When Portsmouth celebrated promotion to the Premier League in 2003 and lifting the FA Cup in 2008 which, it later emerged, came at a crippling cost, Southsea Common played host to the party. Fans also gathered there to toast winning League Two in 2017, though at that point they did not anticipate spending quite so long in League One. 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 that had been stuck in a malaise. Victory at Bolton on Saturday would not only guarantee promotion but crown Pompey champions. As the kit man “Big” Kev McCormack, part of the furniture after 25 years of service, says, the feelgood factor is back.
Among the thousands of supporters present for the open-top bus parades of yesteryear was Marlon Pack, the boy who grew up on the Buckland estate proud to say he is now the Portsmouth captain. “I was at the front waving a flag,” says the 33-year-old. Pack rejoined his boyhood club two years ago having been allowed to leave for Cheltenham as a teenager, initially on loan. Part of the deal for his return home included an unusual stipulation: a raft of season tickets for long-time Pompey-supporting family and friends. “That was one of my contract clauses when I signed, otherwise I would be losing money every week,” he says, smiling. “I think I did the club a favour because I was a little bit safe in my negotiations … I could have done with three-figures’ worth.”
Mousinho, who stepped down as the Professional Footballers’ Association chair to take the Portsmouth job, acknowledges he was, externally, a left-field choice given he arrived aged 36, fresh from six years in the division with Oxford United. Technically, Mousinho was player-coach at Oxford, his main responsibility being set pieces. His first away game in charge of Pompey came at Fleetwood, 10 days after travelling home from there at the back of Oxford’s team bus after a win. There is a coincidental element to this weekend in that Portsmouth’s last game before Mousinho’s appointment in January last year – driven by the sporting director, Richard Hughes, who worked with Rob Edwards at Forest Green Rovers – was a comprehensive 3-0 defeat at Bolton.
It has perhaps gone unnoticed that Pompey have lost only four of their 42 league matches, fewer than any other team in the Football League. Pack has been central to them soaring to the top of the pile but it has been the kind of season in which everyone has played their part, having absorbed long-term injuries to key players such as Regan Poole, Joe Morrell and Alex Robertson, an eye-catching performer on loan from Manchester City. Last summer there was a turnover of players, 14 in, 15 out, making the playoffs the objective. Pompey do not envisage wholesale changes in the summer, the sense being the heavy lifting was done last year. “There is no point taking this job at this level if you’re not able to embrace the pressure,” says Mousinho. “A really important part of our recruitment was bringing in players who we thought could handle the pressure.”
The day Pompey set about sealing the deal for Poole last summer showed they cannot escape fan attention. Ali Knell, the club secretary, thought he had identified the perfect location for Mousinho, Hughes and the chief executive, Andrew Cullen, to hold talks with the defender – a boutique hotel in nearby Emsworth – only for them to be rumbled by a supporter.
Mousinho recalls walking out for the warm-up for their impressive 1-0 win at Peterborough last month and being hit by the wall of noise from Portsmouth’s 4,000-strong following. Then there was the atmosphere at Fratton Park for the visit of second-placed Derby last week. “Probably the loudest I’ve ever experienced,” says Mousinho, who made almost 500 career appearances. Owing to improvements to the Milton End, Pompey’s crowds are regularly north of 20,000.
Everyone knows what is at stake at Bolton, so to keep things light on Tuesday Portsmouth’s under-eights joined the first team at the start of training, an exercise they also undertook at about this time last season. Since arriving at the club Mousinho, who was on the same course as Danny Cowley, his predecessor, for his Uefa pro licence, has stressed the importance of living comfortably with expectations that have previously weighed heavily. Those pressures make the tough times tougher, the good times that touch sweeter. “You never really realise the island mentality that Portsmouth has got until you get down here,” Mousinho says. “There are three big things here: the navy, the university and the football team. But I think everything is underpinned by the football club. The whole mood of the city changes depending on our result on a Saturday.”
after newsletter promotion
A striking graphic in the revamped players’ canteen proudly states: “The island city with a football club for a heart.” On the opposite 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 lend him a hand in the changing room as an apprentice. This is a new Portsmouth, however, and last summer the club made a conscious effort to nod to the past while talking to 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 wilderness, by their standards at least, it is safe to say Portsmouth will savour success if it comes this weekend.
“To be able to potentially give them something back for all of the years of struggles they have gone through would be an unbelievable moment,” says Pack, who talks fondly of playing around the corner for Copnor North End as a kid 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: the visualisation of what it would be like to be on a stage or an open-top bus where the fans have come out to congregate together and celebrate. Now we have to get the job done and make the dream become a reality. I don’t know what kind of mess I’d be in terms of my emotional state, because for me it would mean the world.”