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General Dulwich Hamlet chat

StephenMac said:
Quite the opposite. I'm still keeping myself to myself a bit but it's been great having little chats with people like the editor (now I realise who he is) in recent weeks. On Saturday, I helped tie one of the banners behind the goal before the second half just because I was standing there. Immediately Jack (Scutta on here?) and Nisha (apologies if misheard) introduced themselves. That was just pure class and not something I would imagine happening at many other clubs.
Click to expand...

Which means you were stood next to me while you were fixing up the banner behind the goal. Hello!
 
Jamie Wyatt said:
You need Liam or Mishi, How do you highlight people's names?? There is a link to other forum on website all already, this one could replace that and I can close other one!!
Click to expand...
Put an @ in front of them and start typing - it'll suggest the name to you.

Dulwich Mishi for example :)
 
StephenMac said:
Forgive me the indulgence but I thought I would share some thoughts as a total nouveau who has only been going to games since September.

I grew up watching Aylesbury United in the Southern League (and one high-comedy season in the Conference) many, many moons ago. I played in their various youth teams but I enjoyed following the first team, playing in front of similar crowds to Dulwich now, more. I lost touch a bit with university and moving away from that rather godforsaken town but watched from afar as they became another boom-and-bust non-league club with a dodgy owner and property developers muddying the water. They are now groundless and struggling to pull in 200 every other week. Broke my heart a little but it was what it was.

Then followed 15 years as a season ticket holder at Highbury and then the Emirates. That time saw the Invincibles team and plenty of trophies but I watched in dismay as everything around me changed. The glory hunters, the prices, the moaning in the stands and, above all, the the booing of Arsenal players by their own entitled fans. So I knocked that on the head and spent a couple of years turning up at places like Orient, Hendon, Barnet for my sporadic footballing fix.

Last year I moved South to Streatham to live with my girlfriend. I flailed around a bit - ice hockey (fun but not football), Sutton United (terrible football and weird fans), T**ting & Mitcham (so sorry, I just didn't know!) and even a one-off trip to Carshalton. But it wasn't really doing it for me. I can only plead geographical ignorance as Dulwich didn't even occur to me but then, one night in September, having realised just how near Champion Hill was I bowled up for the Margate match.

Now I know I got lucky with that being a particular cracker, late winner and all, but the evening was a revelation. I knew deep down within 15 minutes of kick off that I had a new footballing home. I think the plan was to have a fun diversion every other Saturday, but in little more than five months I am already struggling to imagine life without DHFC. I couldn't tell anyone exactly why it has captured my imagination like it has as there's no one reason.

There are lots of reasons. Firstly, there's the football. Boy, you're lucky to see football played the Gavin Rose way at this level. Long may he stay because the quality, especially going forward, is extraordinary. Then there's the atmosphere. I love it - fans supporting the team in the right way, in numbers, in song, in ridiculousness and with massive humour. The leftist slant is right up my street and a breath of fresh air even if i'm not QUITE ready for Luxury Automated Communism. Humour aside, I love the collective feel that permeates the club, whether it's supporters committees, the 12th Man scheme, the brilliant podcast, the food bank collection or the Stonewall match next week. It's still early days for me and I still have to earn my stripes but I certainly hope to get more involved in the future.

Best of all though is just feeling so fucking welcome there. I turn up on my own (girlfriend and friends think i've lost it still) and it's just friendliness from the get go. A smile and a hello at the turnstile, same buying a programme, more in the bar and then throughout the match itself. It would be the easiest thing in the world for The Rabble to be some dreadful, self-congratulatory clique but i've seen no evidence of that at all. Quite the opposite. I'm still keeping myself to myself a bit but it's been great having little chats with people like the editor (now I realise who he is) in recent weeks. On Saturday, I helped tie one of the banners behind the goal before the second half just because I was standing there. Immediately Jack (Scutta on here?) and Nisha (apologies if misheard) introduced themselves. That was just pure class and not something I would imagine happening at many other clubs.

So i'll shut up with my ramblings but really i just want to say that you have got a very special football club and one so excitingly on the up. I would say that you're lucky to have it but i suspect that many on here are the very people who have done so much to make it special in the first place. I hope to be around the club for many years to come but, for now, thanks for having me and I genuinely hope that you're as proud of your club as you should be.
Click to expand...

