Yes, SW19 has recovered from the White Screen of Death (famous last words) that so many of you suffered last night. For those who have yet to read the match report, click here. I’ve even put a picture of yesterday’s game up above…
For the technogeeks amongst you, the problem was that a WordPress theme update buggered up. Which I only found out at 1445 yesterday. But because my disk that I host this on turned out to be full – and it’s a pretty big disk – it could no longer update anything.
Hence why there was a basic theme up last night instead, and why I just reinstalled the proper theme this morning afresh.
Anyway, there’s still an issue with a 400mb Statpress table that needs to be downloaded then destroyed, or just simply tossed out like last season’s defence, and once that’s done with luck most of the crap I’ve/you’ve had to put up with recently should be a thing of the past.
And for 99.99% of those of you reading this, you’ve just wondered what the hell I’ve just said.
Oh, and the reason you’re reading this now is that this morning, my mouse decided to do its impression of somebody taking too much PCP and throwing itself off the nearest motorway bridge.
Thank god we won yesterday.
Anyway, victory is always sweet, and things felt quite nice today. The sun shone a little bit brighter, the birds tweeted* a little bit louder, even the traffic jams on the M25 weren’t quite as aggravating.
* – by tweeting, I mean the noise they make. I don’t mean they go on social media and type “LOL – just crapped on some bloke below my tree #banter”
You have to say, the three points could do a lot of good to us. It showed we can fight back after being 2-0 down and win. It shows what happens when you actually have a go and start doing things like shooting at the goal.
But it also seems to have done NA’s stock a lot of good too – if you read the WDSA writeup on this, that is. Changing the formation to a pretty bold one and it paying off is the stuff every manager dreams of.
Granted, there’s a fine margin between it being a stroke of genius and a fuckup that has to result in immediate resignation. And it’s easy to forget that this could have easily been a loss yesterday.
But at least we’re now showing steel, determination and – perhaps most importantly – flexibility. Our ability to change things won us the game yesterday, and for the first time in a long while we were able to capitalise on the bit of momentum we got.
How many little rallies have we had in the last season or two where we’re let ourselves down beforehand and lost because we gave ourselves too much to do? I know we won after being down to Bradford at KM in February, and us coming back at Priestfield arguably help keep us up last season.
But this has more of the “traditional” Wimbledon fightback about it. And it’s good to have.
Obviously, there’s a lot of work to be done on the training ground, and we won’t get away with that each week. I’d rather us make the Torquay (minus the last minute goals) or Wycombe type performances de rigeur than have to constantly come back from going behind.
Watching the goals on the FLS, the first goal for Scunny really was a case of Worner still not entirely communicating with our defenders. Perhaps they need one of those corporate bonding sessions where they go paintballing, or go on some murder-mystery weekend thing where they have to work together to solve it.
Although no doubt Worner will inadvertently stab Benno in the leg after finding the murder weapon…
A few other things. Sheringham does seem to be splitting opinion. Apparently his old man wasn’t too happy with a comment made about Charlie at Norbiton station – but then, what does he expect?
It’s obvious that he (Sheringham jnr not snr) needs some good fortune, but as said before recently – he’s got to do it quickly, otherwise it becomes impossible to pull himself out of it.
His penalty looked quite predictable on the replay, if that makes sense. Smith needed that goal yesterday almost as much as we did, and Midson when he gets his first goal will get many more.
Right now though, Teddy’s kid looks like a Conference level player in a League Two outfit, and he needs to change that perception pretty damn pronto. And it’s not because people may not like his old man…
Other thoughts : I can’t remember if I mentioned this in yesterday’s report, but it was very interesting to hear (after the boos of frustration) at half time some loud chanting for Midson’s name.
You can bet NA heard it, and indeed it’s something that even the more level-headed of AFCW fan yesterday was pissed off about at half time. To not play him when you’re 0-0 away at the break is one thing. But to do it when you’re down 2-0 at home to a game that it’s a good idea to win in…?
We’ll probably see more of this sort of thing throughout the season. It worked (almost) at Torquay, and it worked yesterday. And it’s obvious that NA would rather use Midson as an impact sub – because let’s face it, looking at it sans emotion it’s working.
And it will be frustrating to go through. Midson himself doesn’t seem 100% happy about it. I just hope that our boss is man enough to take it on the chin when it backfires.
Still, a good week is ahead of us, when we don’t have teenager-esque brooding about the result. To be fair, we didn’t have too much of it after Exeter, although even at this early stage getting into bad runs of form isn’t ideal.
Force of habit still makes me look at the bottom of the table, and we’re already six points clear of the bottom two. As we found out ourselves last season, a bad start this stage of the season can do a lot more damage to you than you may think at that moment, and this time round, we’ve managed to avoid that so far.
Remember, yesterday we could have been playing Nuneaton rather than Scunthorpe.
On a semi-related note, yesterday’s programme had one of those occasional articles about the divisions from whence we came, and it’s interesting that these “non-league was great but I wouldn’t want to go back to them” type angles always focus on the CCL.
Or to be more accurately, these nostalgia pieces always evoke out the memories of cheese rolls at Merstham, or the curry at Southall. Or for reasons of balance, Feltham.
Leaving aside your editor’s prejudice against much of non-league football, and how despite it’s “real football” tag is a lot grubbier and hypocritical than League football ever was – it’s funny how nobody wants to remember the trips to Walton and Hersham, or Croydon Athletic, or Maidstone.
Or any other Ryman League ground. Or any other shithole place where the real insular nature of non-league football put many a previously sympathetic Womble off for life.
Back in those days of course, the very notion of playing Scunthorpe in any competition would have been a bit far fetched. It would have certainly not been in the League, and the best we could have hoped for was the ultra-romantic FA Cup first round tie.
To be honest, unless we did a Stockport or Darlington, we’ll never go to those venues again anyway – FAC first round bananaskin or Senior Cup ties aside. Even going down to the Conference wouldn’t have been quite the same as going to Bashley.
Still, we came too close to comfort for it to be the dim and distant past, and as the article said it’s best left in our memories ready to be tinted with rose. We can never go back, and nor should we want to.
Ironically, your editor was in/near Sandhurst this very afternoon, and yes, you do think back to those days (the area doesn’t look much different BTW). Of course, all romance ebbs away very quickly when you pick up the NLP at the nearby Tesco out of curiosity.
Especially the chump on the letters page today, who wonders why TB still hasn’t been employed and described his axing from us as a “surprise”…