Popping The Cherries

By now, the entry for any home trip pretty much begins the same way. Meet up with Miller chums (in this case, Jenny, Clarkey and Steve Ducker), travel up to Sheffield on the train (via Donny in this instance, and for the next few Saturdays, given that National Express are currently doing the best deals on tickets), meet up with Mr Kyte in the Fat Cat and have nice lunch while Mr Kyte debates staying in the pub till six o'clock and just pretending that we've won (and given that it's the Fat Cat's winter beer festival at the end of the month, if he's ever actually going to do that, that's going to be the weekend) before heading to the DVS by about quarter to three. So assume that we've done all that, and that Jenny and I have hoisted the London Miller flag in what's probably getting up to Force 5 on the Beaufort Scale, at least in the exposed bit of the main stand's upper tier. We've asked the youth team, who always sit up there to watch the game, to try and stop it from blowing away, but we're not hopeful...
Instead, it's probably time for thumbnail sketches of the regulars who sit round us in Block 5, just to give you the full flavour of the matchday experience. Across the aisle, we have the press box, and behind that the few rows of seats which are given over to scouts, referees' assessors, fringe players (though most of them are currently on-loan at Ilkeston, under the tender care of Rotherham legend and one of the nicest men in football, Paul Hurst), people with players' comp tickets and assorted hangers-on. Behind us, we have two blokes of pension age who moan, sotto voce, throughout the match and always, but always leave well before the end, and a bloke of what my dad would describe as 'stiffish build', who road-tests his sarcastic one-liners on my dad and vice versa. In front of us, we have a forty-ish bloke with two lads of about six and eight. He has the unenviable job of trying to watch the game and keep the two of them from getting bored at the same time. The older boy seems to actually care about what's happening on the pitch; the younger one is still at the age where he prefers playing some football game on a hand-held console, interspersed with bouts of randomly punching his brother. Sometimes, this is more entertaining for the rest of us than the game, and it's certainly more fun than listening to the moaning pensioners attempt to break the world record for using the word 'rubbish' the most times in a ninety-minute period.
It's a word they certainly get to use at stages throughout the game today. Bournemouth, who've made a healthy attempt at wiping off their points deduction, are still stuck in the bottom two and need to beat us to stay in touch with the teams above them. For the first ten minutes, they have a pretty good go, and then Mark Hudson scores a goal out of almost nothing, with a beautiful volley which would be up there in the goal of the month candidates if we were in the top division. (Whoever sub-edits the local Saturday night sports paper, the 'Green 'Un', manages to give a nod to the recent New York plane crash with a rather dubious shoe-horning of 'Hudson miracle' into the headline of the match report. The fact Hudson once referred to himself as 'our saviour' when his injury-delayed first appearance in the team sparked a run of winning games is purely coincidental.)
After that, we go on some lengthy spells of decent possession football. It soon becomes obvious just how much influence Darren Anderton had on Bournemouth's play. With him, back in October, they bossed the midfield and dictated things. Now, we have four or five more very good chances to score before half-time, and really should put the game beyond them.
Their cause isn't helped when Danny Hollands manages to get himself off by committing two silly fouls in the space of a couple of minutes, the second when he chops down Jamie Green, who is having a cracking game and at the time is on a run which has already seen him evade two fairly healthy tackles. However, as so often happens, the ten men up their game. The ineffective Lee Bradbury is replaced by the pacy, threatening Mark Molesley, and the crowd, especially the moaners behind us, become increasingly frustrated by the fact we can't press home our advantage. Jamie Green hits the crossbar, Molesley puts a shot agonisingly wide (if you're a Bournemouth fan), David Stockdale, playing his last game for us before he goes back to Fulham, makes the one real save he has to all afternoon and Bournemouth have a goal disallowed for offside - the last couple of incidents taking place in stoppage time. Incidentally, now might be the time to mention that I was actually at university with one of the assistant referees, Mr T. Maton of Leicestershire. Tony probably won't remember me, but I certainly remember him - and we had some interesting chants about him twenty-however-many years ago, so woe betide him if he ever gets as far as refeering!
At last the whistle goes. Jenny is stopping up for the game at Scunny on Tuesday, so it's Clarkey who helps me retrieve the flag - which is, thankfully, still securely tethered. On the train from Meadowhall to Doncaster, Clarkey, Steve and I get talking to a really nice woman who's on her way back to Donny following an afternoon at the ballet in Sheffield. It turns out her husband is a Grimsby fan - who, bizarrely, are our opponents next weekend - and she enlightens us with a story of how, though she's not really a fan of the team she tried, and failed, to get their grandchild called Buckley (after Alan), simply because she thought it was a good name. We can't help but agree.
There's time for a swift one in the Corner Pin (just voted CAMRA Pub of the Season) before we get the train back to London. Ted, Martin and Howard are in the next carriage along, bouyant after beating Luton 5-1, which also does us a favour. Ted and I pop into the Doric Arch, where we're treated to the Ultimate Fighting Championships on the big TV. It's sport, Jim, but not as we know it...