I got the train into London Victoria leaving Herne Bay at midday. It was a pretty boring journey that I took a few old copies of my FourFourTwo magazine collection with me to kill the time and I was pretty entertained reading an in-depth interview with Barry Fry. Love him or hate him, I think Barry Fry is a total and utter legend. I guess I'm on my own in that respect? He's such a fantastic character, a misunderstood villian and I love how he uses so many 'fuck's' and 'bollock's' in his dialogue. His vocabulary is almost as limited as mine.
There was also an interview with Steve Claridge in which he amazingly didn't come accross as the dullest man in football, unlike when he's doing his 'pundritry' for the football league highlight show. And speaking of Bazza Fry, he actually told a funny story about him when he was his manager at Birmingham,
"When Kev Francis signed for Birmingham for £800,000, we lost on his debut 3-0. Kev played badly and Barry went insane. He looked at him and said: "800 fucking grand? What's the number for the fucking Stockport chairman? Get the cunt on the phone, sell this cunt back to him him for £800."
As I say, Barry is a fucking legend and this story only solidifies my view.
Anyway, I couldn't be arsed with the hassle of the underground so I made by way to Waterloo by changing at Clapham Junction. As I have said before, that station is a fucking bastard to try and navigate your way around. I think it has at least 30 different platforms! But luckily I managed to make my connection by about 30 seconds.
I met John outside the Hole In The Wall just after 2PM with the intention of doing a pub crawl around that area. But being the boring fuckers that we are, we got some comfortable in there that we stayed there the whole 3 hours we were in the area.
It was good to see 'ole Johnny boy though, he hasn't been seen in action since we defeated Truro so it was a long overdue re-appearence. He entertained with some tales of his army days in Belize, most of which are probably best not to repeat on here.
He also took pity on my lack of funds by getting most of the rounds in which I was grateful for. I think I started off on the customary pint of Fosters before hitting the decent selection of ales they had available, eventually devouring Pride of Oxfordshire (x2), Surrey TEA, The Gold Cup and a pint of Banks in the duration we spent there.
Nothing too exciting or noteworthy to report here. When John got up and put his jacket on he managed to knock his near-full pint over the table, getting it everywhere and eventually smashing the glass. Luckily the bar staff in there are decent and even let John only pay half the price on his replacement. Silly, careless bastard.
We also got the delightful company of our companion from Dartford for a short while, Grassbank, who decided to pop in while he was en route to Maidenhead. It was good to have a catch up and talk about all things Blue Square South for a while. It disgusts me that I am hoping Dartford pip Woking to the title but it really is a case of choosing between the lesser of two evils. Its like choosing between putting your testicle through a cheese grater or having your eyeballs gourged out by a koala bear. But yeah, it was good to see him again, I love mingling with the opposition fans.
We eventually had Sappo and Josh Watkins turn up at the pub about 4:45PM. Part of the reason we spent so long in here was because I was waiting for some of the other Dover fans to arrive but considering neither of these two were drinking, it was a pretty pointless exercise. Ginger Jonathan Pring was also supposed to meet us but was running late from work so we didn't see him until we were at the ground, while a fellow ginger Christopher Hunt was also running late from work duties.
John must have left the pub pretty pissed here because he managed to fall down a FLIGHT OF STAIRS consisting of 3 steps, and thus nearly fucking his ankle up! Sadly I wasn't too drunk and despite drinking over 10 pints throughout the day, I wasn't even remotely pissed at any point in the evening. For some reason I can't intoxicate myself for these midweek games despite my best efforts, and I would have needed to for the horror show DAFC had in store.
We got the 5:13PM train into Hampton, which took just over forty minutes. Pretty piss poor when you consider it isn't even a long distance but it was stopping past loads of cockney shitholes like Wimbledon, a place which I thought had relocated to Milton Keynes.
The train was crammed full of commuters and thus a not very ideal time to travel. Full of 'Cockney-boy-done-good' types but on the positive side, there was some very delicious crumpet about, less covered up than usual with the beautiful sunshine. Two fitties were sitting right near us but I don't think they would have been impressed with our gaggle of overweight thick twats.
Most of the journey we had to make do with Sappo filtering the usual bullshit out of his mouth. Claiming that he was getting lots of texts from *X girl, a really fit girl from Dover but he wouldn't go and meet her unless he could guarentee that she is putting out. Yeah, of course mate. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Luckily he said he doesn't read my blogs so he won't have to read this. Shall I make a running joke about him every week?
