And it was going so well…
It wouldn’t be an AFCW pre-season with at least one stinker against a lower league side, especially one not in the EFL.
Our first – and hopefully only – pile of whale wank turned out to be West Sutton 2 Haydons Road 0 and it was about as good as it sounds.
True, it really didn’t help matters that your editor done something to his knee, which made walking at times almost impossible.
It got to the stage that when I got out of my car and had to work out how to cross the road, I nearly turned back to go home.
Perhaps I should have done.
My knee is a bit better now, due to a mixture of naproxen sodium, Advil, plenty of cold gel and some impressive strapping.
And one hopes the players are feeling equally as sore this morning.
I suppose when Sutton went ahead leaving us looking as mobile as I was (and I moved more than McDonnell did for it) that kind of set the scene for the afternoon.
Although there was a foul on our player in the buildup, that somehow managed to get missed.
Not that it excuses most of yesterday. We played it around nicely, showed some decent touches at times, all without actually hurting Sutton.
Reeves (?) blasted over which was as good as it got in the first half, though admittedly I wasn’t paying too much attention to the game.
Trouble is, my enthusiasm wasn’t exactly ignited for the second.
We defended far too much for my liking, and one team was treating it more like a competitive fixture (hint: it wasn’t us).
This is the problem with PSFs, where you do have to take them with a large amount of sodium.
In a proper game, I think we would have put ourselves about a bit more than we did yesterday.
Although funnily enough we started to do that in the last 15 minutes, especially when Bugiel and Kelly came on.
Splatt featured too, and he turned out to be the best of a bad bunch. Even despite our lameness, we could have scored at least one.
Needless to say, we were giving away too many fouls, including one in the area. Yep, a penalty, where it already seemed to make the home fans’ season.
I left when they put it in the net, like people who need extra assistance getting on a plane I figured hobbling back to my car was a better option.
While writing this, there’s an OS interview with Steve “I scored at Luton” Seddon which has popped up, who curiously didn’t go into detail about the game we just played.
It’s all well and good him being glad to be back, but you’d hope though that there would be some kind of reaction by Millwall, even if it’s simply announcing a loanee coming in.
Luton is less than a fortnight away now, and it’s hard not to think we’re slightly underprepared…
Plus points: It wasn’t too far to get home. Splatt looking lively. Trialist looked OK.
Minus points: 3pm to 4.50pm. Wouldn’t have scored even if we were still playing.
The referee’s a…: I’ll be charitable because it’s their pre-season too, and it’s never an easy job.
But when somebody yells “Come on lino, you must be a fucking trialist” and it’s not done for comedy effect, you know they’re not going to have a good proper season.
Them: They were a bit like us when we were non-league and a L1/L2 side came to Kingsmeadow.
Up for it, treated it a bit (OK, a lot) more seriously and they got their result of the season at our expense.
Remember that they beat Wycombe in a PSF very recently too, so they’re doing well in the Pre Season Cup.
435 of us discovered yesterday that away fans are now put down the side opposite the main stand, which would be fun in an away turnout of over 700.
£12 wasn’t bad these days, although at times it felt like we paid £12 too much for the “privilege” of seeing our lot.
And yes, you just know that if we don’t get Wealdstone away in the FAC we’ll be sent to GGL instead.
And lose.
It’s still odd to get my head around the fact that Sutton were an EFL club not so long ago, although they’re now at the level they probably should be.
Just as AFCW are culturally an EFL side, Sutton are culturally a non-league outfit at heart. And yes, it still annoys me how they manage to keep beating us.
Oh, and their 12-year old Ultras (с барабаном) loved doing that Charlie Koppel song to Omar Bugiel…
Point to ponder: Are goals going to be our problem again this season?
I had to rewrite this bit PDQ because I was focusing on Matty Stevens and his lack of PSF goals.
Until I realised he netted against Pafos and then Enfield Town.
He looked as likely to find the net yesterday as I was, and while Kelly finally knows where the goal is, he wasn’t going to do much in 15 minutes.
Bugiel featured for the first time since Notts County away in the playoffs, and it showed.
Granted, Splatt came on and caused problems but he’s only a young lad and shouldn’t be expected to do the work of the more senior goalgetters.
