""Colchester versus fucking Hartlepool?!?!" I hear you all cry. Well, I'll better use this paragraph to help justify my decision to go to such a random and yawn-inducing game.
I do have free train travel after all, which gave me the taste to get another ground ticked off the list. My initial plan was to watch my beloved Plymouth Argyle (2CW blah blah) for the first time in over seven years to watch their relegation six pointer away at Hereford. However, this included a ludicrously long journey and I would require going on my own so I decided against this.
Then my good pal Chris Hunt alerted me that he was up for going to a game seeing as he lives in the London area then he would come back down to Dover for the weekend. Our initial plan was to watch Watford v Blackpool as they had reduced all adult tickets to a tenner. Sadly though, when I went onto the online ticketing portal there was one, yes ONE seat left in the entire ground.
So after that we were left with the choice of the rest of a bad bunch. Colchester ended up being the most sensible option. It was only £13 for an under 21 ticket for me, while it set him back even less at £12 because of his armed forces discount, thus making it pretty much the same price as Crabble. And it also seemed pretty easy to get to via train - it only took one switch at Stratford International to the other Stratford station, before a direct train to Colchester.
So there you go you miserable bunch of fuckers, a good, cheap day planned out ahead. Or was it?
The day began on Good Friday with a 9.02 train into Faversham. I bought four cans from the the local newsagents nearby my Herne Bay home. Its really decent value in there for a small shop - 500ML cans of Kronenbourg, Becks, Stella, Tyskie and numerous more are only 99p can or 6 cans for a fiver, so pretty decent value. I took a mix and match with me.
Annoyingly I had to have a forty minute wait at Faversham station thanks to National Rail's awesome timetable schedules, so I headed off to the local CO-OP to top up my phone credit and pick up a few bargains in store.
Bargain 1: A salmon , cucumber and spinach sandwich that had been reduced to 70P from £3.50. It was actually pretty dissapointing and was dryer than the sahara desert. Cheap sandwiches would become a common theme throughout the journey.
Bargain 2: Ginster slices were on offer at £1. Naturally I plumped for the spicy chicken flavour as it is clearly the best out of the lot.
Yep, so that was my breakfast sorted.
Eventually the train turned up and I looked forward to cracking open a can or two as most people like to do at 10AM in the morning. But it was a pretty dull journey that was helped surpassed by reading old copies of my massive fourfourtwo collection. One thing I will say is it amazes me how quickly time goes by in football. It was over 6 years ago I began getting pissed on the way to away games as a young teenager to shitholes like Walton Casuals :sob:.
Now at Stratford International provided me a real challenge. I had nearly forty minutes for my connection but trying to find the other Stratford station left me puzzled, now they have got rid of the bus shuttles with the newly opened shopping centre behind it. But after walking around in a daze for ten minutes I managed to find my way thankfully, despite a complete lack of direction provided around the place. At least I can show the others the way next time we use this route for an away game.
Chris asked me to buy his ticket to Colchester from here as he was running late thanks to closed lines on the underground. And I have no experience of buying train tickets so I didn't have a fucking clue! I ended up buying him a super-off-peak ticket complete with a HR railcard as it looked the cheapest, but I didn't have a fucking clue whether we were off-peak or not! But I don't think we were checked whatsoever on the trains or at Colchester station so it was a pretty wasted exercise.
It was pretty hot on the Stratford Platform 10 and it brought out the best and worse of London. The scantily clad hot women being the positive part. The chavvy Essex scum and wannabe gangsters, not so much.
But I was more concerned whether Chris was actually going to make the train or not. Reading where he was on his earlier text and checking the underground map, it appeared very unlikely that he would make it over in time and would thus leave me with another 30 minutes in London, gagging to get in a pub for a pint. But as the time approached seconds away from our 11:39 departure, suddenly his beautiful carrot-topped head appeared on the platform and we were ready to head off to the inbred part of Essex. Woo-hoo!
The hour long journey included stopping past various towns of shitty ryman north clubs that I have heard of like Witham, Brentwood and Wivenhoe. Oh, and Chelmsford.
