Three acts, one result – the 22/23 men’s season in review

The Bard’s great tragedy “Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark,” with its vivid dramatisation of madness and melancholy, sprawls across five Acts. The slightly lesser tragedy of Dulwich Hamlet’s 2022/23 season, the Wince of Denmark Hill, with its vivid dramatisation of madness and melancholy, played out across a mere three Acts, with a brief comic interlude after the first. Much like the audience for Shakespeare’s protracted Tragicall Hiftorie, we fans experienced the odd thrill and profound insight into the human condition, but also some interminable and harrowing periods of prolix mediocrity.

Sein oder Nichtsein, das war die Frage as the season booted off. Frankly, after the delirium of promotion and the bacchanal on Promotion Roundabout, The Hamlet had laboured in the lower depths of The National Conference South like an indolent chub. But with a host of new ostensibly decent looking players lining up alongside some old favourites, there was a sense of ease and confidence at a sunny Champion Hill as we beat a Braintree Town side who would finish in the play-off places. But then, like Jim Thompson’s Getaway, it all went wrong and headed south, with scarcely a point glommed in the next six games. Inspired by that dismal toll, it was Nichtsein and goodnight sweet prince as Gavin Rose, the great Lion of Champion Hill, was asked to vacate the dugout.

Gavin was The Hamlet’s longest serving manager, a man who had arrived in 2009 to find a club on its uppers, appreciated only by a few hundred jaded fans and the odd scruffy cur. Thirteen years and two promotions later, the Hamlet were playing sexy football in front of crowds that had increased ten or more fold and now eagerly fell upon the fancy Greek street food and artisan booze offered at all corners. All down in significant part to Gavin and his preternatural desire to build our great club on the Hill. But as Chaucer said “at the laste, as every thing hath edne” and that was the edne for Gavid, Goodbye Gavin Rose. You will ever grow in our hearts. You were the ace who put the Hamlet in the South.

So where next? Well to someone few of us had heard of - a decent and well-liked fellow called Paul Barnes. Initially Paul came as the interim manager but then was elevated to the hot-seat permanently; leading in turn to the best fan chant of the season (to the tune of Go West “Paul Barnes no longer interim. Paul Barnes no longer interim, Paul Barnes no longer interim, Paul Barnes, we’re really into him”). Early signs were good. Not just Paul’s level of accessibility, accountability and just plain old decent football management, but also the results

Words by Mark McGann

which propelled us into the top half of the league. However then, as is The Pink and Blues’ wont, the first two months of 2023 saw an arid run of results propel usdown the league to the business end of the relegation zone. O God, God, how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seemed it to The Rabble. And Paul too was asked to vacate the dugout.

What stripe of paladin then could possibly steady the good ship Toscana, plump up the club’s morale and pitch East Dulwich’s Finest towards the nirvana of mid-table mediocrity? Lumber forward ex-Maidstone gaffer and no-nonsense nonleague enforcer the mighty Hakan Hayrettin. Now “Hakan” is a name historically bestowed on the ancient overlords and emperors of the Anatolian steppe. And to watch Hakan prowling the touchline - shoulders as wide as he is tall, brow furrowed like the lava soil of Lanzarote - was to witness a commanding colossus dedicated to doing the dirty work necessary to keep the Sons of Edgar Kail in the National South.

And, Ali Bongo style, he nearly pulled a dead rabbit out of the hat. At home, in particular, the team played ugly but played to win. And win we did. But away, for some reason, away was a different matter. And by the last match of the season, we needed a win or a draw. But got neither and whimpered and waffled our way to a feeble defeat. That was us done, relegated back into our ancestral homeland of the Isthmian Premier.

So how are we all feeling? Mixed views but on the whole pretty chipper it seems. Hak and his trusty sidekick Terry are staying and most of us feel quietly bullish about that. Plus some of us are beginning to feel an opportunity to revel, revive and rejuvenate in the romance of the Isthmian, a league that derives its name from the alluring isthmus of Corinth where in ancient times a Games was instituted by mighty Sisyphus and dedicated to Poseidon the great god of the sea, earthquakes and (who knew) horses. Compare this with the prosaically titled National Conference South. Pah! Moreover, some of us are pondering too whether the demotion has a distinct (albeit short-lived) upside as the prospect of away-days to Lewes, Hastings (Paul Barnes’ new team) and Margate are pencilled in. Indeed, some of us periretirees might even check out the real-estate while we’re down there, see what you can get for the price of a Horniman Heights semi. Sea views you say?

But promotion, that’s what we want. And yet we’re up against some analogously ambitious teams, among them the wretched Billericay. So no one thinks it’s going to be easy. And ay, there’s the rub.