Riding the Luck: Colchester at Home

20th March: at home.

This is the week of the Cheltenham Festival: horse racing extravaganza just down the M5. Literally thousands of pounds being spent on corporate hospitality, wagers and flights from and to Ireland. The week of St Patrick’s Day.

 

The weekend when both Formula One and Moto GP begin new seasons.

And the week that begins with Walsall still in third place in League One. A seeming impossibility at the end of last season.

To mark the first former Olympic cycling champion Victoria Pendleton finishes fifth in an amateur race at Cheltenham. To mark the second (and Channel Four’s debut as the channel showing F1 there is an interesting Guy Martin programme (on said Channel 4). Set up as a duel between a Red Bull F1 car (complete with semi-trailer and fourteen man pit crew) and Martin’s own superbike(arrives in the back of a white van with one mechanic) in a range of race-offs at Silverstone. The programme also, interestingly drags in science and personalities: David Coulthard piloting the car. Guy Martin in any guise is very telly-friendly: knowledgeable, charming and with an infectious humour. Non-stereotypical he “brews up tea” at the drop of a thing that is dropped easily and often and is an eccentric workaholic. Alf Tupper in leathers?

  

The factors that give the car three victories out of four are analysed, but key to the programme is the relationship that develops between the biker and the Scot.

 

Strangely – and for the first time, races in both classes will be taking part on the same weekends this season. Is this deliberate competition? Or accidental?

More seriously we have had the pronouncements of the Conservative government budget. Amongst the unexpected measures are the setting up of a tax on “Excessively sugary drinks”, allegedly to combat “child obesity” but perhaps to fund a pledge to make every school an academy rather than under local authority control: the long-threatened centralisation of control.

… and, driving home on Friday evening I hear that the alleged ring leader of the dreadful Paris attack has been captured in Brussels.

In the Saddlers news we will now not be playing our Good Friday game away at Gillingham or the home game against Shrewsbury on Easter Monday. To Bradshaw has, deservedly been called up for the Wales games – so an enforced “international break”.

This has both good and bad sides: we will gain games in hand … but these are no good if you can’t win ‘em.

Both games are being rearranged and I am seriously thinking of making the long trip to Gillingham. This has been a truly wonderful season to date (wonderful encompassing roller-coaster and frustrating but standards and spirit have been marvellous).

There are unexpectedly long queues at the ticket office when my brother and I get there; fans needing to get money back from the tickets they had perhaps bought for the postponed games, as well as some buying/collecting tickets for the game today.

There are just over a hundred fans that have made the trip from bottom-of-the-league Colchester. True fans indeed: my hat is off to them!

I decide to delay collecting my Savoy Lounge pass until after the game and head inside the Savoy Lounge. Nobody in there, so I politely nab a chair at a nearly full table and join in with chatter: the game at Burton Albion, a lady wanting to do her happy-dance goal celebrations who has just been given a job as staff nurse at Sutton Hospital and the sacking of Sean O’Driscoll.

Outside to join Cully, Jack and Mike at the pitch side. I hear about the successful trip to New York before we take our chairs.

Expectations are, of course, high; we are, after all playing the team that is bottom of our league Jon Whitney has done a fantastic job of getting the supporters behind the team (this man is a great motivator – we have yet to see if he is also a good manager). And the crowd is, quite literally, buzzing! Which is great to feel, to be part of.

 

But then reality sets in. Colchester are not going to roll over and give up. Far from it! They are keen, active, assertive and we struggle to get to grips with the speed at which they begin. Surely they cannot keep it up? Surely we will adjust ?

Then, with the ball in a totally different part of the pitch James O’Connor is down. Needing treatment. Looks serious: he is helped off the pitch, cannot put his weight on his one foot. Young Matt Preston; solid and physically awesome is shuttled on. He has already played a few games this season, but he is coming into a minefield this time. O’Connor has grown into the role of central defender over the course of this season – and has been another talisman.

Colchester’s much deserved goal comes from a corner. Lanky Owen Garvan leaping high to pop the ball past Etheridge into our net.

