Hello, and welcome to Football with no Limits!
Last week, Joe interviewed Bashley and Mainz fan (yes, you did read that correctly), Sheridan Sparkes. “Where is the podcast?” I hear you say…
It was an excellent episode, and we would have loved for you to enjoy it.
However, there were some problems with the recorded audio that were not realised until after it was initially uploaded. We are unable to fix this problem so we have salvaged what we can from the audio and will instead present the interview from this blog post. Enjoy!
Football with no Limits was stretched to its limitless best as Sheridan, a Bashley and Mainz supporter, joined Joe to discuss how he came to support Mainz and how life was as the only Bashley fan growing up, while Joe tried to avoid discussing Scotland’s opening game as far as possible (this was recorded prior to Scotland’s match against Switzerland).
I have to say, I have never heard of a Bashley fan until Joe told me about Sheridan. So how did he come to support Bashley?
“I’ve always been a massive football fan. So I grew up in the village of Bashley, which for those of you who don’t know is a small village in the New Forest on the South Coast of England, and was involved with the club in numerous roles; flipping burgers, working behind the bar, sat on the bench in a couple of pre-season games because we couldn’t get the numbers together.”
Was Sheridan the only kid at school who supported Bashley? Growing up, many people had a ‘big’ premier league side they followed. Not Sheridan, who burst out laughing when Joe asked if there were any other Bashley fans at school or if he was in the minority.
“Yeah, minority is one way of putting it. I was the only kid at school that followed Bashley. Our average gate is two hundred and fifty to three hundred, it really is a village club.”
“We played in the Southern Prem (the seventh tier of English football) for a number of years. We actually got into the playoffs one season and looked like we were going to make it to the Conference South. But in hindsight I feel like if we did the club would definitely have gone bust, so the seventh, eighth division is definitely our level.”
Unsurprisingly, the lower echelons of English football can often be a hard sell.
“[It was a challenge] trying to persuade guys at school to come along to games with me whilst your Liverpools and Manchester Uniteds were on the telly, and it was at the time I was at school when Bournemouth were rising through the leagues again. There was plenty of competition in the background there.”
As many of you will know, Joe is a keen groundhopper, happy to take in any game in any league. I certainly can’t think of any neutral who would have followed me down to Dumfries and Galloway twice in six weeks to watch Elgin on the road. He is not the only one, as Sheridan too is a keen groundhopper. A glance at his twitter account suggests he has racked up a jawdropping 126 games across the 2023-24 season. Did we read correctly? 126 games?
“I have yeah, its far too many, even for me. That app (Futbology) has sent me to some wild places. I’ve been groundhopping for about a decade now and obviously you get to know some faces; I know lads that are doing 250-300 games a season. I come away from a ground on a Thursday night or something, absolutely shattered, thinking ‘what on earth am I doing here?’ But it’s been a lot of fun.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking Sheridan must have been stood at Bashley Road at times thinking “what on earth am I doing here?”. Bashley made headlines in February 2016 when they drew 0 -0 with Mangotsfield United. It was their first point all season. They would manage one more point in the next fifteen games, a 0-0 draw with Slimbridge. A tough season for all involved as they suffered relegation from the Southern Football League Division One South & West with no wins and a -188 goal difference.
“It was tough.” Sheridan admitted. “It boiled down to the guy that was putting money in when we were playing in the Southern Prem pulled away from the club. I won’t go into detail, but the club then obviously struggled. We didn’t have the money to finance a playing budget at that level, went down, didn’t find any money from anywhere else. It was an U18s team at times with a couple of senior heads in there. With all due respect to the players that put the shirt on and played at that time, they turned up every week. But they were playing above their level and we were getting whipped week in, week out.”
The 2015-16 season was their second in the eighth tier following relegation from the premier league, though the previous season had brought little on-field success either, as Bashley had finished bottom of the league with just eight points, though they were reprieved from relegation due to two other demotions in their league.
“Due to Sholing, a Southampton-based team, taking voluntary relegation we were given a reprieve and told to stay in the league. Again, no money came in over the summer, we couldn’t find investors or a chairman willing to build up a playing budget, and we played with kids at a level that was beyond them with all due respect and got thumped every week.”
“In a weird sense, it was a lot of fun looking back on it. Okay, we took two points from 42 games, but there were some very good away trips during that season with the people you met. It ended up being the people that were there out of the love for the club, the people that were there to watch a successful team were long gone. Without wanting to sound too stereotypical, you ended up with almost the die-hard fans. So it was, despite the on-pitch troubles, and off-pitch for a lot of times, a lot of fun that year.”
Things are much brighter at Bashley now. After relegation to the Wessex League, they started to win games again, and enjoyed some stability, posting back-to-back 14th placed finishes in their first two seasons at the level, double digits clear of the relegation zone. They returned to the eighth tier in 2021/22 after finishing as runners-up in the Wessex League, accumulating a very impressive 90 points over their 40-game season. They have posted 7th and 15th placed finishes in their two seasons back.
