Precious moments

I’m on 97 games for the season and 6,148 overall after another seven last week. The results, with crowds or ‘crowds’ in brackets, were: Aldershot Town 2-0 Maidenhead United (2,181), Amateur Football Combination 2-3 Southern Amateur League (26), Angel Islington 1-0 EC1 Youth (15), Barnet 2-1 Macclesfield Town (2,200), Redbridge 1-2 East Thurrock United (108), LBS Alumni 9-1 PWC City (1) and UCL Ladies 1-1 SOAS Ladies (4).

I think I set some kind of record on Saturday by attending a game that involved going through 58 tube stations. I started by taking the Central line from Lancaster Gate to Greenford (10 stops) in the hope of seeing an AFA Middlesex/Essex Senior Cup tie at the London Marathon Playing Fields. Two ties were scheduled for 1.30 at that venue but only one of the four teams turned up, so I had to quickly think about alternatives.

Two teams who have made their mark in this season’s FA Cup, Redbridge and East Thurrock United, were playing an FA Trophy Third Round Qualifying tie at Oakside Stadium and I calculated I had enough time to get there for 3pm, despite it now being 29 Central line stops away and right across the capital. I was in the ground at 2.52 and had a little more time than I’d thought because the kick-off was delayed after an assistant referee seemed to find a hole in one of the nets.

Here’s a funny thing. The game started at 3.06 and East Thurrock scored after five minutes through Petrit Elbi, described in the programme as ‘a dynamic forward of Albanian origin’. The goal was announced over the public address as having been scored after eleven minutes. A newspaper on Sunday also had ‘eleven minutes’. I don’t think so.

Redbridge face arguably the biggest game in their history this coming Saturday, taking on League 2 Crawley Town in The FA Cup Second Round, but they certainly gave it everything against Essex rivals East Thurrock and could easily have forced a draw near the end. Then, for the superfan, it was a 19-stop journey back to Lancaster Gate. Yes, I think it was just about worth it.

Sunday morning’s game in Regent’s Park, at which I was the only spectator (no second man, no dog), featured LBS and PWC. The former went 8-0 up in the first minute of the second half and I believe the striker with ‘JOSE 88’ on the back of his shirt was scoring his seventh goal. If so, it was something I’d never seen before. LBS only added one further goal, making it 9-1, in stoppage time.

I went to the hotel for a coffee and a biscuit before returning to the Park for a 2pm game between two girls’ teams. One was clearly UCL, because two girls supporting them from the touchline could frequently be heard shouting “U-C-L, give ‘em hell!” I couldn’t quite make out the name of the other team until a substitute called ‘Precious’ told me they were SOAS, which stands for ‘School of Oriental and African Studies’. She came on for the second half and turned out to be their best player.          
       
For me the most annoying thing during any game is when a team scores and there’s an unseemly fight between players of both teams as they try to retrieve the ball from the back of the net. It happened again on Friday and resulted in two players being booked. Surely the next bit of play after a goal has been scored is the conceding team kicking off; I personally don’t think the scoring team has any right to ‘hurry them up’ by putting the ball on the centre spot for them.