86 Is The Magic Number: Dover 2-1 Chelmsford

Well, its quite incredible how you can go from such a low to a high within a space of a week, as Dover bounced back from our embarrassing performance at Hythe to win our second game on the spin after an impressive victory against 3rd placed Chelmsford at Crabble.

It was a pretty non-descript pre match routine. I wasn't planning on drinking before the game but after exchanging texts with Jared he agreed to lend me a fiver, so I had a couple of jars in the Old Endeavour him and a few others, before getting a lift up to Crabble from Randy Lucey for about half 7.

Crabble was very sparsely populated,  as expected. Cold weather, Champions League on the telly and dissillousion over recent performances were all contributing factors but even that brought into consideration, 625 was very piss poor for a fixture that normally always breaks the 1000 barrier. Chelmsford themselves brought a decent following with about 75-100 travelling down from Essex so there were little over 500 home fans in attendance. I dunno about you but that makes me squirm a little bit. Still, midweek games are never ideal with work and finances coming into play, but its always dissapointing to see a really low turnout, particularly for what was a really must-win game for us.

But we'd have the laugh last on any deliberate stay-away fans out there with Dover playing some of our best football seen at Crabble this season, particularly in the opening 45 minutes.

The game kicked off in rather comical fashion when the referee somehow managed to botch a one minute silence by starting it when Pat Yarwood was still making the match announcements on the P.A. It was pretty awkward to be fair.
It was for the 25th anniversaire of the sinking of the MS Herald of Free Enterprise, killing all 193 people on board. I shamefully have to admit that I had no prior knowledge of this event and only afterwards learned about it on wikipedia.
Also shamefully, during the minute silence the only thing I could manage to think about was how much I needed to fart and how funny it would be if I or somebody let one rip out. Fortunately I managed to just about hold on but I did feel guilty for show such a lack of respect in my thoughts.

In terms of team news, Billy Bricknell  was rewarded with a start up front in place of James Walker after his winner at Salisbury on Saturday while Dean Rance and Phil Starkey came in for Shane Huke and Michael Corcoron. I have no idea whether Shane is carrying an injury niggle or not but if he was dropped then its an interesting decision. I think Shane is pretty overrated; he gives the ball away a lot and is always getting caught out of position so I was pleased to see Simpemba be given the armband. As I said on Tuesday he has that look of a captain, he's vocal and dominant. Fingers crossed he gets to keep it.

Anyway, I don't need to waste time typing about every single match incident because James79's superb highlights can do that for me;

Some of our play in the first half was fantastic. We actually kept the ball on the deck and the players linked up superbly. Our formation was sort of 4-4-2 changing to 4-2-4 when we were attacking with Purcell and Johnson on either flanks, both of whom had excellent games going forward and tracked back well. Bricknell was leading the line superbly like a proper number 9 and seemed fired up against his former club. Dixon was back looking like the player we signed in his first few games, with some absolutely outstanding balls that were giving me a semi erection at times. Rance and Cogan (who took soom unjustified stick on the forum after the game just because he was wrongly awarded MOTM by the sponsors) kept things simple and ticking over nicely in central midfield. The only seemingly weak links in the side IMO were Starkey, who while gets forward quite well always gets caught out and George had to cover for him quite a few times. And Ruiz, who seemed to have a rare off night for us and looked shaky inbetween the sticks.
We were well worth value for our lead when Bricknell put us ahead just past the half hour mark. Some neat passing on the edge of the box saw Dixon(?) get fouled just inside the area and while the Chelmsford players momentarily stopped, expecting to see a penalty awarded, Bricknell fired the loose ball into the bottom left corner to break the deadlock. Cue Steven King with his typical witty comments to their goalkeeper Stuart Searle "Did you not want to save that then? Why did you stop?"

When we went into the break a goal to the good the only dissapointment was that it was only the one goal we had scored. We could have found ourselves with a more comfortable cushion but Searle was having a good evening in goal for the visitors.

I earned myself a few cheap laughs at half-time by singing along to the song above, as well as doing a gay dance to go along with it. Why we play such crap music on our PA I don't know. BRING BACK LED ZEPPELIN ETC!!!!!!!11111!1!1!!!!ONE!!!!

In the second half we lost our shape a bit. Losing Dixon before half-time to injury was a big blow, particularly as his replacement in Walker was nowhere near as up to his standard. Why he is being picked over Simmonds is a strange one. I don't know if Forster doesn't rate Simmo that much but he is one of our best strikers on his day and probably our best finisher in the squad. I doubt he is still in the doghouse over his "Dover fans chat shit" comment last week but if he is then he shouldn't be, we have all forgiven and forgot about it.

Anyway, Chelmsford picked up in the second half and eventually nabbed an equaliser courtesy of that fucking useless journeyman Cliff Akurang. They were given too much space down the right and their cross was well met, although Ruiz should of done more to come out and collect the ball. That was a massive blow and our heads began to drop a bit after that, not helped by some of our fans frustrations whenever a pass went astray.

