In the absence of a game because of the international break, Will called up and suggested that we might go along and watch the mighty Moors, now playing in the National division, visiting Aldershot. Thinking it might be fun we met up at North Camp station nearby and went along to the ground grabbing a pint in the Crimea pub just outside the stadium (I use this term loosely).
I’ve been pretty starved of football in recent times with regard to Blues; the Sheffield game was watched from the comfort of my sofa since it was a 17.30 kick off and totally inconvenient from the point of view of travel, the QPR match, I didn’t go to after the dreadful experience of last season, the Preston game I couldn’t make as it was a Tuesday night and I couldn’t get away from work in time, the Blackburn game fell on the date of my wedding anniversary and I value my health and Nottingham Forest is this Friday evening and impossible from the work standpoint! What is more it isn’t even on the telly and has been moved because of a clash with Notts County’s game in League 2 on the Saturday; a poor show in my opinion. I hope to get to the Rotherham match on Tuesday but that is questionable.
Anyway, what of Saturday’s offering? Well the less said the better; I’m not going to dwell on the game because it wasn’t very good. Other than to say that that Aldershot deservedly won the match 2-0 with both goals coming in the second period it was pretty dull fare but no worse than England’s second half performance against lowly Malta later on. The chicken curry and chips at half time wasn’t bad and at least it was hot, reasonably substantial and only £3.50. I feel I have to congratulate the other 50 intrepid souls from the Midlands who made the trip down to support Moors who remained evenly competitive with the Shots until they conceded on the hour from a well taken drive from about 20 yards. After that they never looked like getting anything from the game.
For all that, I’m glad Will and I went; one of the things that Will commented on was that seeing non-league football like this has concentrated the mind a little that we shouldn’t complain about Blues as much. It certainly helps to make appreciation of the standard of Championship easier when you see football at the level seen on Saturday. One note of interest was that Akwasi Asante (remember him?) was playing up front for Moors and no we should not bemoan his loss if this was anything to go by which is a shame as I seem to remember he showed great promise at one time.
Finally, what about the national team? The cathartic shock of losing our manager after only one game in charge (at least he can claim a 100% record!) doesn’t appear to have changed the overall temper of the England team. They made heavy weather of beating an extremely limited Malta team but the main focus has to be on Rooney. I will try and avoid hyperbole here and say that I thought he played OK but we have better players to fulfil the deep holding midfield role. It struck me that once again we were trying to shoehorn a player whose powers are fading into the team at that team’s expense and it is for that reason that I’m glad that our captain has at last been dropped in the interests of playing people in their more natural positions and balancing the side. I hope and trust, like many other proud Englishmen, that this will see an improvement in the performance against Slovenia tonight. We’ll see I suppose but if all else fails we can still laugh at the comedy show going on across the expressway. ;-D
Tara-a-bit!
Bazza KRO
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