Suprisingly though it was a pretty decent day off of the field. With me having to make an on-pitch presentation to David Leworthy before the game there were fears running rife during the week that I would be too drunk and embarrass myself and the club. I don't think I embarrassed myself but typically I was pretty bamboozled by the time I arrived at Crabble.
The writing was on the wall when I met Champ for breakfast in Jermaines at about 10AM. I had my first fried breakfast in very long time which went down a fucking treat although unfortunately the infamous fit, Polish waitress was not working so I had to settle for beans instead of cleavage. I also took the first glimpse of the trophy plate that I would be presenting for David Leworthy - it was very smart for £20. Then Paul Harrison sensibly drove down to pick it up from us. Once the brekkie was guzzled down we headed off to the increasingly miserable Working Men's Club for a drink in there. It must of been early because we arrived before it was even open!
I promised myself and everyone else that I would drink slowly and to be fair I initially dead. I consumed a poofy Toffee Apple Brothers cider in the workies, mainly because I don't trust their pipes and the beer usually tastes shit. It turned out to be a rather uneventful pint with me and Champ particularly being uncharacteristly dreadful on the quiz machines.
Next up was of course the Old Endeavour. A pint of fosters went down a treat in the front beer garden as the sunshine suprisingly made an appearence. I kept winding Champ up that I was really looking forward to seeing the Woking fans who would be joining us at half 12.
In fairness I was and Kingfield Ender and Kanu's Nan (of conference south forum fame) made for good company and in-depth conversation. The pub was also populated by an influx of Dutch Woking supporters who were fairly strange but friendly nonetheless. Plus a good turnout from Dover fans who were looking forward to a competitive game against a fellow big-guns from this division *sigh*. We had the lovely Russell down from Nottingham aswell as some cracking company in Sappo and Furry Phil plus others.
Again though, nothing particular of note here other than my increasingly rapid pace on the Stellas. Once the first few went down I had acquired a real taste for the lovely stuff and probably necked a few more than I should of done. I had barely just ordered one when I was being hurried up to the ground by Champ for a lift with Andy Lucey. I quickly necked the rest off which rather shamefully led to me chundering on the pavement up the road. It was sudden, feeble and pathetic but at least it got some of the breakfast out of my system.
Thanks to Baldylocks we arrived at Crabble hill about half past 2 when some friendly chap gave me a crisp £10 note as a contribution towards my flags. Thank you BAWA.
As we approached the turnstiles I said to the others "I'll be going through the season ticket holder turnstile because I'm a real fan". It manages to garner a chomp every single time without fail.
In an attempt to rid of a few last-minute nerves before my presentation I went to order a half pint of fosters, which got necked in one. It was rather busy in the bar yet they still ridiculously only had 2 people serving behind the bar with no queuing system in place. This seriously should have been addressed a long time ago yet nothing is ever done. No wonder why we hardly drink in there.
I then rushed around to the tunnel where I was greeted by everyones childhood hero and all-round legend David Leworthy. Walking out on to the pitch strangely felt very surreal, even though we are only Dover Athletic and I've been on there twice for pitch invasions. But it was great. Leworthy got a standing ovation from both sets of fans (credit to Woking for that) and it was a real pleasure to give him his award. He seemed like a really nice guy and made me feel comfortably in his rather awe-inspiring presence. As he walked off to the directors box and I walked back out to the terrace he said that he would join us on the terraces in the second half and duely kept to his word. Top man.
 | |
| Two legends collide. Nah, only joking. But the deserved winner of our best ever player award. How we could do with a player of his calibre right now! |
The most impressive thing about the first half was the noise created by the Jollyboys in the River End, which I HATE kicking towards in the first half. Its a habit that needs to be changed IMMEDIETLY. We remained noisy throughout despite a very poor effort on the field from our players. Leworthy himself was on the receiving end of many of his classic chants "Leworthy my lord" etc.
I'm not going to go into much detail about the match because I really don't want to remember it! We went into the break 2 goals down courtesy of a Dale Binns strike and a Jack King penalty on the stroke of half-time. The first goal was a good individual strike when he tore Starkey a new arsehole on the left before firing a fierce shot into the bottom corner from the edge of the area. Then Schulz (?) clumsily brought down one of their players just inside the box which the dominant and impressive Jack King converted.