For some reason me and Chris were sat by the train toilet doors and we used this to our advantage. Whenever a female came out of the toilet we would hold our noses and go "urgh, can you fucking smell that?. discusting.". Which is hilarious/immature [delete as appropriate].
But yeah, not much to report here other than being surrounded my Jeremy Kyle essex types that should really learn how to used contraception.
We arrived in Colchester at about half 12 without a fucking clue where we had to go and what station exit we needed to use. But it didn't take long to reach our goal of finding a pub as we rocked up at the Bricklayers Arms which was evidently the Col Ewe fans choice of a pre-match drinkathon. And it was a really smart boozer with a very nice beer garden. The ales were not half-bad either. With it being an Adnams speciality, I had their Ghost Ship and Gunhill varations, both of which were very nice. As was 'Top Totty', my third pint which I clearly selected just for its name. It was fairly decently priced as-well which impressed me.
Chris's reputation as a hard man managed to evade him here though as he only managed 1 pint of cloudy cider during the entire duration. He accredited this to being straving hungry which I will give him the benefit of the doubt for, even though he consumed a packet of monster munch and a couple of bananas.
We made our way for the shuttle bus service at just gone 2PM, which was only about a minute walk away from the pub. For a £1.50 return it was great value and certainly softens the blow of them having a ground so far out of town.
There was a great moment on the bus where some bloke in a wheelchair (who curiously had an Ipswich Town sticker) got on the bus and got himself settled near the disabled zone. But the driver insisted that some person needed to move from their seat to give him more space and at this point a disgruntled old voice from the back moaned "For god's sake. How much more space does he need?!"
We arrived outside the Weston Community Homes Stadium (what a mouthful) about half 2 and I immedietly set about retrieving our match tickets. They were in an envelope and I wasn't asked for any proof or anything. The turnstiles were electric monitored with no humans on the gate so technically me and Chris could have entered the ground with an under 11 ticket if we wanted. Food for thought for next time anyway (there won't be a next time unless Dover repeat their famous 1975 cup run which included drawing 3-3 at Layer Road before winning the replay 4-1 under the bright lights of Crabble).
In the concourse bit beneath the stand Chris was desperate for some food so I decided in joining him in buying a pie and a pint. At £2.90 a balti pie and £3.80 for Fosters, its really didn't come cheap. But the pie was worth every single penny - I don't think I've had a pie as tasty as that in a long while - if ever. I think it was a locally made one and it was quite simply orgasmic.
The pint however, was a complete waste of money and I had to swiftly neck it when realised that we were only moments from kick off.
I had been warned over how sterile this new identikit stadium was by various people. The most valid echoer of this view point was a Colchester fan himself, Tom, who many of us met a few seasons ago at a service station when we bumped into some Col Ewe fans on the way back from Havant and Waterlooville. We stayed in contact and he and a few others actually joined us at our away game at Braintree last season.
Anyway, he said the stadium is awful and completely devoid of any character or homeliness feel. So much so that he rarely bothers with home games anymore and prefers to focus on away games. I can see this sentiment is echoed by quite a lot of their support. Despite faring well in League 1 in most of their seasons since the ground move, their attendances have been pretty dreadful and have completely stagnated. Sadly its a popular trend in football these days to move to a souless ground and many of these moves are unneccessary. Coventry moving from Highfield Road to Ricoh Arena is another example. HR was a perfect sized ground for them at about 22,000 yet they move to a terrible 32,000 arena and their attendances have dropped. I understand that Layer Road only held around 6,000 and they needed to move to help the club grow but they have clearly messed up with the new stadium. Chesterfield moved ground last season and have showed (according to Russell and many other sources) that you can make a decent new home. But a ground like Colchester's would make me think twice about ever wanting to leave Crabble should the situation arise, as rumours have popped up at points this season suggesting so.
Yeah, the game was one of the most dullest things I have seen in a long while, and that includes watching Dover on a weekly basis. The atmosphere was terrible as you can expect with a ground only a third full. The stand we were in behind the goal had a few drummers but no songs ever really spread around the ground. The 100 or so from Hartlepool were Borehamwood-esque in their level of noise - even when they scored. Me and Chris were on the third row from the bottom and had plenty of space around us, I even spent the entire game with my legs over seats ahead of me. I don't go to football games to watch in comfort, which is sadly seems to be the etiquette these days.