The nearest pub by the station was called The Railway Bell I think and despite being in an upmarket area of London I was still absolutely HORRIFIED and OUTRAGED to learn that it was £4 for a pint of Fosters in there. How can a pub justify charging so much for a single pint? Well I know the answer to that (because there are enough mugs in the area to pay for it) but its still pretty shocking nonetheless. £2.60 for a pint of coke to the non-drinking fags with us aswell. And worst of all, the barmaid looked like a transgender!
So we decided to not piss around for too long here, in fact very swiftly finishing our pints so we could grab some grub from the chippy over the road.
Given the prices in the pub we were expecting it to cost £7 for a portion of chips or something equally ridiculous, but the £1.40 for a small portion wasn't too shabby, and the chips were pretty decent too. A much needed refreshment, but I was left to rue not getting anything else with it later on.
Right then. Next pub. Can't remember what the name of it was but we went in there last season and it didn't seem to bad in there. But I had a really awful pint of some stout in here which again wasn't cheap at £3.60 a pint. It tasted like fucking treacle and took a real effort to digest the whole thing. That's always the problem with ales - the majority of them are very decent but you can one shit one and that will put you off it for a while.
Again, pretty non-descript here. We were going to wait for a few of the others from the coach to arrive and meet us for one but we couldn't be arsed to stay there in the end, instead heading to the ground with about 50 minutes until kick-off.
From the station to the ground, its only about a 5-10 minute walk depend on your walking pace, and those two pubs are the only ones en route. It isn't a great place for an away day and one I'd much prefer to have midweek than waste a weekend game on it. Its not the best of grounds either, but it is OK. They have a strange peculiar small seated stand behind one goal, which seats about 60 people! Behind the other end they have a small covered terrace, something that they didn't have on our previous visit. Down one side there is virtually nothing, while on the other is a combination of three stands; one terrace, their main seated stand in the middle and another seated stand next to it, which was closed for some reason. I presume something to do with the safety.
John got me in a student for £6 I think, again mugging off yet another turnstile operator. I should be charged for theft, shouldn't I?
Straight into the bar though, which was fairly decent. I couldn't remember it well from last season when I was hammered but it wasn't the cheapest at £3.30 a pint in there, in plastic glasses. Although you know the bonus about plastic glasses don't you? DRINKING ON THE TERRACES! WOOHOO!
We caught up with all the fellow Dovorites here, those who got the coach down and the two gingers that were running on later trains. Then there was the oblituary piss-taking session of Martyn 'no-morals' Mcgarrigle who was pretty tanked up, the lucky bastard. He kept on banging on about his women pulling prowess because he has a massive tally of THREE (3) shags. Good on him.
Me and Chris Hunt took it in turns to tear him apart before I came to the conclusion that he looks like Velma from Scooby Doo.
 |
| Martyn Mcgarrigle. |
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| Velma From Scooby Doo. |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYpMBjbDw-A&feature=player_embedded
There above ^ are the match highlights so I don't have to go into do much detail on match events. Although it seems to be very generous on us and doesn't highlight how poor we were, particularly defensively. As you can see from the opening, Ruiz was really lucky to escape without conceding after completely missing the ball but luckily from then afterwards he was much better and made some good stops.
We were completely over-run in midfield all evening, not suprising we keep persisting with a 4-2-4 formation with no real physical strength in midfield. Cogan seems to shirk away from every 50-50 challenge and looks scared whenever he is in possession. Southam is a great passer of the ball and made numerous decent passes in the game but he's not exactly blessed with pace when tracking off the ball. And unfortunately our defence had a real shocker with the exception of Simpemba, who's been excellent. Even Wynter got torn a new arsehole by their right-winger, who hilariously looked like a giraffe with his ridiculously long neck and tiny peanut head. Ex white James Simmonds, who was briefly with us for a few games a couple of years back, had so much freedom in midfield for Hampton and caused us problems all night.