 

Maybe, we hope silently, the game will be called off because nine of the visiting fans run about a bit behind the goal.

Their team, cheekily and happily for them are one nil up – and looking good for it.

O.K. Fair enough we are without one of our “main men”, Adam Chambers. Young Liam Kinsella coming in for him is not having a bad game. And O’Connor is not out there, commanding the defence, but …

At some time we notice that both Jordy Hiwula and Tom Bradshaw are wearing black gloves. Tomorrow is the spring equinox, the day on which hours of sunlight and non-sunlight (technically sunlight is shaded from us by the earth itself) are equal: the first day of traditional spring, but this is the coldest day we can remember; low temperatures biting deep. Also the day, wouldn’t you know it when our gas boiler is being replaced at home (a combi boiler) so no central heating, some mess, lots of disturbance and clearing up to be looked forward to.

But, back to the gloves: I am minded of the Kirk Douglas gunfighter character in, I think, The War Wagon. But I am out-gunned by my peers who go for Robert Vaughn’s gambler-pistolero in The Magnificent Seven. Anything sometimes rather than watch poor football. Fashion and films can be a worthwhile distraction. And, is it true by the way that we can really only see 5% of everything that actually exists? That there is stuff in between the stuff that we can see?

At half time, gloves or no gloves, we are still we are one nil down. The crowd I still behind the team, but, as we kick off the second half, patience is wearing thin. We seem to be passing sideways – or worse, backwards, instead of going forwards. There is a tangible edge of frustration. How can we be so brilliant on the road and so poor at home. We haven’t won a home game in the last six. Are we jinxed?

The game continues; we are poor (and Colchester play a part, of course, dominating the game).

There are substitutions: Rico Henry off and Milan Lalkovic on (like for like or near as dammit) and Kieron Morris on for Kinsella. We stir a little after these moves. But Lalkovic cannot make an impression on the defence and is clearly annoyed with himself. Sawyers is booked (properly so for reacting angrily to a poor decision). The frustration is creeping onto the pitch.

Not sure where the plan came from but Matt Preston is now playing further forwards. Winning balls and knocking them down or on. The ball begins to go to our players, nit theirs. We are suddenly energised, realising maybe that we need to get a goal, get two: win the match … because time is running out.

Spectators all around me are adamant we will not get even a draw out of this. Me? I am not so sure.

And, faith pays off, as with a couple of minutes to go Preston finds Bradshaw who controls the ball inside the penalty area and drills a shot past the ‘keeper. We are level. Needless to say the atmosphere changes. The crowd is now baying: urging the team forwards, forwards, forwards.

Some more short, sideways passes. Long balls, crosses and we are in to time added on. Well into time added on. It seems impossible to score, but … we get a corner. Good cross from Lalkovic, the goalkeeper saves, the ball bobbles out to Bradshaw; fierce shot … comes off the bar.

To Preston, who is patience personified, waiting for the ball to drop, keeping his head.

Before he hammers it into the net … and the crowd goes crazy!

 

One we have literally pulled out of the fire.

For some reason the fourth official speaks with the referee and goalkeeper Etheridge is booked. Was he enjoying the goal/ Celebrating? He was too far away from the action. Cannot see this as anything other than an over-reaction. By the fourth official amazingly.

Happy with the three points. Still in third place: both Wigan and Burton above us winning their games (when less than secretly we were hoping they’d both slip up; give us a chance). But, honestly we had some real luck towards the end of this game and those few brave Colchester fans have every right to feel gutted on the way home to East Anglia.

Crewe (home)

11^th March, 2014

Morning TV reminds us all today is the first day of the Cheltenham Festival (that’s horse racing) and that, last year there was snow and the track was frozen hard. It is also singing the praises of our athlete’s at the Paralympic games in Sochi. Jade Etherington and Kelly Gallagher winning our first Paralympic “on-snow” medals for their courage in taking on ski-ing while being partially sighted. That’s courage! Our two curling teams are doing well too, it seems. The new one for me is called, I think sledge hockey, and looks like a violent version of the original rollerball film. Disabled players on sledges with ice-hockey style sticks and a puck. Have to try and watch one of the games.

