There's a hundred other things that would be more worthwhile than attending a football match that in all likelihood will have no bearing on anything for either side. That said, does football really have any great bearing on anything anyway? It's not like getting promoted or relegated really has a material impact on anything beyond the stunted feelings of some emotionally immature idiots who routinely trade their free time and hard earned cash for a diet of almost perennial disappointment in the hope of reliving a moment of their youthful dreams vicariously via the achievements of others. (That's us, by the way, in case you hadn't worked it out)
I don't have time to go home before the game, so my dinner is a Tesco meal deal. I feel as if Simon Sadler would approve of such austere frugality. At the ground, Tony Parr lists the sponsors in a bored monotone drawl. "Smythe's Widgets, sponsors of Ryan Finnegan's sock ties... Acme Gadgets, sponsors of general cynical chatter, ABC logistics, sponsors of Julian Winter's squash practice session fees."
The usual tinny drivel plays across the speakers. There's only so much you can hear 'Now that's what I call mid 80s to mid 90s middle of the road guitar music' at volume that sounds as if you're listening to it through next door's party wall and it retain any novelty. I put my headphones on instead.
There's about as much a sense of anticipation within the crowd waiting for the game as there would be in a bus station waiting for the routine 17.31 service from town to suburbia. A lad in a very purple tracksuit ambles past me and yawns like a big old dog awoken from a fireside slumber. I drink a pint of gassy lager I don't particularly want because that's what I always do.
I suppose we might as well do this..
---
I could describe the game in nth detail but what's the point? Fuck knows why I write this shit anyway other than the fact it's a thing I starting doing, so I keep doing it. Like breathing in and out. Sometimes, when a game is good or the occasion is special, it seems sort of vaguely worthwhile, because it's a record of what it was like to be there and that might be nice to look back upon in 30 years time if I'm still here or if anyone looks for it. I don't want to go all 'writerly wanker' but my favourite ones to write just sort of pour out, it's a kind of distillation of the feeling of being amongst others who are transcending the mundane and lost in the music, the rise and swell of the crowd, the percussive smack of boot on ball. I don't really think about what to say, it's just what is in my head and I type it out - but today, I haven't a clue. How to describe very little?
It wasn't so much a case of been taken away from the everyday by the spectacle as presented with a stark reminder of how grimly unsatisfying much of life can be - how we can anticipate pleasure and visualise wonder, but spend most of time sitting around waiting for something to happen that never does and then, after a whole lot of nothingness, the final whistle blows.
As a game, it was sort of like when you're in Tesco and it's boring as fuck and you go to the reduced bit in the hope of a (literally) cheap thrill and all there is is a pot of egg mayonnaise and it's only got 13p reduction anyway so you sigh and leave it where it is to coagulate further and eventually get chucked in the bin.
Fuck me MCLF, cheer up lad.
It was just a 0-0 draw, no one died. - There's been plenty of them in the past and there'll be plenty more in the future. People read this for the football, not for me banging on like some shit boring pub philosopher who is in the 3 to 4 pint sweet spot before incoherence kicks in so I'll do a bit of football.
What happened in the game? Not a lot. Sonny Carey (who I like and people who are wrong don't) ran about a lot and twice nearly scored (but sadly didn't actually score,) the first a drive from the edge of the box well saved after one of those intense breaks he's become adept at of late, the second, a charge down of the keeper that squirts past the post. Lee Evans had a shot that at the beginning of the season when Evans looked proper class would have probably broken the net but is actually less accurate than some of the shots I've written a paragraph about when CJ has had a similar effort. I'm a bit scared that Lee Evans will seek me out and deck me though if I say stuff like 'came closer to hitting the west stand ball boy than the back of the net' so I won't do that cos he's quite hard looking.
Albie Morgan has a funny night. He's actually pretty good in a nipping about midfield terrier kind of way, but he gets chance after to chance to hit the target and every effort is equally poor. He's normally a good bet to at least work the keeper but tonight he can't get close. I love Albie though so I'll forgive him his finishing nightmare.
The game probably dies about 30ish minutes in when Pool put a good move together and Haydn Coulson (who also plays generally pretty competently) slices what looks like a golden chance at the far post wide. Around me, everyone is in the same frame of mind, exchanging grimaces of suffering as if this is exactly what we knew we would be getting and getting it just confirms how lumbered we are with this affliction. If we can't even work their keeper after that move, we know what sort of night it's going to end up being.
Eventually we shift shape and go to a kind of 451ish shape that may or may not have actually been 433. The fact I can't tell what it actually is is probably an indication we weren't very comfortable playing it -though CJ lays a chance on a plate for Morgan with an intelligent and accurate cut back - The cheeky cockney chappie slices it like a golfer distracted on the downstroke of his swing and looks knackered and fed up as he does so.