That was beautiful. A slightly rewritten version of this would be great article for the Moral Victory... I only say rewritten as I think the MV is all new content, except the Gavin Rose interview. Ludo
 
StephenMac said:
Forgive me the indulgence but I thought I would share some thoughts as a total nouveau who has only been going to games since September.

I grew up watching Aylesbury United in the Southern League (and one high-comedy season in the Conference) many, many moons ago. I played in their various youth teams but I enjoyed following the first team, playing in front of similar crowds to Dulwich now, more. I lost touch a bit with university and moving away from that rather godforsaken town but watched from afar as they became another boom-and-bust non-league club with a dodgy owner and property developers muddying the water. They are now groundless and struggling to pull in 200 every other week. Broke my heart a little but it was what it was.

Then followed 15 years as a season ticket holder at Highbury and then the Emirates. That time saw the Invincibles team and plenty of trophies but I watched in dismay as everything around me changed. The glory hunters, the prices, the moaning in the stands and, above all, the the booing of Arsenal players by their own entitled fans. So I knocked that on the head and spent a couple of years turning up at places like Orient, Hendon, Barnet for my sporadic footballing fix.

Last year I moved South to Streatham to live with my girlfriend. I flailed around a bit - ice hockey (fun but not football), Sutton United (terrible football and weird fans), T**ting & Mitcham (so sorry, I just didn't know!) and even a one-off trip to Carshalton. But it wasn't really doing it for me. I can only plead geographical ignorance as Dulwich didn't even occur to me but then, one night in September, having realised just how near Champion Hill was I bowled up for the Margate match.

Now I know I got lucky with that being a particular cracker, late winner and all, but the evening was a revelation. I knew deep down within 15 minutes of kick off that I had a new footballing home. I think the plan was to have a fun diversion every other Saturday, but in little more than five months I am already struggling to imagine life without DHFC. I couldn't tell anyone exactly why it has captured my imagination like it has as there's no one reason.

There are lots of reasons. Firstly, there's the football. Boy, you're lucky to see football played the Gavin Rose way at this level. Long may he stay because the quality, especially going forward, is extraordinary. Then there's the atmosphere. I love it - fans supporting the team in the right way, in numbers, in song, in ridiculousness and with massive humour. The leftist slant is right up my street and a breath of fresh air even if i'm not QUITE ready for Luxury Automated Communism. Humour aside, I love the collective feel that permeates the club, whether it's supporters committees, the 12th Man scheme, the brilliant podcast, the food bank collection or the Stonewall match next week. It's still early days for me and I still have to earn my stripes but I certainly hope to get more involved in the future.

Best of all though is just feeling so fucking welcome there. I turn up on my own (girlfriend and friends think i've lost it still) and it's just friendliness from the get go. A smile and a hello at the turnstile, same buying a programme, more in the bar and then throughout the match itself. It would be the easiest thing in the world for The Rabble to be some dreadful, self-congratulatory clique but i've seen no evidence of that at all. Quite the opposite. I'm still keeping myself to myself a bit but it's been great having little chats with people like the editor (now I realise who he is) in recent weeks. On Saturday, I helped tie one of the banners behind the goal before the second half just because I was standing there. Immediately Jack (Scutta on here?) and Nisha (apologies if misheard) introduced themselves. That was just pure class and not something I would imagine happening at many other clubs.

So i'll shut up with my ramblings but really i just want to say that you have got a very special football club and one so excitingly on the up. I would say that you're lucky to have it but i suspect that many on here are the very people who have done so much to make it special in the first place. I hope to be around the club for many years to come but, for now, thanks for having me and I genuinely hope that you're as proud of your club as you should be.
Click to expand...
Great post Stephen, which sums up what it's like for so many of us whether we're in our first season like yourself or have been going since the seventies like Mishi and myself. Not sure if I've met you yet, but I've had the pleasure to become well acquainted with many younger and newer Hamlet supporters this season which helps make the whole day a massive social occasion on top of seeing entertaining football: going to the Fox on the Hill with around twenty other Hamlet fans after the Billericay home game, the last train home from Margate where there were a similar number, then again on Saturday when we all went to the Gowlett after leaving the clubhouse - great evening in the pub, I didn't leave until 1am, and thanks to the wonders of modern technology was able to time my departure perfectly to catch the N63 bus back to Sydenham Hill, but even if I'd just missed it they run every fifteen minutes these days at weekends. Makes a change from the old days when I recall dashing out of the Clock House at 11.15pm for the last bus home. Absolutely EVERYTHING about the Hamlet just seems to keep getting better and better. I suppose it has to end somewhere, but right now I'm just enjoying the ride!