No snow here, this time around. Blue skies, sunshine after early fog and, after a day up at the allotments – mostly it seems shifting slabs –  my body is aching and part of me just wants to curl up in the foetal position in a dark room. The M6 is closed somewhere nearby and that causes knock-on problems for local traffic. As well then that, a bit obsessive perhaps, I set off with plenty of time to spare. A more-than-usual amount of Walsall fans are on the radio and one of them, tempting fate, suggests that after all of the recent defeats Crewe might be in for “a tanking”. Strange how that sent a shiver up my spine. Easily finding a parking spot – my traditional one – I get just a little cold walking to the ground. I don’t rush, there is plenty of time. I’m not queuing to collect a ticket. This one was bought as part of a link-up deal with the Wolves game.

Towering above us, and more importantly the M6, is what was (maybe still is?) Europe’s largest road-side electronic advertising hoarding … and it is advertising forthcoming events at Bescot (but not the matches) and switches to an ad about gas boilers featuring  our captain Andy Butler who is training to be a plumber when his footballing days are over at Walsall college. Gas boilers advertised on an electronic sign: ironic perhaps?

Turnstile staff are, as usual cheerful. But the ground is markedly empty. Two coach loads of hardy Crewe (the Alex) fans stir about in the roof of the Family Stand, but Walsall supporters are like patches of colour and slow-motion movement scattered about elsewhere.

This journal was born as a result of Crewe Alexandra. Mark Savage, a relative of some remove (I never was much good at remembering family links) is a died-in-the –head Crewe supporter. Son of my great-auntie’s oldest daughter (you work it out). Last couple of seasons we’ve headed in to see them, eaten lunch and drunk tea together and taken in the game.

Mark sent me a text saying he couldn’t make this game. Then another saying he had had a book published on Amazon called A Hundred and Twenty Grounds for Divorce. It’s apparently about the break-up of his marriage, subsequent events and his ambition to visit every Football League ground. I mean to buy it (at 77p it’s got to be worth it eh?) But, I thought Hmmm, slightly different but give it a try.

Hence this journal. Thanks Mark. I think.

The two teams are warming up well before kick-off. Nobody could fault our levels of fitness this year anyway. The colours look clean and fresh and the playing surface has been well maintained, looking green and even. Our goalkeeping coach has a fierce shot on him as he’s trying to warm up keeper Richard O’Donnell. And there’s us in need of a striker!

The game starts slowly and never gets going in the first half. We’re trying to be patient, passing the ball across the back a lot, then up, then back again. It is painful to watch but at least we’re not losing as we go in. And they’ve had two players booked. There is the ridiculous pantomime of stewards asking to see season tickets as we drift into the lounge. Not sure what the point is when the ground is so damned empty and letting everyone in might mean we sell a few more beers.

Talk about the planned “stag night” trip. It was going to be Tallinn, now, it seems there is some doubt. Accompanying the father of the groom I am keen to know exactly what responsibilities I will have. Keeping the party out of fights with other groups?

Second half and suddenly we are losing. Crewe looked better than us in the first half, although we could have pretended we were playing a patient passing game waiting to play the killer ball and slam four or five goals in.

Really ?? Well we can dream can’t we?

We seem to liven up a bit then and there are chances at both ends. Substitutions. Lalkovic on, Ngoo on. On loan from Liverpool he is apparently an England under 21 striker … must wonder as he is warming up in front of such a small crowd what his future holds. He tries hard enough and has a fierce shot bent around the near post. But for all our pressure we are getting nowhere, rarely testing their keeper in fact.

Then there’s a searching Lalkovic cross, missed by all the Walsall players up there and planted perfectly into the net by a Crewe defender. Seems for moment that he’s the only one who believes it.

 

Then the ref’s whistle: the  cue  the manic, mighty – some might say edge-of-desperation roar from the now-enthusiastic Saddlers fan and the gallop to a 1-1 draw.

Incidentally the whole Ukraine/Russia situation is no longer big news. Doesn’t mean it has been resolved of course.

 

Photosource:Walsall Advertiser