Budgie's opener

The superfan’s six matches in the last week included two in The FA Cup and two in The FA Youth Cup. And the Swedish ladies were 10-0 up after an hour of their Greater London Women’s League fixture in Regent’s Park.

The first match I was ever taken to was an FA Cup First Round Proper tie between Crystal Palace and Hitchin Town at Selhurst Park in 1960, my boyhood hero ‘Budgie’ Byrne scoring Palace’s 10th-minute opener in a 6-2 win. The weekend of the First Round remains my favourite one of the season.

Before the weekend, I’d seen the FA Staff XI swamped 7-1 by the Arthurian League at Hanwell, with my line manager definitely the best No.19 on the pitch, and FA Youth Cup First Round Proper ties that finished Leyton Orient 2-1 Bromley and AFC Wimbledon 2-1 Sutton United (after extra time).

My FA Cup choices were Bromley v Colchester United on Saturday and Wealdstone v Rotherham United on Sunday. Before those I’d seen 60 matches in the First Round and they’d included eight in which a non-League club had beaten a League club. My first ‘giantkilling’, a cause of dizzy excitement at the time, was Walton & Hersham’s 2-1 win against Exeter City in 1972.

I remember the Division Four side forcing about six corners in stoppage time.

Bath, Kettering, Northwich, Oxford United, Staines and York made history at the weekend – but there were no surprises at my matches. Colchester, now managed by Aidy Boothroyd, did a very clinical job on Conference South team Bromley, scoring twice in each half for 4-0. A crowd of 4,242 saw the non-Leaguers play at home to a League club in The Cup for the first time since 1950.

I wasn’t even born then. Most people weren’t.

It was a crisp, sunny day on Saturday and I’d been standing behind a chap with his two young kids. On the back of his jacket it had ‘HAYES LANE ULTRAS’. Sorry? Sunday morning was grey and miserable, with spots of rain in the air, as I watched my first KIKK United match of the season on Pitch No.10 at Regent’s Park.

Those Swedish ladies certainly turned on the style, beating Leyton 11-1. It was 7-0 at half-time and 10-0 after an hour. Leyton, rather oddly, were arguably the better team after that and should have scored three or four. Only the No.14, a second-half substitute, wore the black tights for which the KIKK players are famous. Perhaps she just had muddy legs.

I could sense that ‘Miss Croatia’ had missed me terribly since my last visit to her café for lunch, though she feigned complete indifference, and I was soon on my way from Baker Street to Ruislip for the Wealdstone tie at 3 o’clock. This turned out to be a Cup cracker, with Stones pulling it back to 2-3 in the 89th minute and coming so close to equalising in added time.

The Middlesex County League are continuing with their experiment of playing occasional fixtures on Saturday morning, and Grange Park will face Warren in Division Two at Wormwood Scrubs, Artillery Lane, Du Cane Road, London W12 on 28 November at 11am. There will be a programme.