Roll up, roll up!! We're back, WE'RE BACK!! After spending swathes of lockdown afternoons trying to perfect the brewing ratios of our soon to be rolled out “Spencer interview bingo bitter”, to say we were thrilled at the prospect (road end) of standing in a stupidly oversized stadium shouting at cunty full backs would be the understatement of the pandemic. Be still my beating heart, proper competitive football was back on the agenda. Proper stuff. Football isn’t a TV show kids.
Seeing as
at least 183 of you ventured into (at least the first few paragraphs of) our
P.R.E season rollout “shitdump”, it seemed only right that we throw up the red
carpet on frankly the most joyous 12th
September in popular culture history since Barry White vacated mumma White’s
fallopian tubes of love, back in 1944, setting in motion the chain of events
leading to the end of the second world war.
What’s that you say? Why are you talking about Barry White and the second world war?! Well, why the feck not to be honest. I mean it’s not like we’d roll up to the San Cherrio for this momentous FA Cup battle and find our heroic centre half and captain playing up front or anything….
Oh, I didn't mention the opponents did I? It was Lymington Town. Two divisions lower, booked their visit courtesy of a frankly ludicrous late winner against Brockenhurst. Unbelievable. Spencer had done his best to sell them as the Man City of the Wessex League ever since the draw. We all knew his apprehension was more rooted in the fact he was having to play fast and loose with smashing a squad together. Spencer's old goto of grabbing players from the preseason trickle down was somewhat being fingered in the arsehole by the fact nobody was able to turn the fecking taps on further up the pyramid. Injuries, illness, suspensions, alien abductions. You know how this works by now.
After some furious, frantic google abuse on who the hell the new lads were and if they were indeed ones we'd seen in the friendlies, we settled into place with Spencer’s frenetic early excuse fests still ringing firmly in our lugholes from his spate of preseason based confabulations with the boy Lloyd. What’s that? He’s done another one pre match? He’s talking about how sunny it is? Sealey-Harris is back?? He can’t play because Spencer’s printer/sign/scan/e-mail game is less Linford Christie and more Tony Christie??? Well I’ll be fucked. I can’t keep up. That said, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… agents at this level are an absolute sodding liberty. They can all get to fuck quite frankly. Fair dos to Spencer for sorting it out and not just telling him to get in the bin. Anywho, I digress! Teams were, indeed, in....
So it was psf ever present Jimmy "JJ" Jewers in midfield with Louis Dunne-Dunne manning the centre of the park in front of the centre back triumvirate of Tom "Le git" Leggett, Seth "the mic" Owens &, newly positioned TheBoroWalk favourite Bryan "the messiah" Akongo. JAWs and Louie "McCain micro chips" Paget would raid down the wingback channels and John "tiny dancer" Oyenuga and new lad Jordan Coady "McCoadface" would sortie in behind CJ fucking Fearn up top. Why the fuck not. From GK to target man in 3 easy steps. Hero. He couldn't really do any worse than topknot could he.
From the off, the visitors clearly had been given their instructions to get amongst it and make sure that the hosts knew they were in a game. Tackles were not offered in half measures and their manager clearly hadn't been on the happy pills the night before, flanked in totality by their number 6 whom I can only assume had shoved a cactus up his rectum at some point in the warm up. We spend most of the first half thinking up suitable nicknames for their weird velcro headed toddler in goal. After finally settling on how funny it would be to do a bunch of Leo Sayer lyrics in the write up, we realised that we didn't know any Leo Sayer songs. More than I can say, that really was a waste of time.... much like the majority of the half. A couple of half chances, a decent jinking run and shot from McCoadface cutting inside and a left foot daisy cutter from captain utility, were as good as it got. I think it's fair to say most of us were more than happy to hear that sacred halftime whistle beckoning us to the where the beer was faithfully waiting for us. HT 0-0
As we reappeared into the second half, we were surprised to see that the lively McCoadface had been given the chop, in favour of Ed "Jibber" Jabberi, but pleased to see Fitz back in the action, on in place of the JAWs who'd picked up a couple of knocks in the first half. The "Jibber" Jabberi was known to us through his frankly obscene panenka pen in the practice shootout against the 'stoke in midweek. He's very similar in style to the boy Cullen, just less likely to take a fucking holiday.