We were very poor and Woking could have had a more impressive scoreline going into the second half. Starkey in particular was shocking. Thanks to some impressive live screening of the game in the bar I was able to watch the final few minutes of the half in the bar where the generous KE had bought us Dover fans a round in. We all agreed that Dover were shocking and they couldn't believe how easy a game they were having.
Second half we were better but again had the lack of cutting edge in the final third. Walker was denied a penalty after staying on his feet and firing wide while off-balance which the referee stupidly gave advantage for when there was clearly nothing beneficial about playing on. Still, no complaints from us as there was no way we were going to comeback against a superior side. Elvis Hammond came off the bench to wrap up 3 points in the closing minutes. The woeful Starkey under-hit an awful backpass which left Ruiz in no-mans land. He was unable to clear the ball and Hammond finished well from a difficult position.
At this point I stormed off in a puff and dashed off to the bar, where a pint of fosters would be my remedy. Soon after I was greeted by all the others and the annoying jubiliant Woking fans. Tobefair, they were fairly humble in victory and seemed annoyingly reluctant to accept my verdict that they will absolutely storm the league this year. Woking really did seem like a side that would match the Newport one that this pissed this division a couple of seasons earlier with vastly quality all over the pitch.
As for ourselves, we conducted a miserable post-mortem on our side. I think we all agreed that the Hayes has left us with too much deadwood that we cannot get rid of because they're all on well-paid contracts. A lot of our players are not good enough to be competiting against the sides in the upper echleons of the division. We're shit. We're not going to get promoted. We suck. None of our players would get into the Woking side. This season will probably be a write-off.
Admittedly I'm a rather fickle person who goes from suicidal to BULLISH after a victory and vice versa for a defeat. But I was thinking to myself earlier: Has this been the least enjoyable season I've had so far supporting Dover? That might sound rather pathetic with us sitting just outside the play-off places with a league record of W7, D7, L4. My first two full seasons watching Dover resulted in relegations and we had to endure a lot of woeful football and underachievement under Clive Walker. Maybe I am just being a spoilt brat but personally this has been a far from memorable season so far. For the following reasons;
- The football for the majority of the season has been woeful. Particularly at home where we have failed to dispatch some really poor sides like Tonbridge, Basingstoke, Havant and Farnborough, teams we should be beating with the money we have invested.
- Crowds are dipping at a quite alarming rate. I can hardly blame people with the woeful football and the less than pleasant match-day experience at Crabble. Theres this young lad called Craig who has chosen to go to Boreham Wood away next week for the second time at the expense of the Woking game, such is his disliking of home games! Mad.
- I've seen some really shit Dover sides in my time but theres not a worse feeling than severely under-achieving. There are very few players in our squad that I feel particularly fond of and really want to get behind. I take the piss out of people who make tirades about 'a lack of LOCAL LADZ' but my god, our players seem so devoid of any passion and looking like they hunger to succeed for our club.
- Very few memorable away games. Chelmsford was a great win and so were the Tuesday evenings at cannon fodder clubs Maidenhead and Thurrock. The weekend in Truro was great but that won't be remembered for the football.
- Martin Hayes sucked a lot of life out of the club and his succcesor Forster refusing to play down reports of being linked to the Northampton vacancy doesn't help either.
- Most importantly, this season will be remembered by quite a few of us as the one we tragically lost Dave Bell.
- Getting knocked out of the FA Cup without a whimper.
Suprisingly the post-match beers were rather enjoyable as we were able to get the defeat out of our systems. Its much easier to accept defeat when its against a side that is much better than you! To cut a really long, boring story short; we drunk a few beers in the centre spot then had a few in the Old Endeavour before fucking off back to our respective slums. I ended up fucking wasted and passed out on my floor with a chinese takeaway next to me. GOOD TIMES!
Just a quick note to KE and KN... thanks for coming, hope you enjoyed yourselves and thankfully we won't get to see your shitheap of a club for a long while.
Sorry this blog piece has been less flavoursome than normal but I really cannot be fucked today as I'm in a really shitty mood. Thank you for being understanding. I may be edit parts of this when I can be bothered.
So next up on Saturday is the delightful trip to Boreham Wood again which I am really looking forward to......NATTTTTTT! I'm pretty sure that it is just me and Packet that are getting the train to the game here. He's coming from Whitstable and myself Herne Bay so we've got to put up with shitty engineering works in Medway en route. Fucking marvellous.
