Good day reader. And welcome once more to this terminally depressed corner of the internet where we talk about getting boozed in the name of watching dreadful 5th Tier football before then moaning about it, extensively, on these here pages. The football that is, not the boozing, as that is rarely the main bone of contention in these sporadic episodes, simply as our old friend alcohol would never ever do anything to hurt us or our feelings as badly as mean old Sutton United would. Nuh uh.
So, it’s been a couple of weeks since the complete no-show up at Boston and you’ll be pleased to hear that this is now no longer a painful memory resting in our consciousness, slowly but surely eating away at our sanity. No no. Mainly because the fucking twats we employ as footballers have since given us more than a few new grey hairs since then to drain what little is left of our mental wellbeing. First up was the massive 6 pointer at home to Braintree. A MUST WIN game that we of course drew 1-1. With 10 men. Thanks to a last gasp equaliser. Hilariously, we really should have even won this one, but let’s not go getting too carried away eh lads? Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen and all that.
That mantra was firmly in place again the following midweek (Hartlepool being binned off due to the Ark like weather since the New Year) with Woking in town. Where we lead twice, had someone sent off (again) but this time actually managed to see the game out in a real backs to the wall, fist pumper of a win. Clearly inspired, the lads then saw off a Wealdstone side so lacking in any sort of quality in any and all areas of the pitch, I thought I was back watching us in September. A 3-0 stroll that left us 5pts above the bottom four and had people wondering if maybe, just maybe, the brighter days of November were back??
Like fuck. This is Sutton United. Where hope cannot be allowed to burn too brightly, lest people get all happy and excited and start enjoying football. So Yeovil away was concocted, a 3-2 defeat extracted from being 2-1 up in the 93rd minute and heading for the fringes of mid-table and assisted by league penalties 12 and 13 being conceded. Even the usually upbeat and positive Chris Agutter was somewhat upset by this, doing his post matcher with a really quite hoarse sounding voice. Which we assume was either because he had a cold and had run out of Strepsils at the end of a long day or had perhaps just spent 20 minutes in the away changing room using every profanity known to mankind and at volumes that would have had people in Weymouth wondering who the potty mouth was. Yeah, Strepsils. We thought so too.
Thankfully, some of us around here, myself included, have unbelievably copped onto a modicum of common in our rapidly advancing years and most of the usual mob were not present to witness this calamity live unlike in previous seasons where we’d no doubt have all been sat in Mr X’s jam jar screaming ‘cunts’ the whole way back up the A303. Our therapists would be proud of us, I can tell you. Which reminds me, I really should book my next monthly session.
This meant that we head North once more, to Play-off chasing Halifax no less, with heavy hearts, not much confidence and that ever present feeling of “What the fuck am I doing with my life?” rattling around in our skulls. Sadly, that’s the one question the therapist hasn’t quite been able to answer yet, but they’re trying their best, I’m sure. Most of the mob decide to ignore recent history for this one and book a weekender, as despite the game being in the depths of shit weather season and the country only just out of 41 sold days of rain and Halifax having been called off on a Saturday for us more than any other club in the last decade or so. So some do still retain that optimism thing, just not for football. So bad have the postponements been that Indiana Jones has been to this northern outpost four times to date and never seen a single minute of football.
It was for this reason I myself decided a Leo was more advisable. That and the 82 fucking quid return ticket. So this meant the usual routine of being up at six, out by half past and as I was being the responsible adult today with the train tickets, an Uber to East Croydon to make sure there’s no drama on the being-at-Kings-Cross-in-time front. So well do things go in fact that I emerge onto the concourse at St Pancs at 20 past 7 with the train not due to leave for another 50 minutes. So I bag a Greggs and go hang around over the road in a deserted Kings Cross to wait for the other day trippers. Soon after 4Days and Chalmers rock up, with the former also surprised at how quiet the gaff is. “Makes a change from this place looking like the queue for the last chopper out of Saigon on a Saturday morning!”. Quite.
