By Simeon Wright
Dulwich Hamlet head into the new National League South season with a full Champion Hill behind them, along with a refreshed squad and off the back of a testing pre-season programme.
Gavin Rose’s team have played eight times in less than a month, running out winners in three, while one match ended in a draw along with four losses – though one of those defeats was on penalties in an annual cup fixture.
The team played for the first time since January away at Carshalton on July 10 and fell to a 1-0 loss, before home games against Millwall and Crystal Palace’s under-23s, which ended 2-0 and 5-0 respectively to the visitors.
But positive displays in those opening outings from new attacker AJ Harris-Sealy continued in matches four and five, as he put the Hamlet ahead against a Leyton Orient XI on July 27 – though Orient hit back to leave Champion Hill with a 1-1 draw – then was on the scoresheet along with ex-Crystal Palace youth prospect Giovanni McGregor and an unnamed trialist to give Dulwich their first win of pre-season, a comprehensive 3-0 victory away to Isthmian League club VCD Athletic.
Meanwhile, Dulwich Hamlet FC Women have also been getting their preparations under way for another season in the London & South East Regional Premier Division, the fifth tier of the English women’s football pyramid. DHFCW have played and won two friendly matches at Champion Hill this month, beating London Seaward 3-1 on August 1 and Enfield Town Ladies 4-2 a week later.
Like the men’s team, Dulwich’s women’s side, who are managed by Ryan Dempsey, have been involved in two incomplete league seasons as a result of Covid-19, but both 2019-20 and 2020-21 saw DHFCW top of the table at the time that the leagues were curtailed – with the club upset that neither season has resulted in the reward of promotion.
The FA did however decide that it wanted to promote some teams last season, and asked clubs to apply for promotion based on a combination of on and off pitch factors, which Dulwich Hamlet did, but lost out to QPR Women. It is thought that this was due to QPR’s superior performances in cup competitions, but Dulwich have publicly expressed exception to the verdict.
They go into 2021-22 with on-loan West Ham goalkeeper Mia North, former Exeter City midfielder Daniella Tyson and versatile full-back Liz Berkeley from AFC Wimbledon, all signed within the past few months, while the club announced at the end of July that up-and-coming coach Matthew Fogbawa, 26, would also be joining the set-up.
On the same ground, Rose and his assistant Junior Kadi headed into August buoyed by a 5-2 victory over Brentford B. Summer signing Chike Kandi scored two, as did striker Deon Moore, and stalwart defender Quade Taylor got the other.
Moore is one of many players who featured last season behind closed doors, but who will no doubt relish competitive matches in front of a packed Champion Hill this season. Ex-Celtic left-back Andre Blackman, who played three times in the Scottish Premiership, Michael Timlin, an experienced Football League player and midfielder Jordan Higgs are among other retained players from the last campaign.
Kandi, right-sided player Jazzi Barnum-Bobb, left-back Tyrone Sterling, and new captain Jack Holland, who was recruited this summer from Bromley, are confirmed additions to the Hamlet squad. And it was Holland’s former club who claimed the Glyn Beverly Memorial Cup on August 3, as they won 4-2 on penalties after twice pegging back one-goal Dulwich advantages, given to them by Darren McQueen and Barnum-Bobb.
McQueen, who was a highly thought-of member of the Tottenham Hotspur academy before he moved to Ipswich in 2014, has had spells at several National League clubs, and Dulwich fans might remember him making an impression against their team while playing for Dartford in 2020. Now they wait to see if a move to Champion Hill is made official.
The final run-out before Saturday’s league opener at home to Chippenham Town saw the Hamlet come from behind to beat Merstham 3-1 away. Not much detail is known about that August 6 match in Surrey, with jokes rife on Twitter that Rose should pull out all the stops to sign ‘unknown,’ who is reported as the scorer of all three Dulwich goals that day.
One user claimed that Higgs, Kandi and Jordan Green, a 26-year-old New Cross-born forward who has played Championship football for Barnsley, netted the goals for Dulwich against Merstham.
DHFCW kick off the new league season against New London Lionesses at Champion Hill on Sunday, August 22, and there are two more opportunities this month for fans to visit the home of football in Dulwich when it hosts the Hamlet against Dartford on Saturday, August 28 and DHFCW against Worthing Women the following day.