Broken Phone And Broken Dreams: Dover 0-1 Welling

Cunt. Shit. Wank. Bollocks.

Blah blah blah blah, Old Endeavour, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Stella, Blah, Bla, Blah, blah, Dissapointment, blah, blah, blah.

I'm bored of hearing my own voice now.

To say Saturday was a bit of a dissapointment would be a bit of an understatement. The worst possible scenario of Dover losing to Welling while Sutton beat Weston came to fruition and effectively ended any realisitic chance of making the play-offs.

The day started well enough. It was Jason Mcfarlane's birthday so as usual, myself and Fish headed out with him to the Old Endeavour at just gone 11AM to get juiced up. Our mood was improved further when we arrived; it also the lovely landlady Debbie's birthday so the first 27 customers of the day got their first pint for a pound!

The weather was absolutely stunning, near the 20 degree mark I believe, so the beers were flowing down a treat. Such an amazing contrast to only 2 weeks ago, where we were going through many days with sub zero temperatures. And what better way to spend the weather than getting tanked up with a pub full of Dovorians?

Its a shame we didn't spend all day at the pub (my favourite part of the pre-match session was Jason Mcfarlane ordering a burger and chips, then proceeding to eat another couple of bacon cheeseburgers. By about midday he was already annoyingly smashed.) But by the time I arrived at the ground, via a lift from the enigmatic Andy Lucey, I was really looking forward to the game ahead.

I've had a couple of days to reflect on the game and well, we weren't as bad as I initially made out. We tried hard but we were complete unable to break down a well drilled Welling side, often reverting to long ball shite as we struggled to carve out any real chances.

Welling were not much more adventurous but broke the deadlock ten minutes from time after the highly-rated Jack Parkinson was allowed a free header in the box and duly beat Ruiz.
Being pretty hammered and much like the Dorchester game, I believed this goal had come in the last minute and thus stormed off to the bar in a sulk and watched the rest of the game peter out from there.

I was airing lots of expletives in my frustrations and anger while my mood almost brightened when we were awarded a very dubious penalty when James Walker was adjudged to have been tripped, although the only thing he seemed to trip over was the ball.
I slumped to my knees with my hands in a praying position as I looked up to the big television as Walker stepped up to take the penalty and......... looked on in horror as Holloway dived the right way and kept it out. It wasn't as weakly struck as some people are making out, but he always goes the same way every time and anybody who does their research will be able to guess right.

What is the best way to deal with anger and frustration? The most reasonable way is to get the nearest thing to you (which happened to be my phone) and throw it against the floor. And then upon picking it up and realising it was broken (shock horror) I threw it down again and began stamping on it. And stamping on it. And stamping on it some more. And stamping on it again. And some more stamping. Because of course, that is going to be the most helpful thing to do in such a situation.
That spell of fucking idiocy, my childish response in reacting to defeat has cost me £37.50 so far, as I managed to snap up exactly the same model on ebay last night. Only I stupidly forgot to check which phone network it was on before bidding, so I'm now with an 02 only phone and will have to get it unlocked (my simcard is orange). My stupidity has no bounds at times.

So I'd have to spend the rest of the evening without a blower but I was determined to drown my sorrows and forget the fact another season of following Dover has amounted to nothing. Apparently I told Welling fans and players they're shit and won't get promoted - what a great sport I am. Saturday certainly wasn't my finest hour. I actually have a great deal of respect for Jamie Day and the side he has managed to assemble on a fraction of the budget we have. Their football isn't pretty to watch but it is succesful and I harbour no real grudge towards WUFC, except when i'm a drunken bitter arsehole obviously.

Thankfully I think my anger and arsehole-ness evaporated as the evening progressed. The majority of us were determined to drown our sorrows and what better way to do so than karaoke being on in the Old Endeavour?

We made it back into Dover's best pub via a few jars of lager in both the Centre Spot and the Three Cups. There is fuck all I can recall from here though as I was pretty darn hammered, even by my usual standards. I know that the pub was pretty packed and the karaoke host was brilliant, with a fantastic selection of songs to choose from. I ended up murdering Duran Duran's Ordinary World and Atomic Kitten's Eternal Flame, the latter my karaoke specialiaty. I would post a youtube video of it here but to save me from embarrassment, I won't. It will be easy to find on youtube if you so desire.
The next thing I know I've woken up on Dad's sofa with a near full plate of chinese on the floor next to me, which is always a bonus. Overall the day was pretty darn good, only let down by the soccer. A pretty recurring theme this season sadly.