With a brew secured, we hit the train and settle in, but soon the carriage is filled with Brentford lads on their way to Burnley and with PC having booked later than us, he’s forced to re-locate to his actual seat a few carriages away. See you in Leeds mate! The Bees lot are a nice chat though and help pass the time, mostly older lads who’ve clearly been going years including one who lives in Worcester Park and is a semi-regular himself at GGL. One lad produces a London Pride pint glass for his early morning livener and enquiries as to what he does with it when the game is on reveals that he hides it in all sorts of odd places near the away end and reclaims it on the way out. Fair play. A chap has to have standards after all! Along the way, we catch up on the news that dozy bollocks in America has kicked off WW3, although we all collectively decide that Halifax and Burnley are unlikely to be high on the IRGC strike list, so we should be good for today at least.
We wish our new friends well at Leeds as they head for Lancashire and we look to go deeper into Yorkshire. Next up is the train to Chester and on board a bunch of lads, big bag of cans on the go, rock up next to us. The first one open spraying most of us nearby. Apologies accepted, it turns out they’re heading the same way as us to take in the game. It seems they’d decided a while back that the first team to score on Soccer Saturday would be the venue of a piss up and a game for them. And with Lady Luck clearly smiling on them, they bagged Halifax. We pass the half hour trundle with filling them in on our miserable season and making sure they’re aware of our penalty fetish. “If there’s a moody Asian bookmaker offering odds, I’d get a fiver on it at least!” is my advice.
In Halifax, we wave the lads off to head to Kobenhaven for our first pint “Might see you in the away end!” they laugh as they head to their own watering hole. “Fucking mugs!” we offer back, crossing the road. As we reach the first boozer, we find Mr X outside vagranting the gaff up and sucking on a duty free fag. Inside, Rax is nursing a pint, having apparently had a big night. “I’ve never seen you that pissed” says the man of mystery with a rueful shake of the head. It also turns out Rax has suffered a inebriated tumble by not noticing a foot high brick wall on his way back to his digs and going arse over tit. Here we also discover that Chalmers shits in the shower. Or at least we think that’s what he said. We also debate the next pub as others start to rouse from the Friday night shenanigans.
“Well, there’s the Bear. That’s 0.0 miles away. Or there’s the Hop Inn, 0.0 miles away”. “What about the Jubilee?” “That’s uh, 0.0 miles away”. Guess we’ll do the Hop as its the closest yeah? Pub two and we cop a round and head upstairs to find Indy, Magnum and Greek in. I’m most proud to negotiate the narrow staircase without spilling a drop before dumping a mouthful on the table as I place my glass. Twat. Still, at least Greek’s amused. Here 4Days likens Greek and Mr X sitting together as like “Some podcast I definitely don’t want to fucking listen to”, someone mentions a tweet they’d seen earlier where this season was compared to feeling like you’re a background character in a final destination movie watching all the main characters meet their grisly fate and someone mentions ‘Stockholm syndrome’ to which Greek chips in “I think that’s the boozer round the corner, does Lilleys”.
The Mediterranean lad also reveals he’d gone out with 105 quid in his wallet the previous evening and come home with 100 as he once more went full Rishi Sunak and drained a Northern town of most of it’s liquidity via the medium of fruit machines. Next up is the Meandering Bear, where Magnum nearly chokes Greek by sitting on his man bag and Mr X nearly falls on them laughing as Greek slowly turns a funny colour. With time pressing on though, we set off to be closer to the ground and pug up in one of our favourite away pubs. The Three Pigeons. On the way, cold rain starts pelting us in the face and elicits a chorus of “fuck off”s and other profanity. At which point, it turns to hail. Lovely.
Safely inside, we tuck into pints and their amazing pork pies to help with the soakage, although I must confess Robbo’s steak pie looked the pick of the bunch. Here Chalmers finally looks up his shower shitting thing from earlier on Google and all this does is lead to everyone calling him a ‘Waffle Stomper’. Standard away day fare really. But after only a couple here, it’s time to go do that painful thing called ‘a football match’ and we set off for the away turnstiles, this time on the far side of the ground for a change. A change is as good as a rest I suppose.
