Havant & Waterlooville vs Poole Town – Match Preview
What a relief it was to see Tyrique Clarke’s 94th minute long-range strike find the top corner of the Basingstoke net to give us a hard-earned win, the first since 9th November. Deservedly Tyrique’s goal is currently leading the voting in the Pitching-In goal of the week poll with 51% of the votes.
Speaking to Chris Reeves before the game he commented on how the atmosphere and levels of energy and enthusiasm have risen sharply since Joe & Pat took over. To beat Basingstoke who were in 9th place ahead of the game and boasting a solid away record was no mean feat.
That win pulls us up into 15th place in the table (P25 W7 D8 L10 29 points) but does not hide the fact that we are joint lowest scorers in the league with Tiverton Town on 25 goals.
It was again very encouraging to see some committed performances from Ben Taylor, Harvey Slade and Christos Batzelis in particular but the man of the match award went to Tom Hewlett who is really making an impression since he has been given the chance. He has now made 25 appearances scoring 4 goals. He has had much to cope with on his football journey to date including a leg break whilst on the books at Burton Albion, which kept him out of the game for 18 months. He started the 2023/24 season on loan at National League North side Hereford before having spells at Long Eaton United and Stratford Town. At the end of the 2023/24 season, Tom was offered a contract extension at Burton Albion but turned it down in favour of joining the Dolphins.
With no mid-week game, we now turn our attention to the trip to Westleigh Park where we will take on Havant & Waterlooville. The Hawks are well placed to secure a play-off spot, they are currently 5th (P24 W11 D7 L6 40 points) and have lost just the once at home so far this season. That defeat came last Saturday when they went down 1-0 to title chasing Merthyr, this broke their unbeaten home record of 280days.
The Hawks are managed by the very experienced Shaun North who joined them in a new role from neighbours and now EFL Championship side Portsmouth FC after working in John Mousinho’s EFL League One title winning side last campaign. Shaun holds a UEFA Pro-Licence, the highest coaching accolade in European football and takes his wealth of experience to the Hawks possessing over 20-years of coaching with Pompey across multiple spells, amongst other coaching and management experience.
In the reverse fixture on 15th October, we went down 1-0. The match was pretty much decided on penalties, former Havant & Waterlooville captain Jake McCarthy missed for the Dolphins in the first half whilst Harvey Bradbury scored theirs to take the points. We came close to taking a point late on with a significant chance but unfortunately that was also missed.
The Hawks have two strikers in the Pitching-In top scorers top 10. Harvey Bradbury and Ryan Seager are both on 10 goals and share 5th place in that table.
This promises to be another challenging match but as we know we are more than capable of finding a performance that will give us something from the game.
Enjoy the match
Neil Wellington.