If I was expecting the football to lighten the spirits then I would be sadly wrong. I thought I had seen some terrible stuff from Dover over the previous weeks but the standard here in upper mid-table of league one was barely much better. Neither side could really string more than 3 passes together and it was your typical end-of-season nothing-to-play-for borefest with no realy quality in the game. Well, it weren't a bad move from Hartlepool down the left hand side for their opener after ten minutes with Anthony Sweeney heading home the cross but the defending was practically non-existant.
Chances were really at a premium the entire game so I had to get most of my enjoyment laughing over how bad Colchester "striker" Kayode Odejayi. Put the positional sense and first touch of Nathan Bailey and combine it with the finishing prowess of Elliot Charles and there you have Odeayi - a complete donkey. I was amazed that this was the same player that hit the headlines a few years back for scoring an FA Cup quartar final winner against Chelsea for Barnsley. Completely shocking.
The only player who really looked like they had any creative talents was West-Ham loanee Freddie Sears, who has really gone off the radar since his memorable premier league debut. He converted from the spot to equalise ten minutes from time after Colchester were awarded a ridiculously soft penalty when the 'penalised' player just seemed to slip over. Mind you, the officials were fucking shit all game, showing that whatever level your at they're guarenteed to be dreadful.
The final whistle was music to mine and Chris's ears as we had become increasingly cold, so quickly dashed off to get back on the shuttle bus in order to make the planned half 5 train back, which we managed with ease. Chris even had time to grab and expresso from the station coffee shop which quite amusingly stocked a chocolate biscuit packet called 'negro'. Quite how that made it past tranding standards I will never know!
[Upload picture here when I get the chance to]
Chris handed me a can of Carlsberg for our journey back to London. I only drunk it because I was desperately thirsty and I'd developed quite a headache by this point. I enjoyed reading my matchday programme on the journey back because it gave me the chance to gaup at how poor Colchester's away following are - most of them are barely over three figures! They even struggle to get more than 500 for their local games at Wycombe and Orient!
We missed our connection at Stratford International thanks to Chris needing to buy a ticket but this wasn't too much of a problem. Instead we headed to the nearby Waitrose (we're very posh you see) to grab some dinner and we were in for a treat. We came in just at the right time as they were reducing various of their sandwiches at silly prices and I grabbed three for the journey back. The first one was a juicy steak and caramelized onion, the second a grilled bacon and emmertal (sic?) double decker, while the third was a poor purchase without really looking. It was pastrami, emmertal (sic?) and summerkraut, which is basically a discusting german type of pickle. I ate the first two with ease but I could only have half of the latter. I think pastrami is just basically a cross between ham and beef, except it tasted cheap and nasty. In hindsight I wish I had waited for them to reduce the king prawn and rocket salad number - now that sounds beastly!
And the day was concluded with Chris showing me his laptop on the way home, showing lots of pictures of his 6 month old son and various excel spreadsheets which he keeps all his betting record and stuff on. He's a true proffessional and takes his money making very seriously.
Oh, and I also pissed him off by dropping various disgusting farts on the train home, some of which were so bad they even embarrassed myself.
Right then, was it all worth it despite the boring football? Yeah, it weren't a bad day out in general and it certainly beats sitting at home wanking off to pop idols. I love football and I love visiting new grounds - I'm a massive geek in that respect. So I can say I managed to tick off another member of the great 92 and I've been there and done it. And it also provided a nice little warm-up to Tonbridge away the following day.....YEAH! YEAH!
Now I'll leave you with some photos of the ground. I will try not to leave it too long to do my Tonbridge and Sutton blogs, OK?
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| Arriving outside the ground. |
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| Completely left empty when the smaller teams are in town. |
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| The Away Support 'Masses' |
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| A very exciteable bunch. |
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| Happy Birthday messages while the game is on-going. What has English football come to? |
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