Away Day Wiz Diaries #9 – Portsmouth (A)

Alan Pickard on the long and winding road that leads to Portsmouth via Southsea.

Sep 30, 2024

Alan Pickard

Two hundred and thirty miles each way. Two thousand folk all making the journey south. Some went by train and stayed the weekend. Some drove—some on the nine supporters coaches. And one bloke cycled it. All of them absolutely bonkers, especially him on the bike (I hear he’s writing up his exploits on The Pinch soon…).

But before we get into that, a serious word. There was one very notable absentee down at Portsmouth, missing from my coach as well. And sadly, Hull turned out to be his last hurrah watching the wizards. He's left a massive hole in so many people's lives. There's a huge community of people that follow Sheffield United. Let's look out for each other eh? Rest in peace Jonny.

Our day began at 06:15 am, and we headed for the coach meeting point. It was 06:33 am when the driver of Coach 2 announced to me that "the toilet ain't working mate". As a coach organiser, that is the second worst thing you can be told, only being beaten by "it's broken down". Luckily, I didn't hear them words! However, no bog was actually an improvement on the situation we had at 3pm on the Friday when the original coach we'd booked called to cancel.

Anyhow, as mentioned, we’ve got 230 miles to do, which works out at roughly a very long time to pass, and we're aiming to be in Southsea for around 11:45am so we can plot up with a few sherberts and watch the early kick off.

I think it was roughly at junction 30 when Harris opened up a 2 pack of boiled eggs, and announced his next course would be a Tuna and sweetcorn sandwich, much to the delight of absolutely nobody else on the coach. It stunk exactly how you think it did anorl. Luckily, one of the young uns has loaded up a game of Tic-Tac-toe (I think its called) on his blower. If you've never played it, it's strangely addictive, and it did pass quite a lot of time.

11:45 soon rolls round and we're dropped off in Southsea at a sports bar for the early kick off. Now my memories of Portsmouth, admittedly from 1998, are that it wasn't such a nice place, however I have to say, I've changed my mind after going back. The bits we saw were nice anyway, although disappointingly we never ventured to the seafront. The pub crawl took us in 3 establishments, O’Neills, The Royal Albert and finally Festing. All offering a warm welcome and great to see pubs with fans from both teams just enjoying their days. Lovely weather too in the deep south of England, feeling very much summer rather than autumn.

The ground is one for the traditionalists amongst you. Old school. Compact. They've modernised large parts of it since my last visit in 1998 when the away end was uncovered. And the surrounding areas have had extensive amounts of money spent on development. But it's still a very traditional ground. They have a marine based mascot (think popeye the sailor man) who carries his placard around the border of the pitch with the slogan "play up pompey, pompey play up" and credit to them they do drum up a good atmosphere across the whole ground. And of course, you have to mention Mr Portsmouth here. The bloke who doesn't own any upper body clothing as he spent all his pocket money on a bell to ring.

The game itself was a tight affair, with both teams probably having a case for saying that they'd done enough to nick it, when in reality a draw was the fair result. Super Mike Scooper with two first-half saves who had the away end stood applauding. Gus Hamer with the best first half opportunity, a free header 8 yards out, but unfortunately straight into the keepers hands.

In the second half we pushed and on another day maybe Femi Seriki or Tyrese Campbell stick their chances away. One takeaway from the past few weeks has been the improvement of our fitness. We went right to the end again. Once the full time whistle went the players decided to have a bit of a royal rumble with big Vini the main architect! No idea why.

The final bit of humour then came courtesy of Coach 2. Who is absolutely nowhere to be seen at the pick up location. A phone call later we find out he's parked next to the players entrance waiting for everyone to come out! Wavy day all round.

Today's Alternative man of the match - Jonny Gascoigne. You're going to be missed pal. Love ya.