Although we have not played Gosport Borough very often, before World War 2 Worthing played a handful of clubs which had “Gosport” in their name. The relationship between these is not entirely clear to me, but my understanding is as follows:

• There were clubs called Gosport and Gosport Athletic that merged in 1904 to form Gosport United
• New clubs called Gosport and Gosport Athletic formed after World War 1

Most of our matches against these sides were friendlies, but we also played a Worthing Charity Cup semi-final against Gosport United in 1909 and an FA Amateur Cup 4th qualifying round match against Gosport in 1937. Gosport Athletic were our opponents in the first match played at the Sports Ground after we moved here in 1901, the score being 7-3 to our visitors.

Moving on to tomorrow’s opponents, we first played Gosport Borough Athletic (as they were then) on 17th January 1948, losing 2-1 in Hampshire in an FA Amateur Cup 1st round fixture (Arthur Wood netting our goal).

The other four meetings with Gosport Borough have all been pre-season friendlies. On 6th August 1977 we lost 3-2 at home, Dave Romaine scoring both our goals, and exactly four years later we drew 2-2 at Gosport (Micky Edmonds and Steve Gill being the scorers).

On 26th July 1994, Craig Punter scored in the 1-1 away draw, and on 25th July 2023 Brad Dologhan netted our consolation goal in a 4-1 defeat at Woodside Road.

A summary of our results against tomorrow’s opponents is shown below: