Tantrums, Trampolines and Tony Dixon: Tonbridge Animals 2-3 Dover

Fucking wow, where do I start for this one? Leading up to our first visit to the Auld enemy in three years I had pretty much given up all hope after our previous three displays. Instead it turned out to be the best day out of the season as we secured a dramatic late victory in another Tonbridge-Dover classic and thus renewing the nastiness of the rivalry after a damp encounter back at Crabble in August.

The day always had 'carnage' written on the card, particularly when you're in a Wetherspoons by 9AM and are on a 10.24 train for a journey that is only an hour away.
The day started off by meeting many of the usual suspects for a customary spoons beer and burger to kick-start the day. Me and Fish walked down to meet the usual suspects like Jared, Doddy, Christopher Collings, Scotty, Russell and a couple of cling-ons like Callum Crutchfield, whom can nearly match me in the waist size department.

I of course opted for my pattearned chicken gourmet burger, which to use another tasteless Martyn Mcgarriggle quote "went down like the twin towers". The pint of tuborg that accustomed it? Not so much, I have to be honest. Beer can either go down like water at 9AM in the morning or it can go down like citric acid, as it should.

I have to confess that walking to Dover Priory station with the lads I didn't really have the 'Tonbridge away buzz' like I normally do. For any outsiders reading this, Tonbridge over the past seven years have been quite a fierce rivalry for us. They're only about an hour away directly on the train which in the world of Dover, is a very local game for us. Our first real classic encounter game in the 2004/2005 season in a relegation 6 pointer, where they beat us 3-2 to relegate us. What particularly left a sour note in our mouths was that their winning goal game in the FIFTHTEENTH (!) minute of injury time from a penalty that was taken from re-encroachment. That along to go with one of their fans draped in a Tonbridge Angels flag screaming "Wake up Syko" during a minute silence before the match, a week after he had died while playing for Folkestone.
Fortunately they were relegated along with us that season and the following year we managed to meet in the play-off final a year later at their gaff. Once again they beat us by the same scoreline, despite reducing the deficit by two goals after they stormed into a three goal lead. Tommy fucking Tyne missed a penalty for us when we were two goals down, which could have entirely changed the complexion. But it didn't and thus broke by poor little 15 year old heart.
We eventually renewed acquaintances in the 2008/2009 season and managed to get our revenge, beating them 3 times over the course of the season including an FA Cup victory. Our final day 2-0 victory at their place was predictably full of drama, even though we had gained 101 points already and neither side had anything to play for. There was a sending off for both sides, then both Hessenthaler and Warrilow received their marching orders for a half-time bust up, as well as a 40 minute stoppage delay due to a serious injury to one of our players!

Anyway, getting onto my point. They finally re-joined us in the conference south this season and our game back in August was a massive damb squib, a completely un-memorable goalless draw that evoked no drama, not helped by a very poor Scumbridge away following.
So on the lead-up to Saturday's game I was convinced we'd be in for a pasting from a fired up Tonbridge side with various ex-Dover players with a point to prove, particularly our former hero Frannie Collin. I genuinely went in on Saturday just hoping to enjoy the piss-up but I have to admit, on the way up I wasn't really feeling it. Miserable weather didn't help improve the mood.

Even the train journey up was fairly relaxed. Despite there being a fuck-load of us on there, with many classic relics turning out for the day, there was very little space on the 4 carridge choo choo so we all had to spread out quite a bit. The most amusing part was Andy Makin choosing to sit next to Mark Winter. To put it this way, Mark is not the biggest lover of Andy and his errr, lets say 'carefree' nature, and both men know that. But I have to say that I was impressed with Andy's ability to drink 8 bottles of budweiser and another can before we had even arrived!
Another humourous moment was when Russell opened up one of my beer bottles on the train roof ceiling, the very same technique that he discovered back on a legendary pre-season trip to Faversham a few years back. But somehow he managed to botch this and spilt beer over some poor bloke nearby. Fortunately the bloke wasn't too eggy and forgave Russell, who was doing his best Inbetweeners "Ooooh sorry" impression.
Right, can't remember much else though other than Doddy and Martyn being a pain in the arse by standing in the corridor and getting in our way but it didn't stop be from ogling a very solid 8/10 blond beauty who kept on walking past.

