Refreshers.
You remember.
Those little fizzy sweets – pink, yellow and green discs of sugar. (And malic acid. And sodium bicarbonate. And E470b. And natural flavourings. So that’s ok then). Everywhere when I were a cub, which I do accept was awhile back. Now they take a whole lot more tracking down – the shelves in Tesco (not a Unilever related absence as far as I am are)), WH Smith, Sainsburys and Co-op are Refresher free zones. You need a specialist sweet shop these days.

Or a football pitch.

Goalkeeper kit designers have plumbed new depths this season, reaching an unexpected new nadir on the fluorescent pigment front, with the kit allocated to Gosport Borough’s man between the sticks. He looked, as Donna pointed out, like a packet of the aforementioned sweet comestibles. Clad in hi-comedy, hi-vis design it is generally essential to either have a sense of humour (he did, as his banter with the crowd evidenced). Or be able to play a bit, which he could, as he kept his team in it for long periods and also made a penalty save late in the second half.

Gosport’s keeper

A packet of Refreshers

Fortunately for us he couldn’t keep out Sam Merson’s 92nd minute winner. Cue raucous celebrations on the terraces. SWEET.

Heroes on the pitch and off – as TLF snaffled the tub of Cadbury’s miniature Heroes in the raffle.

DOUBLY SWEET.

So that’s all bon bon then (BOOMBOOM!)

Confectionery Fox

Match stats:
St. Albans City 2 Gosport Borough 1
Attendance: 787
Consumption: 1 German beer from the bar & one can Carlsberg from the beer fridge. John F queried whether it was appropriate for TLF to be wielding a missile but I promised if I did throw it I would ‘throw it like a girl.’ That seemed to appease him, although he obviously didn’t hear the end of the sentence that included the words ‘javelin thrower.’ Of and bacon fries of course.
Raffle tickets – 9 losers and 1 BIG WINNER

I like to think that the Worthing manager did his best Lady Bracknell impression in the changing rooms after the game against St Albans. I don’t mean he indulged in a bit of cross dressing – although if he wants to that’s none of TLF’s business. Rather he looked at his players and informed them that,”to lose by one goal Mr Worthings, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose by six looks like carelessness.”

Of course he probably didn’t. He may well not be wild about Wilde (BOOMBOOM!) and also after a bit of a spanking from a team admittedly one league above you, theatrical related badinage is probably not top of your average manager’s to do list. And also he only had only player in his squad called Jack so that would have made the whole you-play-for-Worthing-and-that’s-one-of-the-characters-in-the-play riff a bit thin. Expect of course for all we know they all do pretend to be called Ernest when they come up to the City, just like the play. And before you think that is like a thin thing on a thin day singing “I’m so very thin “, it should also be noted that the denouement of said play does take place in Hertfordshire so it is almost all falling into place now. Well in my special TLF head at least.

But if the Worthing manager wasn’t Lady Bracknell then who was? Ray was in with a shout. His reaction to the reflection by TLF and Julie that Ian Rogers would be the ideal practical person to be stuck on a desert island with contained suitable levels of derision…anyone would have thought we had just owned up to being left in a handbag at a left luggage department at a railway terminus. We were merely noting that Ian’s addition of a small torch to his evening match apparel was a wise one as you can’t see nuffink in the inner sanctum that is the away turnstiles. Ray however has experienced Ian pre-torch days and a short and witty anecdote ensured regarding the search for a lost set of car keys late at night illuminated by the headlights of Ray’s daughter’s car…The story was of course told with typically Clarence Park bonhomie, wit and affection which isn’t quite Lady B’s thang. Although such is her lack of faith in the male gender that she may well have been nodding in approval at Ray’s exhortations to a St Albans side, 4-0 up, to “Not throw it away now.”

They didn’t of course and the gaffer’s (FA) Cup did therefore runneth over and on his birthday too. He was greeted in the clubhouse by a relatively tuneful rendition of Happy Birthday which went down well. He was also greeted by an earnest looking ex-player who had decided during the summer to depart the finery of Clarence Park for a Tudor shilling. Whether his appearance was a welcome birthday gift or not remains to be seen.

While I think the gaffer probably has an encyclopaedia of put downs, TLF is too scared to suggest there is anything remotely Bracknellesque about Ian Allison. Instead my final nominee must be Gary if only for his response to the TLF post-match beverage of choice. “A half! To order or at any rate drink a half, whether it was Stella or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.” Well it sounded a bit like that and in any case I’d rather drink half a Stella than be found in a handbag.

“A Handbag!?”
Repeat ad nauseam

Oscar Fox

Match stats
St Albans City 6 Worthing 0
Attendance: 678
Snackage: Quavers. WTF!? It’s all gone a bit cheesy on the deep fried snack front. Suitable customer feedback was shared. Also some pretty good chips. My one-TLF boycott of the new snack wagon could only last so long – stomach will always win the war of attrition against principles.
Alcohol consumption: Two bottles of the German stuff and a yes. Alright. A half of Stella
Countless unwise purchases of raffle and goalden goal tickets.

