Deep In The Hole

Squeezing on to the train at King’s Cross, Jenny and I are convinced we’re travelling with a party on their way to the 37th annual huge luggage convention in Edinburgh. What else could explain their need to tow something quite so large around with them?
Otherwise, it’s a particularly quiet Saturday. It’s international weekend, so there are no games in the top two divisions, and even Leeds have managed to get their game called off. When we arrive at the Fat Cat, it’s almost deserted – apart from Phil, who as ever is working his way through a pint and a paperback as he waits for us. Unlike a fortnight ago, it doesn’t seem as though any of the away fans have wandered out as far as Shalesmoor in search of a decent drink.
There are no hold-ups on the tram, as no one’s going to Hillsborough, and when we arrive at the DVS there’s plenty of time to put up the flag before that part of the stand is colonised by the youth team. Off you go, you small boys...
For the third game in a row, we’re playing one of the teams who was relegated from League One last season and, like Northampton and Crewe, Hereford are lurking down towards the bottom of the table. However, they’ve recently beaten Bournemouth and drawn with Dagenham, and the last time we played them at Millmoor they beat us with a classic one-nil ‘smash and grab’, so we can’t assume they’re going to be a pushover.
As the first half progresses, though, it looks like that’s exactly the case. Hereford are poor, giving us an awful lot of space and time to play the ball – and we play as well as we have done all season, creating chance after chance. Pope puts a superb ball into Alf’s pass, though he can’t make the most of it, and a couple of minutes later, Ellison slides an equally good ball for Alf to latch on to. One-nil. After that, big Pablo shaves the bar with a shot, Fenton hits the bar and Alf fires narrowly wide. Don, on the other hand, doesn’t make a save until about forty minutes in. We should be four-nil up by half time and it wouldn’t flatter us, but we’re not, and even though Hereford haven’t looked in the least threatening, you still have the nasty feeling that failing to finish our chances could cost us.
Half-time sees a schools five-a-side game in conjunction with some community initiative or other, and a sight which would no doubt have been picked up on camera for Adrian Chiles to have a chuckle over on Match Of The Day 2 if this was the Premier League – my dad playing air guitar to Status Quo’s ‘Whatever You Want’, which, asks the half-time quiz, was part of this week’s top five, but in what year? (Answer at the end – and don’t just scroll to the bottom, that’s cheating...)
Hereford start making substitutions, and show more in the way of attacking intent. We don’t have the freedom we did in the first half, but we still look comfortable. Nick Fenton has to go off with a dead leg, and Pope is replaced by Drewe Broughton, who can’t quite repeat his supersub antics from last week, but has one good chance with a header that he just can’t get enough power into. Alf, meanwhile, has faded a little as the balls to him have begun to dry up. And then, with about thirty seconds to go, we don’t clear a ball in the area and Hereford get an equaliser. The superb first-half performance is forgotten, and the team is booed off the pitch by fans whose expectations are getting rather too high. After all, we’re in the top three, unbeaten at home, averaging two points a game and, in Alf, we have a striker who’s in double figures in early October. Some people are never happy...
Back in Donny, Jenny and I pop into the Corner Pin, which tonight appears to be twinned with Twin Peaks. On the train home, we get talking to the chap sitting opposite us, who’s a southern Leeds fan and something in the legal profession. We have an interesting chap and he has a few things to say about the situations at both Leeds and Notts County, which we’d love him to expand upon, except we’re suddenly at King’s Cross and I have to escort Ted home after a hard day not actually getting to see Darlo play Dagenham. Though, as he points out, at least it means he’s never seen them lose there!
(And the answer to the Status Quo question – 1979. Gold star and a tick if you got it right.)