This really is the type of game that I would just fucking avoid all together if I had some sort of social life and something better to do with my time... unfortunately I don't. I fear another dicking at their shitheap of a ground and that is what i'm expecting. The thing is I'm really craving an FA Trophy run to salvage a rather poor season so I actually really want to win here. I hope BWood field a weakened side... heres hoping anyway. COYW, keep the faith, keep the biscuits.
| Saturday 19 Nov 2011 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chelmsford | 6 | - | 1 | Bromley | |
 Ibe (17) Rainford (22) Cornhill (31) Bakare (53) Benjamin (85) Parker (91) |
Taylor (80) |
 1,008 |
|||
| Dorchester | 0 | - | 0 | Sutton Utd | |
| 552 |
|||||
| Dover | 0 | - | 3 | Woking | |
| King (46) Hammond (91) Binns (09) |
1,061 |
||||
| Eastbourne Borough | 0 | - | 2 | Basingstoke | |
| Bubb (21) Sills (72) |
628 |
||||
| Eastleigh | 2 | - | 2 | Dartford | |
| Smith (43) Jordan (54) |
Green (27) Wallis (37) |
604 |
|||
| Hampton & Richmond | 0 | - | 2 | Thurrock | |
| Boylan (29) Boylan (74) |
590 |
||||
| Salisbury | 1 | - | 3 | Farnborough | |
| Reid (46) |
Blake (53) Bennet (61) Bennet (73) |
804 |
|||
| Staines Town | 1 | - | 1 | Havant and W | |
| Chaaban (59) |
Palmer (66) |
274 |
|||
| Truro City | 2 | - | 0 | Tonbridge Angels | |
| Afful (19) Palmer (91) |
662 |
||||
| Welling | 2 | - | 0 | Boreham Wood | |
| Clarke (24) Clarke (30) |
688 |
||||
| Weston-S-Mare | 4 | - | 2 | Maidenhead Utd | |
| Pepperell (19) Grubb (20) McGregor (84) Grubb (91) |
Williams (56) Quamina (91) |
307 | |||
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |
Woking | 17 | 13 | 3 | 1 | 42 | 13 | 29 | 42 |
| 2 | |
Welling United | 18 | 12 | 3 | 3 | 42 | 25 | 17 | 39 |
| 3 |  |
Sutton United | 17 | 10 | 4 | 3 | 33 | 16 | 17 | 34 |
| 4 | |
Dartford | 17 | 10 | 4 | 3 | 35 | 20 | 15 | 34 |
| 5 | |
Chelmsford | 17 | 8 | 7 | 2 | 33 | 16 | 17 | 31 |
| 6 | |
Basingstoke Town | 16 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 31 | 22 | 9 | 29 |
| 7 | |
Dover | 18 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 26 | 18 | 8 | 28 |
| 8 | |
Weston-S-Mare | 18 | 8 | 3 | 7 | 33 | 31 | 2 | 27 |
| 9 | |
Tonbridge Angels | 19 | 8 | 3 | 8 | 34 | 37 | -3 | 27 |
| 10 | |
Boreham Wood | 18 | 8 | 3 | 7 | 22 | 25 | -3 | 27 |
| 11 | |
Dorchester | 20 | 8 | 2 | 10 | 25 | 30 | -5 | 26 |
| 12 | |
Truro City | 17 | 8 | 1 | 8 | 30 | 31 | -1 | 25 |
| 13 | |
Eastleigh | 18 | 7 | 3 | 8 | 24 | 30 | -6 | 24 |
| 14 | |
Eastbourne Borough | 17 | 6 | 3 | 8 | 29 | 29 | 0 | 21 |
| 15 | |
Havant and Waterlooville | 18 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 31 | 31 | 0 | 20 |
| 16 | |
Salisbury City | 17 | 5 | 4 | 8 | 24 | 29 | -5 | 19 |
| 17 | |
Bromley | 16 | 5 | 3 | 8 | 25 | 34 | -9 | 18 |
| 18 | |
Maidenhead United | 19 | 5 | 3 | 11 | 24 | 43 | -19 | 18 |
| 19 | |
Farnborough | 18 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 23 | 43 | -20 | 16 |
| 20 | |
Hampton & Richmond | 18 | 3 | 4 | 11 | 21 | 32 | -11 | 13 |
| 21 | |
Thurrock | 17 | 3 | 3 | 11 | 16 | 40 | -24 | 12 |
| 22 | |
Staines Town | 18 | 2 | 5 | 11 | 19 | 29 | -10 | 11 |
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