When Robbie Apter comes on, he looks as if he's had his legs tied together by invisible elastic and lacks his usual impish manner, Sammy Silvera looks every inch an Ian Poveda clone on one of Poveda's bad days as he just gives the ball away trying mad stuff and we generally don't seem to have clue what we're doing in this formation, to the point where I'm baffled that we don't see Bees come on and go to a bit more of a focal point as whilst Bees isn't Stan Mortenson, he's not like some comedy shit player you'd avoid bringing on at all costs. Perhaps Bruce is just trying shit now to see what happens on the off chance he hits gold, but it was weird we never really tried playing the way we'd played most games up to this point.
Peterborough (who looked basically like a rubbish team who might one day actually be pretty good, they're all technically pretty able, they just haven't 'clicked' and keep getting stuff wrong that if they got right would be very effective) nearly score at the end. There's a muted 'ooooh' then quite a lot of booos then we all go home.
---
This is almost certainly the worst summing up of a game I've ever done. The weirdest thing about it though, in the midst of all the gloom, we put it together quite beautifully a few times. In the first half we had about a 90 second spell of what I could honestly describe as total football, crisp, lightning quick first time passing around the whole team,with fluid and free movement - we looked absolutely brilliant until it came to the final shot. In the second half Sonny and Albie combined down the right in a move that contained some of the most intelligent passing and moving that I've seen us do in ages, each of them dropping angled balls to each other that, like a brilliantly measured pool shot, rolled exactly where each other needed.
At times, you can see us do really nice stuff. We sometimes play whole halves of good football, even occasionally churn out 90 minutes of decent play - but as has been painfully apparent for a good length of time now, we're not good enough over the 22 man squad. I try not to stick the boot into individual players writing this, because who really needs some dickhead that knows nothing banging on like he's judge and jury (I'd be fucked off if CJ came to my work and laughed at my many shortcomings and would say 'CJ, what the fuck do you know about my job - and he'd be right to say, 'well if you can write about me, why can't I mock you') and to be honest, I don't think it's particularly merited anyway.
I don't think this is generally a group who've 'given up' or 'don't care' - I think that's just easy stuff to say when we don't play as we want - I actually think a fair number of them have a place in a half decent squad (the emphasis being on 'squad' there) - I think we just lack in quality and particular attributes across the 22 and we're relying on the same core week in and week out regardless of form or fatigue. If nothing else, shouting at young lads half my age to 'get fucked' or to 'fuck off' because the squad isn't good enough and I'm unconvinced by the direction of the club as a whole (have we actually got one?) isn't either really what I'm at the football for or particularly fair.
At no point since the boycott ended have things felt as flat as they do now. In fact, it's a long, long time since Bloomfield felt as apathetic, as resigned, as generally passive and inert as it did last night. It felt almost like a pre-Uncle Val era game, when we were stuck with Karl's reign of extreme parsimony and being midtable in League 1 was about as much as we could expect and at least if we were there we weren't getting relegated and who knows, we might get a half decent player on a free every now and again but deep down, we knew that there's only so many Scott Taylors you accidentally get and a lot of Graham Fentons...
That's not how it should feel. This is not where we all expected to be. It all just needs a fucking good shake and a bit of ambition.
Maybe it's just another 0-0 and maybe football is just like that. Perhaps in a perverse way, it's why we love the game - because being good isn't easy and expectations can be dashed - but I can't help coming to the same conclusion as I have done multiple times prior - Summer is massive. We're going to need a truck full of players whatever happens - it's going to be a massive test etc etc etc. Repeat until June and then hope for the best, however foolhardy that may be....
Onward!
I could describe the game in nth detail but what's the point? Fuck knows why I write this shit anyway other than the fact it's a thing I starting doing, so I keep doing it. Like breathing in and out. Sometimes, when a game is good or the occasion is special, it seems sort of vaguely worthwhile, because it's a record of what it was like to be there and that might be nice to look back upon in 30 years time if I'm still here or if anyone looks for it. I don't want to go all 'writerly wanker' but my favourite ones to write just sort of pour out, it's a kind of distillation of the feeling of being amongst others who are transcending the mundane and lost in the music, the rise and swell of the crowd, the percussive smack of boot on ball. I don't really think about what to say, it's just what is in my head and I type it out - but today, I haven't a clue. How to describe very little?
It wasn't so much a case of been taken away from the everyday by the spectacle as presented with a stark reminder of how grimly unsatisfying much of life can be - how we can anticipate pleasure and visualise wonder, but spend most of time sitting around waiting for something to happen that never does and then, after a whole lot of nothingness, the final whistle blows.
As a game, it was sort of like when you're in Tesco and it's boring as fuck and you go to the reduced bit in the hope of a (literally) cheap thrill and all there is is a pot of egg mayonnaise and it's only got 13p reduction anyway so you sigh and leave it where it is to coagulate further and eventually get chucked in the bin.
Fuck me MCLF, cheer up lad.
It was just a 0-0 draw, no one died. - There's been plenty of them in the past and there'll be plenty more in the future. People read this for the football, not for me banging on like some shit boring pub philosopher who is in the 3 to 4 pint sweet spot before incoherence kicks in so I'll do a bit of football.
