In every roadside hostelry from here to Burgess Hill

Last weekend I was in the London area, in part to see Dulwich Hamlet play their final game of the regular season at Burgess Hill Town. Having seen the EvoStik League affected by matters off the field, issues at the top of the Ryman League were to be settled in the traditional manner. Bognor Regis Town went into April with the best chance on paper, being 2 points off the lead with a game in hand. When they lost to Worthing, this handed the advantage to Dulwich Hamlet, who had still to play Whitehawk, at that stage in third place. A win for Whitehawk put them in charge of their own destiny.

Some end of season games can be effectively dead, with little at stake for the teams, but this was very much alive - a win for Dulwich Hamlet could still win the title if Whitehawk were to slip up, and Burgess Hill needed to perform better than Whyteleafe to avoid finishing in a relegation position.

Whilst I did not try every roadside hostelry on the way, and with the dual carriageway A23 there are not many left, most people from my train took a sharp right out of the station to the Watermill. Suitably refreshed, I arrived at the ground to find John from the Southwark News taking notes from the team list posted outside the clubhouse. I went for the simpler expedient of taking a picture of it.

The weather people tell us this has been the wettest April for some time, and there was some concern a couple of days before the game that it may be postponed, which would have been a problem for the League, as the composition of the play off semi finals on the Tuesday depended on this and other games. Fortunately, the rain eased off, allowing the water to soak in, or not, as the water companies tell us.

The light was the worst I have seen for an afternoon game in April, I had to switch from the sports mode to shutter priority on the camera when I found I was getting shutter speeds down to 1/160s at ISO 1600, something I do not expect to need to do at this time of year. The background provided by the trees did not help.

Phil Wilson against a dark background

I took up a position by the side of the pitch to avoid the wind blowing the rain on to the front of the lens, as, despite the forecast, I had forgotten my lens hood. Still, it is good for the side on movement shots.

Kevin James

Many of our supporters thought this was our worst performance for some time - I have not seen many games, so there are plenty of which I am not aware, but the team seemed to play as though they knew the title was out of reach. Indeed it was, a whopping (for them) 287 spectators squeezing into the Enclosed Ground to see Whitehawk make sure of it by winning against Chipstead.

For the second half, the trees afforded some protection for my more usual position behind the goal.

Sanchez Ming leaves his marker horizontal

Lewis Goncalves goes for a header

With Whyteleafe winning, Burgess Hill needed a goal to retain their league status, and efficiently scored one after 80 minutes, the defeat giving Dulwich a third place finish, and a home fixture against Folkestone Invicta in the playoffs.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.