Gone For A... Yes, You Guessed It

Ho ho ho! It’s that London Millers Christmas party trip time of year again, and if anyone knows where the twelve months since the last one has gone, please leave comments below... Assembling at Kings Cross for the journey are Jenny, Tim, Clarkey, Chris Turner, Steve Ducker and Julia. Joy should have been joining us, but according to Julia she’s come down with the lurgi. It doesn’t stop the rest of us kicking the party off once the train’s gone through Peterborough. Jenny, as ever, has brought Waitrose crackers (good presents, rubbish jokes...), Chris has brought his legendary cheese and onion on sticks and I’ve gone all Graftons and made some good old Yorkshire parkin. For those not from the Rotherham area, Graftons was an excellent local baker which sadly went out of business a couple of years ago. Their finest creation was the Melting Moment, a combination of squidgy meringue, cream and jam. If anyone ever managed to recreate the recipe, I would be a very happy woman...
The original plan, suggested by Phil, who we’re meeting in Sheffield, is to visit the brand new Brewery Tap in Sheffield station. It’s the sister establishment of a bar in York which has been attracting great reviews and the boys are keen to try it. Unfortunately, Chris Kirkland rings to let us know he’s at the station and the bar will definitely not be open by the time we get there. We tell him we’ll meet him in the Bath Hotel instead.
We take the tram to West Street and walk through the back streets, which acts as a reminder of how much Sheffield has changed in the last few years. We cut through the West One shopping centre, where a newly-married couple are posing for wedding photographs. Clarkey, ever the gent, stops to offer his congratulations.
The Bath Hotel opens at 12, so Chris has been in the Wetherspoon, rolling up at the pub at the same time we do. We colonise the small back room and Clarkey starts handing out this year’s raffle tickets. The main prize this year is hospitality for our game against Chelters in April, by which point they may have actually sorted out their managerial situation...
Chris K decides to change his shirt in public; in a reversal of the usual roles, I really need Drewe Broughton to put his hands over my eyes!
It’s very tempting to stay where we are till much nearer kick-off, but there are people we’ve arranged to see in the Carlton, so we head for Attercliffe. There’s quite a large Rotherham contingent in there, now the landlord has dropped the ‘away fans only’ rule, which means we’re able to sell a football card to raise some funds. The winner is Dave Finnis, which means his trip over from Australia hasn’t been entirely without excitement!
Burton have brought slightly fewer fans than I’d expected, given it’s their first season in the league, but crowds always seem a little sparser in December as the cost of getting the Christmas shopping kicks in. When I was first on the student paper at Leicester University, several thousand years ago, the assistant editor was a lad called Nigel Poulson, who was a massive Burton fan at a time when almost no one followed non-league football as religiously as they do now. If I remember rightly, their manager at the time was Neil Warnock (but then someone’s manager has to be...). I’d love to know whether he’s still following them, and whether he’s here today.
If he is, he sees his side get off to a not particularly inspired start. Half the pitch is vile, with the parts which were covered for the U2 gig and subsequently relaid looking boggy and causing the ball to bobble unpredictably on the surface. Burton are attacking in the good half, which enables them to pass the ball around nicely, but even so their keeper is timewasting after about ten minutes. We have a decent shout for a penalty when the ball hits a Burton hand in the area, but the ref doesn’t see it. Two minutes later, exactly the same thing happens again, and this time he does point to the spot. Despite having missed a penalty against Lincoln, Alf steps up to take it. He doesn’t make the same mistake again. That’s sixteen for the season.
My dad and I are being entertained by our friends in the row in front. Lewis (we assume that’s what he’s called because that’s the name on the back of his replica shirt), who always plugs into his radio, is keeping us up to date with other scores. He seems strangely gratified that Wednesday aren’t doing very well (though to be fair, that’s the default position of most Rotherham fans). Meanwhile, the older of the two boys in front of us is complaining about the fact we always scrape through games. He wants to see us score a lot of goals, for once, and I think his dad would quite like that, too. But it’s only one-nil at half-time. Burton have been passing the ball around, probably helped by the fact Ronnie’s playing a central midfield combo of Nicky Law and Gary Roberts, neither of whom is particularly defensive minded, but they haven’t troubled Don too much.
The half-time draw is performed by Billy McEwan, always popular with the Rotherham fans, but don’t mention his time at Darlo to Ted... Strangely, the Rotherham United dance troupe seem to have bitten the dust, though no one seems to mind too much.
In the second half, we get the good half of the pitch, and for about twenty minutes we have Burton under the cosh. Alf hits the crossbar with an audacious lob, with Adam Rundle (on loan from Rochdale and officially Alf’s BFF) failing to convert the rebound, and the keeper has to make a couple of good saves. We get a second goal when the Burton defence briefly goes missing, allowing Rundle to slot a good little ball into Alf’s path, which he converts with a poacher’s instinct. We haven’t had a player who could score goals of the same quality and with so much variety since Mark Robins.
Unfortunately, Burton pull one back a couple of minutes later, when we neglect to take a couple of opportunities to clear the ball and Webster curls a shot past Don. The Burton defence continues to look porous, but the game turns when Fenton is sent off for sliding in on Webster. The ref doesn’t hesitate to pull out a red card, which would be fair enough if one of the Burton players hadn’t put in a very similar challenge on Nicky Law and not even received a yellow for it. Clarkey points out later that if we’d had big Pablo or Harrison in midfield, they’d have cut the attack out without Fenton needing to make the challenge.
Ronnie takes off Rundle and brings on Marc Joseph, but Burton sense they’ve been given the upper hand and keep on attacking. Miller Bear is trying his best to get an atmosphere going by banging his drum, but one of the legs keeps falling off, which kind of ruins the effect. Never mind, Bear, I’m sure Santa will bring you a new one for Christmas if you’re good!
Burton get an equaliser when we again fail to clear a ball and Pearson capitalises on our mistakes. We have a chance to score right at the end, but Joseph heads over. Unsurprisingly, there are a few boos at the end, even though other results mean we’re still third in the league. We wander off to the Carlton, in theory to meet Tim, although he’s decided to visit the Cocked Hat instead. No one is entirely sure why...
Back in Donny, we have a swift one in the Railway, before boarding the train for the return leg of the party. With the aid of the ‘25 Years Ago This Week’ feature in the Green ’Un, Steve decides to play a game which involves naming all the members of the team who’d played against Newport. This was when the much-reviled George Kerr (every time I type that name, a little bit of my brother dies inside...) was in charge, so it takes a while as most people have desperately tried to blank that season from their memory. By the time we’ve got them all, we’re well past Grantham and all the parkin and sausages (including a fesh packet Steve was saving for the way back) have been scoffed.
As we come into King’s Cross, Tim rings Ian Chaplain and invites him for a drink. I have to get home and attend to three hungry cats, so I decline to join them. But at least we’ve had two party trips in a row where we haven’t lost the game, which must be some kind of record, and not even the idiots on the Tube having a celebration much more drunken and raucous than ours can spoil the mood