“The club’s in a kind of stabilisation period. The fact that we’ve stayed up and held our own at the level we’re at is the main thing, I would go as far to say that the club is at its level. Getting promoted to the Southern Prem and knocking about there for another five years would be a lot of fun. If you’re looking to go higher, or certainly higher than the Southern Prem into the Conference South, then I think we’d be punching above a weight that we don’t need to because we’ll just end up falling back into the same troubles that we had.”
Sheridan suggests that Bashley’s initial demise is an all too familiar tale in English non-league football.
“It’s a similar non-league cycle. Somebody gets a bit greedy with a non-league club, takes it [up] a couple of levels and then gets bored or runs out of money and the community that’s left behind ends up falling down the pyramid trying to pick up the pieces. I would imagine there’s nobody involved that wants that to happen to the club again.”
For those of us who support a club lower down the pyramid, it can be all to easy to look at your friends enjoying more success and trophies with bigger clubs, but there is something to vouch for about the more intimate feeling of supporting a smaller club. Is Sheridan glad he went his
own way?
“Yeah 100%. I got into, without wanting to come across as ‘yer Da’, I got into a purer form of football as it were, that I really enjoy and I still enjoy.”He explains that this has helped build his enthusiasm for groundhopping. “I think one of the reasons that I ground hop as much as I do, because I like going back to the community clubs. You turn up to a non-league game in Germany, there two or three hundred people there. Theres all the mates of the players, the partners of the players, the old boys from the village stood there having a beer catching up on what’s happening during the week.”
Germany is famous for its football culture, often seen in other countries as an example of what supporting a football club, and what football clubs in general, should be like. It was this same famous culture that drew Sheridan in.
“So I studied German when I was at school.” He explained. “I went through to university and carried on learning the language. I studied in Mainz for a couple of semesters in 2018/19.”
“All football fans know about the German football culture. I got myself to a game and immediately fell in love with Mainz. The club and the fans took me on so well”. Next season will be Sheridan’s sixth as a season ticket holder at the Mewa Arena. “Time files when you’re having
fun I suppose.”
Mainz have become part of the Bundesliga furniture over the past fifteen years, though have rarely reached such heights that the likes of Frankfurt and Union Berlin have managed in recent years. Their last venture into European competition was in 2016. So have Mainz been underperforming in recent years, or has the quality of the league stepped up in recent years?
“Its difficult to say whether the club’s been underperforming or not. You have to look at the history of the club; we got promoted into the Bundesliga for the first time in the club’s history 20 years ago now, had a couple of seasons in the Bundesliga, got relegated then came back up and have been in the league since 2009. So we have established ourselves at the top level of German football.”
“Like you said, we have had a couple of runs at Europe. But there is absolutely no way you could suggest that Mainz is a club that should regularly be challenging for Europe. Talking to fans, I think most people would be comfortable finishing eleventh or twelfth every season and having a couple of runs in Europe every three or four years.”
Last season did threaten that stability however, as Mainz took until their tenth Bundesliga match to record their first victory, a 2-0 home win over RB Leipzig.
“Underperforming at the beginning of last season, definitely. We really started poorly, and it wasn’t until the end of the season that we went nine games unbeaten and saved ourselves at the end of the season on the final away day at Wolfsburg.” The 3-1 victory at Wolfsburg was the club’s first away win in the league all season, and what a time to get it. While Sheridan was disappointed with the season, he was still able to see the bigger picture. “The fact that club has kept itself in the Bundesliga for another season is a great success in the eyes of a lot of supporters. Especially those of an older generation.”
As for next season, is survival the goal? Preferably without the late season nerves?
“Yeah 100%. The objective for next season is that by February-March, we’re pretty much safe. A comfortable mid-table finish would be incredible.”
“Personally, I think the club, if we do the right things in the transfer window in the summer, there’s no reason with all the clubs that now qualify for Europe [that Mainz cannot be there]. Down in Germany, I think its down to eighth place, so Heidenheim qualified this year.”
“There’s quality in the club, because those clubs that finish in and around those places jump around and are different each season. If you can match that quality, there is no reason that you can’t put a run of games together and actually make it into Europe, which for me personally, would be the dream; to watch Mainz in Europe, travel around Europe and watch and go to some
of these places.”
As for Mainz’s squad, there is talent in there. Sheridan ran through some of the highlights of the squad for us.
“If people are listening to this who follow German football and they haven’t heard of Brajan Gruda, then you’ve been living with your head under a rock. He’s the next big thing.” At just 20 years old, he has already trained with the senior German national team.
“Hopefully, he stays around Mainz for one more season. I think he’ll end up getting sold for good money and potentially come back to us on loan for one more year.”
“We’ve lost the central midfielder Leo Barreiro, Luxembourg’s central midfielder. He’s off to Portugal, he’ll be with Benfica next season. He’s a fantastic holding midfielder, and creative going forward when he gets the chance as well.”
Some of Mainz’s squad made it to Euro 2024 too, with captain Silvan Widmer representing Switzerland, and Phillipp Mwena playing for Austria.
Joe and Sheridan talked further on Bashley and other matters, but unfortunately it was after that last question that audio recording failed us, and we do not have the remainder of the interview.
We would like to give a huge thank you to Sheridan for taking the time to join us. He was an excellent guest and we will be keeping a close eye on Bashley in the future.
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