I apologise to any of my blog loyalists for the lack of content today but I'm still majorly down over Saturday's result, its a Monday and I generally just can't be arsed. I just want the season to finish now and save my money instead of following what is bound to be a lost cause. Can we overturn a ten point deficit to make the play-offs with 14 games remaining? I would love to say yes but the fact is we have a very tough month coming up and whenever we come up against one of the better sides we simply do not seem to have the guile to break teams out. Corcoron and Cogan have had good games this season but simply do not have what it takes to make something happen. We desperately miss Southam at the moment without his drive but even with him in the side we don't look capable of beating 2 of the top 5 sides in the play-offs. The only side we have beaten in the top 5 was Chelmsford away, whom had a slow start to the season and an off day defensively. I would love to be eating humble pie in a couple of month's time but I simply can't seeing us win 10 of our next 14 games, which will probably be the minimum requirement to make the play-offs.

Instead it looks like the Kent Senior fucking Cup is our holy grail this season, so roll on tomorrow night and our semi-final against Hythe. I'm strangely really looking forward to it.

Pos		Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1		Woking	30	21	6	3	61	25	36	69
2		Dartford	28	17	6	5	62	30	32	57
3		Welling United	29	17	6	6	59	37	22	57
4		Chelmsford	30	15	10	5	54	28	26	55
5		Sutton United	29	15	9	5	54	39	15	54
6		Eastleigh	31	13	6	12	46	44	2	45
7		Dover	28	11	11	6	44	29	15	44
8		Weston-S-Mare	30	13	4	13	50	52	-2	43
9		Basingstoke Town	28	11	9	8	45	35	10	42
10		Dorchester	30	12	6	12	42	45	-3	42
11		Farnborough	30	11	5	14	43	59	-16	38
12		Tonbridge Angels	28	10	7	11	50	50	0	37
13		Salisbury City	30	9	9	12	40	43	-3	36
14		Boreham Wood	28	10	6	12	34	41	-7	36
15		Truro City	30	10	6	14	47	58	-11	36
16		Havant and Waterlooville	29	8	9	12	49	52	-3	33
17		Maidenhead United	30	9	6	15	36	55	-19	33
18		Bromley	30	8	8	14	43	56	-13	32
19		Eastbourne Borough	28	7	7	14	41	51	-10	28
20		Staines Town	29	7	6	16	32	48	-16	27
21		Hampton & Richmond	28	5	9	14	38	52	-14	24
22		Thurrock	31	3	9	19	25	66	-41	18

Saturday 25 Feb 2012
Basingstoke	3	-	1	Thurrock
Sills (19) Daly (28) McAuley (30)			Deen (81)		391
Bromley	1	-	0	Chelmsford
Araba (65)					636
Dartford	2	-	0	Salisbury
Erskine (47) Rogers (53)					941
Dorchester	3	-	6	Havant and W
Malson (34) Nichols (58) Wilson (05) Nichols (86)			(18) Palmer (28) (03) Palmer (53) (62) (69)		469
Dover	0	-	1	Welling
			Parkinson (79)		950
Eastbourne Borough	0	-	1	Staines Town
			Charles-Smith (06)		672
Eastleigh	3	-	1	Truro City
Bubb (17) Brown (28) Bubb (88)			Ash (65)		535
Farnborough	3	-	2	Tonbridge Angels
Charles (13) Jeffrey (16) Page (46)			Suarez (01) Hill (71)		608
Hampton & Richmond	1	-	1	Woking
Huggins (44)			Cowan-Hall (66) King (71)		1,069
Maidenhead Utd	0	-	3	Boreham Wood
			Bryant (25) Riza (27) Sankofa (87)		242
Sutton Utd	3	-	2	Weston-S-Mare
Vassell (51) Beautyman (57) Dundas (76)			Kabba (20) Kabba (65)		656