It fucking annoys me when people are always so impatient, and thankfully I can show the moral high ground here because I was. We had to keep dealing with a boring, negative Chelmsford side that kept going to ground as if they had been shot in every aerial challenge. All there plan was to win free-kicks and hope to nab a goal but thankfully with an absolute man moutain in Simpemba and Harris they very rarely threatened, despite enjoying most of the possession.

But we perserved and eventually got our rewards. We went very close when one of our near post headers was cleared off the line but we would have to wait until that magic 86 number to see the back of the net bulge.
A Barry Cogan ball into the box was dealt with poorly and seemingly struck a Chelmsford player clearly on the arm but Walker (who we were all bemoaning for a lacklustre performane) was on hand to smash in the loose ball leaving those of us who had bothered to turn up for the game going absolutely wild. A MASSIVE surge from the twenty or so chaps behind me.

My nerves in holding out onto our lead would have been dimished had Purcell's deflected effort had bounced into the goal when it hit the underside of the cross bar and Southam's surging run on the rebound not been met by a superb tackle.
While I had my head in my hands there was no reason to as we comfortably saw out the remaining few minutes and even had a further chance to extend our lead when Johnson closed in on goal.

But the final whistle blew and we began to celebrate what was a magnificient win for us and one we fully deserved even though we had to weather the storm a bit in the second half. It was a big turnaround after last week and our players looked fully up for it, full determined and battled our way to do the double over a side that should finish in the play-offs, unless we continue to go on a winning run and keep the pressure on them. I'm not going to get ahead of myself and i'll keep each game as it comes but when we're capable of playing like that and if we reach that bar every week then you could forgive me for getting a little bit excited. That said, a strong end to the season and getting prepared for a title push next season will do me fine.

In the bar afterwards it was very quiet with only about a dozen fans in there. Reginald took pity on me and bought me a much needed celebratory pint of fosters and we spoke to a few other regulars in there such as the Fullers, Dudley, John Lister etc. John Lister's uncle Manx White was down for his second game from his trip over the Isle Of Mann and has clearly brought us good luck! Sadly he won't be at another game this season unless we make the play-offs. But if we lose on Saturday I am going to blame his missing presence for defeat.
Anyway, Reg gave me a lift back to Herne Bay again, once again confirming his status as a fucking legend. One thing you can rely on even if the football supporting Dover is shit, is that the fans we have are absolutely fantastic. God bless you all.

So Saturday brings us another tough challenge, this time in the form of Basingstoke, whom sit only a few places beneath us and are one of the few teams to be Dartford this season. Should hopefully be another cracking away day and hopefully our third win on the spin for the first time this season. Fingers crossed anyway.

Tuesday 06 Mar 2012
Basingstoke	0	-	2	Tonbridge Angels
			Collin (15) Collin (72)		312
Dover	2	-	1	Chelmsford
Bricknell (31) Walker (87)			Akurang (60)		625
Farnborough	1	-	0	Eastbourne Borough
Page (91)			Rook (50)		400
Sutton Utd	2	-	0	Havant and W
Griffiths (44) Barrett-Braham (48) Taggart (07)					409
Welling	2	-	0	Weston-S-Mare
Parkinson (36) Pires (51)					387
Bromley	1	-	1	Staines Town
Malcolm (23) Swaibu (91)			Chaaban (91)		233

Pos		Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1		Woking	31	21	6	4	61	27	34	69
2		Dartford	30	19	6	5	67	31	36	63
3		Welling United	32	19	6	7	65	42	23	63
4		Sutton United	31	17	9	5	57	39	18	60
5		Chelmsford	32	16	10	6	56	30	26	58
6		Dover	30	13	11	6	47	30	17	50
7		Basingstoke Town	31	12	9	10	48	41	7	45
8		Dorchester	31	13	6	12	46	45	1	45
9		Eastleigh	32	13	6	13	46	45	1	45
10		Farnborough	32	13	5	14	45	59	-14	44
11		Weston-S-Mare	32	13	4	15	50	58	-8	43
12		Tonbridge Angels	31	11	8	12	53	52	1	41
13		Boreham Wood	30	11	7	12	39	44	-5	40
14		Salisbury City	31	9	9	13	40	44	-4	36
15		Truro City	31	10	6	15	47	60	-13	36
16		Maidenhead United	31	10	6	15	38	55	-17	36
17		Havant and Waterlooville	31	8	9	14	51	58	-7	33
18		Bromley	32	8	9	15	45	59	-14	33
19		Eastbourne Borough	30	8	7	15	43	52	-9	31
20		Staines Town	32	8	7	17	37	53	-16	31
21		Hampton & Richmond	29	5	9	15	38	53	-15	24
22		Thurrock	32	3	9	20	25	67	-42	18