What happened in the game? Not a lot. Sonny Carey (who I like and people who are wrong don't) ran about a lot and twice nearly scored (but sadly didn't actually score,) the first a drive from the edge of the box well saved after one of those intense breaks he's become adept at of late, the second, a charge down of the keeper that squirts past the post. Lee Evans had a shot that at the beginning of the season when Evans looked proper class would have probably broken the net but is actually less accurate than some of the shots I've written a paragraph about when CJ has had a similar effort. I'm a bit scared that Lee Evans will seek me out and deck me though if I say stuff like 'came closer to hitting the west stand ball boy than the back of the net' so I won't do that cos he's quite hard looking.
Albie Morgan has a funny night. He's actually pretty good in a nipping about midfield terrier kind of way, but he gets chance after to chance to hit the target and every effort is equally poor. He's normally a good bet to at least work the keeper but tonight he can't get close. I love Albie though so I'll forgive him his finishing nightmare.
The game probably dies about 30ish minutes in when Pool put a good move together and Haydn Coulson (who also plays generally pretty competently) slices what looks like a golden chance at the far post wide. Around me, everyone is in the same frame of mind, exchanging grimaces of suffering as if this is exactly what we knew we would be getting and getting it just confirms how lumbered we are with this affliction. If we can't even work their keeper after that move, we know what sort of night it's going to end up being.
Eventually we shift shape and go to a kind of 451ish shape that may or may not have actually been 433. The fact I can't tell what it actually is is probably an indication we weren't very comfortable playing it -though CJ lays a chance on a plate for Morgan with an intelligent and accurate cut back - The cheeky cockney chappie slices it like a golfer distracted on the downstroke of his swing and looks knackered and fed up as he does so.
When Robbie Apter comes on, he looks as if he's had his legs tied together by invisible elastic and lacks his usual impish manner, Sammy Silvera looks every inch an Ian Poveda clone on one of Poveda's bad days as he just gives the ball away trying mad stuff and we generally don't seem to have clue what we're doing in this formation, to the point where I'm baffled that we don't see Bees come on and go to a bit more of a focal point as whilst Bees isn't Stan Mortenson, he's not like some comedy shit player you'd avoid bringing on at all costs. Perhaps Bruce is just trying shit now to see what happens on the off chance he hits gold, but it was weird we never really tried playing the way we'd played most games up to this point.
Peterborough (who looked basically like a rubbish team who might one day actually be pretty good, they're all technically pretty able, they just haven't 'clicked' and keep getting stuff wrong that if they got right would be very effective) nearly score at the end. There's a muted 'ooooh' then quite a lot of booos then we all go home.
---
This is almost certainly the worst summing up of a game I've ever done. The weirdest thing about it though, in the midst of all the gloom, we put it together quite beautifully a few times. In the first half we had about a 90 second spell of what I could honestly describe as total football, crisp, lightning quick first time passing around the whole team,with fluid and free movement - we looked absolutely brilliant until it came to the final shot. In the second half Sonny and Albie combined down the right in a move that contained some of the most intelligent passing and moving that I've seen us do in ages, each of them dropping angled balls to each other that, like a brilliantly measured pool shot, rolled exactly where each other needed.
At times, you can see us do really nice stuff. We sometimes play whole halves of good football, even occasionally churn out 90 minutes of decent play - but as has been painfully apparent for a good length of time now, we're not good enough over the 22 man squad. I try not to stick the boot into individual players writing this, because who really needs some dickhead that knows nothing banging on like he's judge and jury (I'd be fucked off if CJ came to my work and laughed at my many shortcomings and would say 'CJ, what the fuck do you know about my job - and he'd be right to say, 'well if you can write about me, why can't I mock you') and to be honest, I don't think it's particularly merited anyway.
I don't think this is generally a group who've 'given up' or 'don't care' - I think that's just easy stuff to say when we don't play as we want - I actually think a fair number of them have a place in a half decent squad (the emphasis being on 'squad' there) - I think we just lack in quality and particular attributes across the 22 and we're relying on the same core week in and week out regardless of form or fatigue. If nothing else, shouting at young lads half my age to 'get fucked' or to 'fuck off' because the squad isn't good enough and I'm unconvinced by the direction of the club as a whole (have we actually got one?) isn't either really what I'm at the football for or particularly fair.
At no point since the boycott ended have things felt as flat as they do now. In fact, it's a long, long time since Bloomfield felt as apathetic, as resigned, as generally passive and inert as it did last night. It felt almost like a pre-Uncle Val era game, when we were stuck with Karl's reign of extreme parsimony and being midtable in League 1 was about as much as we could expect and at least if we were there we weren't getting relegated and who knows, we might get a half decent player on a free every now and again but deep down, we knew that there's only so many Scott Taylors you accidentally get and a lot of Graham Fentons...
That's not how it should feel. This is not where we all expected to be. It all just needs a fucking good shake and a bit of ambition.
Maybe it's just another 0-0 and maybe football is just like that. Perhaps in a perverse way, it's why we love the game - because being good isn't easy and expectations can be dashed - but I can't help coming to the same conclusion as I have done multiple times prior - Summer is massive. We're going to need a truck full of players whatever happens - it's going to be a massive test etc etc etc. Repeat until June and then hope for the best, however foolhardy that may be....
Onward!
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