Getting The Replay Blues

Luton on a wet Tuesday night. What could be finer? While you’re busily compiling a list (you can stop when you’ve come up with more than fifty things, which shouldn’t take you too long...), let me whisk you to the Bricklayers Arms, where Clarkey and Chris Turner have just got comfortable and I’m about to join them. With the later addition of Julia, this is the sum turn-out of the London Millers tonight. Clarkey is highly disgruntled by this – Jenny may be on her annual Christmas shopping holiday, but as far as he’s concerned, most of the others don’t have an excuse for not being here. Perhaps they’re not enticed by this replay of a game which, according to Clarkey, we should have won in the first leg, Luton apparently having been one of the poorest teams he’s seen all season. The reward for the winner is a trip to Southampton in the Third Round. Playing Southampton isn’t exactly a novelty for us as we beat them in the Carling Cup last season (and, memorably, knocked them out of the FA Cup at Millmoor a few years back), but it would give us a chance to visit St Mary’s.
Unlike our last visit, we make sure to give ourselves plenty of time to get to the ground, the away end being just that little bit further away than you always think. Clarkey is delighted to see that the sports bar just down the hill from the Bricklayers, which offers only smoothflow type beer, is pretty much deserted, while the real ale establishment we’ve just left was heaving. The new installation of a stretch of Zen pavement which tinkles when you tread on it is an exciting addition to our walk, but doesn’t quite distract from the view you get into back gardens piled with broken bikes and other rubbish as you cut along the side of the ground.
A couple of lads are putting up a flag we haven’t seen before. It has their names – Dave and some nickname beginning with K – emblazoned on it, and is made of that silky stuff usually associated with cheap knickers, and we give them some tape to help hold it in place.
For the first five minutes, it looks like Rotherham are really up for this tie. We have a couple of good chances to score in the first minute, with Sharps having a header saved and defenders scrambling to block another shot. Then, suddenly, Luton break away and Adam Newton scores. With Fenton suspended, we’re playing an unfamiliar back four of Lynch, Joseph, Sharps and Brogan, and the two full-backs are having problems dealing with Luton’s pacy wingers. We’re not playing particularly badly, but then Claude Gnapka awarded a rather dubious free-kick (he’s another one of these Drogba-esque big, strong players who crumples like tissue under a challenge when it suits him) from which Alan White scores. The Luton fans start getting a bit cocky, with the Rotherham support responding with a chorus of ‘minus points and we still stayed up’. We start looking for things to distract us from the rather flattering scoreline. On the touchline, Drewe Broughton is warming up in the unique combination of gloves and sweatbands. (Ted, who isn’t here tonight and wouldn’t have the sight of a bat to distract him if he were, would be making some comment about ‘big, glove-wearing jessies’). Clarkey decides the club is missing a trick – for those who can’t quite afford to sponsor a full kit, they could be offered Mr B’s sweatbands at £25 a time...
For much of the rest of the half, and much of the second, Luton continue to attack. Tom Pope is working very hard, but Alf is feeding on scraps. Luton’s third goal is another breakaway, finished off by Gnapka, who milks the moment and milks it again when he’s substituted. He’s received a booking for putting the ball in the net after not realising he was offside, even though the ref blew a good twenty seconds earlier (something players should really get booked for more often than they do); with any luck, it’ll eventually count towards a suspension which will rule him out of an important game. This may sound bitter but, like the Notts County strikeforce of Lee Hughes and Luke Rodgers, there’s just something objectionable about him.
We are still making chances, and I’m starting to understand what Ronnie sees in Gary Roberts, although he seems to be tiring as the game goes on. However, ex-Roth keeper Kevin Pilkington makes a couple of good saves, and we’ve already realised it isn’t going to be our night. Ronnie takes off Ellison and Pope and brings on Ryan Taylor and a thankfully gloveless Broughton. Big Drewe hits the bar with a header, but that’s as close as we come.
There is some disgruntled muttering from one or two fans as the teams come off the pitch, including the two lads taking down the other flag, but the players take the time to applaud the hundred and thirty-odd who’ve travelled tonight. They know they haven’t produced their best football, but it hasn’t been the complete humiliation all the press reports will later suggest by any means.
We’re back at the station in time to catch an East Midlands service back to St Pancras, rather than the much slower Thameslink. Sometimes, you can’t get out of Luton fast enough...