As I’m not a massive fan of Paul McCartney, any apology can be shoved where the sun doesn’t shine.
And it certainly won’t be shining for a 7.45pm kick off the day after the winter solstice. A Friday night before Christmas fixture, pulled forward from the Saturday afternoon, which at my stage of life, seems a wonderful thing. Going back years, the Friday night before Christmas would have been prime work Christmas party territory, alcohol fests. But now they tend to be low key meals a few weeks before Christmas, which suits the now teetotal me.
It also helps with travel arrangements. The long journey north to Morecambe for Christmas can start ten hours earlier and not involve an overnight stay at somewhere like Lichfield before the hostage handover (Helen’s mum) at Lymm services to other relatives to take her to north Wales. It’s a shame the original fixture got postponed, as it means the rearranged one will be a Tuesday night affair some time in the new year. Which isn’t as conducive to visiting family and staying over. I did wonder about going to see a Morecambe game over the period we are up there, but like Crawley, both of their fixtures between Christmas and New Year are away.
The European Super League has raised its ugly head again this week, and the greedy six have been quick to distance themselves from it. It’s interesting to note that WAGMI haven’t made a statement about it yet. Watch this space I suppose.
There is still a disappointment over last weekend’s loss to the cheating, HGH filled Mansfield team. The more I watch the Jay Williams incident the more I wonder what he got one yellow card for, let alone two. (I hope the second was for calling the extra from Platoon an effing cheating see you next Tuesday.)
Tonight’s game sees the rapscallions from southwest London, recent ‘rivals,’ the Wombles from Wimbledon (or the moniker I’ve seen this week, the Merton morons). Common are they. Yet again I am disappointed to see that they have no Bulgarian players, let alone one who is an uncle. (And it’s us who have Tobi Omole, even if he didn’t make the pitch.)
Going into tonight’s game AFC Wimbledon are in the final playoff place, six places above us. Although they are only two points ahead of us, so a win would see us leapfrog over them in the table. It looks as if there will be a packed Broadfield Stadium tonight, as it appears the Wombles have sold all of their tickets, and by mid-afternoon, Crawley had sold over four thousand tickets.
With this in mind, the plan is to leave the house in plenty of time to get there as there will be queues everywhere, and with it being such a bumper crowd against local rivals they might actually be treating bag checks seriously tonight.
The queue to get in near the fan zone was ridiculous, so we turned and went back in by the west stand and walked round. Both terraces were filled early, the seats taking a bit longer to fill up. Seriously, what is with the additional ticket check to walk down to the east marquee. How the fuck do you think we got in the ground in the first place. And why do you refuse to answer the simple question of why are you doing an additional check of tickets.
AFC are in an all-white kit, which is a surprise seeing as it isn’t listed as any of their three kits online.
We get a nice early chance as Nick Tsaroulla beats a couple of players on a run from the halfway line, but the final ball is somewhere between a cross and a shot, it goes wide, but out of reach of the strikers coming in.
There is an early injury to Liam Kelly. He goes down after a delayed reaction a minute or so after he is whacked in the head when trying to clear a ball from the edge of our area. It must be serious as he is subbed off.
Just before the quarter of an hour mark we get a corner, but AFC break, and there are a couple of incidents that see Crawley players on the deck. There is an innocuous header from an AFC striker which somehow squirms through Luca Ashby-Hammond and trickles into the net to make it 0-1.
From the restart Crawley break only for Kellen Gordon to be hacked down on the edge of the D, and we get a free kick in a promising position. Will Wright lines it up, but he goes for precision instead of power, and doesn’t manage it, and the shot goes over and wide.
It wasn’t a great five minutes for Wright who managed to lose the ball in the middle of his own half and the ball was fed through for another AFC striker to smack the ball in from the edge of the area to make it 0-2. (Which apparently was their last shot on target for the whole game.)
Late in the half and it looks like it gets worse. AFC get a corner and the ball is headed in, but the offside flag goes up, so there must have been a touch on before the header. The AFC bench goes mad at the decision, and their manager gets a booking. Not content with that he carries on, and the ref goes back, shows him a second yellow and he is banished to the stands.
With injuries and incidents there are eight added minutes at the end of the first half, which still wasn’t enough time for Crawley to get another decent chance. The half time whistle goes with us trailing 0-2. We were half a yard short and half a second late to everything all half. Hopefully there will be an “enthusiastic” team talk. (See Welcome to Wrexham for the context of that one.)
I have moaned a lot about the half time playlist being repetitive, but they did throw some new songs in today. Which is fine, but for crying out loud, what are you playing at Whamaggedoning everyone by playing Last Christmas?
The second half starts with some early AFC pressure and a wayward shot is out over the KRL Logistics stand for the only ball loss of the game.
Klaidi Lolos comes on for Ben Gladwin, just after the latter gets booked, and is in the thick of it quickly as he forces an exceptionally good save from the AFC keeper. And then we break, and this time Danilo Orsi forces another good shot, which is quickly followed by a Tsaroulla effort which is unfortunately straight at the keeper.
It definitely seems the team are more up for it now. But AFC are still dangerous, from a corner there is a free header which hits the inside of the post and ends up in the grateful arms of Ashby-Hammond.
There is a tackle in midfield, which to be honest didn’t look that bad, but the ref has his yellow card out for the AFC player, and it happens to be a second one, so the red follows, and AFC are down to ten men. Nice to get some ref luck after the shocker from the imbecile we had for the Mansfield game.
It takes a while for the extra man to show any effect. There’s a wasted five to ten minutes where if anyone were asked, they would have probably said Crawley were down to ten, but then belatedly we did start to make the man advantage count. Adam Campbell gets a shot on target which the AFC keeper did flap at a bit, but the ball goes over the bar for a corner. Which is played in, then out again, and back in, but Tsaroulla’s shot ends up going wide.
Finally, against the ten men there is some concerted pressure and Lolos lays the ball back to Wright after some splendid work, and Wright strokes the ball into the net from the edge of the area. And it is 1-2. Another Tsaroulla effort follows, but it is straight at the keeper again.
There are six minutes of added time, during which the AFC keeper is picking stuff up in the area and showing it to the ref claiming it was stuff thrown at him. Another AFC player gets booked for time wasting. But we can’t get a final ball right and any remaining pressure comes to naught, and the final whistle goes, and we lose 1-2.
The crowd is announced as being 4,792, with 1,330 away fans, and the sponsor’s man of the match is Nick Tsaroulla.
It is a disappointing loss just before Christmas, and with other results we slide another place to fourteenth before two away games over the Christmas period before our next home game on New Year’s Day against Swindon Town.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.
And, Come on you reds.