Southampton v Pompey

Travel and match report by Ross Young

The day started with an early alarm clock for all to ensure that we arrived in Pompey in time to get on our bubble Coach that very kindly agreed to pick all 59 of us up from The Hard Interchange, as opposed to the other 3 pick up points (Due to our reliance on certain IOW Ferry operators). I personally could not find any fault with the club' and Police force' organisation of this transport bubble. The entire day felt very well organised, and the club representatives on our coach ensured what should have been a very tedious trip was actually good fun. Upon our arrival we were greeted by Portsmouth FC's own matchday stewards which I felt was a nice touch. Less kind words can be said about the concession stands at St Mary's stadium. The queues were enormous, and they had very little organisation considering they knew how many Portsmouth fans would be in attendance, as well as how much a lot of us like a pint, or multiple ones (myself included)

The match itself was a not so surprisingly cautious affair with neither team wanting to concede a goal. The first half we were very much the better team and could have easily been 1-0 up at half time had it not been for some poor decision making in the final third. Unfortunately, some even worse decision making in our defensive third lead to an incident in which Nicolas Schmid collided with Connor Ogilvie and resulted in both of them being injured (Schmid unfortunately for 2-3 months with a broken hand) This lead to Ben Killip stepping in for Schmid and later Jordan Williams coming on for Ogilvie at half time. 

The second half was a much more balanced game overall. You could tell when certain players were getting tired as we started to concede silly chances through careless passing being intercepted. Thankfully though we made the correct substitutions and saw the game out for a well earned point away. It could have been 3 points if Colby Bishop managed to get his foot onto a late cross but unfortunately it wasn't to be, and the match finished a goaless draw. 

Our fans were superb and sung loudly throughout the game, doing the club proud. I'm looking forward to the return fixture at Fratton were I'm hopeful of us getting a better result against them.

The return travel was very much the same as the outbound travel and other than having to wait to depart we had a very quick trip back to Pompey, and had a couple of well earned drinks in the pub before getting the ferry home.

Lastly I would like to extend a massive thanks to Steve Lacey for organising this whole trip (and for kindly letting me have a lift to the ferry with him)