While our tactics left a lot to desire, so did our passion, commitment and willingness to win the game. I don't think our players intentionally want to play badly but Hampton looked desperate to win, were really fired up and outfought us in all areas of the pitch, and beat us to every single ball. It was fucking shocking to watch at times. Their failure to put away chances, their inability to defend set-pieces and a horror goalkeeping error cost them a game they should have easily of won. When Bricknell grabbed our late equaliser it was more a feeling of disbelief rather than ectasy of rescuing a late point after being two goals down. And the funny thing was, moments later we could scrambled a goal in from a corner, had the ball fallen more generously to us. That would have been the cruelest robbery in the history of football had it been completed.
Credit to Hampton though, they certainly looked like one of the better botttom half teams and better than their lowly second bottom position suggests - they were physical yet could play a bit of football aswell. It would appear their main problem all season has been conceding shit goals, usually from set-pieces from reading their forum. And thats exactly what they did here.
To be fair, their first goal was a beauty. A well-struck shot from 25 yards that flew into the top bins. BUT NONE OF OUR PLAYERS BOTHERED TO FUCKING CLOSE HIM DOWN IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!
Their second goal was a classic example of our poor defender. Wynter beaten on the right and a simple header unmarked from the back post.
Then about 5 minutes before half time we were all flabbergasted when Simpemba scored his first goal for the club, completely against the run of play. From a free kick on the far side Cogan actually managed to deliver a fantastic ball accross the box which was superbly met with a towering powering header.
In the second half Hampton could have scored another 4 or 5 goals but somehow a third goal eluded them. And Bricknell would make them pay. He'd had a couple of decent chances to equalise before hand but finally found the net a few minutes from time. A terrible fumble by their keeper from a weak cross and he nipped in for his easiest goal of the season. Thats 5 goals in 6 games for Billy now, he's finally looking like the asset he was at the beginning of the season.
Overall a point was not really any use to either side. We need to catch up with Chelmsford and stop making excuses after every game. We were awful for the vast majority of the game and some changes need to be made. Johnson and Green were completely inneffective and I wouldn't be suprised if we terminated the latters loan. Purcell looked completely burned out by the end of the game. Huke, Starkey and Cogan are just not good enough for this level.
We need a more balanced midfield please.
I said before that we were not going to make the play-offs because we drop too many points and I will stick by that. 13 draws just isn't good enough. As Phil pointed out elsewhere - you'd be better off with 5 wins and 8 losses than that!
It was a pretty dull, grim evening off the field as well. T'was a pretty poor following from us - I wouldn't have said we took much more than 69 out of the lowly 369 crowd at the Beveree. Everyone was in their negative midweek mood and we barely bothered singing much all evening. Apart from John making a few pissed-up shouting ramblings it was pretty dull round.
I quickly spoke to some Hampton chap before leaving the ground; a Hampton director (?) called beaverlover who posts on the conference south forum and reads this very blog. I expressed my sympathy and guilt over denying them what should have been their three points but quickly had to rush off to the station, as we only had 10 minutes to make our train.
We all just about made it after a lot of huffing and puffing and even while deperately needing to go for a piss. We were quite horrifed to find there were no toilets on board so I had to do some quick thinking. I found an orange juice bottle, went off to the other empty carridge and did the buisness. Unfortunately I under-estimated the size of the bottle and was quite alarmed when it suddenly overflowed and piss leaked all over my jeans,
which stained me for the remainder of the journey!
A horde full of AFC Wimbledon fans got on our train when we stopped at Norbition. I hadn't realise they were at home to Bradford City on the same evening. This led to some real life trolling by Christopher Hunt, who repeatedly kept making references over how great Milton Keynes is! Being sober I was quite embarrassed, but smirking at the same time.
Speaking of Milton Keynes, that is where I was heading. I agreed to stay at John's for the evening seeing as I don't have work on Wednesday's until 5PM, so found a way of not having to travel to Herne Bay back late on my own and this would also prevent John from falling a sleep and waking up in some Northern shithole like Runcorn or York.
John has a lot of previous for waking up in really far out outposts when he's pissed after a Dover game. I remember Rugby being one of the them once. (Some shithole in the Midlands, not the really crap sport played by Tarquins.)
We had to get a tube from Vauxhall to Euston which was a pain in the arse. Worse still was that I had to pay £4.20 just to get a single ticket to somewhere a few stops down the line. Utter joke!
It was also annoying to only have a few minutes to get on our train to MK, meaning I had no time to buy a drink or grab some munch. I had a mouth dryer than the sahara desert, so this excruciating slow service to Milton Keynes was a painful one and we didn't arrive there until about midnight.