It was the visitors who kicked into second gear first, Beachy having to get out and get large to block off their striker with his big old size 11's. Minutes later he was called into action again when a soft free kick was given, the ref continuing his personal spiral towards maximus ineptitudeus bellendus, and belted with sufficient gusto calling our fearless protector into one of his big old flying tip off jobbies. That was about as good as it got for the new forest lot though. As the game developed, it became that age old battle of "well this is clearly going to go to pens" versus "well this is clearly going to go to pens" and there was only ever going to be one winner. To be fair though, Fitz was proving to be the spark to make things happen as Boro pushed on. He was the first to force Leo Sayer into actually making a second half save in anger as he cut into the box and arrowed his effort low, the permed wonderkid doing exceptionally well to get down and smother the shot with his outstretched manchild right arm. Paget pinged a few efforts in and around and there were a couple of almighty penalty box pinball episodes as 'Boro threw everything they could find at the PRE, tiny dancer coming closest as his effort deflected more agonisingly wide than Keith Emmerson's hairline. The final piece of the big fat frustration pie came as Spencer was forced to throw on the boy Hooks as Seth limped off in stoppage time. He sauntered out to the left wing and a minute later, low and behold a final Boro stampede bobbled across right into his path and his shot was just smothered by Leo the stopper once again. With that, the collective "FFS" groan rang out from the PRE as that big old full time whistle brought us to pens. FT 0-0
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Having already kept out a number of pens across the 2 dress rehearsal shootouts with Woking and the 'Stokers, I think we all dared to dream that perhaps Beachy would have enough to get us over that line and into the big fat felt bag for the 1QR. Flashbacks to feeling 800 miles from the shootout we lost at the Dripping Pan a couple of years prior niggling away in the back of our minds. Their first player steps up and Beachy hurls himself low to his right and BOSH, we were immediately in business. CJ, Dunny, Paget & Fitz all despatched their efforts, leaving their final taker with the chance of pushing us towards sudden death or not. No worries though, he was shit and smashed it over the bar inducing biblical scenes of celebrations in the PRE and the surrounding areas. FT 0-0 (4-3 pens)
Monday's draw would deliver us a pilgrimage to the Chalfont of St. Peter, whom were league adversaries with us when we won promotion back in '16/17. They're now seeking refuge in the Isthmian league south east. Could have been much worse! Spencer won't have a better chance than this to equal his greatest FA cup run.
So what did we learn? Well, good god we need a cutting edge. With 'Arris returning to the ranks, clearly welcomed by his teammates going by the love in post shoot out, and Fitz well on the mend from his injury, we should be much better equipped to deal with life post Reggie. At the back, we look well set. Hopefully Bradders will be back from his covid scare pretty sharpish and with CJ, Seth and the flippin' impressive messiah (now converted to an all singing all dancing centre back behemoth), Spencer has options there. The week would unravel, as expected, with players magically appearing on the southern league's official webpage thing. Fabio Sole, Wilberforce Ocran, Kamon Sherell Assidjo & Ollie Sims all added to the ranks to try and create an arsenal of velocity to take the southern league by storm and set the wheels in motion for that push for promotion the club were talking about at the start of the year.
A push for promotion? That might be more ridiculous than starting a tinpot football blog by talking about Barry White and his part in ending the second world war. You see the trouble with me is, much the same as everyone else, we don't have any idea how this season's going to play out. No time to breathe though, the Supermarines are coming to town again to kick off league proceedings. They'll provide a real acid test as to how Spencer's fledglings will hatch into the season.
Weird old week. 2 defeats, 1 draw, 3 penalty shootout wins. If this is the new normal, it can get in the fucking sea. It's good to be back though.
Up the fucking 'Boro. 💛💙
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