THIS WEEKEND’S MATCH PREVIEW – HAMPTON AND RICHMOND BOROUGH (AWAY)

Off to Hampton this Saturday as Dulwich Hamlet prepare to get their teeth into the Beavers...

THIS WEEKEND’S MATCH PREVIEW – HAMPTON AND RICHMOND BOROUGH (AWAY)

It’s been a strange old season for the Beavers, rock bottom early doors they bade farewell to joint-bosses Paul Barry and Darren Powell who resigned after a 3-2 defeat against fellow Ryman Strugglers VCD Athletic prematurely ejected them from the FA Cup.

The football season had barely begun, yet Hampton and Richmond had already endured a chaotic season. A poor start left The Beavers contemplating relegation and a management change.

The season opened with a tough trip to moneybags Margate, a battling 1-0 defeat against a team packed with higher level experience seemed respectable. However the floodgates opened back at the Beveree as Borough conceded four goals in each of their first three home matches losing to Wingate and Finchley, Witham Town and Grays Athletic. Between these traumatic experiences defeat against another of the ante post promotion favourites Maidstone United meant zero points from five straight defeats.

Wins over Lewes and Harrow Borough, both by the odd goal in three followed by a determined 2-2 draw at Champion Hill in front of nearly 3000 fans, substitute Paris Mason’s 94th-minute equaliser sending all but the pocket of joyous Beaver fans home disappointed. Three games unbeaten and the candle of hope was lit again. However the weakness at the back returned to haunt them in a topsy-turvy 6-4 reverse at the Beveree to Leiston. The exit from the FA Cup away to VCD [proved the final straw for the dugout double act of Barry and Powell.

Swiftly the Beavers moved to fill the gap bringing in former Kingstonian manager, Alan Dowson, as the new number one in the Beveree dugout. The former K’s boss had shocked Kingsmeadow with his departure in May after over seven years at the helm but the affable Geordie was never going to find much solace in kicking his heels at home. At the time of Dowson’s appointment Hampton were third from bottom with eight points from ten games but, inspired by the new supremo, picked up a point in his first game in charge – a 2-2 away to high-flying Hendon.

The Beavers began to rise up the table but still something wrong in bucolic suburbia. It was snakes and ladders as a slew of wins would lift them up the table only for a poor run of defeats to knock them back down gain. At one point they crept into the top ten, ironically after a 2-1 win over VCD Athletic, only for back to back 3-0 defeats away to the Met Police and Bognor Regis Town to halt the upward advance whilst Grays ended the FA Trophy bubble also with a 3-0 win.

There came another revival – one defeat in four steadied the ship but since a 2-2 draw away to Wingate and Finchley, the Beavers seem to lost their cutting edge failing to win for another six outings before last Saturday’s 2-1 win at home to “manager-less” Harrow Borough.

This afternoon’s game kicks off at 3.00 pm at the Beveree Stadium, Beaver Close, Hampton, Middlesex, TW12 2XB

ADMISSION PRICES

• Adults £10.00
• Concessions £5.00
• Child 4-16 £5.00