All too common

Four more games in the last week, with attendances in brackets, finished: Leyton Orient 4-3 Dereham Town in The FA Youth Cup (366), Carshalton Athletic 3-1 Cirencester Town in The FA Trophy (225), London Business School 2-0 Tristars in the London Accountancy League (1) and Camden Town 1-0 Northwood in the Greater London Women’s League (12).

That’s 78 this season and 6,129 altogether.

Saturday was the anniversary of both the first and last game that I attended with my dad. The first was Crystal Palace v Hitchin Town in The FA Cup on 5 November 1960 and the last was Eastbourne Town v Oakwood in the Sussex Senior Cup on 5 November 2005. I remember how much he was shivering on the walk back to the flat after that last one. A few days later he went into hospital and never came home again.

From the age of two to six I lived in Carshalton and on Saturday afternoons Dad used to take me to the children’s play area in a park next to Carshalton Athletic’s ground. I’m sure he would rather have been at the game than watching me mess about on the swings and slides. I hope I made up for that by having Dad as my guest at numerous Wembley finals and England games. He always said the 1992 European Cup Final between Barcelona and Sampdoria was his favourite.

I was at Carshalton on Saturday, a typically grey November afternoon with the lights on from the start, and the Robins did me proud with a 3-1 win over Cirencester from Gloucestershire in what was apparently their best performance of the season. I wasn’t expecting too much, with them in the bottom half of the Isthmian Premier table and gates dropping below 200, and they were a goal down inside a minute.

Six minutes later a Cirencester defender, with both arms high above his head, blocked a cross inside the box with one or both hands. It was a paradigmatic penalty but the visitors still felt inclined to dispute it. Dean Lodge, who I saw play for QPR in The Youth Cup years ago, slipped a nerveless spot-kick into the corner and the Robins were firing on all cylinders as they scored twice more in a very entertaining second half.

It was colder than I thought it would be in Regent’s Park yesterday morning, so I kept on the move as the only spectator as LBS grabbed three London Accountancy League points against Tristars. I don’t know if it was the referee’s first game but he waved play on after blowing his whistle for a free kick and then surprised players of both sides by giving a throw-in after a goalkeeper had sliced the ball behind his own goal as he rushed out to kick clear.

I had enough time to go back to the hotel and put on some more layers before returning to the Park for my afternoon game between Camden Town Ladies and Northwood, watched at the touchline by a sprinkling of mums and dads and a little dog that went mental whenever the ball went anywhere near it. The only goal was a left-foot blast from Camden’s No.10, who looked dangerous throughout.

At one recent game the programme mentioned this genuine story from ‘The Times’…

A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coastguard spokesman commented: “This sort of thing is all too common”.