Hawks 3 Welling 0 – what a difference 182 days make as Doswell’s latest new-look squad lift curtain on National League South season in style

Sam Pearce and Steve Ramsey, now reunited at AFC Portchester, were in the team when Hawks had last collected three points on day one - Lee Peacock scoring within two minutes of his debut at Boreham Wood in August 2011.

Prior to that, it had been 17 years to the day since Hawks last won on the opening day in front of their own fans.

That was a 1-0 victory over Newport with Dean Holdsworth grabbing a seventh minute decider (for stats fans, that was also the time when James Roberts netted the opener against Welling).

What a difference one hundred and eighty two days make. That was how long it had been since Hawks’ last National League South match - at home to Ebbsfeet on February 13.

Back then, during the third national lockdown when hope wasn’t really springing eternal, the small band of club officials and media present had to wear masks, we had our temperatures taken at the turnstile, it was a bitterly cold day and Hawks lost 2-1 in a game featuring five red cards, including both managers. With the sixth tier null and voided, to no-one’s real surprise, five days later it proved a sour end to a highly forgettable few months.

Football without fans is not exactly nothing, but game after game after game played out to a backdrop of near empty stadia was no fun, not for the players, the managers, the bank balances or journalists from The News.

One hundred and eighty two days on, the sun beat down on Westleigh Park, supporters were back - for only the third time in a league game at the ground in 518 days - there were few masks on show and no need for temperature checks. Oh, and the frustrations of 2020/21 were replaced by early-season smiles from Hawks players, management, officials and supporters. On days like this, unless you had anything to do with Welling, football is just great.

Of course, one swallow doesn’t a summer make. Ask Shaun Gale. He oversaw the win at Boreham Wood a decade ago, promptly picked up one point from his next six games and was sacked before the season was over with Hawks hovering perilously close to the relegation zone.

And harder tests lie ahead for Paul Doswell’s men - 39 harder tests probably, as Welling were poor and offered very little as an attacking threat - but … searches for book of sporting cliches … you can only beat what’s in front of you, and Hawks were excellent virtually from start to finish. Though it’s early days, the team have more pace than they did last season – energetic wing-backs Joe Newton and Josh Passley contributing greatly to this – and Scott Rendell and Tommy Wright could form an impressive partnership.

One hundred and eighty two days on, something else had changed as well - the Hawks squad. Of the 14 players who had featured against Ebbsfleet, 10 had since left. Only Wright started that game and the Welling one - of the others who have survived Doswell’s latest squad cull, Sam Magri was injured, Billy Clifford was on the bench and Theo Widdrington was starting a three-game ban for his red card against Fleet.

New-look teams, however, are nothing new for the Hawks boss. In his first league game, coincidentally also home to Welling in August 2019, there were nine debutants in the starting XI and five more on the opening day of 2020/21 (plus two more off the bench).

Last week’s double swoop for Crawley defender Manny Adebowale, on loan, and free agent Oscar Gobern took Doswell’s close season signings to 14. Of those, 11 featured against Welling, including two subs. Two others were unused subs with only the injured Jamie Collins missing out totally.

Only Wright and keeper Ross Worner from Saturday’s starting XI were at the club when the curtain was yanked down on 2020/21, clubs (rightfully) deciding they couldn’t continue without some Government funding. Only Worner has appeared for the Hawks on the opening day in the last three seasons - injury preventing Magri, the squad’s other ‘veteran’, from doing the same.

The giant Adebowale - watched from the stand by his Crawley assistant manager Lee Bradbury, the former Hawks boss - started in a 3-4-1-2 formation due to injuries to Magri and Collins. It was his first competitive game since an FA Cup tie against AFC Bournemouth last January, the same month that Gobern had last appeared in the National League for Dover.

But then most of these players have hardly played since the pandemic started to put the world in its stranglehold. This was only Hawks’ 16th league game, including a play-off semi-final, since March 14, 2020.

Other clubs have played even less - Moneyfields’ game against Blackfield & Langley at the weekend was just their sixth league fixture in over 500 days; Gosport Borough’s remarkable win against Poole Town, ex-Hawk Brad Tarbuck (who featured in Doswell’s first squad) scoring an injury-time winner, was only their eighth in the same period and their first since last October.

So many non-league clubs, so many at the heart of their local communities, have survived without gate money and bar revenues for so long. It is my fervent hope that the turnstiles keep on turning and the pints keep on flowing at Westleigh Park, Privett Park, Dover Road and all our other local grassroots clubs in the months to come.

With that in mind, I was slightly surprised to see the Hawks’ crowd for Welling was ‘just’ 867. Admittedly, that is more than double the attendance for the club’s previous opening day home win in 2004 (429, v Newport) and also up on the 599 who saw the first home game in 2011/12 (also v Welling) following the success at Boreham Wood. It is also better than the 549 who saw the Hawks’ first ever home league game in August 1998 (also v Newport).

It was, though, well down on the 1,348 who turned up to watch the 1-1 draw with Welling in Doswell’s first match two years earlier.

Perhaps there are good reasons - Pompey were home at the weekend (they were at Shrewsbury on the same day in 2019), it was a rare sunny Saturday in what has been one of the wettest summers in living memory (just ask the local cricketers if you don’t believe me), and some people might still not feel hugely safe attending a football match alongside hundreds of other (non-masked) spectators. The pandemic has not suddenly gone away just because a new football season has began (Bradbury was also present because Crawley’s EFL game with Harrogate was postponed due to positive Covid test results in the latter’s camp).

Perhaps there are also a group who have become used to not attending football matches in the last 17 months. Perhaps, and we cannot ignore this, there are those who cannot afford it any more (£15 for an adult to watch National League South football is not cheap, though a Hawks season ticket slashes the cost to just £7.50 per game).

Hawks will hope that as the season progresses, more supporters will be tempted to return. They will have to wait, though, as the next home game isn’t until September 11. And if the entertainment value is as high as the Welling victory, they won’t leave feeling they haven’t had good value for money.