Football does funny things to a TLF.

But you know that.

Champions League football however takes it to a whole new different level.  It is new and shiny. It is, let’s face it, likely to be a rare occurrence. Can’t think of anything else that would entice TLF to part with even more hard-earned pounds on a return train trip to Lesta (distance from St Albans approx 80 miles) than had been spent on a return trip to Bruges (distance from St Albans approx 203 miles). Don’t get me wrong, it was a very nice train complete with, for comedy purposes, a Portugese train manager who turned out to be a Porto fan who wished all the Lesta fans good luck for the evening as they would “need it against his team”, but am not sure that this vaguely amusing sideshow quite justifies East Midlands Trains peak travel fares.

Still nothing could have come between TLF and the chance to hear that Champions League music at Filbert Way. I know that Manchester City fans enjoy booing that anthem but they probably have sufficient confidence that they will get the opportunity to do that on a season by season basis. For us Premier League peasants, however, who have experienced the slings and arrows of outrageous footballing fortune, we are going to embrace every single fairy tale moment.

The only downside to be honest in all of this is Uefa.  TLF is reliably informed that Uefa stands for Union of European Football Associations. That though is the sanitised and shortened version. It actually it stands for “up-their-own-backsides-money-obssessed-sponsor-loving-bunch-of-effing-killjoys”.

All clubs participating in the Champions League receive a 155 page manual advising on requirements for the privilege of hosting the games. And so we kiss goodbye to any beer being available in the ground, our stadium is re-named for the evening, Filbert Fox (if he is allowed out as he needs to be a similar size to a ‘normal person’) is subject to a dress code (which must include a hole in his shirt for his tail), the pitch has to be mown in a certain way, the Club needs ato invest in a measuring stick to ensure that all player escorts (that’s the kids that walk on the pitch with the players  not ladies of the night) are between the required  1.05 metres and 1.35 metres tall and don’t get me started on what should and should not be in the referee’s dressing room or how many free parking spaces Uefa require (180 as it turns out – I’m not sure we have that many in total). All of sudden TLF is starting to get in touch with her inner Nigel Farage. I probably never had one; but I do now.

Some things however remain beyond the reach of this beaucratic and bloated machine. The digestive delight that is the Red Leicester cheese and sausage roll remains on sale, the grins on our faces at the idea that we are yet again experiencing history after so many dark days cannot be wiped from our faces and despite the best attempts of an erratic referee and the desire to play so deep for the last 20 minutes that our defence might has well have been sitting in the stand behind our goal, Lesta City squeak a 1-0 victory.

Lesta City. Currently top of their Champions League Group. Pure fantasy.

Skint but happy Fox

“Maybe that’s what hell is: the entire rest of eternity spent in fu#kin’ Bruges.”
Ray (Colin Farrell) from the film, In Bruges.

It is fair to say that Ray the rookie hitman did not take to Bruges and TLF has helpfully identified a number of crucial areas where a different approach might have meant he enjoyed it that little bit more:

The right send off
You see when TLF departed these shores on her maiden-champions-league-no-really-TLF-is-going-to-watch-Lesta-abroad-and-has-bored-everyone-witless-about-it-all-week voyage, a poet Laureate waved her off. Didn’t know he was a Lesta fan did you?

Sir John shows his true colours

The right lucky T-shirt
With the 4-1 spanking by Liverpool the blue polo shirt had finally been condemned to the washing basket. Good for all those in close proximity to TLF as it hadn’t been washed since after that defeat to Arsenal on 14th February (actually that’s worse than I thought). Ray to my knowledge did not allocate a t-shirt to Bruges. Mind you TLF wasn’t totally on form in this area herself; choosing a white shirt might prove to have been an error depending on how results go…..

Of course if Ray did have a lucky t-shirt (and I have only seen the film once so I wouldn’t like to call it either way) it probably wasn’t a replica away shirt from the 1960s. If he had worn that then he would have enjoyed quality banter with some Lesta fans enjoying a drink on their hotel terrace while TLF queued for a barge tour of Bruges. The very same fans whom a bit later he would bump into again in a fine establishment, just off the main square which was purveying a fine range of Belgian beers (although if he bought the coconut one I can understand his general grumpiness as it wasn’t great) and share further banter and good chat.

Mind you I suppose if they had christened him, “the girl on the boat,” like they did me that might have been a bit of a sticking point in their relationship.

