Technically it was a Fox weekend. Not a Saints weekend.
But it had not been the best of working weeks (I think the best working week is actually when you are on annual leave for a week, but there you go). And for some bizarre reason, call me unadventurous, but I didn’t see that the antidote to all this was a train journey which costs the equivalent of the GDP of a small nation, followed by witnessing blue tinged (with a soupçon of relegation), misery. Not when for the sake of a quick walk I could enjoy some locally sourced (although not organic) potential misery at Clarence Park. While the Saints league position is not as perilous as that of the not-very-mighty-right-now Lesta, they were winless in seven games so expectations were low.
I did also have a new accessory awaiting its debut. I had bought Mr TLF a particularly fine, cashmere claret and blue scarf for Xmas from the very lovely Bark Scarves (more of them anon). The colours were vertical rather than your traditional horizontal (I know how rock n roll am I with my disregard for footballing traditions?) and it was pretty smart. The ugly truth was that by early January I had developed scarf envy. Fortunately the people at Bark Scarves were happy to humour me again and BOSH, there I was, proud owner of blue and yellow army vertically striped neck attire.
Scarf loveliness
But would it prove lucky? Off the pitch me and MR scarf experienced a mixed afternoon. Good pre match banter which followed up some drunken twitter conversations from the night before, some recipe sharing (told you I was rock n roll) and one of the best condemnations of officialdom I have heard in a long while, courtesy of Gaz, “You’re a disgrace to the corporation of referees.” On the downside I did lose the feeling in four fingers en route to the ground and it was an hour before they were defrosted. You may mock but let me tell you having no feeling in the first two fingers of both hands makes the successful application of brown sauce to a bacon cob without damaging garments, especially new scarves a high risk enterprise (like the SS Enterprise but not in space). I also went on a mildly alcohol induced apostrophe rant which was not aimed at our esteemed programme editor but he was the collateral damage and it did give him the hump and that is never a satisfactory state of affairs. It was the scarf what made me do it honest.
On the pitch? A very welcome home win, which included a cracker from Sam Corcoran. The type of goal that you see flying towards the back of the net and you JUST KNOW. The team did do a bit of that thing in the second half where they start to look a little jittery but obviously that’s just to keep us on our toes and give Davy Mac the opportunity for a bit of despair, which Davy does with a certain élan. While this was going on, up in the Void, the Foxes were limping to 0-0 draw. Some of my footballing misery continues but at least my game selection paid off. Lucky scarf!
Vertical Fox
Match Stats St Albans 2 Weston 0
Attendance 363
Yellow failing raffle tickets 10
Goalden goal ticket one minute off – 1 but to win two games on the trot would be greedy
Lager consumed 1 bottle of ‘the German beer’, 2 halves of Stella (yes I was indeed going out for dinner afterwards).
The mighty, returning to winning ways after weeks of misery Bacon Fries 1 packet. Fingers almost lost due to frostbite 4.
Programme editors irritated 1