Thankfully things began to liven up as we entered the Tonbridge Weatherspoons, the eloquently named 'Humphrey Bean'. One thing I'll give Scumbridge credit for is they have a very good selection of pubs for a pub crawl for what is at least a mile walk to their ground. Its situated near the station and spoons is always a great starting place and they have one of the better ones that the pub chain has to offer. Its very spacious and has a nice, big beer garden.
Annoyingly they had adopted a 'single file' queuing system which meant an annoyingly long wait for a beer, before Dad delightfully surprised us all by purchasing myself, Russell and Mark Miller a pint each, saving me five minutes and 2 odd quid of my life. He brought us all the same golden ale each, which went down like a sack of shit.

Some epic BANTZ began to occur in the beer garden, despite frequent spits of rain from the sky. Doddy got ripped the shit out of because of his clothing combination; plimsoles, yellow chinos (worn by cunts), bright pink socks and a Dover shirt. Obviously the latter is never embarrassing, but he somehow managed to pull of a clown look.
One of Phil's former ermmm "relations" called Jane joined him in here, a self confessed ex-Angels fan who has fallen out of love with the club. And quite hilariously she told Phil, without prompting, "There's a lad over there that looks like Ben Mitchell". Cue the customary piss-taking session of Martyn Mcgarriggle, along with a friend Alex Wilshaw brought along, who also looked like the Walford hardman's poofter son. "Theres only two Ben Mitchell's".
Poor Martyn. He can't drink at the moment because of his medication, so he's actually been really well behaved recently and generally not getting caught up in idiotic nonsense.

Then there began a conversation between Phil and Mark Culley over which of them had the smallest cock. Don't ask me for the full details but this whole debate stems from a comparison competition on the way back from an away game several years ago. Phil remarked that Mark's cock looked like "One of those cocktail sausages you get from a 49 pack from Iceland"
Phil of course was already on his way to getting hammered, thanks to Spoons selling 660ml bottles of Baltika, a 5.5% Russian lager for only £2.50 a pop. About 25 minutes in he was already on his third! This easily convinced me what to have for my 2nd drink and it was indeed great stuff.

Soon after we were already having sing-songs in the garden and well on our way to destination: shitfaced. By the time most of us were leaving for our second pub a shit-load more Dover fans entered the pub having got a later train to the rest of us piss-heads.

The next pub we went to was a small little cavern called the Chequers. Its a fairly traditional old boozer complete with a small beer garden and sky sports for all you premiershit leeches.
Sadly the charm wasn't matched by the two barmaids behind the bar. When the moody lard arse bitch behind the bar went to serve Fish she responded to his "She was first" (pointing to Champ's girlfriend Rosie) with "Do you want serving or not" in a really arsey manner. If we were not so fickle and gasping for a pint of bombardier, we would have told her where to go.

It wasn't the most impressive of pubs although I had a decent enough pint of bombardier and then London Pride in here. I spent the majority of the period chuggin away on cigarettes in the beer garden while this bat-shit crazy old lady sat with us and started rambling on about the usual stuff that your average 73 year old would. I.E; Religion, Her deceased husband and her children. She also told us that the reason she looked so good for her ages was because she has 'lots of sex' but then claimed she was joking and she wished that was the case. Well young madam, if you would have fancied being taken into the gents and bent over the sink then I would have been happy to oblige.

A fine young lass.

I also had to prevent her from lighting a cigarette the wrong way around aswell! Lets be honest, we've all been there at some point...
Inside the pub it seemed the others were being too noisy and singing songs, like the animalistic pricks they are and I think they were asked to move on by the weary bar-staff.

We were keen to move on anyway and I moved on up to the St George and Dragon with Jane and Phil, the latter of whom was absolutely shitfaced already.

Now this is where the fun and games really begun. About 60-70 Dover fans ended up in here and we drunk the place completely dry, putting several hundred pounds into their tills in the process.
Most us of went out into the beer garden and began enjoying ourselves. First of all there was a keepy-uppy contest on the grass with a stray basketball. Well that was until Ben Mitchell had a 'Peter Kay in the John Smith's advert and booted it high in the air until it landed in some poor bastard's back garden.

Then some of our disgraceful lot thought its would be a great idea to start bouncing around on their ALREADY BROKEN trampoline that was taped off with rope. And thus they managed to damage it even more. Absolutely FUCKING SICKENING behaviour i'm sure you'll agree. DISCUSTING VANDALS.

