by When Portsmouth celebrated promotion to the Premier League in 2003 and lifted the FA Cup in 2008, it later emerged at great expense, Southsea Common hosted the party. Fans also gathered there to toast their League Two win in 2017, although they didn’t expect to spend so long in League One at that point. At the seventh attempt, a return to the second tier after 12 years away is in full view, John Mousinho having quietly revived a club mired in malaise. A win at Bolton on Saturday would not only guarantee promotion but confirm Pompey as champions. As the man of the device “Big” Kev McCormack says, some of the furniture after 25 years of service, the feeling factor is back.
Among the thousands of supporters who attended last year’s open bus parade was Marlon Pack, the boy who grew up on the Buckland estate and is proud to say he is now Portsmouth’s captain. “I was starting to wave a flag,” says the 33-year-old. Pack rejoined his youth club two years ago after being allowed to leave for Cheltenham as a teenager, initially on loan. An unusual stipulation was included in the deal for him to return home: multiple season tickets for Pompey’s family and friends who are long-time supporters. “That was one of the clauses of my contract when I signed, otherwise I would be losing money every week,” he says, laughing. “I think I did the club a favor because I was a bit safe in my negotiations … I could have done with a three-figure value.”
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Mousinho, who stepped down as chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association to take the Portsmouth job, admits he was, on the surface, a left-field choice because he was 36, fresh from six years in the division with Oxford United. Technically, Mousinho was the coach at Oxford, and his main responsibility was set pieces. His first away game in charge of Pompey came at Fleetwood, 10 days after he traveled home from there on the back of the Oxford team bus after a victory. There is a coincidental element to this weekend in that it was Portsmouth’s last game before Mousinho’s appointment in January last year – driven by sporting director Richard Hughes, who worked with Rob Edwards at Forest Green Rovers – in a comprehensive 3-0 win at Bolton.
It may not have gone unnoticed that Pompey have only lost four of their 42 league games, fewer than any other team in the Football League. Pack were instrumental in their rise to the top of the pile but it was the kind of season where everyone played their part, having absorbed long-term injuries to key players such as Regan Poole, Joe Morrell and Alex Robertson, the performer attractive on loan from Manchester City. Last summer there was a turnover of players, 14 in, 15 out, which means the playoffs are the objective. Pompey does not envisage wholesale changes in the summer, it is the meaning of the heavy lift made last year. “You don’t deserve to take this job at this level if you can’t take the pressure,” says Mousinho. “A really important part of our recruitment was to bring in players that we thought could handle the pressure.”
The day Pompey sealed the deal for Poole last summer showed they cannot escape the attention of the fans. Ali Knell, the club’s secretary, thought he had identified the perfect location for Mousinho, Hughes and chief executive Andrew Cullen to hold talks with the defender – a boutique hotel in nearby Emsworth – only to be interrupted by a supporter .
Mousinho remembers walking out for the warm-up of their impressive 1-0 win at Peterborough last month and being hit by the wall of noise of 4,000 people who followed Portsmouth. Then there was the atmosphere at Fratton Park for visiting Derby who finished second last week. “It’s probably the highest I’ve ever experienced,” says Mousinho, who has made almost 500 career appearances. Thanks to improvements to the Milton End, Pompey crowds are regularly north of 20,000.
Everyone knows what Bolton is all about, so to keep things light on Tuesday Portsmouth’s under-eight team joined the first team at the start of training, a practice they also did around this time last season. . Since his arrival at the club Mousinho, who was on the same course as Danny Cowley, his predecessor, from his Uefa pro license, emphasized the importance of living comfortably with expectations that were worse before. Those pressures make the hard times harder, and the good times sweeter. “You never understand the insular attitude of Portsmouth until you come down here,” says Mousinho. “There are three big things here: the navy, the university and the football team. But I think everything is based on the football club. The mood of the whole city changes depending on our result on Saturday.”
A great graphic in the renovated players’ canteen proudly says: “The island city with a football club for a heart.” On the far wall is a mural featuring Linvoy Primus, a Pompey hero who won promotion in 2003, and Alan Ball, the Portsmouth manager who gave McCormack his job. McCormack remembers the days when Pack would give him a hand in the dressing room as an apprentice. This is a new Portsmouth, however, and last summer the club made a conscious effort to stick to the past while talking about its future. Out went pictures of the FA Cup trophy lift and empty Nelson Mandela quotes in the gym, in came pictures of the current group celebrating. The aim is to get back to the Premier League but, after so long in the desert, at least according to their standards, it is safe to say that Portsmouth will taste success if it comes this weekend.
“It was an incredible time to be able to give something back to them for all those years of struggle,” says Pack, who talks fondly of playing around the corner for Copnor North End as a child and remembers the days. when he had a season ticket in section D of the South Stand. “This was the exact reason I came back to this club: to visualize what it would be like to be on stage or on an open bus where the fans have come out together and celebrated . Now we have to do the job and make the dream come true. I don’t know what kind of mess it would be in terms of my emotional state, because to me it would mean the world.”
