So let's rewind a little bit and catch up from where I last left off. Which was a Kent Senior Cup defeat to Herne Bay, which must have been a decent blog post as I received a chomp from their 1st team manager on twitter, who labelled me as 'sour'. And just prior to that was our fantastic win at Bath City in which I said I would now try to fully get behind Nicky Forster instead of doubting him and that our home form was surely about to turn the corner as we had been looking a terrific side on our travels.
With the team clearly bouyed by my words, my positivity was rewarded with our first home win since March by dumping those precious tossers Tonbridge Animals out of the FA Cup, courtesy of goals by Danny Webb and our superb new targetman Ben May, who has clearly been our best player over the past month. That was a fucking sweet day and made for a brilliant birthday present for the following day, in what turned out to be a very messy and all round enjoyable day, at long last. This being days after we announced the coup of Darryl McMahon from Eastleigh for an undisclosed fee.
Could we continue to turn the corner with a first Crabble league win since March with the visit of Maidenhead up next? Of course we could. Two second half strikes courtesy of that man Ben May again coupled with a Billy Bricknell goal coming off the bench to make the game safe made the mood really upbeat and reinforced the belief that we could be turning the corner.
Then we had to make the midweek visit to traditional GM Vauxhall Conference christmas rivals Welling United soon on the Tuesday and managed to preserve our unbeaten-since-December away record with a 1-1 draw but we should have escaped Park View Road with all 3 points, until the stupid, fussy, attention-seeking wanker of the referee awarded them an unneccessary penalty in the 92nd minute. He was evening things out after awarded us a soft, albeit correct, penalty in the first half which Ben May duly converted. It was gutting to only get a point out of the game in the end although a point was a fair result seeing as we were lucky to escape some severe 2nd half pressure from the hosts. It was a decent game between two sides who should be up there come the end of April.
And that leads us onto the weekend just gone - after seeing off Tonbridge in a very difficult draw we were rewarded with another tedious and tricky tie against another Kent side at Crabble; Bromley.
Despite being very pleased with how we had been playing over the last few weeks I couldn't muster up too muich enthusiasm for the game. I do love the FA Cup but for me my main priority is to concentrate on the league and gaining promotion, we had our moment in the sun two seasons ago. So the FA Cup is a bit give or take with me at the moment and the prospect of such a dull tie hardly filled me with any enthusiasm.
I don't think anyone else really caught the FA Cup bug either, judging by how few people were out for some pre-match snifters in the Old E. It was so dead that me and Fish were so bored that we walked up to the Centre Spot early to watch the Man City v Sunderland game. It didn't help that gutless arseholes like Jared didn't turn up, nor answer my messages, so I hope he feels the wrath of my anger if he is reading this blog.
Do you know something? I've already erased most of what happened on Saturday out of my mind. I wasn't even that pissed really, it must just be that its now Wednesday and I want to move on from it. If for some reason you want to read the version of the match events then read Camilla's match report from the official website.
Instead I'll just bullet point my thoughts and random points on the match;
- I didn't actually think we were as bad on Saturday as some people made out. In the end it was an error from young Walker in goal (who has been fantastic for us - until that mistake) and what seemed to be Steve Watt being outpaced for the second (I can't remember for sure - I haven't actually bothered to see the highlights) which ultimately cost us. Bromley played well, defended well and looked like a much better side than last year; they should take a fair share of credit. But they didn't actually create (m)any chances aside from their goals. We applied a lot of pressure at times but didn't get much of a breakthrough. Yes we do still defend way too deep at times. But it was mainly some individual performances I was disappointed with......
- Namely Calum Willock and Ricky Modeste. Particularly the former, who I have been a very big advacator of. He just never seemed fit, bothered or particularly interested in the contest and looked like a far cry from the player who raped Eastleigh's backline at their gaff. Ricky has also been anonymous in more games than he's played well in, although we were warned of his lack of end product before he arrived here. But to be fair to him, he didn't really see that much of the ball.