Sims, Donkor, Topallaj, Ecclestone, Pruti, Muller, Jennings, Simper, Foyo, Njoku, Francis SUBS: Bell, Ogbonna, Harris, Nadesan, Rodari, Eze, Haigh
Inside the ground, we of course find the lads from the train over from Leeds having bumped into the away end like complete idiots. So we pass a couple minutes before kick off taking the piss out of them and emptying bladders in the magnificently 16th century black death piss up a wall khazis in this part of the ground. Old school! On the pitch, given the gulf in league placings, we start quite brightly considering and have a couple early moments before Francis gets wide, pulls one across the box and Njoku lays it back edge for Simper to bend one top corner inside the first 15 minutes. A few minutes later, we really should have a pen when their keeper makes a hash of a back pass and Njoku nips in to steal it off his toe before being flattened from behind. Nothing doing of course, which is fucking infuriating given that oppo seemingly have only to go near our box to have a match official pointing to the spot.
This appears to wake up the hosts and they slowing wrest control away from us before we fail to close down around our box and they’re level with half an hour gone. Their lad hitting one beyond Sims and in off the inside of the post. They really should be ahead at the break too, when a similar situation leads to a shot coming back off the bar with Sims stranded, but with a tap in certain he makes an unreal effort to finger this onto the post and gather the rebound right on the goal line with the oppo claiming it’s in. Not a fucking chance lads. Amusingly, this leads to the female ref getting booed off at the break despite us having got robbed of the pen and having to wait until about 35 minutes in for our first fucking free kick. Aye, proper biased she’s been eh?
The second half is fairly even but the edge in front just after the hour. Easy cross from wide, glancing header and it goes in off the upright again. Game over surely? Thankfully, Aggy’s changes liven us up a touch and from here on, we really take the game to the locals and finish the stronger. We don’t create many gilt edge chances, but 5 minutes after going behind, Foyo gets wide, pulls it back and Njoku’s shot takes a horrble deflection and trundles in for 2-2. From there, we’re the better side, but just lack that one killer chance to nick all three and instead it’s a hard fought point to take back to the Republic. Right, pub? Pub.
We head to the Victorian, a really quite busy ale house nearby and a solid sub-10 minute walk down the hill to the station for us day trippers. Here we sink a couple, Rax asks a barmaid for some Love and Affection (a pint of) which she of course eye rolls him into next week over. I also get to hear The Streets ‘Fit But you know it’ playing while I get a round in, and return do do do dodo do do doing the whole way back to our table. Chalmers elects to order himself a Dominos and darts a few early, then 4Days and I leave the rest to celebrate the Desmond and head on down the hill ourselves. We find PC in the station, jealously guarding his pizza and chicken bites. Whilst we wait for the rattler back to Leeds, all sorts of scantily clad sights appear, heading for a night on the tiles. Some more easy on the eye than others.
Back in Leeds, we scatter for cans and snacks. I elect to go middle class fast food and partake of a Leon before canning up at Sainos. On the train, PC again wanders off to his own seat as the carriage fills up and we’re soon greeted by the Brentford lot from this morning who having been 3 up were pegged back and saved twice by VAR before nabbing a 4-3 win. We’re also sat with some more Bees lads who oddly enough had been sat with Chairman Bruce, AB and others on the way up “You fucking Sutton lot are everywhere today!”. So we spend the time chatting shit football over cans and recharging mobiles back to London and this helps pass the time swimmingly. Back at Kings Cross, we look for PC on the platform, but decide to invoke “No man left behind” and head for the Thameslink. Here 4Days joins me as far as Blackfriars before hopping off to head back to Sunny Sutton. I remain on until Croydon and with a fair following wind and a 410 showing up sharpish, I’m back at HQ around 11pm. Sound.
I tiptoe in and find Mrs Taz already snoring her box off. Which is a shame, as it means my cracking little anecdote about our 13 penalties this season being a National League record will have to wait until over breakfast in the morning.
She’s a lucky lady that one and no mistake.
Taz