It doesn’t help that one of your other strikers has been quietly moved aside (he was on the bench but as far as I know didn’t come on).
Really, we have to look for another striker, just to shake things up a bit.
The rumour mill this week suggested that we’ve bid money for Bromley’s Michael Cheek, which I wouldn’t say no to.
Said whispers are also mentioning in hushed tones that there are loanees lined up already and even another striker training with us.
It would be nice to know that they’re true, and not just the kind of thing you hear at this time of season.
It would also be nice to get the official announcement that they’ve all joined us, so at least we’re adding to what is still an incomplete squad.
Loan players take ages to be agreed, because we’re at the whim of their parent club, and this time of the season is rife with trialists – most of whom never seem to be seen more than once.
After the game, at least one individual mentioned how much we need more additions. I don’t doubt our coaching staff agree.
Truth is stranger than fiction: 1) Is 435 for a PSF four miles away on a Saturday good or not? 2) It still amuses me even now that there’s a company on GGL called “Plough Lane Coachworks”. 3) “Is there a fire drill?”. Yes, there was. We believe in safety at our end of the Thameslink.
Anything else? Is it me or is there a bit of a strange mood around the club right now?
I’m not quite sure why, but you would think it could show some enthusiasm for getting promoted.
It doesn’t seem excited that it’s back playing the likes of Luton, Reading, Cardiff etc, and that Wombley : The Return was a negative as much as a positive.
Even allowing for the financial challenges that being in L1 will bring, there should be a bit more euphoria about going up than it’s showing.
Come on AFCW – we got promoted, not relegated.
The kit launch – one of the biggest money makers for a club – seems to be pushed to the background, and even just a brief promotion of an upcoming PSF seems verboten.
All right, there’s the occasional post of it on social media the day of the game, but it would be nice to know how training is going, what we’re working on beforehand.
Get people emotionally invested for the next nine months ahead.
On the pitch, we’re more prepared for life in L1 than we were in 2016, at least structually. I’m not convinced off it we are.
Your editor heard a little whisper towards the back end of last season suggesting the club would have been secretly relieved if we didn’t get promoted.
Well, as a football club you must always be prepared if you ever get the chance to step up a level, and it’s our own fault if not.
The Craig Cope (PBUH) interview soon after promotion set the tone for the close season, and we’ve had more tales of financial woe than anything else since.
And I think it’s starting to grate on the rank and file supporter.
There are things that need to be done, like new floodlights. Which we’ve finally got (did that come out of the pitch flood insurance or did the DT find some money down the back of the sofa?)
They cost money to install, and probably aren’t cheap to run. But as said so many times on SW19, that’s running costs that every football club has.
The latest give-us-your-money enterprise is the Club Patron thing, which seems to be the Yellow and Blue/Blue and Yellow Club rebranded with a higher price.
Now, some people absolutely love to schmooze and have dinner with the manager, although I’ve never quite understood why. And it makes sense to dip into their pockets.
The trouble is, how many people are able to pay £3600-00 (including VAT) for something they were mostly getting for much less only last season?
Or indeed, willing to pay for it?
OK, you get access to the boardroom twice a season, and some may think the 260% (or whatever it is) increase is worth it for that alone.
How much more takeup would that get though? Especially if those who are part of the current Y&B/B&Y Club might decide this isn’t a good use of their money now.
Don’t get me wrong, the Y&B did seem to have more than the whiff of a Gentleman’s Club about it, minus presumably the poledancing Ukrainian girl that got roped in for “meetings”.
Any of their photos showed that only one person had hair that wasn’t grey. And I expect the Patron replacement to be similar.
No, I’m not suggesting we should push for “diversity”, which basically means “people who look different for the purpose of a photograph”.
And I’m fully aware that older gentlemen will tend to have a lot more disposable income than those younger. Twas ever thus.
We’ll see how successful it turns out to be – I expect there’ll be some takers for it, but perhaps not as many as the club hopes.
And if people want our fans to be less grumpy – perhaps AFCW itself could be a bit less miserable…?
So, was it worth it? I somehow spent 1h30 minutes writing about a PSF loss to Sutton.
In a nutshell: Can we delay the season until mid-August?