Amex Stadium final could yet put gloss on Eastbourne Borough’s gloomy season
You thought it was all over? It isn't yet - or not quite. Eastbourne Borough's season, dramatic for most of the wrong reasons, has one - or possibly two - final twists.
Not this Saturday’s final National League fixture at Chelmsford - more of that to follow - but the improbable prospect of an Amex trip in May. The Sports have progressed to the semi-final of the Sussex Senior Cup, and that much-postponed game will finally be contested next Wednesday, April 29, at the Sussex FA headquarters at Lancing.
The fixture has been shelved and rescheduled around Borough's league schedule and by the availability - or not - of their semi-final opponents, Brighton and Hove Albion. The Seagulls field their Under-21 side in the competition, and the exact composition of Wednesday's two line-ups might be unclear until the day of the tie.
The Sports have a majority of their first-team squad out of contract after tomorrow's final league fixture, while Albion theoretically have a larger pool to draw on. So team selection will be interesting, to say the least.
But a final at the Amex represents an attractive prospect to round off this quite unreal season, and whoever pulls on a red (or pink) shirt on Wednesday will surely be eager to do Borough justice.
That final - briefly touted by some as a possible opener to the new season in August - has now been scheduled for Wednesday, May 13, so Steve King would have a further fortnight to keep his cup squad fit and ready to draw down the curtain on this most dramatic of seasons.
Oh, and in all the confusion, we had almost overlooked the small matter of the Final opponents! Three Bridges FC, after their own title-winning season, will be ready and waiting - and might just be Senior Cup favourites.
In any case Bridges and Borough are due to meet in the league next season.
King may privately be regarding the Senior Cup as a distraction, and Borough officials are truthfully weary of the long-running saga.
Meanwhile the Sports have one last game to cross off the fixture list: a visit tomorrow (Saturday) to Chelmsford City.
Until a week ago, the match might have mattered to the Clarets, but the Essex club have fallen just short of the National South play-offs.
With all games scheduled for a 12.30 kick-off, the relatively early start will have dampened the appetite among Borough's usual band of travelling supporters - who, on arrival, will find themselves segregated in a low stand on the "far side" of Chelmsford's rather forbidding Melbourne Stadium home.
The Clarets' ground, actually an athletics stadium, has a quite metallic and clanky feel, and Borough's record there under successive managers, is pretty awful.
Perhaps King's men - who have played with spirit and eagerness in recent games - can beat the odds and finish their 23-season National South record with a feisty victory.
And one post-script: while the Borough loyalists begin checking the routes to Carshalton or Cray Wanderers for the new season, Worthing fans will be packing Woodside Road to the rafters as the Rebels seek the final three points - against Ebbsfleet United - which will guarantee them promotion to the National League (and road trips to Scunthorpe and Hartlepool).
We wish both clubs - and all our local players, officials and supporters - a happy end of season, and a restful summer.
Can we start the countdown to the Tennis Week yet…?