AFC Bournemouth - a guide for Premiership visitors

HertsWolf

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[Copied from Dorset Country Life because it is very helpful]

Bournemouth is in Dorset, a distinctive former mining city and major port on the south coast. Most of our support comes from the tough and embittered former coal mining communities of Sandbanks and Christchurch, but increasingly Cherries, as we are known, travel in from suburbs like Southampton and even rural Wiltshire.

The club was founded in 1899 by a man called Charles, as Boscombe Coal Miners Athletic, and we swum around in the lower depths of the Bournemouth and District League, then various regional divisions, the clubs fortunes depending largely on the skill of canaries and underground safety equipment.

The club’s main claim to fame was, when managed by Harry Redknapp, we managed a dramatic victory in the FA Cup over a Portsmouth team managed by Harry Redknapp’s dog. This famous cup run was ended in the next round by Harry Redknapp’s Spurs.

In recent years, substantial investment in large SUVs, corrugated iron stands with eight rows of red plastic seats, and some decent players have led Bournemouth to the portals of the Premier League and its huge stash of roubles.

We appreciate that supporters of other Premiership clubs have never been to the dark, Satanic mills of southern Dorset before, and so we provide this helpful guide to your special ‘Wembley’ day on the south coast. As long as you are not Yeovil scum.

“милости просим to Bournemouth!” as we say in eastern Dorset

At the ground
Visitors will be in the East Stand, now the “Vasily Kalinnikov Biological Detergent Stand” or in the South Stand, sponsored as ever by the Северный флот, the Russian Northern Fleet. Pies, blinis and alcohol-free vodka are available at Gennady’s Burger Bar in the back of the stand.
Away supporters found in the Edinburgh Woollen Mills North Stand will be ejected from the ground. Incidentally, this is the only stand in the Premiership fitted with stairlifts on every aisle.

Sales of our matchday programme “вверх!! вперед!!” (“Upward!! Forward!!”) and Argumenty i Fakty can be bought from our young patriotic comrades outside the ground, along with current and back issues of “Range Rover World”.

Thermos flasks of Dorset tea and tartan rugs may be rented from the back of the Croquet Stand for £10, and between December and January, when temperatures fall below 21 degrees C, fur stoles and vaping samovars can be hired from the same venue.
Bournemouth supporters have only the one song, but feel free to sing along. The words are “Ты вообще кто? Ты вообще кто?” repeated slowly and constantly. Small cheeky Bournemouth tykes will run to the front corner of their stand and beckon you towards them with the charming cry of “Давай потом, если вы достаточно трудно!”, which roughly translates as “Welcome to Bournemouth, strange foreign visitors from up north somewhere!”

Getting to the ground by car
Best coming by the M3 and M27 West unless you have a week to spare getting through the reams of shoppers, Japanese tourist coaches, cattle trucks and garden centre vans on the Salisbury ring road and then the 157-year-old drivers tooling round the New Forest in maroon-coloured 52 reg Rovers.
You can park pretty much anywhere you like at Dean Court, but we request you don’t block the fire exits from any of the stands. There are two valet parking spots and ‘Mother and Russian Billionaire’ spaces available.
Several years ago, the supporters of one club came on a coach and this caused a lot of problems in the cul-de-sac, and several hybrid tea rose bushes were damaged. So sorry, but no coach parties.

Getting to the ground by train
You can travel to Pokesdown Station direct from Bournemouth, Christchurch and Hinton Admiral without changing. Otherwise, it is a life-changing trawl from London through endless, endless Surrey suburbs and the washed out palor of 1930s Southampton and then “Holy Mother of Jesus is it still another fucking hour to go?”
Most trains have a buffet cart but note that the sell-by dates usually expire by the time you reach Basingstoke.
Second class seating is also available for those with less money.

Getting to the ground by sea
AFC Bournemouth has its own ferry terminal for passengers coming from the Channel Islands. We understand that Bergerac is a fan.
Yachts may be moored by Harry’s house and a fiver will secure the services of his dog to guard your 75’ Sunseeker for the afternoon.

Local pubs
Bournemouth has a pub, but we are not sure where.

Local tea rooms and independent coffee shops
Bournemouth has the highest concentration of doillies, porcelain teacups and pointless distressed grey John Lewis home decorations in the Western hemisphere, and the away supporter will have an enormous selection of teas, scones, cakes and pastries to savour while discussing the finer points of Dorset's Jurassic Coast.
Not all tea rooms and cafes will allow away colours though, and many have shipped in strangely ugly but deceptively cheerful bald bouncers from London to keep undesirables out (like Yeovil scum and those wankers from Frome Town). You may be allowed in for a small pot of Jasmine Tea (but not Yunnan Pu’er Tea…this isn’t fucking Brighton!) or Earl Grey if you agree to cover up your scarf or shirt.

Club Shop
If you wish to buy a souvenir of your visit to Bournemouth, regrettably we do not have a shop yet, but we have a branch of House of Fraser in each stand where you can buy embroidered Cherries cushions (after JMW Turner) and framed prints of Eddie Howe (as painted by Salvador Dali in the form of a blonde tennis player scratching her arse).
If you wish to buy a player as a souvenir of your visit, rather than a Dean Court snow globe, please enquire direct to the club secretary. We often have discounts on bundles of three (or more) of our poorer players for the benefit of Brendan Rogers when he is visiting. This worked well at our feeder club, St Marys Saints.

Safety
Sadly, there are a number of hoodlums who follow our great team. Please do not confuse them with our contracted stewards hired from the Russian Special Forces with their orange high-vis vests, or the Dorset Constabulary, recognisable by their flashing lights and sirens, their constant rushing around talking about ‘shouts’ and ‘blues and twos’ and ‘keep ‘em peeled’ and looking really important.

