What better way to start off than saying that I am pretty sure this is the worst match I have ever watched and there have been some bad ones.
The day had gotten off to a good start as I took the short train ride from Birmingham New Street to Leamington. I was meeting a pal who I hadn’t seen since FCUM away about 3 years, so we decided to have a few pints in Leamington. Don’t ask me how but we ended up taking ages to find a pub and randomly ended up in The Greyhound just by the town centre. We knew we could watch the Liverpool match there and that was good enough. The locals were pretty welcoming in there and it wasn’t overly busy, it worked out at £6.55 for a pint of Strongbow and a bottle of Bud, so probably not the cheapest place in Leamington and we didn’t see any signs of food in there. Liverpool got the win though, so I was buzzing and then it was time to call a cab.
This actually took a lot longer than I expected to arrive and as soon as we got in the cab we were made aware of the traffic, which has been made all the worse by ongoing road works that apparently have been going on for a year. We didn’t need much to go wrong by this stage and the writing was on the wall we would miss the start of kick-off. We finally made it to the ground and the turnstiles by 3.10 pm and paid our £13 admission. Standard.
It is from here on that I am struggling for words as there really isn’t much to write about as the match highlights would vouch for. We had a £5 double cheeseburger and that was probably the best value we saw for the next 80 minutes and the fact I had a nice chat at half-time with a few Bulls fans when having a vape. Ben Pollock probably came closest for us when trying to poke the ball home in the first half but it was too close to the keeper. For most of the match, we restricted Leamington to speculative efforts, none of which bothered me and if you know me that means quite a lot as I am always stressing. Sadly, we were the same in the final third ourselves. We did give it a (bit of a) go in the last ten but it was long-range efforts that were never going to trouble their keeper. I think Steve Burr summed it up nicely after by saying that “There wasn’t much in the game today and there wasn’t a great deal to shout about today. Chances were very limited today and it was very difficult to get the ball down and play.” He also said, “the pitch was awful”.
The problem is a point didn’t suit anyone but in reality, it was a fair result and it couldn’t have been any fairer than 0-0. It was fitting that our two most creative players generally, Maz and TOE were subbed to show that there was nothing cooking here and to top off nicely it was absolutely freezing, the wind really kicked up. Now it is decision time on whether I make the trip to Kettering on the 22nd or not or wait until Gloucester. We need a win this weekend for starters to keep any hope of the play-offs up but in truth, we have done better than I expected this season, so onwards and upwards and anything more than a top 10 finish is a bonus. Having said that, I haven’t given up hope of a top-seven finish just yet.
Al Davies.
The Gubbage and the Glory! 