defence. “Double figures today?” was a question I heard posed more than once pre-match, and while I knew that was unlikely, the prospect of seeing a few goals is always tempting.
In a match which offered two sartorial firsts for me – a team with a cross on their shirts playing one in diagonal stripes – that prospect of a ’10’ seemed hopeless misguided in the first half. Well marshalled at the back by a young lad in the Alresford goal, who’d picked up the knack of shouting instructions at a very young age, it seems, the away side thwarted Bemerton at nearly every opportunity. And they had a lot of opportunities, as they imposed themselves and got stronger and stronger as the game wore on.
Nearly half an hour had gone, with the home side getting more and more frustrated. One effort was brilliantly tipped over for a corner by the young Alresford keeper, who had a fine and faultless match. From the corner though, the ball could be properly cleared, and it dropped kindly near the penalty spot to be smashed back in to put Bemerton 1-0 up.
Despite breaking the deadlock, Alresford continued to frustrate with some committed defending, and it stayed at 1-0 until half time.
After half-time, it all changed. Bemerton seems to go a little more direct, playing balls over or through the central defence, rather than playing it wide, and this just seemed to cut Alresford open. five minutes into the 2nd half, a 1-on-1 resulted in the ball being taken round the keeper on rolled in to double the lead.
It was 3-0 just a couple of minutes later, when Alresford again couldn’t clear, and the ball was hit through a crowd of players, and 4-0 from a header just a minute or so later.
Bemerton were now rampant, and will wonder how they only scored two more, both from headers in quick succession after about 70 minutes. Seven or eight looked likely, but it remained at six, somehow. Even in injury time, a 2 on 1 with the keeper was thwarted by a defender covering on the line just in time.
Despite the number of chances missed, only the most greedy could really grumble about a 6-0 win, and the Alresford keeper didn’t deserve to be on the wrong end of an embarrassing score. One fan, overheard pre-match making the most British of complaints of “if there is a nuclear war, it’ll probably be on my bloody day off” might have a different view, even if just in jest, but the Harlequins are certainly enjoying life at the moment. If only they could get a few more people to come and watch.
Stadiums and Cities 