Regarding your support of Aylesbury United, they were always in the Southern League until winning it in 1988 and spending one season in the Conference, then came down into our league in 1989. They were immediately regarded as championship favourites and were pulling crowds way bigger than anyone else - around 1,000 when nobody else in the league at the time was getting more than about 500 - but they finished 3rd then just subsided to become another typical Isthmian Premier club for the next decade or so before getting relegated and losing their ground around the turn of the century.
 
Pink Panther said:
Regarding your support of Aylesbury United, they were always in the Southern League until winning it in 1988 and spending one season in the Conference, then came down into our league in 1989. They were immediately regarded as championship favourites and were pulling crowds way bigger than anyone else - around 1,000 when nobody else in the league at the time was getting more than about 500 - but they finished 3rd then just subsided to become another typical Isthmian Premier club for the next decade or so before getting relegated and losing their ground around the turn of the century.
Click to expand...

They also played a friendly match against England in a pre-World Cup or Euro Championship warm up, lost 5-0 or something like that.
 
[/QUOTE]Regarding your support of Aylesbury United, they were always in the Southern League until winning it in 1988 and spending one season in the Conference, then came down into our league in 1989. They were immediately regarded as championship favourites and were pulling crowds way bigger than anyone else - around 1,000 when nobody else in the league at the time was getting more than about 500 - but they finished 3rd then just subsided to become another typical Isthmian Premier club for the next decade or so before getting relegated and losing their ground around the turn of the century.[/QUOTE]

That's all scarily accurate Pink Panther. The Conference season was an enjoyable shambles as Aylesbury slugged it out with Newport for the right to be considered the worst Conference team in memory. Happily, Aylesbury claimed that crown in the end. Thereafter, after dropping into the Isthmian it was just an object lesson in how to run a club badly. Bob Dowie (Ian's brother) came in as manager with an absurdly OTT budget and signed about a dozen quality Conference players. Everyone thought promotion was a formality but, much like Margate now I suspect, it was just a load of unmotivated, overpaid players swanning around. The wheels came off one by one through that season and there was all kinds of rancour. Dowie was sacked, the Chairman lost interest and they went into their death spiral. Attendances collapsed and eventually the club was forced out of town and a beautiful little ground and, bizarrely, they aren't even the town's biggest club anymore. Ridiculously, the ground is still there to this day (no property developer ever managed to get planning permission to build shit red-brick houses on it) like a monument to non-league hubris. I didn't see that much of them in the Isthmian years as i'd flown the nest but it was downhill all the way. The History Channel should make a new show, 'Aylesbury United - a warning from history' and make it compulsory viewing for all megalomaniac chairmen who think they can just buy their way up the football pyramid.

Am I right to say that Jermaine Darlington was signed from Dulwich? Only saw him a few times playing for Aylesbury but I thought he was a hell of a player and QPR obviously agreed.
 
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EDC said:
They also played a friendly match against England in a pre-World Cup or Euro Championship warm up, lost 5-0 or something like that.
Click to expand...
Yep, lost 7-0 against England ahead of the Euros in 2008 in front of 7,000 packed in like sardines. Perfect preparation borne out by England returning pointless from the group stages in Germany.

Was a truly surreal day and not just because I had only recently started experimenting with hallucinogenics.
 
Those European Championships was my first ever England away trip...was very rough, on & off the pitch! ;)
 
StephenMac said:
Forgive me the indulgence but I thought I would share some thoughts as a total nouveau who has only been going to games since September.

I grew up watching Aylesbury United in the Southern League (and one high-comedy season in the Conference) many, many moons ago. I played in their various youth teams but I enjoyed following the first team, playing in front of similar crowds to Dulwich now, more. I lost touch a bit with university and moving away from that rather godforsaken town but watched from afar as they became another boom-and-bust non-league club with a dodgy owner and property developers muddying the water. They are now groundless and struggling to pull in 200 every other week. Broke my heart a little but it was what it was.

Then followed 15 years as a season ticket holder at Highbury and then the Emirates. That time saw the Invincibles team and plenty of trophies but I watched in dismay as everything around me changed. The glory hunters, the prices, the moaning in the stands and, above all, the the booing of Arsenal players by their own entitled fans. So I knocked that on the head and spent a couple of years turning up at places like Orient, Hendon, Barnet for my sporadic footballing fix.

