Football Is Dead: Dover 0-4 Staines

This is going to be my most lacklustre and lethargic write-up yet. I simply cannot muster up an ounce of enthusiasm to even get myself worked up at the horror show we all witnessed at Crabble on Saturday. Even typing the score into the headline makes me feel physically sick.

Saturday was a day that promised so much and delivered so little. Even me, a miserable wrist-slitting negative bastard was pretty BULLISH on the morning of the day. I even wrote a facebook status of how much I was looking forward to STORMING into the play-offs and a day of "Beer. Sun. 3 Points. Karaoke. Fingering" lied ahead. Sadly only three of those 5 things on my list came to fruition. I bet you can work out which two didn't!
The worst thing about it was I actually believed my words. After our last two performances away at Eastleigh and Farnborough, combined with the factor of how dogshit Staines were back at their place in December, I arrogantly expected nothing less than a comfortable win. Sadly, this arrogance was matched by our players.

The day started off alright, I guess. The sun was absolutely blazing in the Endeavour beer garden and everybody was having a wicked time. I sunk quite a few pints of fosters and stella in my usual fashion. Everybody was enjoying topping up their tans nice and early while chatting bollocks over several £2.20. The usual stuff.

Puppa Snell was out too and was equally quite pissed. Sadly I had to endure one of those necessary "Father/Son" talks on the way to the ground following my recent unfair dismissmal from Morrisons although football is my favoured form of escapism from all the bollocks that goes on in the real world.

So while football was supposed to end my dismal week on a high note it actually made it ten times worse. We suffered our worst home league defeat since the 1999/2000 season when we got trounced 4-0 by big spending Rushden & Diamonds in the GM Vauxhall Conference.

If you fancy having a good laugh at our expense the have a good butchers at the highlights as provided above. I simply cannot be arsed to go into great detail over this travesty of a result, and all-round piss-poor performance from a Dover side that didn't even muster up a single shot on target, as far as I'm aware.

Not one single player came out of the game with any credit. It was utterly abysmal and quite frankly embarrassing to watch. Everything about the entire game was horrible. My three four qualms about the game were:

1. Robert Edmans was making his debut after signing on loan from Dagenham and Redbridge. We know what a good player he is from previous encounters against Chelmsford. So while Nicky Forster made a big cock-up by starting him even though he looked desperate well short of fitness, and hopefully off the pace, it was an utter disgrace to hear people around me cheer him off when he got substituted. Even by some people I know and I like were guilty. While its understandable to be angry over such an hopefully inept team performance, doing that just helps nobody. What the fuck is he going to make of our club and our fans after that?
2. The atmosphere was absolutely dire from the word go. I thought everybody would be up for a game like this especially with quite a few of the jollyboys tanked up on watered down lager. But no, we barely had even sung a song by the time Staines took the lead and then scored their second. I tried, but its always the same 10 or so of us fighting a hopeless cause. What's the point? It doesn't help when you have part-time wankers like Martyn and Sappo who only turn up to games when they can be arsed, or when you have two club wankers like Alex Wilshaw swanning off to watch Leeds instead. But they can't just be blamed. Crabble is like a morgue and has been so for the majority of the last two seasons now. Something has to change.
3. Mind you, I can't make myself out to be a paragon of virtue. After seeing utter bilge in both halves of football I watched the remaining minutes of either side in the bar. This isn't a complaint as such but it is too tempting to just dissapear into there when we are playing shit! I actually witnessed both Staines 3rd and fourth goals in there. This only increased the amount of 'Fucks', 'cunts' and bollocks' in my impressive vocabulary.
4. Actually, there is a fourth i've thought of. I fucking hate Staines. Shitty tinpot club that has a horrid tinpot mentality. The sight of hearing 20 trumpet carrying twats singing "We can see you sneaking out" made my blood boil. Try getting dicked at home to a club that belongs in the Middlesex league. Fuck off.

Well, there was a positive after the game anyway. We learned that Chelmsford lost at home to Blazingjoke, meaning we yet again got away without losing any ground on the play-off pack. Amazing isn't it? But this still didn't improve my suicidal mood.
Just to clarify, when three of our players felt the need to apologize to those of us fans that had bothered to stay in the bar afterwards it speaks volumes over how bad we were.

It was quite funny in the bar afterwards actually. Theres a crazy old bastard who supports us and he always seems to be absolutely hammered. We're not sure if we mis-heard him or not but he appeared to call one of the Staines players a 'black bastard' in a sort of loveable crazy old person manner.
He then proceeded to give Forster a good dressing down, leaving our poor gaffer probably just thinking "Who is this old bastard? Somebody call security".

