The English talent for hospitality was on full display at Southampton Airport (Parkway) railway station.
The Pumpkin franchise in the station building was closed. It would have done a roaring trade. On a Saturday afternoon the station was busy, with people waiting for trains on one side and a ‘rail replacement service’ to Bournemouth on the other. Its cheerless platforms were swept by chilly north-easterlies and periodic squalls of rain; the small station hall, with its shuttered Pumpkin, was the obvious place to go.
But wait! Southampton Airport (Parkway)… might the name contain a clue? Across the footbridge, barely 100 metres away, stood the terminal building of an international airport.
According to the screen in the Arrivals hall a flight from Salzburg was due. Travellers from the birthplace of Mozart could have been forgiven for turning round and going straight back. The Costa was screened off, and a small group of young people was engaged in desultory conversation which did not, apparently, include plans to re-open. Alongside, something called The Globe Bar & Kitchen looked as if it had last entertained guests in Tony Blair’s second term.
That left WH Smith. With due respect to the nation’s most dogged seller of odd stuff that nobody seems to want any more, you know you’re in the wrong place when WH Smith is the only food and drink option. I bought a chicken and bacon wrap and a Tribe protein flapjack bar, raspberry flavour, from a young man who, coincidentally, was eating.
Away supporters travelling by train to Eastleigh FC are advised to use Southampton Airport (Parkway) station. I hesitate to contradict anybody, let alone recognised authorities, but I’d advise them to use Eastleigh. Yes, it appears to be much further away, but it is less so in practice and, in any case, they’ll find places open in Eastleigh on a Saturday afternoon.
The distance factor is annoying. By the straightest route, Eastleigh FC would be only a few minutes’ walk from Southampton Airport (Parkway). But that route would involve fast, busy roads with no footpaths. The safe alternative is a walk of about half an hour around three sides of a square. It’s scenic – the University of Southampton Sports Centre, the Lakeside Country Park – but in the end only about 15 minutes longer than the walk from Eastleigh railway station.
I got off the train at Eastleigh to have a look at the place. That was out of guilt. I had already left an earlier train at Winchester, two stops up the line, reasoning that there would be more opportunities for football tourism in the ancient capital of Wessex than in, well, Eastleigh.
Police attended Eastleigh railway station in discreet pairs. Evidently they expected Oldham Athletic fans either to ignore the Southampton Airport (Parkway) advice or to be unaware of it. On the other hand, it didn’t look as if any serious trouble was anticipated. Or perhaps, it occurs to me, the police routinely patrol Eastleigh town centre on a Saturday lunchtime.
It’s a nondescript sort of town with attractive, quirky details. One side of the otherwise undistinguished Market Street is sheltered by an elegant arcade. There’s a crumbling Art Deco picture palace above a profoundly depressed shop. On the High Street, a garish local museum – closed by lack of funding – fulminates against the local authorities on posters in its dusty windows.
You still have a little way to go, but you’re on the home straight. Allow yourself one last distraction… the clock on the church tower of St Nicolas; it only has one hand. To make sure you notice, it has the words ‘One Hand Clock’ all over its face. And now you’re almost there. For what it’s worth.
Eastleigh 1 Oldham Athletic 0
Silverlake Stadium, 11 March 2023