Honestly though the majority of were in that 'Lets act in a Twattish mode because we're pissed and theres lots of us'. Nothing wrong with that though as we are relatively decent drunk people, if not a bit loud and annoying. Oh, and I downed a pint of ale before celebrating like I had just scored the winning goal in a world cup final! LADDDDDDDDDD!

Scumbridge fans were clearly upset though that we had vastly outnumbered them in their own pub and any of their songs were just easily retorted back at. They thought they'd play the "We've got Frannie Collin" card so I think they were a bit upset when we responded with "We love Frannie more than more you". Then they tried playing the "you're french" card and we responded with the "French, french wherever we may be....... it could be worse, we could Tonbridge, selling pegs to feed our kids" song and they just had no answer to us.
When will teams learn that all this French nonsense doesn't bother us in the slightest? Other than it being tediously annoying, we just manage to embrace it and it winds nobody up. I think certain fans need to look at getting some new material, preferably something that is half-witty and imaginative.

A lot of the older DAFC fans in here were chuffed to meet their late 80's ex-Dover legend Tony Dixon in the pub here, who had randomly popped along for the game. Last time we had ventured into the very same pub another ex Dover legend, Colin Blewden, appeared. I wonder who it will be next time?
There was also a sighting of Matt Fish and one of my all-time heroes, Alan Pouton at the game so they were all out for this one!

Yeah it was pretty damn carnage here. We left such an impression that they prevented us from coming back after the game. Fair enough!

I think we failed on all grounds...Whoops.

So our by the time we walked through the graveyard and onto the ground we were all pretty darn wrecked. So much so that Canterbury White, who I still haven't picked up his actual name, managed to write himself into cult status. While walking through the club car park he managed to trip over a speed bump and face-plant into the road! It was one of the most brilliant things I've seen in a long while.
But he didn't stop there. He then attempted to get into the ground by paying by credit card and got turned away! We didn't see him again until about 15 minutes from time, after which legend has it he was caught sleeping on the grass somewhere outside the stadium. Bravo sir, excellent work.

Right then guys, time to get onto the soccer. I think even the biggest optimists amongst us were hoping for a respectable draw at best but instead of receiving a massive pasting we were expecting, it was much, much better than that.

Well, what a frantic first half of football that was!

It didn't get off to the best of starts. Another deja vu sense of "Here we fucking go again" creeped in just after ten minutes when we went behind thanks to some non-existant defending from a corner. They hit the bar with their first headed attempt but Olorunda was allowed to just easily tap in the rebound.

FOR FUCK SAKE! But no, we actually showed some rare character and fight and equalized almost immedietly. A great cross down the left hand-side was met by Tezza Dixon who scored at the second attempt with his foot, after Worgan had saved his initial header.
And this led to a rather embarrassing moment for myself. Having run down to the bottom barrier for some reason, I managed to fall off my feet and lost balance against the barrier. After losing a fighting battle to get back on my feet I managed to fall over on the pitch and got myself soaking wet and covered in mud.
Fortunately I think most of the rest of our travelling contingent were too busy celebrating to notice but for those who did see it had a great laugh at our expense.

This equalizer and our first goal in well over 300 minutes of soccer certainly lifted our spirits. It soon kick-started songs off "Let's get fucking naked" and many of us stripped our shirts and trousers off. I told Russell before the game to not allow me to take my shirt off but sadly he failed and my flab and boobs was there for everybody to see. It then just softened down to "Shoes off if you love Dover" and our players really loved that.

Things got even better for us after about 25 minutes when we took the lead. A great, really swift counter attack led to Billy Bricknell getting tripped over by Lee Worgan when he went to round him. Some people accused him of diving but I certainly think the contact was there, he just made a meal of it.
Anyway, Billy stepped up and just about managed to stick the penalty away. It took a divot on its way over Worgan thanks to the horrendous state of their pitch. Honestly, it was terrible. Looked like a sandy beach in most area.

But sadly out joy would be short-lived as the referee evened things out by awarding a penalty to Tonbridge only a minute later. Academy lad Lloyd Harrington making his debut made a mis-timed tackle in the box and the penalty was an easy decision for the referee, who had a pretty decent game to be fair. It was quite hard on Lloyd who other than that had a really decent debut and coped well against their attacking qualities. It was really great to see a young lad from the youth system getting a chancce and managing to shine.
Anyway, up stepped Frannie Collin to empthatically stick the ball away from 12 yards in one of the most predictable 'he's going to score in this match' moments ever.