- I see NF has had some criticism for 'resting' Simpemba, Thomson and Bricknell and not taking the FA Cup as seriously but I completely disagree. For starters, all three had been nursing minor injuries/illness anyway. But we should be able to rely on any of our back up players and they should be good enough to step in when called upon. A few of them let us down.
- Bromley fans travelled in higher numbers than they usually do with around 100 making the journey. They weren't very noisy though. Me, Darren Boyd and Fish led a ten man singing army that actually made put in quite a lot of effort for us.
- Ok, I admit it. I love the FA Cup more than I thought I would miss it. I was quite envious looking on at the draw even though we would have only missed out on another yawn inducing home tie. What's worse is that Dorchester are just 1 winnable game away from reaching the 1st round which will postpone our game on the 3rd November. Which is a fucking bummer for two reasons; everyone is already excited for it and we have a crew already sorted for the 5.40AM train out of Dover. Secondly, it will be a fucking nightmare getting there on a Tuesday night.
- There's no need to be too suicidal or overthink the result. Its worth noting that Bromley have an excellent recent cup pedigree - knocking ourselves, Sutton, Dartford and Welling out in the past 2 seasons, all of which I think have been away games. Not forgetting that we are traditionally, well, a shit FA Cup team. I have still seen enough to suggest we're good enough to mount a promotion challenge, my only qualm is that a few individuals need to up their fucking game.
- There's this bloke called Dan Cameron. Some of you may know him, some of you may not. He's alright on the whole, but he ain't half fucking irratating. He turns up for quite a few games then goes off the radar for another few months/weeks/years before re-appearing again as if he'd never been away. Anyway I had to spend a lot of the first half moving away from him after hearing him slag off every one of our players for any mistake they made. It took a lot of refraining to not turn around and tell him to shut the fuck up. Someone do us a favour and club him round the head with a baseball bat if he turns up at the next match.
It was a fairly subdued post match piss up at a consequence of the defeat compared to the previous few weeks which had seen everybody staying out on the gas. To be fair we did neck quite a few pints in the Centre Spot, Three Cups and then the Old Endeavour afterwards but I was home by about half 9 and even had dinner saved for me rather than crashing out with a takeaway - which is a rarity. Having to pay to get into a bloody home game meant I was even skinter than usual and thus had to call it a day early.
Shame really because there was a really talented middle-aged Irish duo that were playing the violin and singing songs as part of the Old Endeavour's evening entertainment. They were good, not normally my cup of tea but I respected their talents. It was just a shame to see the pub really dead for it, I felt a bit sorry for them. Phil, Doddy and Jesbitt all went to the Bull nearby to watch one of Phil's favourite local bands, who were excellent according to him. While we left a very unusually pissed Fish in the OE on his own so he could celebrate his £300 accumulator win, the jammy bastard.
One final word of note - Dovitos chippy. First time I had been in there since they had been taken over and fuck me, they're absolutely woeful now. T'was £1.80 for a 'large' portion which consisted of a small tray filled with a few horrible crispy overcooked chips. Absolutely rubbish and a real shame to what was my favourite chip shop in Dover. Never again.
And that's it. Sorry for the lack of excitement on my blog return but it was a very unexciting day and game - you can't polish a turn. Fortunately this impending weekend promises to be a blinder no matter of the Truro City outcome tomorrow, which will determine whether I spend the weekend with Doddy on an overnight sleeper train to stay over in Cornwall or whether I will simply be watching Barnet versus Plymouth instead (2CW, etc). I do hope that Truro pull through as they are a top club with top fans - but sadly that seems increasingly unlikely. And in all honest they should never have been allowed to begin the season - the ongoing sitituation has been farcial and completely unfair on the other sides in our division that will lose out in revenue on their home game with them or have already forked out to travel down there even though the result will probably turn out to be meaningless.
However, if the game does go ahead it could be an all-time memorable classic....
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