The Mighty Saints were conspicuous by their absence from the First Round of the FA Trophy and TLF was faced with the possibility of her latest FFZ lasting until 29 December and no chance of any football related shenanigans with Julie the Red until 2019.
This being an unacceptable state of affairs, we scanned the fixtures for somewhere to visit. Independently we came up with the same top three, and finally settled on Wingate and Finchley.
Why?
Because we could get there via Thameslink and the tube? Maybe.
Because they have an interesting history? (While the merging of Wingate FC and Finchley FC only took place 25 years ago, Finchley FC was formed in 1874 and Wingate FC in 1946, after WWII, in the belief that the field of play was another arena on which to tackle the ignorance that fuelled anti-semitism) A bit, yes.
The chance to witness some giant killing? Wingate being in the Bostick League Premier Division while their opponents, Dulwich Hamlet are in the league above? To be honest, not really.
Because their website had a whole page dedicated to pre-match fuelling stations? Oh you can see right through us can’t you?
And so we found ourselves in the convivial surroundings of the Bald Faced Eagle. Or something like that. Suitably fed and lager-ed, there followed a short bus trip in the rain to the Maurice Rebak Stadium, where we received a suitably warm welcome from some very cold looking youth team players who were operating turnstiles and flogging programmes and golden goal tickets.
Helpful
The Maurice Rebak is a tidy place and while the bar might not be that big it has big radiators and serves STELLA.
Come 3pm and it was time to join the Wingate Ultras behind the goal, fortunately under cover. The stand that is not the Ultras. Here we witnessed the ‘best goalmouth scramble ever’ (copyright BBC Sport, BT Sport, TalkSport etc). At the time we did suitably ‘ooh and ahh’ but we didn’t quite realise what we were witnessing. And if you don’t believe me…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/46586059
While that was amazing, Wingate’s second goal, was an utter worldie that had TLF on her feet (we had retreated to the seating for the second half) and a fitting way for them to complete a 2-0 win.
Small but perfectly formed crowd behind the goal
A grey day at the Maurice Rebak Stadium, but metaphoricallly warming.
A great day out; we witnessed a Trophy upset, smiled at the chant that is, “We are the Wingate, we came to Finch-er-lee.” And as a result this team in North London will always have a small place in our footballing hearts. Even more so if they get through the next round; they have only gone and drawn the Mighty Saints’ dirty rivals, the Hemel Scum.
Come on you Finch-er-lee!
Even more lost than usual Fox
I call it memorabilia. Mr TLF calls it clutter.