Some people were dreading Accrington Stanley away at The Wham Stadium; afraid of looking the comically unfashionable fixture dead in the eye, as if to do so would in some way ratify and approve the newest update of the Coventry 2.0 experience – which, if you haven’t noticed, is a crippling downgrade from the early iterations of the app, where feelings of self-loathing, embarrassment, and downright ineptitude were sporadic rather than unwavering, as they are now in 2017.

I was up at 7am to travel with the CCLSC (Coventry City London Supporters Club) – a move that signalled the end of almost 2 decades of resistance to assimilating myself into the bosom of a southernist sky blue clique. Even after necking a Dioralyte, a lucozade original (the messed up battery acid one), a coffee, and two potassium-rich bananas, my fragile Saturday-morning self still wasn’t quite prepared for what is expected of you during a CCLSC train journey: conversation – 210 minutes of the stuff. All words, and questions and yeses and nos and ha ha’s. “Where’s the bike carriage” is about as much as I’m used to saying between the hours of 9am and 3pm, on match day. Unfortunately, they were all really nice people, so I couldn’t even throw a tantrum and head for the quiet carriage. I had to sit there and fucking enjoy myself. Brilliant.

One thing I learned about ~~old~~ older people on Saturday, is that when they go on group expeditions, it’s a near-military operation. An esteemed elder of the CCLSC – who wasn’t even going to the game – having already purchased nine thousand train tickets and a similar number of match tickets for (in my case at least) complete strangers, was orchestrating which pub we went to like some kind of footballing Yoda. After 20 minutes of feeling our way around the tolerably crap suburban back streets of a placid Accrington, guided by the real ale oracle who was announcing directions through the haloed screen of the bespoke Whatsapp group, we finally arrived at The Peel Park Hotel. A bastion of Northernness that had been chosen for its array of sumptuously swamp-like ales, rugged pie game and gratifying historical links to our opponents (it used to adjoin the edge of the old Accrington ground before they somehow moved to an even smaller home) – and definitely not for its proximity to the ground or the station.

Being a bit of a prang logistics freak myself, I’m well aware of the feelings of doom that cloud in when things go wrong. Courteous gents that they are, the CCLSC take care to let pubs know when they are coming. I like to think of them as sort of like anti-hooligans: “Yeah that’s roite, we’re camin down de Peel Hotel and we’re gonna buy all your beer, pay for it, donate some change to the fackin hospice charity appeal, and then do one, in a quiet and bladdy considerate fashion. You heard.”

Anyway - there was a glitch in the well-oiled Yoda Matrix - and it turned out that a dopey employee had confused Coventry with Luton. Meaning this tiny neighbourhood pub was staffed up and full of beer last Saturday, but was down to a single shell-shocked Accringtonian doing her very best to pull 19 pints a minute. In a millennial code that none of them will understand: the Whatsapp thread was going off.

By dint of being in exactly the right place at the right time, I got a lift to the ground in a Merc (good to know that dedicating a significant chunk of your life to a pathetically doomed cause doesn’t definitively slam the door of affluence in your face) and set up camp in the middle of the uncomfortably sunny (and uncovered) terrace at one end of the ground to wait for the rest of the firm to arrive.

What a great place to watch football: leafy trees sprout tentatively above the sheddish stand to the right, with a covered terrace and a skinny little seated “main stand” completing the rest of the Wham arena. For one of the few times ever, “We’ve got more fans than you”, was actually true.

Seeing the team I was excited. Would the enforced absence of Doyle’s bitch Kelly drop yet another fortuitous present in Mark Robins’ lap – this time in the form of a rejuvenated Ben Stevenson: the pass maker with the potential to give our, at times, depressingly disciplined side the shot of creative central nous it has been crying out for. Love him as I do, I’m sorry Ben but it was a big fat N.O.

Within 5 minutes we had already witnessed more presentable football than in 95 excruciating minutes at Barnet. Accrington hit the bar early doors, Grimmer vitally deflecting a shot that could have eluded Burge. Jodi played the returning Duck in down the channel but the keeper beat him to it.

Doyle was having an uncharacteristically shaky start, with one of his misplaced passes leading to a break and a good effort from the Stanley – who had already made it clear that, despite only attracting 100 home fans per home player on the pitch, they were a very decent outfit.

Having not rated him a few weeks ago, Robins is now so reliant on the Duck that he made the starting XI, despite having travelled around the entire world and played a few international football matches to boot. Unperturbed by his jetlag and the undiagnosed case of rickets his poor bandy legs are bending under, he looked as sharp as ever, turning on a sixpence (a la canard) and curling a stinging effort over a relieved keeper’s bar. Moments later, he was bawling out Jodi Jones for not finding him in the centre – the mustachioed one had been set free by Biamou and attempted a scarcely feasible chip into the far corner.

From a goal kick, Accrington broke the deadlock in a fashion so simple, you wonder how games aren’t 15 all.

