Aaron Haggard (39) from Gosport, has turned one of his rooms at his house into a man cave complete with Pompey memorabilia and a pool table. The games room has been shortlisted in the Home Leisure Direct competition for Best Games Room 2023.
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00:00 Aaron Haggard. Aaron, tell me a little bit about where we are. We are currently in what we call
00:06 the Dog House, which is my Portsmouth themed bar, which as you can see, lots of Portsmouth
00:13 memorabilia, shirts, floodlight from Fratton Park, some old seats that we've been able to turn into
00:18 usable seats around the pool table, lots of programs that I've collected and scarves I've
00:24 collected over the years. So tell me what you love about the games room. As mentioned, I think
00:31 probably my favourite thing in here would be the floodlight that we managed to rescue when they
00:35 took the pylons down, which I've turned into a little table that lights up, that's quite nice.
00:41 Probably my favourite thing is just having it, it's a really good space to be able to use,
00:45 come in with friends and family, be able to play pool, watch the games on the big screen,
00:50 so it's just a nice space to have to kind of get away. And how often do you and your friends use it?
00:56 We try and use it as much as we can. Obviously we do still go out and enjoy other establishments
01:02 that I won't give anyone too much publicity, but we go to lots of pubs around Portsmouth,
01:07 but we try and use it as much as we can. So if we don't get tickets for away games, we'll come in
01:10 and watch the game on the projector. So it's a nice space to be able to come and kind of meet
01:14 up and still watch the game together. So that's really good. But we'll try and use it as much as
01:19 we can, whether it be a weekend or fortnightly, but yeah, it gets a lot of use. So I understand
01:26 the Games Room has been shortlisted. Can you tell me a little bit about the competition?
01:29 Yeah, so it's been shortlisted for Home Leisure Direct's Games Room 23 award, got down to the
01:36 final 10, which is fantastic, up against some really, really good other Games Rooms, so it's
01:41 going to be difficult. However, I'm hoping that the people of Portsmouth and Portsmouth fans
01:47 help me out and vote for one of their own, which I know they love to do in their thousands normally
01:52 to get behind one of their own. So hopefully, fingers crossed, we get some support and I can
01:57 win it. Do you think you can win it? I hope so. I've put a lot of hours in and it's up there. I'm
02:05 hoping it's in the... it's already in the top 10, so I'm hoping it can push on and win it, yeah.
02:10 And how can people help you out to get you there? Yeah, so if they just go on the Home Leisure
02:16 website, there's a little link there and there's obviously the top 10 are in there and mine's on
02:21 there, so they can go on there and vote. I'm hoping that, you know, everyone will go on and do that.
02:26 It takes a couple of minutes. I know you said that your favourite thing in here is the floodlight,
02:32 but is there anything else that you really enjoy? As I said, all of it really. It's kind of a
02:41 combination. Everything is never finished. I kind of tend to get given stuff all the time. It goes
02:46 up like the scarves, beer mats, you know, everything you can think of, you know, people will go, "Oh,
02:52 I've got this. I'm going to donate it" or "I'm going to throw it out. Would you like it?" So
02:56 it's kind of always evolving. Stuff's always being added. I just think for me, it's just nice
03:02 to have it all on show. So I had a lot of it in boxes in the loft, which, you know, hidden away.
03:07 So it was quite nice to kind of get it out. People come around, you know, quite, "Oh, you know, I
03:11 remember that shirt from that season" or "I remember that season, you know, we had a really
03:14 good season that year." So it really evokes a lot of memories for people when they come around and
03:18 see different things that they remember from that time. So to have it all on show and for people to
03:22 be able to enjoy it is probably my favourite part about it. I wish you the best of luck.
03:26 Thank you very much. So this is my seat from Fratton Park. I was luckily gifted it from
03:33 Portsmouth Football Club when they replaced all the seats in the Fratton Inn for safe standing
03:37 this season. So I've had this seat in the Fratton Inn for over 25 years when the Fratton Inn was
03:42 first built. It was used on Match Day during COVID. The Portsmouth Football Club social media
03:48 used it a hell of a lot and it went viral for the different local stickers and different things that
03:52 were on it. So when I turned up at the start of the season, first game of the season, to see it
03:57 gone, as you can imagine, I was gutted. So I kind of went to social media, spoke to some of the guys
04:02 like Pompidou Banana Club and some of the local people that donated stickers for it and got an
04:08 email to say that the club had found it in the bottom of a skip and had rescued it and that I
04:13 could go and pick it up. So nice touch from Portsmouth. So a really nice addition. I've still
04:18 got to do some cleaning up and get some old chewing gum off the back of it and stuff but it's
04:21 going to go in a prided place next to the floodlight that I've put together.