View from the Bar – v AFC Portchester 04-01-20

The View from the Bar

New year, new decade, but a familiar challenge facing us here at Westwood. We’ve had some almighty battles and heroic efforts to keep us in the top tier over recent years. Can we do it again? Well, watch this space, but I’ll be here watching with you and, win, lose or draw, there’s really nowhere in the world that I’d rather be at 3pm on a Saturday than right here. Thank-you all for that, you all play your part. I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and here’s wishing a happy and healthy new year to you all.
With that in mind, see below a lovely little bit of old club ephemera I found on ebay recently, a Christmas card from 1962 from the old Supporters’ Club. I just love bits and pieces like this, and I may try and organise a ‘heritage day’ later in the season to show off and share bits and pieces from the club collection, if there’s the interest. Keep reminding me about that and it might just happen…
Early on in the season we enjoyed our first ever win at Portchester’s Crest Finance stadium. Since then our fortunes have somewhat gone in opposite directions, but I’m sure it’ll be a keenly contested game today, especially with the Cowes front line reinvigoured by the welcome return of Jared Wetherick. He scored a cracker in our game at Lymington last week, and although we eventually lost out, there were plenty of positives to be taken from the game. From what I can remember. It was a bit of a big day out, you see…
A special welcome to Portchester boss Mick Catlin today who, as well as leading one of the strongest sides in Wessex football, has also shown excellent taste in music over the past twelve months. You all know the excellent (and one day will be massive) Island band Plastic Mermaids, right? I bumped into him at one of their shows in Portsmouth earlier this year and we managed a good, not-too-partisan chat. Might try and sneak one of their songs onto the PA today, if I can wrestle the keys off Mick the mic.
Enjoy the game.
Toby.