By Robert Vaughan at Champion Hill
Dulwich Hamlet 0-1 Godalming Town
And so begins what folklore will remember as the curse of the Brixton Blog!
Football, as with all cultural media, is consumed subjectively, but this game tested the boundaries of my own denouncement of logic. I left this match – the now sullied league bedsheets of our unbeaten home record unwashable – quite convinced of diagnosable problems.
Hamlet’s usual neat play was missing, replaced by the judderings of a team suddenly uncomfortable with itself. Flux more than flow. But this has been an issue for a month now.
Godalming (a corporeal slice of Albion itself, near Guildford I am informed), playing in a canary-mess of yellow and green, didn’t hamper Hamlet so much as Hamlet harnessed themselves.
This game seemed to be ebbing towards goalless stalemate, bereft of the penetrative euphoria that sticking the ball in the back of the net brings – and the consequently empty match reports on nearby hyperlocal blogs. But when it came it was the wrong way round. In the 59th minute Godalming grabbed a goal out of not very much and the smattering of away fans cheered with the plundersome glee of the unexpected.
Some good saves from the opposing goalie aside, Dulwich never truly grabbed this game by the ruff of its Shakespearean costume. Losing, and doing so rather drably, reveals a certain madness in your football fandom. It’s like staring into an abyss and being devastatingly underwhelmed by what you see. A Hamlet production far too heavy on the tragic. You find yourself silently mouthing the words, There was a protest against disability benefits cuts I could have gone to. There is little more rational then these lonely moments of footballing sobriety.
And glamorous seaside rivals Bognor Regis Town won, pulling ahead of our valiant misfiring transpontine heroes in the race for the title. Until next time, dear reader.
The next home match will be on Tuesday evening, at 7.45pm, against Erit