The rest of the first half actually petered out pretty non-eventfully compared to a frantic opening 30 minutes and the sides went into the break with two goals a piece.
While many others headed to the bar to get a half-time refreshment, I didn't bother. I don't think I have ever even been in their bar. It looks like a crummy mobile with very little space.
Anyway, sounds like it was a good decision too judging by how Tonbridge fans get all upset and precious that they're being out-sung and are unable to take any stick. So I just went round the other stand and set my flags up, while also allowing myself to sober up a little bit.

By the second half kicked off half of our fans seemed to dissapear! I think most of them were either thrown out or not managed to make it out of the bar. Who knows?

What an excellent second-half performance this was from us. We created numerous chances to win the game in an end-to-end half of football. Credit to both sides who were keen to keep attacking and to both sets of supporters that made a great derby atmosphere (that's the only praise you're going to get off that lot from me).

Both keepers had to make good saves. Ruiz made two, one from the edge of the area and the second being a close range shot from Lee Browning. But Worgan made a really decent save from Terry Dixon, who really should have scored with the time and space he had. Dixon was absolutely magnificent for us on Saturday but its evident that he isn't a goalscorer. His opener was amazingly only his second goal for us so far.

Anyway, what a great conclusion it was to the game which thankfully went in our favour. Only minutes earlier had Tonbridge just rattled our cross-bar with a long-range drive when Jemal Johnson won a corner for us in the last minute of normal time. The much maligned Barry Cogan delivered a superb cross that was headed in powerfully by the equally unpopular Shane Huke to send us back to Calais with three points.
Cue absolute pandemonium behind our goal. Fish ended up the floor knocked out, Andy Lucey ended up fracturing his ankle and had to hobble all the way home and I started running up and down the terrace doing some bizarre trumpet celebration!
Moments like that in football are what make everything seem worthwhile, you just can't beat them. Beating the jumped up, small-minded twats on their own turf was one of the few genuine highlights of this season!

So now it was time to pick up where we left off and get ourselves back onto the loony juice. We eventually settled on a pub just past the graveyard that I don't think we've ever visited before. I was pretty desperate for hydration by the time we got here and a pint of fosters definately went down a treat. It was great just reflect on a great game in a beer garden with a pint in my hand. Andy Makin celebrated by pouring crisps and peanuts over me.

I also downed another pint in here (LAD) thanks to Josh Watkins not hurrying the fuck up when we were waiting to move on. There are some seriously slow drinkers amongst our ranks and we need to make them learn the craft a little bit better!

As we tried walking back towards the town we discovered that we were no longer allowed in the St George and Dragon so instead went back into the Chequers. But nope, they'd also banned us from entrance and even locked both their front and back doors! Phil was knocking on their door for about 10 minutes begging for entrance which was pretty comical.

Instead we rocked back into the Weatherspoons where we were made to feel welcome and ended up back onto the Baltika. And WKD actually, thanks to a pansy with us who couldn't stomach their 'drink', which made for an odd combination.

I was quite amused when I asked some randomer if I could borrow their lighter and he lit my cigarette up for me while asking "Are you looking funny at me bruv". Err no actually you thick fucking cunt, I prefer women.
Nothing of too much wildness here though, just one of Tonbridge's sponsors at the game going around shaking all our hands and telling us our support is great, which just puts their whinging fans moans into perspective.

We ended up getting the 7.50PM back to Dover which was errr, quite a wild one and had quite a big incident, a lot of drama and a few arguments on it. My lawyer has prevented me from sharing anymore information about what happened but it was certainly not a conventional train journey home.

I was physically and financially unable to drink anymore by the time we ended up back into Dover so instead some of us went into the new curry house by Iceland.  I only stayed for a starter in there because of funds, so devoured a prawn puri chat, which is a lovely prawn puree wrapped in warm fluffy bread. Absolutely orgasmic I tell ye.
Chris Hunt remarked that his onion bhaji's looked like 'elephant balls' and the restauraunt owner found hilarious. Great comparison.

To conclude, it was a magnificent away day both on and off the pitch with plenty of incident and drama, and much more to remember it by. I've actually had to water this blog down by quite a bit but its one for those of who were there will not forget in a long while.
So how would we fare on our Bank Holiday Monday home match with 4th placed Sutton? Well, you already know but my next installment will be up in the next day or so.
Thanks for reading and sorry if this piece has not lived up to expectations.