A Season with Saltdean - FA Cup Magic

 The FA Cup is where football started for me. As a nine-year-old, the complexities of a league season perplexed me, but the simple purity of a knock-out competition excited me and in 1989, I sat in my front room and cheered on Liverpool playing a poignant final against Merseyside rivals, Everton in the shadow the Hillsborough disaster. I’d chosen John Barnes as my favourite player. He’d been one of the first Panini stickers that I’d unwrapped and his smiling face beamed back at me. It could have been Roy Wegerle or Francis Benali that emerged from that packet, but thankfully, it was Barnes and for the next few years, he was a masterful player, the driving force behind Liverpool’s excellence and on that late 80s May day, he was important as Liverpool finally dispatched Everton 3-2 after extra time.

Years on, it was the early rounds of the cup that fascinated me and I think the first FA Cup match I ever attended was a trip to Canvey Island to see Brighton scrap out a 2-2 draw. Despite the fact that an under-achieving Brighton flirting with their very existence had absolutely no chance of reaching the final didn’t mean that the match didn’t carry the magic of the cup, the link between this First Round fixture and the Wembley showpiece giving the match a glittery glow.

Today, I went back even further, to the Extra Preliminary Round. 348 teams were competing up and down the country, playing in simple settings in front of modest crowds, but the glittery glow that captured my nine-year-old heart was at each one - just thirteen rounds from the showpiece final. My location, of course, was Saltdean United’s Hill Park. My reignited relationship with Saltdean had started at this stage last season when the Tigers had started the season off with defeat at the hands of Eastbourne Town. This time round, they faced Frimley Green who were making their way down from Surrey. The winner of the game would scoop £1,125 prize money (the eventual winner gets £1.8 million), but more importantly the magical hope lingers on for whoever would triumph. It would take a club six consecutive victories to get to the First Round Proper where they might face a league side and eight victories to be in with a chance of playing one of the Premier League big boys. The best Saltdean have ever done is four victories, taking them to them Third Qualifying Round in 2001. Few sides from tier nine make it all the way to the First Round Proper, but last season, Skelmersdale United, from the same level as Saltdean, made it all the way through the six matches before losing to League Two side, Harrogate Town. Could this season be Saltdean’s turn? They’re in the strongest place they’ve ever been, so now is as good a time as any for magic-time at Hill Park.

First things first though, they needed to overcome Frimley Green in the oblique August rain. I invited a friend and his son along for the game and it was the son’s first ever football game and he was properly excited, asking his dad when the game was starting on repeat four hours before kick-off. Would he be catch the magic? 

Saltdean delivered exactly what a seven-year-old needs at their first football game with an early goal, Reece Hallard climbing high to head home, adding to his goals from midweek. Shortly afterwards, Tom Caplin was clumsily bundled over in the box and the referee pointed to the spot. The game could have got away from the Green at this point, but Callum Sauders’ penalty, whilst struck well, was at what is always described by commentators as a “good height for the keeper” and it was batted away and this shifted the tide of the game and as Frimley enjoyed a spell of pressure, my children and my friend’s child took advantage of a break in the rain to climb the bank to the children’s pitches situated slightly higher up the valley. They missed Frimley shooting themselves in the foot and feet are pretty important when it comes to football. Their captain, Bradley Pegg, flew into a attempted tackle with two missile-like feet. He made contact with the ball which was what the Frimley bench repeatedly shouted, but this didn’t prevent the referee from applying the rules and whipping out a red card in a fabulously flamboyant manner. He charged into the melee like a male peacock keen to flash its feathers to any females in the vicinity. He was all arms, synchronising his limbs for a brief fluttery motion before aiming one to delve into his pocket and produce a flash of red. It was only 1-0, but Saltdean had a man advantage as well as the wind and the rain behind them for the second half.

Half-time allowed the children to scamper onto the football pitch, a treat that won’t be available in every round of the cup although it would be lovely, wouldn’t it?, if at half-time in the FA Cup final at Wembley, all the children were allowed to scamper about on the hallowed turf, re-enacting what they’d just sent their heroes do.

The meteorological, numerical and to be honest, footballing ability advantage proved to be more markedly decisive in the second half. Reece Hallard lashed in a second, Trevor McCreadie slapped it into the top corner for a third and Callum Saunders made up for his penalty miss by completing a comfortable 4-0 victory.

And so, on we go, beyond the Extra Preliminary Round to the Preliminary Round where we face Sheppey United and I’m ruing my holiday booking which not only means I miss the next round of the cup, but also means I miss four other Saltdean matches in this packed early-season schedule. But I’ll be back and hopefully, Saltdean will have continued to have scored freely and not conceded in my absence.