Last year I moved South to Streatham to live with my girlfriend. I flailed around a bit - ice hockey (fun but not football), Sutton United (terrible football and weird fans), T**ting & Mitcham (so sorry, I just didn't know!) and even a one-off trip to Carshalton. But it wasn't really doing it for me. I can only plead geographical ignorance as Dulwich didn't even occur to me but then, one night in September, having realised just how near Champion Hill was I bowled up for the Margate match.

Now I know I got lucky with that being a particular cracker, late winner and all, but the evening was a revelation. I knew deep down within 15 minutes of kick off that I had a new footballing home. I think the plan was to have a fun diversion every other Saturday, but in little more than five months I am already struggling to imagine life without DHFC. I couldn't tell anyone exactly why it has captured my imagination like it has as there's no one reason.

There are lots of reasons. Firstly, there's the football. Boy, you're lucky to see football played the Gavin Rose way at this level. Long may he stay because the quality, especially going forward, is extraordinary. Then there's the atmosphere. I love it - fans supporting the team in the right way, in numbers, in song, in ridiculousness and with massive humour. The leftist slant is right up my street and a breath of fresh air even if i'm not QUITE ready for Luxury Automated Communism. Humour aside, I love the collective feel that permeates the club, whether it's supporters committees, the 12th Man scheme, the brilliant podcast, the food bank collection or the Stonewall match next week. It's still early days for me and I still have to earn my stripes but I certainly hope to get more involved in the future.

Best of all though is just feeling so fucking welcome there. I turn up on my own (girlfriend and friends think i've lost it still) and it's just friendliness from the get go. A smile and a hello at the turnstile, same buying a programme, more in the bar and then throughout the match itself. It would be the easiest thing in the world for The Rabble to be some dreadful, self-congratulatory clique but i've seen no evidence of that at all. Quite the opposite. I'm still keeping myself to myself a bit but it's been great having little chats with people like the editor (now I realise who he is) in recent weeks. On Saturday, I helped tie one of the banners behind the goal before the second half just because I was standing there. Immediately Jack (Scutta on here?) and Nisha (apologies if misheard) introduced themselves. That was just pure class and not something I would imagine happening at many other clubs.

So i'll shut up with my ramblings but really i just want to say that you have got a very special football club and one so excitingly on the up. I would say that you're lucky to have it but i suspect that many on here are the very people who have done so much to make it special in the first place. I hope to be around the club for many years to come but, for now, thanks for having me and I genuinely hope that you're as proud of your club as you should be.
Click to expand...

recently new fan myself but i can vouch and say that i have never felt a warm and loving following from a group of fans, on both home and away games. dont entirely know people too much (other than the favourites i get on twitter and who i follow) but everyone seems loving. football friend here if necessary!
 
darryl said:
That's a nice Mail piece, actually - shame about the clanging reference to "boyhood" teams, though, which hopefully is a sub-editor's foul-up.
Click to expand...
yeah agree. Wasn't too bad except for a couple of things like you mentioned. Other than tha fairly accurate piece...I liked the idea about how you don't just have to be a football fan to enjoy it... Also liked the bit about friendships made in 90 mins..... Just shame it was in the daily fail ;-) lol.. All publicity........etc
 
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I liked it, shame the photos made the ground looked like it was empty.
 
Scutta said:
yeah agree. Wasn't too bad except for a couple of things like you mentioned. Other than tha fairly accurate piece... And the idea you don't just have to be a football fan to enjoy it... Also liked the bit about friendships made in 90 mins..... Just shame it was in the daily fail ;-) lol.. All publicity........etc
Click to expand...
The Mail website, unlike the paper, sometimes carries some very good 'un-Mail-like' articles...not that I bother looking at it, but often click on links when people share them on Facebook.
 
Scutta said:
yeah agree. Wasn't too bad except for a couple of things like you mentioned. Other than tha fairly accurate piece... And the idea you don't just have to be a football fan to enjoy it... Also liked the bit about friendships made in 90 mins..... Just shame it was in the daily fail ;-) lol.. All publicity........etc
Click to expand...
To put a positive spin on it, my guess is that Mail readers are a rather under-represented group behind the goal so it can only increase diversity!
 
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