A weekend of contrasting footballing experiences (PART ONE).

Well, the title pretty much does what it says on the tin. On Saturday I obviously attended the Dover v KG Oostende friendly infront of a crowd of 450 and yesterday I took in the Emirates cup, featuring Arsenal, Boca Juniors, Paris Saint Germain and New York Red Bulls, mainly because 1, it was a new ground to tick off and I had never been to a Premier League ground before and 2, to see two decent games of football for the reasonable price of £25.

I did'nt expect much on Saturday as I departed the house around 1pm with my good friend Russell. I was extremely hungover, having got absolutely shit-faced the night before and getting in at 4AM, so my enthusiasm wasn't high, with my banging headache and needing-to-be-sick-ness bared in mind. When my Dad randomly handed me £40 to buy a new Dover shirt before I left, I felt spoiled, delighted and mixture of undeservedness at the same time but I have to say I am really growing to like the new kits - my blue away number looks fucking ace. As Jim Parmenter said to me in the bar "It's about the model who is wearing it". Cheers Trev.

But yeah, the friendly turned out to be great fun - its not every day you get to see your team score 12 goals! Thats right, we scored 12 goals! Ironically Oostende scored first after another worrying Kitteridge error, leaving them to score an easy tap-in. That would be their only goal though, hell even their only attack of the game, as it soon became apparent by half-time that we had clearly booked the wrong Oostende side as we led them 5-1 at the break. KV Oostende were the side we clearly had intended to play, as they had been advertised weeks running up to the game. Doh! KG are apparently a 6th division Belgian side, and if I had to compare them to an English side it would probably be someone like Sporting Bengal. Still it turned out to be a nice, cheeky morale-boosting win which saw Bricknell open his Dover account with a hat-trick and Donovan Simmonds netting 4, proving his finishing credentials which I have previously been sceptical of. I'anson also scored a brace, whilst Johnson, Purcell and Baker also got onto the scoresheet.

Funnily enough, for parts of the game I actually felt we did'nt play very well - for the opening 25 minutes we were quite sloppy in possession and made them look like a half-reasonable outfit! Some of our goals were very nice and well-taken though, my pick of the bunch being where Baker looped the ball over a defenders head before catching it sweetly first time with a volley that found the bottom of the net. Which ensued a humourous comment from the crowd "This is meant to be a friendly Dover. You're just taking the piss". I laughed anyway, so well done to that man. We did'nt take the piss quite as badly as we could have done though to be honest, we genuinely could have scored at least 18. We had 3 goals questionably chalked offside and a mixture of poor finishing from Purcell and Cogan,  plus some fine saves from their goalkeeper prevented the scoreline from being any worse than it was.

Anyway, I was confused the I logged onto the forum after getting home about 9.30pm, via having a few beers at the newly opened Old Endeavour. (By the way its very snazzy in there - been refurbished wonderfully). Yeah, people were moaning that we had just demoralised a pub side from Belgian. Seriously, who gives a fuck? We have two competitve tests coming up in Arsenal XI and Billericay away before the season starts, and its not like you get to see your team score 12 goals very often! People will find anything to moan about. After the signing of Steven Watt was announced before kick-off I find it strange that anyone has something to moan about when quite clearly we are going to piss this tinpot league!!!

Anyway, I'll upload my thoughts on my generally horrendous expierence at the Emirates later on as this article has taken me fuck loads of time to write already, so please stay tuned and thanks for reading!