Blank Saturday

The shocking weather ruined plans for a ‘Vase double’ at the weekend. Redhill v Shoreham was postponed on Saturday and Wembley v Hoddesdon failed to take place yesterday.

Looking out of the window at Mum’s flat in Purley around Saturday lunchtime was like watching footage of a hurricane in Florida, with the rain lashing down and the trees bending back in the wind. The lady at Redhill FC laughed when I asked if the game was on. There was a similar reaction from Merstham, who were due to play Burgess Hill in a Ryman League fixture.

So a blank Saturday for the superfan. Oh, the pain. I did see England v Brazil on ITV1 and, later at the hotel, Portugal v Bosnia-Herzegovina on one of the Greek channels. But it’s not the same as ‘being there’.

The worst conditions I’ve ever seen football played in came in the last ten minutes or so of Dagenham’s Conference fixture with Halifax at Victoria Road in December 2006. It was impossible to play in a torrential downpour that didn’t stop for a second and winds that must have reached a hundred miles an hour. I think we were all lucky to get out alive.

Compared to that it was a pleasant afternoon on Saturday, but the postponement at Redhill was no surprise. The one at Wembley was, though, given that we’d had seven hours of dry sunny weather. Bit of a mystery that.

But I did see some football at the weekend, turning up at Ealing Central Sports Ground on Sunday morning and finding that three games were going to be played on pitches that were perfectly playable. I watched the one that kicked off first, UB6 United v Northolt Manor in the Hayes & District Sunday League Vice-President’s Cup First Round.

It may have only had five spectators but I felt a ‘cup-tie atmosphere’ right from the start. I stood behind the goal that UB6 were attacking, almost knee-deep in leaves, and typically they came nowhere near that goal for about half-an-hour. Northolt scored early on and then missed a series of chances as all the action took place at the other end.

Then UB6 poured forward for the first time, sending the crowd wild with indifference, and the ref awarded a spot-kick after one player seemed to trip over his own feet. The kick was duly dispatched and it was 1-1, the equaliser coming totally against the run of the play. A game that finished 4-1 to Northolt had kicked off at 10.33, although the pavilion clock showed five past three.

That must have been the time when Perivale was last ravaged by an earthquake.

With two games earlier in the week, Pars v Visa (0-4) and Katanga v Islington Admiral (2-4), The Barber is now on 78 for the season and 5,751 all told. There’s FA Cup and FA Youth Cup action to look forward to this midweek, weather permitting.