Portsmouth: Fratton Park faithful dare to dream after escaping the doldrums

In the autumn of 2012 the nation was still collectively basking in the afterglow of the London Olympics – at one of English football’s most historic clubs, though, there was a genuine danger of the sun-setting for good.

“It was a dark, dark time,” says former Pompey favourite, Linvoy Primus, one of the many staff members who were made redundant as the club’s finances unravelled at terrifying speed.

“It got to the stage where players were getting contracts, but most of them were no longer than a month. Some were even week-to-week.

“I saw the uncertainty for players at first hand. If players picked up an injury then that could be that – they faced having their contracts terminated there and then.”

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For a club that had been in the Premier League and enjoyed the financial windfall that accompanies it since 2004, Pompey’s all-too-near brush with extinction was an almost unparalleled example of economic mismanagement.

If trophies were dished out for spending beyond your means, then Pompey would have cleaned up like no club in history.

As they prepare to take on AFC Wimbledon this weekend, however, the days of turning up and witnessing football’s answer to an identity parade – over 50 players were used by Pompey during a 2012/13 season that saw them drop into League Two for the first time since 1978 – are long gone.

Instead of looking down, they’re looking up, with the club perched at the top of League One and eyeing a return to the Championship after a blistering start to their campaign.

Little wonder that Pompey boss, Kenny Jackett, smiles when he’s asked whether being top of the table brings it with more pressure than being in the chasing pack.

“It’s nice to be top,” he says. “If you can’t enjoy being top then you can’t enjoy anything, can you? The ultimate aim is to try to get promoted, there’s no doubt about that. We should see the positives and enjoy it.”

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That’s what the locals are doing and even after two draws and a defeat in their last three home matches, the mood in the city is buoyant.

Gosport-born Jack Whatmough, one of the standout young players in Jackett’s industrious side, is one of the few players to have been at the club throughout the most tumultuous period in its recent history.

He’s well aware of just how much this club means to this island city, although he did play – whisper it quietly - down the M27 at Southampton until the age of 13.

“It was never a problem,” he says. “Although a kid, they couldn't have been much older than five or six, did once call me a scummer while I was walking through Fareham.”

Whatmough left Saints and headed to Pompey at the end of the 2012 season, just as the club’s free-fall gathered the kind of momentum that proved almost impossible to halt.

He nearly made history the following August, finding himself on the bench for a League Cup tie with Plymouth for a League Cup tie against Plymouth when he was still four days shy of his 16th birthday.

“We travelled to that match with two full-time footballers,” he said. “The rest were kids from the academy. It wasn’t the easiest introduction.

“In many ways it was a bit of a blessing for me. It wasn’t a nice situation for the club to be in, but it did mean that I got given my debut at a young age and now, 80 appearances later, I’m still playing.

“It was daunting to play in that situation. We were struggling in League Two, that was the reality.”

After the takeover by the Supporters Trust in April 2013, Pompey’s future was at least back in the club’s hands rather than the mitts of administrators or HMRC.

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And despite the club’s travails in League Two in the seasons that followed, the number of supporters coming through the turnstiles at Pompey’s archaic Fratton Park remained steadfastly high.

“We still had 15,000 coming down – some clubs in the Championship would give anything for that,” says Whatmough. “15,000 supporters in League Two? That’s borderline unheard of.

“Now we’re getting almost 19,000 every week.”

The club is now in the hands of American owners, with Michael Eisner buying out the Supporters Trust in August 2017, but Pompey’s fans are still very much invested in its future.

“The fact that so many of us put our hands in our pockets showed just how we close we were to going out of existence,” says Dan Wood, a Pompey season ticket who has experienced the good, the bad and the downright insane over the past decade.

“And there’s a real mood of cautious optimism. In many ways, I think this team is a real reflection of the people who have watched this club through thick and thin. There’s a genuine resilience about them.”

“At times this season we’ve played some lovely football, but even when we haven’t we’ve still managed to come away with the points.”

During the 2012/13 campaign that almost saw the two-time First Division winners disappear from the English football map, Pompey didn’t win between 20 October and 2 March, a run of 23 matches.

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They only won 10 games in that entire season. Victory over AFC Wimbledon – another team whose supporters refused to give up on them - on Saturday would already leave them just one short of that tally.

“This football club means an awful lot to an awful lot of people,” says Primus. “And for a long time a lot of them didn't know if they were even going to have a club to support the following day. Promotion back to the Championship would be massive. Absolutely massive.”

Jackett and Whatmough are not getting carried away, pointing out, quite rightly, that that season is still just over a quarter old.

On the Fratton Park terraces, though, there’s a feeling that the good times might be about to roll once more.

“Dare we dream?” says Wood. “We probably should, shouldn’t we?

“We certainly couldn’t be in a better place at the moment.”