Beveree Chat

THOSE WERE THE DAYS
18th April 2009

Football Conference (Blue Square); South

Hampton 1 (Quarm 52’) AFC Wimbledon (Main 82’) 1 Att; 3225

HRBFC;-
Matt Lovett; Shaun McAuley (Steve Tyson, 73’), John McDonald (Ryan Lake, 68’), Orlando Jeffrey, John Scarborough, Dean Wells, Stuart Lake, Francis Quarm, Ian Hodges, Kieran Knight (Lawrence Yaku, 63’), Marcello Fernandes.
Unused Subs; Trevor Roffey (Gk), Dean Inman.

Beveree was filled to the brim with its largest ever attendance for a league game on a glorious sunny afternoon. AFC Wimbledon filled the stadium with blue and yellow, taking over the larger part of the stadium. The Beavers’ last home league game of the season, between the top two teams in the division, had Hampton trying to pull back three points on the Dons who were in top spot. In a game of huge importance there had to be at least one controversial decision…...and there was. A lively start saw both keepers in early action; James Pullen, denying Knight, then Lovett making a catch from an attempted overhead kick. In the 12th minute former Beaver, Elliott Godfrey shot straight at Lovett. 0-0 at half-time. In the second half, Pullen was forced to punch away a long throw from McDonald. Lovett then had to come out of his area to head the ball away and moments later Quarm was setting off, with his trademark ‘arm across his face’, having steered the ball home from the edge of the six-yard box. Dons almost equalised in the 74th minute when Lovett made a flying save from Sam Hatton. Then came the incident that turned the game. Fernandes and Scarborough collided wide out on the left and the ball went out for a Wimbledon throw. Scarborough appeared to be seriously injured, but Referee Tony Mason waived play on and John Main scored at the far post. Scarborough is stretchered off, and, with no sub available, Hampton are down to 10 men. The Dons finish as Champions, the Beavers eventually lose at home in the play-off final to Hayes & Yeading.


The Old Historian

Remember it very well. Ha, where to start with this one...before this game I'd quite admired the rise of the new Wimbledon club and was full of admiration for what they'd achieved, and the progress they'd made, even if playing them had turned into an increasingly bitter local rivalry, mainly due to the fact that however hard they tried they just couldn't beat us.
The rebirth of the phoenix Wimbledon was treated with a kind of fawning glee by most of the football media, most of them encountering non league football for the first time and subsequently filing patronising stories about tiny clubs having to suddenly host 2 or 3 thousand visiting fans when AFC visited. For many of us, it began to leave a slightly sour taste, and when a small group of Hampton fans were threatened by some of their idiot fans after a game at Kingsmeadow the àntipathy increased.
However, the build up to this game showed a section of their supporters at their absolute worst. We were running them quite close for promotion and some of them were getting the jitters. Allegedly some complaints were made to the league about how the Bev wasn't up to standard, our ("temp" stand, still in place!) was held up as an example, some fans visited the Bev during the weeks before and photos were taken of it etc and used as "evidence" in these somewhat pathetic accusations. Having done their best to win friends via these spurious reasons off the pitch, the laughing and gloating after their goal, scored when John Scarborough was down injured (not the done thing at all at the time even if the rules have changed nowadays) means that many Hampton fans there that day will never be able to forget. A grudge? Maybe, but perhaps you just had to be there...