Eastbourne Borough and their hardy fans enjoy the delights of Dulwich - this is proper non-league football

It’s never dull in Dulwich. Even a fairly low-key pre-season friendly at the South-East London club is a heap of fun, and a cheerful antidote to the commercialism and cynicism which infiltrates so much of our sport. Let’s take a non-league supporter’s view.

Mid-afternoon on Tuesday at Priory Lane, and a bunch of Borough loyalists have gathered on the car park. Some are expecting to be squeezed into a minibus for the two-hour ride from BN24 to SE22 – but interest had grown, and Borough CEO Alan Williams has magicked up an extremely posh coach for the thirty-odd fans.

They are the sort of cheerful cross-section that is the very hallmark of non-league football. Mick Grimer, one of the Langney Sports founding fathers, is there with club historian David Bauckham – who happens to have grown up just a couple of back gardens away from Hamlet’s Champion Hill ground.

Two ten-year-olds clamber aboard, gleefully clutching their enormous precious drum – which has been sniffily denied entry at some away grounds, but Dulwich are not that sort of club. Oh, and who should we find riding up front behind the driver, but Marion Shepherd – a former Deputy Lieutenant of East Sussex and the closest to royalty that a humble football club will ever come.

Admission is free tonight, but by downloaded ticket only – and for any fans challenged by the technology, supporters club head honcho Paul Fear has procured a bunch of tickets in advance.

Your Herald reporter had done all the right things, but his name still wasn’t on the media list – a capital offence at some grander clubs, but not the slightest issue with Hamlet’s cheerful gate staff.

Walk into the Champion Hill stadium, and you are among friends and fellow addicts. Until five years ago, the club had been locked out for several seasons in a dispute with the club’s then owner, but Hamlet are now back where they belong.

Not posh, not shiny-new, but home and as comfy as an old cardigan. The blue and purple livery is a little bit faded, and the grand old grandstand still has the painted distancing marking from the Covid years.

Everywhere, but everywhere, there are stickers and posters and memorabilia. Away fans, from dozens of clubs, have found odd corners to leave a club sticker behind, and nobody at Hamlet seems to mind. The long-standing link – since 1925! – with FC Altona of Hamburg is celebrated, too. But frankly, if you’re a proper football supporter from anywhere, you’ll feel at home.

In a rare moment of generosity, the Herald treats Mr Bauckham and Lady Marion to a cup of tea. That’s £3.75 – what, each? No, no, assures the tea-bar lady: “£1.25 each – teabags don’t cost very much!”

Gentle readers – including those who commute to bigger grounds – can you name me a Premier League stadium where you can buy a hot drink and get much change from a fiver? Non-league has its compensations!

Champion Hill at its best – for a key league fixture or a big FA Cup tie – is heaving with three and a half thousand in passionate purple and blue. This, of course, is a fairly low-key friendly, and the gate will not quite reach four figures. Plenty of room to circulate, or to choose your seat in the huge main stand. And, of course, utterly unsegregated.

I find myself next to Borough media man Anthony Scott on one side, and a scout from another, nameless, National South club – swirling the tip of his finger around his iPad as he notes Borough’s free-kick movements.

And the match? Ah yes, the match. Borough’s new management team of Matt Gray and Jason Goodliffe have climbed quite a mountain in this pre-season: an almost completely new squad, and a race against time.

This was the fifth of their six pre-season games – and results, although secondary, have been rather chastening: three defeats, then last Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Kingstonian, and now at last a victory.

There has been not only a massive change of personnel, but quite a culture change too. The eighteen months of Adam Murray were thrilling and dizzying, from tactics to TikTok. The immediate future is about Gray making his own mark and – very swiftly – building his own team to take the club forward.

Matt and No2 Jason are proper football guys, very slightly old-school perhaps, but none the worse for that. Have you ever noticed that, from Borough’s level upwards, you never see the manager taking the warm-up. Well, you certainly do with Gray and Goodliffe. They are out there, drilling the back four or sharpening up the passing routines.

It’s still summer, of course, so the shorts and club t-shirt are de rigeur – but you get that feeling that the Gaffer only keeps his best suit for weddings. And you even wonder if he could still do a job as a bustling striker…

It's the People’s Game, and the Sports clearly have a manager who is completely at one with the people around him, from the owner to the ten-year-old drummers. The new regime is taking shape, and it’s looking forward and not back.

And the match itself? Anthony Scott’s report tells the story of a strong opening by the Sports, with two splendidly taken goals in the first half-hour. Hamlet proved quick and combative opponents, grabbing a goal back through the ageless Danny Mills, and we turned around at 2-1.

Second-half chances came and went, as did a stream of substitutes, but the Sports stayed strong during a really useful outing, to notch the first victory of the new era.

And so, under streaked evening skies in dark blue and purple – a backdrop of Dulwich colours, in fact – the Borough band of supporters climbed aboard and headed home from the Hamlet, to arrive right on midnight.

Quick – we need a Shakespeare quote. “The iron tongue of midnight hath tolled twelve…” No, wrong play. Ho hum – ah yes, got it! “We know what we are” declares the Prince of Denmark, “but we know not what we may be…”

Yep – we may be in the top six by Christmas!