Forster actually said goodbye to us on his way out and thanked us for our support, which was a bit strange. He normally seems a bit distant. Maybe he felt the need to redeem himself after telling some whinging fans who were leaving early to "not come back again if they hate it so much".
For what its worth, I think fair play to him. There are a lot of whinging old has-beens up there that think because they pay £12 admission fee they have the right to abuse any of our own players or staff in sight. If they want to dish out some shit then they can prepare to take some back.

Not many of us stayed out but some of us remained to drown our sorrows in the Centre Spot and the Old Endeavour. Out of the young beans, only myself, Doddy and Josh Watkins stayed out while Champ & Rosie, Packet, Chris Collings and Dave Waterfield remained out of the coffin dodgers.
There was karaoke in the OE but because so few of us were out it turned out to be pretty dull. Me and Champ both collectively murdered Living Colour's 'Cult of personality' and my solo of Oasis' 'Half the world away' wasn't much better.
But it was a pretty boring end to what ended up as a pretty shit day overall. Not one I'm going to look back on in seasons to come, that's 'fo shure.

Right then. Another home game tomorrow evening, this time against the team we stole a point from just a fortnight ago; Hampton & Richmond. Given our dire performance on Saturday and indifferent home form, combined with how impressed I was with Hampton at their place (they are a much, much better side than Staines - who I hasten to add were not good but we made them look it) you can forgive me for not being enthralled by the prospect of being back on the River End so soon.
This is a massive game that is our game-in-hand and will see us go level on points with Chelmsford should we win it, so there is all to play for. Its so hard for me to predict though when you never know which Dover Athletic side is going to turn up.
Well, heres hoping I'll be a bit more cheery for my next boring update.

Saturday 24 Mar 2012
Boreham Wood	6	-	1	Eastleigh
Bryant (48) Montgomery (50) Riza (54) Garrard (69) Reynolds (07) Cox (91)			McMahon (58) Rogers (64)		201
Bromley	1	-	1	Farnborough
Joseph-Dubois (16)			Page (64)		448
Chelmsford	0	-	1	Basingstoke
			Daly (24)		865
Dorchester	1	-	0	Dartford
Dovell (55)					534
Dover	0	-	4	Staines Town
			Wheeler (24) Antwi (31) Chaaban (85) Chaaban (91)		759
Eastbourne Borough	2	-	1	Woking
Lacey (13) Watson (16)			Sole (55) Betsy (91)		1,037
Havant and W	1	-	1	Tonbridge Angels
Nanetti (71)			Browning (91)		708
Maidenhead Utd	0	-	1	Salisbury
			Sinclair (21)		434
Truro City	3	-	0	Thurrock
Martin (14) Gritton (47) Kelly (80)					492
Welling	0	-	0	Sutton Utd
Day (61)					748
Weston-S-Mare	1	-	2	Hampton & Richmond
Kabba (05)			Tarpey (46) Jones (54)		249

Blue Sq South Table - March 26 2012

Pos		Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1		Woking	36	25	6	5	75	34	41	81
2		Dartford	35	22	7	6	80	35	45	73
3		Welling United	36	21	7	8	72	45	27	70
4		Sutton United	36	18	12	6	62	48	14	66
5		Chelmsford	36	17	10	9	61	37	24	61
6		Dover	35	15	13	7	55	39	16	58
7		Basingstoke Town	35	15	10	10	53	43	10	55
8		Tonbridge Angels	36	14	10	12	61	55	6	52
9		Dorchester	36	14	7	15	51	55	-4	49
10		Boreham Wood	35	13	9	13	51	50	1	48
11		Weston-S-Mare	36	14	5	17	54	65	-11	47
12		Eastleigh	36	13	7	16	50	56	-6	46
13		Farnborough	36	13	6	17	46	66	-20	45
14		Salisbury City	35	11	10	14	43	47	-4	43
15		Truro City	36	12	6	18	56	70	-14	42
16		Eastbourne Borough	34	10	9	15	48	55	-7	39
17		Maidenhead United	36	10	8	18	39	62	-23	38
18		Bromley	36	8	12	16	46	61	-15	36
19		Havant and Waterlooville	35	8	11	16	56	66	-10	35
20		Staines Town	36	9	8	19	43	57	-14	35
21		Hampton & Richmond	33	7	11	15	46	59	-13	32
22		Thurrock	35	4	10	21	29	72	-43	22