Beside Ourselves At The Seaside

Thanks to engineering works, what should be a routine journey to Waterloo is turned into an underground/overground trek involving bus, Docklands Light Railway and the Waterloo and City Line. Michael Palin would probably make a documentary about it.
Jenny and Mick Walker have also worked round the various line closures and we have time for coffee and the first of Mick’s several cigarette breaks of the day (let’s hope I’ve not blown a secret there – I have a friend who claims her parents still don’t know she smokes, even though she’s been hiding the habit from them for the thick end of thirty years...). Chris Turner and Andy Leng join the train at Clapham Junction; Clarkey should be with them, but he got home late last night after spending the last few days walking part of the Pennine Way and has decided to have an extra hour in bed.
South-west Trains are running a special £10 day trip promotion on the line out to the South Coast, and if they’re doing it as a way of filling their trains it’s worked a treat, because the one we’re on is packed.
As always, Tom Coley is welcoming everyone to the Railway Club by the station – his ‘Save The Millers’ flag is hanging up outside, even though we feel well and truly saved, delays to acquiring the best piece of land on which to build the new stadium notwithstanding. The place soon starts filling up with people we know – the Maxfields, who are staying in a boutique hotel in Boscombe (and that’s a phrase I never thought I’d ever use), Kirkland père et fils, also making a weekend of it, Joy the Dagenham Miller and the Exley family (Mrs E will later opt for sitting in the car with a book, rather than watching the game). There are also plenty of other Rotherham fans, drawn in by Tom’s hospitality, reasonable bar prices (the Ringwood Forty-niner takes a particular bashing from the LM boys) and a buffet which includes more of the excellent chilli we were treated to last season. We use John Kirkland’s phone, which has the tiniest read-out in the world, to Google the answer to whether or not Andrew Ridgeley is married to one of Bananarama (don’t ask why, but on the way down I was convinced he is, and Andy Leng reckoned it was either Pepsi or Shirley – oh, the time just flies by on our trips...).Squinting at the screen, we see that I was correct. If anyone needs a phone friend for ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’, my rates are very reasonable!
As we need plenty of time to put out the flag and get tickets from the ticket office, Jenny, Joy and I make the advance party heading for the Fitness First Stadium (it’ll always be Dean Court to me). My brother, who’s been spending the morning on the beach with the family, is waiting for us, and lets us know that this season we pay on the turnstiles, which leads to a few phone calls to let the stragglers know about the change.
We’ve all come prepared in case the weather is hot, having had the sun beating down on us in the away stand last season (and that was October – climate change is a freaky thing), but it’s overcast, and the sunglasses and SPF Whatever can stay packed away.
For some reason, Tom is travelling without props today – no oversized playing cards or brown toupée – and it’s left to a couple of blokes dressed head to toe in Hawaiian gear to try and get the party started. There’s a decent travelling contingent, who are noisy and in good spirits (beating Derby in the Carling Cup has probably raised their optimism levels), and there’s some banter between the crowd and the two members of the South Yorkshire Constabulary who always keep an eye on us all at away games. Indeed, they’ve already popped into the Railway Club, presumably having read Tom’s invitation on one of the message boards. There are chants of ‘Dodgy copper’ and the usual song about paying for your house, and even the police are laughing.
The first half of the game is fairly even. We have a really good chance after about a minute, but Kevin Ellison shoots wide. Neither keeper particularly has much to do, and Bournemouth seem to have one plan of attack, which involves getting the ball to their speedy right winger. Poor old Jamie Green, the smallest man in the team, is up against the bulk of Steve Fletcher, who’s always had a strangely plastic-y look about him and may well actually be two men welded together, but even so it’s nailed on as nil-nil until a minute before half-time, when a Bournemouth cross goes in (from where Clarkey and I are sitting, we’re not sure whether or not the ball has gone out of play) and is poked home by Ryan Garry, who doesn’t appear for the second half having suffered a concussion.
After that, the Cherries do everything they can to stop us getting into a rhythm and playing our way back into the game. This mostly involves going down injured and staying down for as long as possible. It’s a tactic which works. Our new signing, Adam Le Fondre, comes on to huge applause and looks as though he’ll definitely add something to the team, but at the moment it’s obvious that players are still trying to gel and learn how to play together. The ref, who seems a little naïve and is clearly swayed when it comes to making decisions by the reaction of the crowd, adds five minutes of time on, and then plays at least another minute after that – my brother texts me later to say he’s listening to Radio Solent in the car and people seem baffled as to where all this time has come from – but it doesn’t help us.
At the end of the game, the Bournemouth players go into a huge huddle and then bow to the crowd behind the goal – it all seems a little over the top, and Bradford and Shrewsbury might want to have a word with them about over-celebrating having beaten us.
Mick and Chris T have been shown a short cut by Tom, so we follow them over the cricket pitch and down a side street. I don’t know whether it’s any quicker, but it is quieter, and it does give us the opportunity to spot a rather burly transvestite applying a coat of lipstick while sitting in a van outside a local sauna. I do love genteel seaside towns...
We have a swift drink in the Railway Club, which is much quieter than at lunchtime, then it’s on to a train heaving with exhausted daytrippers and home. Our other seaside trip this season is Torquay, but that’s November – I think the wise move will be staying in somewhere warm that day!