For the first time in a long time, I was genuinely nervous in the build-up to Saturday’s game against Exeter. A combination of the elevation of the two teams, our wild success last weekend, and the tentative, inchoate hope, that we were almost in the middle of a season that could, maybe, be called a promotion hunt; all these things came together, along with the Biamou-goal-like scarcity of tickets for the away end, to form a throbbing core of fear in my lower abdomen.

Exter is 244 miles away from Margate. Almost a 500-mile round trip. It takes about 4 and a half hours on public transport, and costs – well – it’s definitely not free.

I had time to have one extremely rapid-fire pint with the CCLSC before darting off to meet my link; one of the pleasant gents who had offered me a spare ticket in the away end. Having collected this I then wandered round to the ticket office to hand in (and maybe get a refund for) my now redundant ticket in the home end.

As I stood there, waiting patiently, two security guards, one with a Go Pro strapped to his bear-like chest, started sizing me up. The bear man eventually tapped me on the shoulder and said, in that ostensibly polite but somehow threatening tone they all seem to have perfected, “Can you step this way please sir?” Excuse the question mark; it was not a question. Though at this point I was still wondering what lovely prize I’d been selected to win by this nice big dangerous looking beast.

Oblivious idiot that I am and so wrapped up in the excitement and anticipation, at no point did it occur to me to question why I'd been hauled out of the queue like some reprobate. I don't exactly wear a tuxedo to games but I'm hardly a sartorial outlier equipped with a balaclava and a gun-shaped tote bag. He asked to see my ticket, my id, and what I was doing with it. I explained. He then asked to see my away ticket. He gave them all back.

He went off and left me with his more mortal-looking companion who I shot the shit with, still embarrassingly oblivious to any potential travesty.

When the bear man came back he was flanked by two police officers. After explaining the situation one of them said: “I’ve got no issue with this.” The security guards said the same. I reapplied my dumb smile and made to skip off down the road, ready to file this pleasant interlude with some local folk into my 'pleasant away game recollections' folder.

The radio attached to the bear chirps up. Bear man walks off and applies his ear to the radio.

When he comes back, just like that, it’s game over. “I’m confiscating these tickets, you’re not going in.” Turns out he was serious. As I discovered, the club have the last say, and some little minion on the end of the radio had decreed that my punishment for having vaguely entertained the idea of going into the home end (completely alone and with about as much chance of starting a fight as a Kitkat) was not going into the ground whatsoever.

Needless to say, I couldn’t fucking believe it. I’d been making small talk with these guys, asking this boring prat who he supported, where he lived, what fucking breed his shit dog was, and now they were all looking sheepishly at the floor, ignoring my pleas of train hours and money and pure stupidity, before gradually shuffling off – clothed by a veil of mumbled excuses that boiled down to a big fat shrug – in readiness to ruin some other people’s days.

Shellshocked, and scarcely accepting the inconceivable new gravity of the situation, I did a few circuits of the stadium, trying to talk to as many luminous jackets as possible. No luck. Before I knew it the bear man had found me again and this time there were no pleasantries: “I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.” Though he thought it sounded fancy to shift this into the future tense, this was definitely happening right then, and me asking, “Well when are you going to do it?” definitely didn’t soften him up.

I stood by the end of the ground that was being reconstructed and tried to come up with something, anything that would save me from the life I had created for myself. I was under the watchful eye of all the other luminous pricks who had obviously been radioed by the all-seeing eye of justice and told to lock down any entry attempts by a tall male in a black coat wearing a backpack looking like he was about to cry, because "he has attempted to break into the home end and is a danger to the population of the stadium." Behind me were a row of very tall houses. "Can I really go and knock on their door and offer them a fiver to sit in their attic for 90 minutes," I thought to myself. I love Cov, and that was a damn bleak situation, but there is a line. At that moment I think I discovered the line between what I will and will not do in support of my team. I couldn’t do it. I made it to the door but turned around mid shudder. Just too weird.

The rain started to fall and I accepted defeat, turning on the radio just in time to hear us go a goal down and then tried to decide whether any outcome could salvage this nuclear holocaust of a day.

Let's be real: I know I was in the wrong, obviously. But how the hell was I meant to know that St James Park was being run like an evil Minority-Report-meets-1984 omniscient surveillance hell, where people, under the insidious eye of the panopticon, are convicted of crimes they haven’t even decided to commit yet!?

The ifs and buts are still doing my head in now. Please don’t mention it to me if you see me – you’ll know it’s me because I’ll be the one sat in the ground at 11.30am clutching 4 spare, unused tickets.

And we lost for fuck’s sake. That, strangely, made me feel even worse. Roll on MK.

No hay in the meadow

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

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TLS Awards: Volume 2

The Lonely Season's Alternative End of Season Awards, Volume 1

The Final Squeak

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Mark McNulty: Playoff Ice Queen

Fight till the game is drawn ©