Of all the trips in English league and non-league football,
the phrase “Slough away on a Tuesday night” is one that sounds especially
fucking dull. Slough, a team who were in the Conference in the late 90’s, and a
place which is synonymous with being the setting for the series ‘The Office’
(which I can’t fucking stand), are now playing their home games at Holloways
Park in some place called Beaconsfield, sharing with Beaconsfield SYCOB FC.
Whatever a SYCOB is. Sounds like a villain in Dr Who.
After a very good start to the season, we travelled in
reasonable numbers with reasonable expectation to Slough/Beaconsfield, but
unfortunately, that’s where the optimism ended. Having worked the day and
swapped part of my shift to enable me to go to the game, I was hopeful of
finishing on time and getting the half 6 train from Marylebone. I should have
known when I didn’t leave work until half 6 that the evening was going to be a
cluster fuck. Undeterred, I caught the train to Beaconsfield (that was delayed
too) in full uniform with whistle and all, and met The Roth and Eames, who had
driven with a delay in traffic along the way, to get a lift to the ground.
After I left the station via the wrong exit, I eventually
found the dynamic duo, and we proceeded in what we thought was the direction of
the ground. Wrong. A ropey postcode had directed is to the VILLAGE surrounds of
Beaconsfield Rugby Football Club and their midweek practice. As the game kicked
off, we were still driving around the arse end of Beaconslough or whatever it’s
called, and it was soon established that The Roth has all the navigational
skill of a Malaysian Airline Pilot with such stunning directions as; “I don’t
know what this means, continue, erm, down?”
Eventually we arrived at the ground, 20 minutes played and
already a goal down. Meeting with the others, we were informed it had been an
eventful 20 minutes already. Firstly, Matt Eames lookalike, Matt Oldring, had
also got stuck in traffic and was named as a sub, with Tony Lee starting at the
back in his place. Once Oldring had arrived, Lee was subbed with the score at
nil-nil to accommodate Oldring, and Lee proceeded to have a physical
confrontation with both the roof of the dugout and an advertising board as he
left the field. Oops. And almost no sooner had that sub been made, Shane Murphy
in goal allowed an innocuous shot to slip through his grasp and creep over the
line. 1-0 down, and things hadn’t exactly started well.
As Fred and I were being informed of this, Oldring gave away
a free kick for handball, and said free kick was deposited into the roof of the
net. 2-0 down, and poor Eames, who was parking the car, hadn’t even got to the
ground yet. I decided it was time for a cup of tea and a burger, and as I
waddled to the burger van, I met Eames.
He had been made to pay full price to see two thirds of a game that his
side were already looked beaten in. He looked every bit as happy as well. The
tea was good though, although Fred’s tea was apparently was “scathing hot”.
Even the tea was angry.
As I filled my face wing a half pound burger complete with
peppers, onions and tomatoes, the collection of travelling magpies debated what
we had seen and what was needed to spark us into life. One thing was for sure,
we needed a goal. And moments later, we got one. A perfect cross from the right
was met by Jason Brookes to score a stunning volley from 12 yards. Sadly, it
was AWH who put the cross in, and both Al and Brooksey were just knocking a
ball around as subs do at half time. Still, it was a good finish all the same.
The second half started soon after and was a continuation of
the first as we were second best in most departments, looked disjointed, and
misplaced a lot of passes. By this time, we had taken to talking among
ourselves, with this week’s hot topics covering a wide array of bullshit. It
transpired that Spud in his wisdom has declined to make the evenings game as he
had “just sat down.” Quite what it would have taken to move spud from his seat
is unknown, with a series of winches and pulleys or maybe a bottle of ‘peach
steller sidder’ both mooted as possible options. Also absent was Clarkie, who
had been working. The last away trip I had done at Poole had seen Clarkie turn
in a man of the match performance with moments such as bemoaning how he’d been
told off for using the women’s toilets, being verbally done by Poole’s keeper
(The cunts done me. Fair play to him I like that cunt), and somehow getting in
as an under sixteen despite being a giant.
Back to the game and a third Slough goal followed on the
hour, and it all of a sudden had the distinct feel of the worst Kemp/Simkin
masterminded away days. But one thing we are now is a lot more resilient, and
after forcing a couple of saves from the Slough keeper who had to be almost
woken up, we got a goal back after an excellent through ball from Critts was
expertly finished by Brad Tarbuck. Would this start an unlikely comeback? No. A
fourth Slough goal just before time added gloss to the score line for them, and
made sure of a pretty miserable night for us.
Was this an awful performance in which everything that could
go wrong pretty much did? Yes, it was crap. Are we in crisis? Are we bollocks.
This has been a very good start to the season, and we are well worth our high
position in the league. We have the squad and mentality to maintain our
performance levels so far, and games like this will be a vital learning curve
for the management and players. Jem has already admitted he may have got his
early substitution wrong, all the goals were preventable to say the least, and
every team will have off days. Slough were better than us, and how they beat us
was very similar to the manner in which we had won at Cambridge. This
performance was the exception rather than the rule, and hopefully the enforced
break due to our FA Cup exit will do us some good. St Neots will be my next
game, and I’m sure we won’t put in a repeat performance there.
So, Up The Magpies, and hopefully Jem can guide us to a win
in our next game. Lets face it, his navigational skills have got to be better
than Fred’s. SV