Disarray

The next few days after returning from Norway proved to be some of the most stressful, frustrating and desperate times that I've encountered at Hampton so far. In the course of five friendlies - four of which were played at our new Lakeside Stadium home - the team conceded 22 goals, and failed to salvage even a draw out of any of them.

It was an embarrassing opening for our new stadium, where we'd assembled a media weekend to allow the Peterborough press to evaluate our new team and facilities. Our opening game was palatable - a 3-1 defeat to Moss Rose was perhaps to be expected, but we created many chances and held a fair percentage of the possession. What followed against Lesoot United was little short of a shambles.

The match got off to an inauspicious start, and despite a couple of early Lesoot goals from Bryan and Kenia, Hampton fought their way back to trail 2-1 at the interval, thanks to a goal from Marian Pahars. It was at this point that things started to go horribly wrong.

I should've mentioned that the club's financial situation, which had blighted my trip to Norway, hadn't improved. The club was currently operating on a £61,000 per week wage budget; nothing too stressful, as the weekly payments from the FA should outweigh that. However, the FA only gives income to clubs which have an official ranking, and as we'd played only a handful of games, we didn't yet qualify for a cash injection.

Until now, the club had been getting by, and I'd been desperately lining up enough friendlies for the club to earn a world ranking. However, today was the day that our precarious financial position became clear for all to see.

I was in the home dressing room, giving the boys a pep-talk ahead of the second half against Lesoot. "That was a tough first 45 minutes, but I think that Marian's late goal has shown us that there is light at the end of the tunnel."

At that moment, there was a power cut.

I hoped that it was just the changing rooms which had been effected, but as I staggered slowly through the dark stadium hallways, it became clear that this was a widespread problem. Struggling to find my way to pitchside, I instead headed for the room where I could hear the most noise. There was a ruckus coming from the press box, where dozens of journalists were complaining about their work which was lost when their PCs powered off.

"It's an unfortunate isolated incident," I informed them, "It's most likely an electrical substation fault."

"Then how do you explain that?" quipped one reporter, pointing to pitchside.

It turned out that not everything in the stadium had lost its power. It was looking increasingly like our energy suppliers were (literally) trying to send us a message.

With the remainder of the Lakeside Stadium - including the floodlights - still without power, we took the decision to finish the game with an orange ball. After all, the light from the scoreboard was casting a faint glow over the pitch. Despite the new lighting arrangements, the game quickly descended into farce, with Hampton eventually going down to a 7-3 defeat. I'd resorted to using a pen and paper to keep track of the score; I had to send away for more paper before the end of the match. Perhaps the only saving grace was that, with the power still out, the assembled journalists were unable to write too much about what an utter disaster the evening had been.

It was a morale-sapping night for all concerned, and it perhaps went some way to explaining what happened in the days that followed. A hastily-arranged away trip to Pembrokeshire FC resulted in a 7-0 defeat, and an Iberian double-header against Tucanes (Spain) and Alcaria (Portugal) resulted in 1-0 and 4-0 defeats respectively.

It was at this point that I received a message which no manager ever wants to see:

The chairman would like to meet with you urgently.

Gulp.