Please do not mess with the Brockenhurst Ultras, a fairly vicious gang of rather middle-aged supporters, who have been known to ambush away supporters in local garden centres and mock them over their choice of early potatoes, peonies or cardigans.

There’s also the Pokesdown Massiv and Dem New Foresters, gangs of hardened, feral bell-ringers and community transport volunteers. Their modus operandi is to engage people in conversation about CRB checks, low sulphur diesel and the writings of Thomas Aquinas until the visiting fans expire.

Any visitor wearing a "I lost my Cherry in a Pokesdown minute" T-shirt will be asked to leave the ground.

Finally, please inform a steward or the police office if you see one of the rather infamous Dorset Politicians, a small but nasty group of balding, earnest 40-something men wearing slacks and Barbour shirts with a green tie and a blue rosette, guffawing about the price of barley and hedge fund structures. All are serving five-year bans but have been seen in the streets of the county recently.

We do hope you enjoy your visit to Dean Court, the Dorset Nou Camp, where Russia met net curtains and decided to stay on. And where even the dog has an IFA.
 
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AFCB_Mark

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Your attention to detail is splendid Herts! If I may say, the inside of your mind must be a very interesting place indeed...

Reading this whilst supping a cuppa tea (Dorset tea, naturally) was going quite well, but I lost it at ‘Mother and Russian Billionaire’ parking spaces, because there is more than an element of truth to that.

Many a Cherry has been lost in Pokesdown that's for sure. The crazed bar woman in the pub by Pokesdown station has many a tale to tell.

One thing is certain, IF we were to get promoted, we would look so very far out of place. Sky will never have seen so many thermos flasks and tartan rugs in one place. As for those embroidered Cherries cushions you mention, I think they were mass produced in the old main stand in the 1970s, because many a disgruntled gentleman supporter would throw his cushion onto the pitch in disgust after a defeat.
 

HertsWolf

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Your attention to detail is splendid Herts! If I may say, the inside of your mind must be a very interesting place indeed...
Many a Cherry has been lost in Pokesdown that's for sure. The crazed bar woman in the pub by Pokesdown station has many a tale to tell.
One thing is certain, IF we were to get promoted, we would look so very far out of place.

I think the two places I have most enjoyed in recent years have been Bournemouth and Swindon - both exceptionally friendly places.
I think you and Brentford will be massive additions to the PL, and will really sheik up many preconceived ideas about top flight football. Good to see your Eddie being rewarded again this morning too.

I know the bar opposite Pokesdown station... was there before and after the game!
 

HertsWolf

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What is this "Premiership" you speak of?

It's the promised land. It's a place where the streets are covered in roubles and dirhams and where the football clubs are sponsored by airlines and unknown betting companies rather than the local Ford dealer and you get to sit down the whole match and you can't hear a word the players are saying to each other, and where famous players are smaller than they look on telly, but considerably richer, and you get to see yourself on telly when it's not Crimewatch. And shit.

It's also where you never get to play in trophies with the work "Paint" or "Van" in the title, and where if you get to Wembley you fill the stadium and not just the Tube station.

York? Yeh. Not much of a worry about it then, really. <sniff>. The trick is to see what the club name looks like in Cyrillic, change your strip to red to appeal to people in Asia, add a scary big animal as your nickname and put yourself into the Dubai or Moscow edition of The Northern Echo and hide the fucking racing pigeons. You don't seriously think a sheikh or an oligarch is going to bowl into town following a T reg Bedford truck full of Van Reets, do you? And lose the flat caps. Smarten the place up a bit. Make it look like a hotbed of organised crime and seedy gambling dens. Like Yeovil.

I don't think the Minstermen's going to do it for the big, fucking scary animal nickname though, to be fair. It sounds like a typo for a series of slightly creepy children's books. ("Hello! I'm Mr Relegation ho ho ho!"). How about The Red 888 Manchurian Tigers? It'd piss them off down the road, too. No downside (except add the word "Prawns" to the end and it makes you sound like a menu option). You might need a newer, bigger ground but given your place is about four times the size of Brentford, it should do.
 
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It's the promised land. It's a place where the streets are covered in roubles and dirhams and where the football clubs are sponsored by airlines and unknown betting companies rather than the local Ford dealer and you get to sit down the whole match and you can't hear a word the players are saying to each other, and where famous players are smaller than they look on telly, but considerably richer, and you get to see yourself on telly when it's not Crimewatch. And shit.

It's also where you never get to play in trophies with the work "Paint" or "Van" in the title, and where if you get to Wembley you fill the stadium and not just the Tube station.

York? Yeh. Not much of a worry about it then, really. <sniff>. The trick is to see what the club name looks like in Cyrillic, change your strip to red to appeal to people in Asia, add a scary big animal as your nickname and put yourself into the Dubai or Moscow edition of The Northern Echo and hide the fucking racing pigeons. You don't seriously think a sheikh or an oligarch is going to bowl into town following a T reg Bedford truck full of Van Reets, do you? And lose the flat caps. Smarten the place up a bit. Make it look like a hotbed of organised crime and seedy gambling dens. Like Yeovil.

I don't think the Minstermen's going to do it for the big, fucking scary animal nickname though, to be fair. It sounds like a typo for a series of slightly creepy children's books. ("Hello! I'm Mr Relegation ho ho ho!"). How about The Red 888 Manchurian Tigers? It'd piss them off down the road, too. No downside (except add the word "Prawns" to the end and it makes you sound like a menu option). You might need a newer, bigger ground but given your place is about four times the size of Brentford, it should do.

You mean the "Premier League" then?
 

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