Rod McDonald, massive hero of the season so far, got dragged way out of position trying to win a header Stevenson or Doyle should be going for – since the ball was falling exactly where they were both standing. Stanley’s man heads it on, a back heel from their striker takes Stokes and Willis out of the game, leaving Grimmer to close down the man with the ball, who has the easy job of slipping the ball out to the left where yet another player is waiting (there are millions of them by this point) to slot a great finish across Burge. Is that Devon Kelly-Evans’ man? Who knows. Grimmer was marking him until Rod lost the header. The whole thing takes 9 seconds. We don’t score many goals. It wasn’t looking good. For some reason the goalscorer decided to put his finger to his lips to make us all angry. It worked.

For the next few minutes, without actually missing any real chances, they were all over us. We restored some semblance of order eventually but, shorn of the defensive ying to our midfield yang, we had far less control of the game than we are used to. Stevenson was getting dogs abuse from the terraces for his perceived passing inaccuracy, but in reality, no one out there was really having a good game. Burge, Duck, and Jodi were all doing just about OK. Everyone else was below par. Doyle was shite (barring one amazing sliding tackle), DKE (through no fault of his own) is not yet good enough or physically canny enough to start games at this level (if you’re small, you need to be smart about it), Willis and McDonald’s distribution was about as bad as anything I have seen, and the amount of times a straight through ball along the ground set one of their players free spoke to the new arthritis crippling the spine of our team.

We almost went 2-0 down when a ricochet from Grimmer span all the way over Burge and clanged off the top of the bar. We put a few passes together before halftime and Jodi sent a quintessential cut-in-and-shot very, very wide. I was relieved to still be in the game.

Obviously the most important trump in our hand for the second half was that we were shooting towards the, by-now, quite subdued sky blue army.

In a repeat of the Barnet game, we came out all guns blazing. I was even forced to note down “PRESSURE” – not something I do lightly. Jodi got a good early shot off, Duck one upped him with an even better attempt that the keeper struggled to push away, and we forced a string of corners.

McNulty came on for DKE to become the third out-and-out striker on the pitch. You know Robins must be panicking when that happens.

We had a penalty appeal – I think it was Biamou but cannot remember what happened for the life of me. He didn’t try hard enough for my liking so I’m going to have a guess and say it wasn’t a penalty.

Despite looking perfectly content to sit back and soak up our notoriously toothless attacking threats, Stanley had chances of their own, with Billy Kee hammering a curled effort just past Burge’s top corner.

Duckens then brought the best out of the keeper with yet another long range effort (noticing a pattern here?) before Jodi decided to break the mould and instigate an attempt from less than 20 yards out, delivering a lovely ball onto the head of our lethal striker in-waiting Mark McNulty who maintained his location under the radar of the world’s scouting network by missing completely – as usual. (After the game Rod McDonald brought it to the fans’ attention that the strikers all score buckets of goals in training – Rod, some advice, shut the…)

Jodi Jones, cementing his position in everyone’s mind as one of our worst players (will make sense later), dribbled the length of the pitch, having collected the ball from an Accrington corner, and won a corner off their left back. It came to nothing.

Maybe I should start every paragraph with ‘Jodi Jones’ to hammer home my point a bit harder?

Jodi Jones, with time running out, cut in yet again but his shot was saved by the keeper. We could have played until Monday and we still wouldn’t have scored. But when you are relying on 2 champagne players to score worldies that we can defend behind, there will be days where you lose or draw – quite a few I imagine.

Ducken will now be completely quacked for Tuesday – our desperation exposed for all to see when he finally hobbled off the pitch with seconds to play.

The CCLSC, despite being made up predominantly of middle aged men who like real ale and sitting down, have recently attracted some unwelcome fame for their part in #stationgate : the civilian intimidation of the sky blue army’s persona non grata Timothy Fisher.

This week’s installment, #tracksuitgate, occurred after the final whistle. (It’s almost too stupid to give airtime to, but in the unlikely scenario that Jodi Jones tries to gauge fan opinion on the internet, I’d like to leave a positive contribution for him to discover.)

Leading the players around the two sides of the ground where our fans were housed was Jones – looking glum, but ensuring that he thanked everyone who had travelled. His attention was seized by a large man dressed in the disguise of a child about to steal his very first micro scooter. Complete with New Era cap and generally crap vibe, he was screaming bloody murder at Jodi, the gist of which was “Jodi, stop sulking, get off the pitch, you were awful, sort it out.”

A member of the CCLSC, weirdly, disagreed with this assessment. The result: a slot of screaming, shouting, finger wagging, swear words, and general beef. I.e. exactly what the CCLSC LOVE.

Thankfully everyone escaped unscathed. I hope that man was an anomaly. Jones by no means had his best game for us, but he can still be prouder of his performance than most. If anyone is a victim of his success, it’s Jones.

I really hope that when January comes around, and Jones is inundated with offers from clubs in higher divisions who will pay him more, rely on him less, and not scream abuse at him every time he fails to save his team from abject mediocrity going forward, he won’t remember that oversized child at Accrington and think to himself, “Actually, fuck this, I’m leaving.”

No hay in the meadow

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

TLS Awards: Volume 3

TLS Awards: Volume 2

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

The Final Squeak

90 minutes of paradise

Mark McNulty: Playoff Ice Queen

Fight till the game is drawn ©