A Season with Saltdean - Let's Start Again

I have unfinished business with Saltdean United. Last season, with the doors of Brighton and Hove Albion’s Amex Stadium closed to me, I went in search of live football and was drawn back to an occasional haunt of my teenage years: Saltdean’s idyllic Hill Park. In the late ’90s, I got a call from the Sports Argus in the middle of the week, telling me where they wanted me that Saturday. Although Saltdean involved two bus rides - a three-hour round trip from my home on the Knoll Estate - it was still my favourite place to go. The football was good as they fought for the Sussex County League First Division, eventually missing out by three points to Burgess Hill Town. It wasn’t just the football though. The valley setting gives the ground a unique and calming feel. Some grounds feel almost oppressive and claustrophobic while there is none of that at Hill Park with the matches feeling like they’re in a grand and natural arena overlooked by sheep gambolling in the fields. Before the game starts, I sometimes recline on the slope reading a paperback with the sounds of nature combined with the thud of footballs being thwacked around the pitch in preparation for what is to come. What could be better? 

That runners-up spot Saltdean achieved back in 1999 is the highest the Tigers have ever finished and last season, it looked like history was about to be made. They’d started the season sluggishly and erratically, scrapping out a couple of wins, but dropping points in drab draws as well. Then one day, I turned up and the team had been dramatically overhauled. It was as if the old players had evaporated into the air like at the end of Avengers: Infinity War and in their place, some superhumans had emerged. I drove over to East Preston with low expectations unaware of the transformation, but those expectations were rapidly fertilised with Miracle-Gro as Saltdean ran out 8-0 winners, went on an unbeaten ten-game run and climbed to the summit of the Premier Division. What could go wrong? Well, the answer’s pretty obvious. It’s the thing that has blighted all our lives for the last seventeen months.

The second lockdown was announced and it looked highly improbable that football at this level would continue. As with all the government announcements, everyone knew what was coming well in advance and with this knowledge, Saltdean took to the pitch of Hill Park for the last time against Eastbourne Town back in March. Their talismanic striker, Trevor McCreadie was so frustrated that he took it out on a defender’s ankles and the referee flourished his red card. It was a symbolic moment. We were all being shown the red card by COVID-19, all of us banished from the pitches we love. Trevor trudged from the pitch and we trudged to our homes. 

And so the season was curtailed, Saltdean having only completed fourteen of their games and though they were top, there was no title, no celebrations, just a long wait, but now that wait is over and the Tigers have roared into the season, devouring the opposition as if they are legless antelopes. On Saturday, they dispatched Uckfield 3-0 at their place. I had a 60th birthday party to attend and had to rely on Twitter updates to follow the game. Following County League football is only really meant to be done in person, but those three little pings on my phone that punctuated the party gave me confidence for the season ahead.

Last night was the real deal though. I was back in the valley, a bar of Cadbury’s Whole Nut clutched in my hands, an excitement bubbling away in my heart. Saltdean’s team hasn’t changed much from last season, but there were three new players in the starting eleven, Callum Saunders playing just off the striker, having recovered from a lengthy injury, Tom Caplin, a composed and classy presence in the centre of midfield and George Taggart, a slippery winger. Let me try a brief bit of insightful football analysis, adopt a pretence that I am able to discuss football knowledgeably rather than emotionally. The centre of midfield was a position in constant flux last season with many players dipping their toe into this most challenging of positions. I often felt that someone who could combine the combativeness of a gladiator with the soft touch of a fine artist would complete this Saltdean team and last night, Caplin made me wonder if he was the Marcus Aurelius/Claude Monet hybrid we’d been waiting for. He showed an ability to crunch into challenges in an uncompromising fashion and combined that with an artist’s creativity and finesse when the ball was at his feet earning him a deserved Man of the Match bottle of bubbly.

The opponents on a humid, although rapidly chilling, Tuesday evening were Hassocks and it was quickly clear that Saltdean were going to be utterly dominant, keeping the ball for long periods of possession and snaffling it away from Hassocks with quick and effective pressing whenever their opponents briefly had it. They took the lead early when Reece Hallard drove the ball low through a crowded penalty box after it had pinged off the crossbar from a corner. Hallard doubled the lead with an overhead kick, again being the quickest to react to a loose ball in the area. 

At half-time, Trevor emerged, taking to the pitch at Hill Park (in a competitive fixture) for the first time since that depressing day back in March and the goals continued to flow. Caplin was ready to put the finishing touches to the masterpiece he’d been creating all game and swung the ball into the top corner from the edge of the box. Then it was Trev’s turn, rifling the ball unerringly into the bottom corner. Kieron Pamment, scorer of two goals at Uckfield at the weekend, added to his tally for the season, curling in an effort from just inside the box and then it was back to Trev to complete his brace - his fifth for the club in less than dozen appearances. 6-0!

What a start to the season! Nine in goals in two games, none conceded and back at the top of the table again. And on Saturday… it’s the glory of the FA Cup - the Extra Preliminary Round starts at Hill Park at 3pm.