Hayes and Yeading v Dorchester is hardly a game to ignite much interest in many people. Even people in Hayes, Yeading, or Dorchester don’t really care about it. Combine that with the fact Tuesday’s defeat to Maidenhead has made relegation all but certain, what could have been the proverbial ‘six pointer’ was now largely meaningless. But despite the dead rubber nature of the game, it wasn’t going to stop us making the short trip to their temporary Woking home for an afternoon of non-league. And drinking. It’s what we do.
A sociable midday meet in the Wellington saw a few new faces turn up for the occasion. Kate, JP, Halls and Bending had all been conned into thinking it would be a good day out, and the later than usual meet time had given Cam vital time to recover from his hangover. Having naively got the first round in for eight others, he felt obligated to stay out to get his money’s worth, and duly looked like he had been excavated when we met at the pub.
For a change, the days chat didn’t centre around football, and to be truthfully honest, the whole footballing side of the day was met with utter apathy by both fans and players alike. Conversation lurched between some very obscure points including the eating of chicken hearts at a Brazilian buffet (Brazilian buffet is not an innuendo), the virtues of a student card and it’s free McDonalds cheeseburgers, and Halls’ new baby blue suit he has on order. Halls is not an avid football fan, but added a touch of class to the occasion with his talk of suits, his taste in M&S lentil crisps, and his attire being like a man who was part Libertines tribute band, part clay pigeon shooter.
The short train journey there was largely uneventful, except for Fred realising his group saver ticket wasn’t valid as he had one ticket too many from his group save 4. Thankfully for Fred, the train guard “luckily wasn’t a cunt”. Another small revelation was that a friend of JP’s had got some national notoriety for not only being on the show ‘First Dates’, but also looking like Alan Carr. A fact he duly got rinsed for on national television. Well he did try to steal JP’s then girlfriend when drunk on new year’s eve, so you reap what you sow.
A couple of pints were consumed in the pleasant surrounds of The Sovereign pub as well as meeting with Welchy, Cal (who just popped down from Inverness for the game, as you do) and Steve who had also made the trip, and then it was off the Woking for kick off. H&Y are managed by Phil Babb, a man who had a very good career in the professional game including a World Cup with ROI in 1994, and a League Cup winners medal. Sadly he is remembered more for when he slid bollocks first into the goal post when playing for Liverpool many years ago. Don’t remember? Refresh your memory here;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dONtFBuCztM
Upon arrival at the ground, we thought we might have arrived an hour or so early due to the lack of fans, but no, we were on time, there was just pretty much no others there. Hayes and Yeading are an amalgamation of two teams that no-one really liked or supported, and have now formed one club that no-one really likes or supports. The match attendance of 107 seemed generous considering we were strewn around a 6,000 capacity stadium like alleged sightings of a Malaysian airliner, and that total may well have included all players and staff. But not to be put off, we assumed position behind one goal, and put our newly washed flag right over the H&Y flag, as we’re mature like that. We also spied a Sutton sticker, obviously put up before the stern sticker based warning they received at the avenue recently.
The game itself followed an all too familiar pattern, in that we looked ok for 45 minutes, before conceding one and then another soon after to condemn us to an all too predictable defeat. We did hit the post early on, but besides that the main highlight was Wozza’s audible shout of cunt each time he was beaten to the ball, Smeets mistiming a header and then spending the next five minutes making sure his nose wasn’t bleeding, and the very astute instructions of the H&Y number 3 to the rest of his defence, telling them that; “fuck me, it’s not difficult, don’t give it to the fucking striped shirts”. That boy will go far. Not only did we reportedly have to purchase white socks to avoid a kit clash, we also had a player on the bench by the name of Sam Smith. We were quickly informed that it’s not the singer who brought us ‘Money On My Mind’, which is probably for the best, that song is fucking terrible.
After the game, my chat about important issues including goalkeeping gloves and Wrestlemania with AWH was cut short by Phil Simkin wanting to talk to Al about next season. Pick a better moment next time Phil, we were mid discussion about the Undertaker v Brock Lesnar.
AWH, Phil and Jem also provided very honest opinions on this season but the prospect of trips to such footballing hotbeds as Biggleswade, St Neots, and Hungerford (as well as games v Weymouth and Poole) next season will provide us with different places to drink in, if nothing more. Cam also managed to interrupt a post-match interview with H&Y ‘keeper, Mikhael Jaimez-Ruiz, and excelled himself by saying he couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying both now and during the game. That would be as he is Venezuelan. So after basically being called a racist, Cam continued his stroll to the station.
After 90 minutes of what was very sober football by this seasons standards, we then looked to salvage something from the day by getting very, very drunk in Camden culminating in Cam getting the barmaids’ number and then arguing that it probably wasn’t her real number as the writing was too neat, Cal leaving half way through the night to catch his 8 hour coach ride back to Inverness (as you do) and a couple of the lads taking some quite fine Irish girls to another pub only to be told they were too drunk to enter.
Given the low aim, the rest of the evening was a success as we duly got totally smashed and had more shots than we saw during the course of the 90 minutes. Overall, an entertaining day, but if the football told us one thing, it’s that the season’s end doesn’t come quick enough as far as the club is concerned. It was the most apathetic of footballing outings I’ve ever known, and next season both direction and clarity are needed as well as some new faces. But until then, the prospect of Banbury away on a Tuesday night will spur us on. SV.
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