The View from the Bar
Art’noon all. So here we go again, as our home league campaign gets underway for another season. And we’re not off to a bad start, with three points from our opening two away fixtures. If memory serves me, we had a pretty successful start to last season too… what could possibly go wrong?
Fantastic crowd last week, with 157 here for the Lymington match. Disappointing result, but hopefully everyone will be back today and throughout the season. Last year we were the third best supported side in the Wessex League (with an average of 136) despite our lowly league position. Absolutely brilliant support, and a testament to your loyalty – long may it continue (and we’ve got quite a run of home games coming up, so you’ve plenty of opportunity to demonstrate it in the coming weeks…)
On the subject of support, it’s quite likely there’ll be a few old faces in the stand today (who haven’t been up here for 25 years or so), as there’s a Cowes High School reunion (1989 leavers) going on tonight and I think I’ve cajoled a few of them into a return visit to Westwood while they’re back on the Island.
One familiar face who sadly won’t be here today is that of Keith Hill – otherwise known as Mr Bashley – who succumbed to pancreatic cancer a couple of weeks ago. Always vociferous and outspoken, he was exactly the sort of character every club needs (but only a few are lucky enough to have) and typified the passion that exists for many clubs at our level. He was always a master of winding up opposition supporters too (especially with his online match reports) and I myself had more than a couple of exchanges with him where, shall we say, we agreed to disagree. He’ll be sadly missed at Bashley, and across the league. RIP Keith.
Anyone who can help out with distributing or putting up a match poster or two please give me a nudge today, as I’ll have the latest batch of match posters for distribution. They’re a fantastic way of raising our profile in the community, (and also help boost the attendance, of course), so if you know of a shop, pub, club, business or even a house or car window where a poster could be displayed, please do what you can to help out.
Enjoy the game.
Toby.