Grief and emotional comedowns can do strange things to people — and affect their future. I’m not referring to the loss of a family member, or a night out at Motion in Bristol circa 2012, but rather the play-off final against Totton in the summer, which, quite frankly, was a shitshow of a performance from the officials. Emotionally, that period of watching Dorch has got to be up there with one of the greatest and most exhausting times in recent history. Nail-biters against Frome and Poole, last-minute chaos from Spetch’s fridge head at Hungerford, and the carnage of the Totton play-off semi left many of us shattered. Is that why I had a pretty horrendous cricket season this summer? I highly doubt it. Is that why we’ve started the 2025/26 season in the relegation zone, conceding numbers similar to Bonnie Blue’s body count? Maybe.
Alas, my second game of the season was away to Hanwell. The first was the 3–0 loss at Farnham in the FA Cup, in which both result and performance went exactly as expected. The results speak for themselves — we’ve been pretty woeful this season.
Hanwell were a team who did us 3–0 twice last year, including a cold, miserable Tuesday night where my outing of a new winter coat kick-started my Columbo alias. All these 3–0s must’ve been playing on my mind, as I went to do my usual “3–0 Dorch win/piss down the drain”, only to realise five minutes later that I’d lumped a tenner on Hanwell to win 3–0. Not the worst accident ever, although my mum would beg to differ. Hanwell’s a nice and easy one for me. Buik is still convinced I live in the Newbury borough of West London, so he thought this was on my doorstep (among the many downfalls of our Bu, geography tops the list). A simple train to Reading and the Lizzy Line to Ealing Broadway — close enough.
As is now tradition with London trips, Goddard is my first rendezvous point. The Goddard and Floyd families go way back, so it was great for TG’s bambino to be there for his first game. I don’t think he was as excited as we were about the craft beer selections, as he sat playing Minecraft on his phone.
A short black cab to the ground and we met the boys who came up on the team coach or drove. Everyone seemed in good spirits apart from our Pete, who, without hesitation from the turnstile staff, was passed through as an OAP for just a fiver. This clearly affected him — he took 15 minutes to himself to use the rest of his entry fee on chips and eat them in peace. Vossy and Jakub went for a more exotic option as they had lasagna from the old double decker bus that doubles as an Italian cafe/hospitality suite, others stuck to a more liquid intense diet.
The game kicked off, and the first observation from the many congregating BTG was that it was fucking boiling. I, as always in any temperature with double digits, was one of the only people in shorts — others were still in Dorch bobble hats and puffa jackets. Ignore Flash Jury’s weather predictions at your own peril.
Hanwell’s a tidy little club with an immaculate pitch (QPR Ladies play here too) and we were joined by the “London Mags” — a load of Geordies in vintage shirts who’d come for a piss-up. We were also very excited to debut our purple third strip today — which was, in fact, just the training top from four years ago.
We started well — by God, we moved it around better than we did at Farnham. We took an early lead after a bit of pinball from a corner dropped to Marcus Daws, who poked a flick-on into the bottom corner. 1–0, and two bucket hats ended up on the pitch. The best bit of handling from the keeper all game was launching one of them onto the roof of the stand. Luckily mine was recoverable, after Ollie called me a fucking idiot for not realising there was a gap at the bottom of the wall as I tried to reach over to get it. We continued to dominate, with Daws having their RB in his pocket and Crosbie hitting the bar as Daws cross smashed off his chest and onto the frame of the goal. Half-time came — a thoroughly deserved lead.
The second half kicked off and we carried on as we finished. We dominated the ball, and Daws caused nonstop problems linking up with Smith. We got a second after another pinball in the box resulted in an attempted Wayne volley falling to our new Torquay loanee Crosbie, who smashed it in. That seemed to kick Hanwell into another gear, as they bombarded our back four (yes, back four — not the fucking three we’ve seen all season), but we stood up to everything they threw at us.
Into the 90+ minutes, and the ball fell to Wooding, one-on-one with Besant and ready to make it 3–0 — giving us our first 3–0 victory since, funnily enough, Hanwell in Feb 2023 — finally making myself and Wardy a lot richer. But he fluffed his lines and fucked it.
FT: 2–0. My god, that was an impressive victory. Even more impressive was how Tom Smith looked in our Patagonia x TSOF collab — which he decided to tag on Instagram. Just a case of waiting for the legal letter to arrive.
Everyone in the bar after was buzzing, none more so than Tommy Killick. After the Farnham game, he looked a lost man — pacing the bar before finding the Pizza Express pile to console himself. Today, he was greeting everyone, beaming ear to ear, and even had time to pose in the bucket hat. Buik confirmed he’d be heading home, having a cup of tea, and settling down for Strictly and a catch up on the days messages — leaving a few of us stunned. Ollie apparently went home and popped a bottle of bubbles — I assume to celebrate the win, but who knows what goes on behind the scenes.
A quick Uber back to Ealing and then the rattler home. It’s not often we see a Dorch away win — but fuck me, that felt good.
Are we back? Course we fucking are. DF.*
Editor’s note – For the purposes of timelines, I’m pretending this was written before our back-to-back 2–0 losses to Poole and Wimborne, and the 1-0 win over Basingstoke. I am very unsure if we are fully back just yet.
