3rd September 2020
Alcoholic Units – Not till later!
MoM – Joe Neal
Another close one between Joe and Jonny, but today goes to Joe for his outstanding performance, especially in the 2nd half – also refreshing to see a player stay on his feet👍
“Dads not coming today because of the rain” 🤭
A rearranged match against Stourbridge today thanks to all the FA Cup fixtures… at least a few more of us would make a Saturday than the original Monday fixture 🤔
Umbrellas ✔
Phone chargers ✔
Flags ✔
Google maps ✔
Its would be a wet miserable journey to Stourbridge for me BigAl, Wader Lew and Rodney ☔ at times you could hardly see the car ahead the rain was so torrential – we prayed we wouldn’t get there and find out is was called off….
There’s no parking at the ground in Stourbridge or so we were told and so we left the Beemobile a couple of streets away and walk the five minutes to the ground to be met by some friendly stewards 😊who showed us the way through. It felt odd coming through this way as the last time I came here some eight years ago we had been ushered in via the cricket pitchside and into the segregated stand; today we walked past the busy clubhouse we didn’t go in and through to the pitch passing a sanitising station 👍an outside bar 👍 and snack hut that I have been assured does the best chips with Curry sauce in the whole of the Southern League 🤔
By now we had been joined by Super Scoop in a strange choice of clothing – shorts? Perhaps, like the St.Ives game he knew something we didn’t 🤔🤔🤐…We made our way to the first stand up terrace whilst BigAl went off to get a team sheet we didn’t get a lot of cover from this terrace as the rain was driving straight in at us 🌧
I have to say in my experience, clubs in this part of the country, and Stourbridge are no exception have the friendliest fans 😊👌 its incredible, people come up to you, ask about the journey, wish you well 💚 It wasn’t long before one gentleman in his Stourbridge face mask came over to me and pointed me towards the seated terrace next door, not sure what to think about this 🤔 did he think I was a little old lady 🤔🤣🤣 I said to him Nah football has to be watched standing up – to which he replied “ah an oldie” i think that was a compliment as in old skool 😉.
Big al made his way back to us also chatting to another home supporter who was interested to know how the waders were doing this season.
We decided to vacate that terrace and make our way through the seated stand to the terrace the other side. We stayed for a while and Nunny spotted us, coming over for a quick pre match chat – got to love non League! 💚⚽️
The rain was still coming down hard but the terrace was getting busy and the Waders were kicking towards the clubhouse, we decided to move back outside behind the goal and hide under the brolly..
None of us were particularly hopeful of bringing back any points from today as we never get anything here 🤷♀️
1st Half
Not unsurprisingly just five minutes into the match Stour took the lead with the Waders defence all over the place 😒 ‘Dave’ and Anni had now arrived having taken 60 mile detour 🤭 So there were 7 of us, 8 if we include Amanda who was taking cover in the stands **we discovered later 5 or 6 lads who were cheering Waders on (guessing either rivals of Stour or maybe Oxford fans?).
Back to the match 👇
For 40 minutes of the 1st half we were battered by Stour ☹and it was a shock to all of us when the ball finally appeared at our end, even more so when we were given a lifeline thanks to a well worked goal from Fabio to pull us level😃 At half time things remained level and to say we were lucky, would be an understatement of epic proportion 😱 still that’s football I suppose.
By now Rodney and Lew we’re sampling the Curry sauce soaked chips much too BigAl’s disgust 🤢 I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but BigAl is more than a little odd 🤪 he doesn’t like gravy or Curry sauce ?? and isn’t a big fan of potatoes 🧐🤔 Being half Irish, this is very disturbing to me 🤨 I would like to add he had already worked his charms on me before I found any of this out 🤣😅- Lew being an all around lovely kid 💚💚 made sure to pick out chips that were not curry covered and feed them to his Grandad, how sweet 💚 until we discovered he was licking the Curry off, it’s a good job we’re related 🤣🤣
We made our way round to the shed end for the 2nd half and opted to stand outside behind the goal.
2nd Half
So out for the second half and to say we were concerned would be an understatement as we were sure Stour would come out firing on all cylinders ready to put the game to bed 😨 On 46 minutes Fabio was shown a harsh straight red after going in for a tackle that was deemed to have been high 😐 it was clear for us to see and the steward later agreed, that it was not intentional as you could see him watching the ball not the player… Oh no!!! 10 men against Stour, what could possibly go wrong? 😨😨😰
Amazingly the Waders started to play with more confidence and were clearly the better side for a good part of the second half, Scott Davies and Leon really started to pull the strings in mid field and the Waders grew in confidence. Johnny Giles and Joe Neal absolutely tore into the Stour defence and Johnny was rewarded with a great goal after some brilliant build up play by Joe Neal 2 – 1 to the Waders 😃😃 It should have been 3 really when after a shocking 2 footed lunge by a Stour defender 😡 that the lino claimed not to see 🥸 even though he was looking straight at it and it was right in front of us 😡 Luckily Joe skipped over it (had he gone down it would have been a red) and made a fantastic run and got round the keeper but his shot was cleared off the line by the Stour defence 😏 the clock was ticking down…
We were all anxiously checking our watches praying for the referee to blow the final whistle;Stour were really starting to press for the equaliser now and unfortunately on the 90th minute, a mix up in our defence saw the ball not properly cleared and it fell to a Stour forward who’s shot took a massive deflection past Kyle and into the net gutted 2 – 2 😒
If you’d have offered me the point at the start of the match, I’d of snatched your arm off…. So we shouldn’t really be down about this, but there is something so gut wrenching about goals on 90 minutes..😭
Not many photos today my hands were freezing and numb having to hold the Waders umbrella over Twatterboy – honestly, this is going to his head 🤓 I think he actually believes I’m his PA 🙄 🤣 so cold and wet, we headed home having again watched a great Waders display 💚⚽️💚⚽️ I’m sure its my lucky no.7 CraigyD shirt… 🤭😘
#InNunnyWeTrust #GreenArmy #Waders
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