stevegrant

4 out of 15 so far, so they've not done too badly, tbf. Turned out to be a decent day for Hampshire, couldn't believe it when the current partnership reaching 150 meant it was a record 5th wicket against Middlesex that had stood since the 1920s, absolutely mad that a relatively modest record stood for so long. That Vince LBW decision was annoying as he was going along quite nicely, other than him having come down the wicket quite a long way, it seemed fairly difficult to tell from the footage whether it was a reasonable decision, the path of the ball was partially obscured by the umpire.

And probably rightly so when we have three 50-wickets-a-season seamers who don't play any white ball cricket.

One of the few good things about the two most recent ticketing systems the club has utilised is that they've allowed supporters to pick their specific seats for away games as well as home ones. While it's not technically illegal, it is in direct contravention of the current Ground Regulations, which must be seen to be enforced by the club in order for it to retain its various safety certificates for the stadium. It's been a lot more "light touch" in the Northam for years now, but the club cannot be seen to be promoting any sort of "standing section" until they have got planning permission and sign-off from whichever department of the city council deals with the safety enforcement. They'd effectively be saying "we don't care about the regulations we've agreed to", which tends not to be an attitude that goes down well.

Is Fuller properly fit, or have we thrown him in there as there aren't any other vaguely reliable bowlers available at the moment? His over and Whiteley eating up dot balls for fun again was ultimately the difference. Kent probably aren't as bad as their position in the table looks, but once you get beyond the top 3 there's not a lot of batting there - we were probably 10-15 short with the bat, and then that one big over for 21 killed us.

Tom Prest is surely next batting cab off the rank. Personally I'd put him in ahead of Donald or Whiteley anyway, especially in conditions that end up being relatively spinner-friendly.

I suspect the choice there is one of three: Will Jacks, Rehan Ahmed, or nobody. With Stokes surely unlikely to be fit to bowl (the claims that he'll be able to at Edgbaston are absolute horseshit from anybody who watched him in the field against Ireland ), and the wickets seemingly going to be pretty flat as per Stokes' "Bazball" wish, we might just make do with Joe Root being able to get through a few overs of spin and to pick another seamer.

While Crane's output this year has been weaker than previous, the balance in our team is provided by having the two spinners eating up 8 overs. Dawson rarely goes for runs, so if Crane leaks a few but takes wickets I imagine we'll still take that. The existence of Ross Whiteley continues to baffle me, maybe he's the one that makes way when Howell is fit, whenever that might be.

It's weird that so many clubs in this country seem to have (or have had, they're getting a bit better with this) a Director of Football who answers directly to the manager/head coach, rather than the other way around. The clue is in the job title, DIRECTOR, which means they're at board level, where all the footballing staff, including the first team manager/head coach, report into the Director of Football. As you rightly say, the DoF should ideally be the most powerful individual on the footballing side of the business. However, there should really be a blend of collaboration and delegation - dedicated recruitment staff, for example, but broad agreement among the DoF, head coach, scouts, etc, as to what skillsets and compatibility with playing styles they're looking for. It's a tough balance, but you can't really have a manager who gets everything he/she wants even if it deviates from the agreed systems/styles because if/when that manager leaves, some of those players are redundant; similarly, you can't have recruitment staff just going off and signing players without some sort of agreement with the coaching staff, because that's a waste of time and money, and erodes trust in the group. With Jason Wilcox coming in as DoF, he's the guy who has to be the "face" of this new setup, we have to assume that he has had an input into the recent hires and the near-completed hire of Russell Martin. Wilcox takes the responsibility to put all of this together, and he needs to ensure that everyone is on the same page from the word go.

Good that they've got a proper Direct Debit scheme set up this season, unlike last season's recurring card payment thing which didn't work at least once early in the season.

Who?

Yeah I think so - realistically they had to give a little bit back to people after the absolute shitshow of this season. Some won't renew regardless of the price, but these prices (especially on the price-per-game ratio) should retain most of those who might have been wavering a bit.

Literally one pound cheaper would have made it a 6% saving - how did nobody at the club check this?! In fact, the club hasn't actually mentioned a minimum reduction in any of its comms - email or website article.

Just the last year's inflation would put it somewhere near that, I reckon

I think I paid something like £455 in our last Championship season, we had two fairly significant increases in a row (around £100 each time, I think) with the back-to-back promotions.

With Pusey and Lumsden both leaving, got to assume there'll be strikers incoming. Defence was absolutely fine all season, goalscoring was the very obvious problem that needs solving if there's to be any sort of promotion push. Also interesting that Leeta Rutherford and Ciara Watling aren't on either retained or released list, neither have featured for some time now... 🤔 Big game in the WSL at the weekend, Spurs v Reading - if Reading win, they go level with Spurs and it would mean there's a point separating the bottom 3 (Leicester also down there). As funny as it would be for Spurs to get relegated (having spent £250k signing Beth England from Chelsea in January), it would probably be disastrous for the Championship as their resources would probably see them run away with the league, leaving the rest with not much to play for.