It was worth getting back though. John cooked up a whole packet of sausages and bacon so we sandwiched the fucking lot of it, like the fat fucking legends we are. It was absolutely awesome and I cannot thank John enough for it. Cheers mate.
But all in all, a pretty dissapointing evening and one where it felt like money wasted rather than well invested. Watching Dover does feel like a chore sometimes.
Hopefully Saturday will be better, our long trip down the South Coast to Eastleigh. The ground itself is a shithole and they've got an expensive squad they cannot afford so we'll probably lose. I'll have to make sure I'm drunk enough to numb the pain, I guess. Theres a decent set of lads on this one, so it certainly has a lot of potential on the off-the-field aspects. COYW
| ednesday 14 Mar 2012 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sutton Utd | 1 | - | 1 | Eastbourne Borough | |
 Watkins (46) |
 Watson (44) |
 475 |
|||
| Tuesday 13 Mar 2012 | |||||
| Truro City | 2 | - | 1 | Boreham Wood | |
| Martin (12) Yetton (57) |
Bryant (20) |
299 |
|||
| Maidenhead Utd | 1 | - | 1 | Dartford | |
Wall (14) Tilson-Lascaris (46) |
Harris (29) |
355 |
|||
| Hampton & Richmond | 2 | - | 2 | Dover | |
| Jones (18) Inman (28) |
Simpempa (40) Bricknell (87) |
369 |
|||
| Woking | 4 | - | 1 | Dorchester | |
| Murtagh (32) Sole (51) Sole (53) McNerney (76) |
Walker (79) |
1,268 |
|||
| Staines Town | 1 | - | 1 | Tonbridge Angels | |
| Wheeler (23) |
Schulz (29) |
228 | |||
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |
Woking | 33 | 23 | 6 | 4 | 69 | 31 | 38 | 75 |
| 2 |  |
Dartford | 32 | 20 | 7 | 5 | 71 | 32 | 39 | 67 |
| 3 | |
Welling United | 33 | 20 | 6 | 7 | 67 | 43 | 24 | 66 |
| 4 | |
Sutton United | 33 | 17 | 11 | 5 | 58 | 40 | 18 | 62 |
| 5 | |
Chelmsford | 33 | 16 | 10 | 7 | 57 | 32 | 25 | 58 |
| 6 | |
Dover | 32 | 13 | 13 | 6 | 50 | 33 | 17 | 52 |
| 7 | |
Basingstoke Town | 32 | 12 | 10 | 10 | 49 | 42 | 7 | 46 |
| 8 | |
Eastleigh | 33 | 13 | 7 | 13 | 46 | 45 | 1 | 46 |
| 9 | |
Dorchester | 33 | 13 | 7 | 13 | 49 | 51 | -2 | 46 |
| 10 | |
Tonbridge Angels | 33 | 12 | 9 | 12 | 55 | 53 | 2 | 45 |
| 11 | |
Weston-S-Mare | 33 | 13 | 5 | 15 | 52 | 60 | -8 | 44 |
| 12 | |
Farnborough | 33 | 13 | 5 | 15 | 45 | 62 | -17 | 44 |
| 13 | |
Boreham Wood | 32 | 11 | 8 | 13 | 42 | 48 | -6 | 41 |
| 14 | |
Salisbury City | 32 | 10 | 9 | 13 | 41 | 44 | -3 | 39 |
| 15 | |
Truro City | 33 | 11 | 6 | 16 | 52 | 65 | -13 | 39 |
| 16 |  |
Maidenhead United | 33 | 10 | 7 | 16 | 39 | 57 | -18 | 37 |
| 17 | |
Bromley | 33 | 8 | 10 | 15 | 45 | 59 | -14 | 34 |
| 18 | |
Havant and Waterlooville | 32 | 8 | 9 | 15 | 54 | 62 | -8 | 33 |
| 19 | |
Eastbourne Borough | 32 | 8 | 9 | 15 | 44 | 53 | -9 | 33 |
| 20 | |
Staines Town | 34 | 8 | 8 | 18 | 38 | 55 | -17 | 32 |
| 21 | |
Hampton & Richmond | 31 | 6 | 10 | 15 | 44 | 58 | -14 | 28 |
| 22 | |
Thurrock | 33 | 3 | 10 | 20 | 27 | 69 | -42 | 19 |
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