The right mode of transport
To my knowledge at no point in the film does Ray eschew (BOOM!) the organised, police escorted 80 minute march to the ground (quite good fun by all accounts) in favour of a lift from the new friends met in the bar (see above). Now that’s where the action was. They, you see have VIP tickets, and it is amazing how much fun you can have in a foreign cab, with two blokes you have only just met (steady!), when their VIP tickets have to be collected from the ground. Because no politie (such a good word for the officers of the law) will believe the VIP ‘story’and so will send the cab on some circuitous route to another checkpoint where this time the politie does believe the ‘story’ but sends us back the way we came to yet more unimpressed politie. There was a moment when we were all genuinely worried that we would never arrive but beer-induced hysteria took over and we entertained ourselves with considering the standard of the Belgian prison cell we were likely to end up in and whether starvation would cause us to kill Nick for his apple – he must have known, why else take a complementary apple from your hotel to a football match!?

I am guessing Ray might have enjoyed the small international incident that was caused when we finally alighted from our cab and it became very clear that the politie were not delighted to see TLF, most definitely not a VIP and resplendent in Lesta colours loitering in what was definitely NOT the away fan end.

The right seat
I doubt Ray would have got a good seat. Bizarrely TLF was the posh bit (that’s all relative at Club Brugge), separated from the rest of the Blue Army by a complete stand. But we did have access to their supporters club bar – not that different to the Saints bar really. And the stewards were all old boys and absolutely lovely – dishing out team sheets destined for the media (sat behind us), to us hoi polloi like there was no tomorrow. Ray might have liked the people I was sat with though – there was a manic ‘we’ve been drinking all day but we are too happy to be fighty and was that really the Champions League anthem we just heard’ kind of a vibe going on.

The right song
Maybe Ray isn’t one for a chant. But I am sure he couldn’t have resisted the charms of the new version of Jamie Vardy’s having a party which went along the lines of:
Keith Vaz is having a party
Bring your poppers and your Charlie!

The right result
Even if everything above hadn’t gone to plan then surely a “pinch me I am still dreaming moment” as you witness your team mark their champions league debut with a win 3-0 means that” the entire rest of eternity spent in fu#kin’ Bruges” is maybe what heaven is.

……Mr TLF isn’t a fan of Bruges either. He says it’s a bit dull. Dunno what he means.

Jan Breydel Fox

And finally.
Good things come to the TLF that waits.
Escape from the FFZ. Not that it was all bad you understand; certainly Sunday’s hangover was testament to the very good wedding that kept me away from non-league football day at Clarence Park (great crowd, rubbish result).
Tuesday 6 September had arrived, the Mighty Saints were playing at home and TLF had a skool nite pass. It needed something special for this momentous breaking of the football duck.

And there he was. In the club shop. Moodily silent. Stood slightly aloof from everyone; not joining in with the badinage (and there is a LOT of badinage available in the shop area). Alluring, sturdy and very, very cool. It was love at first sight.

Oh yes. The lager fridge had arrived.

Je t’aime

Now that might not seem very momentous but when Thameslink ‘Technical Faults R UsTrains’ had conspired to prevent TLF from witnessing the opening goal (scored just as I came through the turnstiles) then an ice cold beer within paws reach is a welcome slight. Especially when accompanied by a sausage roll the two retailed at a bargain five of your earth pounds.

Suitably refreshed, things were looking up. The next goal was witnessed by yours truly and then it was back to hang out with Mr Fridge at half time. It was then I came across his quieter but no less attractive mate, Mr Tracksuit Top. What happened after we were introduced has to stay between me, him and our resident shop keeper but, “NO Mr TLF I assure you there is nothing new in the wardrobe.” (I’ve hidden it in my study).

In the second half it became clear that it isn’t just goals that are missing from the FFZ, it is the quality terrace chat. The reassuring shouts to a player who has just missed a sitter, “Good try son. Come on head up. Go again!” are quickly followed, sotto voce by, “How the eff did he miss that!?” And who knew that an innocent TLF cycle helmet resting on the terrace could be a source of such entertainment. But I don’t want to spoil you. Just think reference to a grazed helmet in a medical context and let your imagination do the rest.

Some slick forward passing and a ridiculous amount of added on time later (well it was ridiculous until we scored in it) and the Mighty Saints were 4-0 winners and third in the League. It’s good to be back.

Strangely enough the Thameslink late train compensation claim form I have doesn’t make any reference to compensation for missing home goals OR missing Julie’s debut as a turnstile operator. I can only assume that is a misprint and I shall be putting in for suitable recompense.

Where there’s blame there’s a claim Fox

Match stats
St Albans City 4 Poole Town 0
Attendance: 485
Nutritional refuelling: 2 bottles Carslberg, 1 sausage roll (maybe it will be lucky to NOT eat bacon fries this season)
Raffle tickets: 10 losers.
Golden goal: NONE because I was late
Time sat staring at broken down train at City Thameslink Station and get a bit angry: 40 minutes