Jesus wept, grow up. Everyone in the away end stands anyway, it'll make absolutely no difference.

That's perhaps the only corner that could work, but it still wouldn't be a proper "corner" like at Leicester. There is, I think, a vertical fence that starts above that entrance tunnel (which is predominantly for emergency vehicles) which would be a natural segregation point, which would basically mean the away section would be the blocks from that fence around to some point along the Kingsland touchline. I still think it'll never happen because the police would rather not create potential ambush points, which that industrial estate probably is, and Britannia Road allows much quicker exit for the coaches. The Itchen North concourse currently caters for blocks 1-6 (maybe 7 too?), and is - in my opinion - far too small to cater comfortably for that number anyway. It has only one set of turnstiles. As a result, it cannot be segregated. There's also precisely zero chance that they would allow an away section right next to or in front of corporate hospitality. People tried that when we first moved to St Mary's in 2001. The problem was that there was no real organised movement to ensure that the most vocal element went to one specific place, so some went either side of the away section in the Northam and Itchen North, and some initially went to the Chapel, but presumably saw the way the wind was blowing and ended up moving to the Northam. Probably fair to assume there are some that just want to be close to the away fans, so you can count those people out already. To be honest, I think a lot of people have been where they are for years now and just don't want to up sticks and move.

It equates to the same problem. The existing concourses can be partitioned to an extent - as seen in the Northam, that can be increased and decreased where necessary by using the metal shutters - but in all four corners of the stadium there is no public way of people moving between concourses, there's literally just a small door between each. Each stand is separated by walls of concrete, and obviously these are massive supporting structures for the entire building, you can't just knock them down.

But it's not an identical design at all. Similar number of seats and built by the same company, certainly, but anyone who has been in the away end at Leicester will not recognise the layout there as being anything we have in place at St Mary's. Their stadium was built with the away section in the corner factored in from the start. St Mary's evidently was not, given where the police control room is located. The layout of the stadium under the stands making it nigh-on impossible to do what people seem to think is a piece of piss and just move them round to take up the corner blocks. You have the ticket office plus other offices and rooms in that corner of the stadium, with no turnstiles able to service a segregated corner. Perhaps the only corner where it might be manageable would be the Northam/Kingsland corner, but then you have access issues because that corner is where a large portion of home fans arrive at the ground, and away fans would naturally have to cross paths with home fans to get back to coaches parked in Britannia Road.

It would be interesting to know what White's job description entails, really. Assuming he has no input on selection or coaching, considering I think we've only signed Ben Brown in the last two years (which rather fell into our lap because of his situation at Sussex), what is he actually doing? Tough decisions should have been made about certain individuals for the good of the team. We moved Lewis McManus on to Northamptonshire seemingly at the drop of a hat because we felt his batting wasn't up to scratch, and got Brown in, so it suggests that the sometimes-brutal decisions can be made. If Joe Weatherley isn't going to be playing first XI cricket, he should be out on loan in Division 2 getting games against proper bowlers, same with the likes of Aneurin Donald and Mason Crane. We also seem to have an absolute fuckton of white-ball-only players: from the squad page on the club website, it's Ellis, Howell, McDermott, Whiteley and Wood. That's a LOT of salary cap being used on players who aren't eligible for the County Championship.

It's still there, but eventually there was always going to come a point where the bowlers couldn't bail out the failing batsmen. With Abbas, Abbott and Barker in the team, if one had a slight off day it could be absorbed by the other two. With Barker out injured, we're now relying on Fuller (fast and hostile but erratic) and Holland (nagging line but often ineffective) picking up the slack of a guy who got 50+ wickets last year. Throw in a continued failing top order plus the usual bailout all-rounders pissing their wickets away on day one, and it's not a great combination. If Organ isn't going to bowl, what's the point in him being in the side? Even Joe Weatherly looked more likely to score runs, Toby Albert got a double hundred for the 2s the other day, so we've got alternatives there. Or we stick Holland back up the top of the order again as another sticking plaster once Barker is fit again. For a supposedly ambitious and forward-looking county, it's insane that we didn't go out and try to sign a new opening batsman in the winter. It was so obviously the weak point in the team last year, probably the sole reason we didn't win the title given the difference in batting bonus points earned.

Morning session was pretty good, Middleton and Gubbins were watchful but took advantage of anything slightly off line, but after lunch the Warwickshire bowlers were a lot tighter with their lines, which brought a flurry of LBWs early in the afternoon. We managed to get a couple of useful partnerships going but both Holland and Fuller gave their wickets away - Holland with a half-hearted pull which ended in the hands of Briggs on the deep fine leg boundary, and Fuller stupidly ran himself out going for a quick single that was never on. Felix Organ again failed, is he going to be our Zak Crawley? Only really works if we're still winning games in spite of his lack of contributions...