“What we do in life echoes in eternity.” – Maximus Decimus Meridius
Never has something been said that speaks so much truth. But in the world of The Duke we need to slightly change the wording a bit:- “What we do on a Saturday night echoes for the rest of the week”
Because that is what happens to us after we attend to watch our much loved team. You see, everyone likes a little tipple now and again and us in the Firm are no different. And like everyone else, some of us enjoy the socialising and banter a wee bit too much and as we are not allowed out much, we grab this opportunity with both hands.
The problem I have, is that the option of heading to a favourite haunt like Chicago’s was always available to those that wanted it. Now, Chicago’s has shut down, Legends has changed hands more times than a good coin in a whorehouse and Tapuri can be a mission to get to as it is right at the top of the high street past the station.
This now leads us to stagger home the several miles back to our cess pits and by the time one has arrived home the calling for a night cap overtakes us. Things seem to go a bit fuzzy here but the next thing I know is a couple of days later I get an email about some items ordered around 0330hrs on Sunday Morning.
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| When we said “Go out & get youself a bit of fluff mate”… |
This is exactly what happened the last time we were out and I ended up with a jar of Fluff! Albeit a marshmallow based one. And so on to today’s game. The team that was going to do battle for us today were as follows:
Lovelock, Nelson, Rents, Stuart, Downer, Fuseini, Riviere, Williams, Dundas, Taylor, Binns
Subs were: Sinclair, Swaibu, Folkes, Beautyman, Badiali
The match was very much like that Jimmy Greaves saying “it’s a game of two halves” because that is exactly what it was (they all are you doofus! – Ed) and for us the fans this was magnified to the nth degree, because once again the U’s were slow out of the blocks and found ourselves 2-0 down early on. The signs were there that our defence is still trying to work out the kinks as the first goal came after seeing Aldershot beat our offside trap with some ease only to see Lovelock pull off a wonderful save, this of course was not to last as some lax defending saw Aldershot take the lead off a corner.
The second goal wasn’t that far behind the first as another attempt to hold the offside line was broken and as the defence stopped for a second to raise their hands it gave the attacker the half a yard head start he needed to slot the ball past Lovelock and the frustration on the fans around me became apparent as once again it appeared it was only individual defensive lapses that are preventing us from breaking out. The best chance for Sutton fell to one of the Aldershot defenders who nailed a header off the crossbar after a Sutton corner.
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| Maximus Decimus Meridius just out of shot… |
I don’t know what was said at half time by the guvnor, but it worked out like a peach! The wait for a Sutton reply wasn’t long in coming as we began to see some of the potential coming to fruition. The first goal came from after a classic lunge by Downer midway into the Sutton defence propelled the ball towards the Aldershot end, the ball was picked by Taylor – in his first proper game after lasting only 8 minutes against Arsenal before picking up an injury – who’s attempted shot should’ve gone in but was saved by the keeper, the ball rolled out to Dundo who, reliable as ever, managed to bundle the ball over the line.
Our wait for an equaliser wasn’t long as after Stuart had to leave the battlefield and was replaced by Folkes, it was his run and attempted cut back to Beautyman that wrong footed the defender and the resultant trip had the man in black pointing to the spot. The condition of my own mincers was that it was outside the box but I was assured otherwise by those around me with better vision. The first person to grab the ball was Sinclair who had not been on the pitch for long and he calmly put the ball midway down the keeper’s right who had dived to the left.
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| A worrying possible breach of someone’s bail conditions… |
The final goal and the best yet came shorty after this and completed our turn around. Taylor being a handful all day received the ball for Folkes and his curling shot across the ground managed to beat the keeper and hit the inside side netting. Dundo had the chance to extent our lead later on but after a good run he tried to lace the ball with the out side of his boot on to see it go straight past the post on the wrong side. And a Fuseini free kick nearly managed to out fox us all is it wasn’t for the reactions of the Aldershot keeper.The highlight for me was a piece of comedy from one of the Aldershot attacks. after some good work the seemed to be going in only for the ball to be cleared off the line not by a Sutton defender but one of the Aldershot strikers. Clearly he didn’t want him to score! The crowd was better than the Cambridge match coming in at around the 380 mark.
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| Another sunny day down the Lane…. |
The post match drinking was a slightly different affair as whilst the Firm were light in numbers, they were not so in spirit. Our illustrious Firm Leader had declared earlier that today “no drink should be ordered twice” so once we had downed the five varieties of Bulmers available, the time had come to find suitable alternatives, which basically means we started to get each other a drink we knew the other probably didn’t like, the first being a pint of Courage Best (see below) courtesy of the Firm Leader.
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| “Do we really have to drink this shit?” |
That was to be out done by a bottle of Desperados before the challenge was completed with a little Southern Comfort & Lemonade. Thankfully the Spurs game on the telly had finished by now, so it was time to leave and head to the Chalmer’s household for a little tipple (I must say a perfect view of the high school! all them yummy mummies!), and ending up at home surprisingly before Saturday had become Sunday, so thankfully there won’t be any random items brought on Amazon tonight!
The final tit bit is the reason for the title of this blog because for any confusion a “Fluffernutter” is a sandwich that consists of a spread of Peanut Butter and a Spread of the aformentioned marshmallow ‘Fluff’. The resulting sandwich looking something like this.
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| Branching out into the ‘fat Americans’ market…. |
A combination of this, my guts churned out on a Sunday morning. It also tastes like Whale Spunk mixed with Poly filler which fails to explain why there is such a startling childhood obesity problem in America if all their grub tastes like this, but we will leave that debate for another time. Hopefully Juan should be doing the final pre-season friendly at Farnborough next Saturday as the rest of Gandermonium is taking the brand continental style and to Belgium in particular for a Belgian football double header spectacular.
In other words I will probably be spending the weekend in a Flemish police cell!
Duke