towns which somehow finds itself home to a football league club. Meeting at
Euston for the trip north are Jenny, Chris Turner, John Kirkland and myself,
planning to see Kirkland Junior, who's coming over from Manchester where
he's studying, when we reach Macc itself. Our pub of choice will be the
Waters Green Tavern, close to the station, which comes highly recommended by
the DAFTS (Darlington Away Far Travelling Supporters, for those who love
tortuous acronyms) lads. So highly recommended, in fact, that it won their
Pub of the Season for 2007/08, and has been presented with a certificate to
prove it. My mission is to present the staff with a copy of the Darlo
programme in which Ted's write-up about the pub appeared.
Our train gets stuck behind a slow-moving local service and we're about
twenty minutes late getting into Macc. Chris, who's got there before us,
rings us and lets us know that the door of the pub is locked and we need to
ring him when he arrives and he'll vouch for us. It turns out that when he
arrived he'd told them there would be four of us turning up in 15 minutes
and they thought there were going to be 15 of us turning up in four minutes!
The pub, which I last visited with Ted a few years back, is as good as the
recommendation suggests though it looks a little run-down and
unprepossessing on the outside, inside there is a number of real ales on and
good, home-cooked food. And they love the write-up. We're joined by Bob
Harrison and Nigel Hall, who offer to give us lifts to the ground, as the
weather is fairly filthy by now. We'll be standing on an open terrace, but
Bob's fine with that as he played golf yesterday and his golf umbrella is in
the boot. Except it isn't, and neither are his clubs, which he realises he's
left at the club house. Cue anxious call to the golf club...
Another brief digression: Macclesfield is the home of the Macc Lads, a legendary
band whose expletive-ridden back catalogue contains such gems as 'Julie The
Schooly', 'Dan's Underpant' and 'Mary, Queen Of Pox'. None of the lyrics can
be quoted on a family blog such as this one, but suffice it to say they make
Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand look like choirboys. Anyway, the Macc Lads
once obtained a franking machine as part of their mail order operation, and
in the space on the frank where you can put your company details etc., they
had the message, 'The Macc Lads Have Got A Franking Machine'. Class.
And so to the match, which gets off to a great start when, after five
minutes Dale Tonge shapes to shoot when everyone is expecting him to pass
the ball and scores his first senior goal ever. He admits afterwards that
his celebration is a bit rubbish, but he's never had to think of one before.
Apart from that, the most exciting incidents in the half are the news that
Bob's golf clubs have been found safe and sound, and the moment when Drewe
Broughton is made to change out of his cycling shorts because they're not
the same colour as his football shorts, giving everyone in the ground a view
of his pants. Except me, as I'm having my attention distracted by the
Kirklands, who are clearly concerned about my moral well-being.
In the second half, Macc are the dominant team. The football isn't great and
the weather, which the girl in front of us accurately describes as, 'Not
right cold, but it is', isn't helping improve our mood. However, about a
minute from time, we snatch a second goal when Ian Sharps puts in a header
and Andy Nicholas helps bundle it over the line. The phrase 'against the run
of play' has seldom been so apt.
Almost immediately, Macc go down the other end and score, and as one of
their players tries to retrieve the ball he and Sharps get into a scuffle.
The ref gives both players a second yellow when what he should really have
done is confiscated their handbags. And that concludes the action for the
day.
When we get back into town, the Waters Green is shut, so we head for a swift
pint in the pub closest to the station, having acquired another Manchester
Miller, Chris, on the walk. We check the results in the FA Cup qualifying
matches and plan our dream tie for the First Round Proper.
We occupy ourselves on the train back to London with the quizzes in the
Independent and Guardian. Even if we've learned nothing else today, we've
discovered that followers of the New Zealand cricket team are called the
'Beige Brigade'. Now don't you feel better for knowing that?
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