The Bostik Friday Interview: The only way is up for Worthing

When we featured Worthing FC Owner/Chairman George Dowell as the subject of our very first Bostik Friday Interview at the beginning of July, the idea was that no-one from Worthing- let alone George- would feature in the slot again this season. Two months later here we are speaking to him once more, as a campaign that was approached with enormous optimism has gone so badly off the rails that we felt it was necessary to get some clarity about the goings-on at Woodside Road.

Everything that could have gone wrong seems to have gone wrong. On 9th August, three days before the start of the new season, it was announced that the club’s 3G pitch had failed a FIFA quality inspection and couldn't be used until the situation was rectified. Since then Worthing have had to play every match away from home, including their one ‘home’ game against Margate which had to be played at Bognor Regis Town’s Nyewood Lane. Eight games played, eight defeats, and now managerless after the resignation of Gary Elphick, is there a light at the end of a seemingly endless tunnel?

We caught up with George the day after the Mackerel Men’s latest defeat; a 4-2 reverse at Dorking Wanderers which was overseen by former Worthing player and coach John Lock, in temporary charge whilst the club look for Elphick’s replacement.

First and foremost then, what exactly is wrong with the pitch?

It all boils down to the fact that the sub base- the layer on which everything else is laid- doesn’t drain properly. Because of that puddles sit on the surface and these end up making the ground underneath uneven, which of course transfers through onto the playing surface. That needs to be put right. I can’t go into too much detail as the situation has legal ramifications, but we’ve been told it isn’t fit for competitive matches- although we are still able to train on it, and the development centre is still using it.

You had a meeting, led by F.I.F.A., last week to discuss the matter. How did that go, and what was the outcome?

Everyone around the table last week was clear that they wanted to get us back at Woodside as quickly as possible, and the aim is that we’ll be playing at home again during October. We’re still waiting to hear the details of how that will happen, but that’s something that F.I.F.A have control over, so we’re waiting for them to come back to us.

How are you coping financially? Not being able to play at home, losing the ability for other sides to play competitive matches at the stadium- it must be hitting you badly in the pocket?

I suppose we’re lucky that it happened at the beginning of the season. We’ve had the sponsorship money in, the season ticket money, etc. Cashflow is a problem, but what we have in reserve has seen us through until this point and hopefully will tide us over until we get our home games back at home. We are, however, losing income dramatically. Hopefully we’ll be able to claw that back at some point.

You made such progress over the last couple of years; indeed you had an average of 660 last year which was quite phenomenal. Only two hundred and fifty six were at your first ‘home’ match at Bognor. If this goes on for too much longer are you in danger of losing some of the local interest that you’ve built up?

That’s what’s worrying me more than anything else- what’s the reaction going to be when we come back? We knew the numbers would drop, Bognor isn’t Worthing, after all. We’ve tried to reverse as many fixtures as we could, playing teams away that we should have played at home, but obviously the League wouldn’t let us do that indefinitely so we’ll have to play three or four games at Bognor and that will reduce our support and our income. We just hope it’ll only be three or four games, as if it goes on much longer than that we will be in real trouble. We don’t have the reserves to do this indefinitely. Normally we’d have income from the first team, and we hire the pitch out to a number of youth teams, and most of that is gone.

Away from the saga with the pitch and looking at the first team, results have been terrible. What’s gone wrong? Is it just the fact that you can’t play at home?

I don’t think it’s got anything to do with that, so to say otherwise would be a poor excuse. Perhaps if we were three months into the season and still hadn’t played a home game then yes, it might have had an impact, but to start the season as poorly as we have…the team just hasn’t been good enough. Recruitment wasn’t good enough or thorough enough, we seem to have brought in players on recommendation rather than signing people who Gary had seen for himself. I’m sure he’ll learn from that in the future.

He can’t learn from that at Worthing though, because he resigned last weekend. Did you see that coming?

In a word, yes. We’d had a number of conversations about the way the season was going, and we’d discussed it at board level. We have enormous affection for Gary but it wasn’t working on the pitch, and we were about at the point where we’d have had to put the club’s interests first. It wasn’t just the results, it seemed like we were losing our identity on the pitch, and when things went wrong it didn’t seem as if there was a plan to put it right. We were signing players on a Friday and playing them on a Saturday, everything was becoming disjointed, relationships between the players and between the club and the fans were becoming strained- people would be looking at the team and not really knowing who they were, what they were about. It was coming to a head, and it’s fair to say that Gary left as we were about to act. We all got on really well, and the change would have been amicable, but we all knew it was coming.

There was a story doing the rounds of social media that Gary had a row with the supporters on Saturday. Was that the case?

No. He went over to them after the game to apologise, and a few of them were shouting at him, but he just held his hands up and apologised, said that he wished he could have done more for the fans and for the club, and that he couldn’t get a reaction from the dressing room so it was time for him to leave. A few of the fans had some harsh words to say to him, but he didn’t have a row with them.

Do you expect to have a new manager in place before your next game on Sunday?

Not by Sunday, but hopefully by the following Saturday. We’ve spoken to one candidate already, we’d like to speak to a couple more, and ideally we’d like the new man in place before we take on Wingate and Finchley on 23rd September.

Looking forward to the rest of the season then, if you get back home for October and get a new manager in place shortly, what are your aims?

Well we wouldn’t be telling our prospective new manager that we were just aiming for survival, if that’s what you’re asking! We want to win as many games as we can, and push as far up the table as possible. We’re not in a relegation battle yet so we’re not treating the situation as a crisis- we just want to fix it before it becomes one!

Do you envisage a wholesale shake up of the squad?

I’d like to have a Sussex based team. There are a number of good players in the county who I think we could be looking at, and who would be good enough to improve our squad without breaking the bank. I know it isn’t always as easy as that, but when you have players travelling in from London, unavailable for social get togethers, unable to travel with the team, then it means the squad doesn’t have the relationships it should have, they aren’t as closely bonded. The season we got promoted from the South Division the furthest away any of our squad members lived from the club was Crawley, half an hour up the road. I think that makes a real difference.

Worthing take on Staines Town on Sunday in Bognor Regis, before travelling the short distance along the coast to Shoreham in the Velocity Trophy on Tuesday evening. Perhaps one of those matches might just kick start their season? But actually, all things considered, perhaps results on the field are the smallest part of the problem. Here’s hoping that the situation with the pitch gets sorted out very quickly, before it undoes any more of the hard work that George and his team have put in over the last few years.

There will be no Bostik Friday Interview next week as the author is on holiday. However there will be a full series of supporter features running Monday to Friday.

This interview is not to be reproduced without permission.