Caution. This blog contains plenty of depression and more filler that a TOWIE bird’s lips. I’m not going to lie, this is not going to be a happy blog. But it is a blog and we have to report come rain or shine all the highs and lows as we follow the boys in Amber & Chocolate. So sit back and prepare yourself, have a cuppa or a beer to numb to the pain.
Saturday’s result against Harrogate saw the wheels finally start to come off our attempts to stay in the league. Whatever was the defence thinking for the goals? Why didn’t Omar just lump the ball (and the man) into the stand? Why did Kizzi give the ball back and the defence didn’t follow the men? But we could spend an eternity discussing the finer points of many a game. We can save all that for the drinking and the Gandermonium Care Home. But either way, I think we’re done. Have been for a while now.
Most Sutton fans would agree that the moment this match was arranged for a Thursday, it was the first nail in the coffin for our cup run. A match two days before we are potentially finally about to be relegated, was never going to be a good option. You would have to look back 20 years to find a manager that was prepared to play and win both matches. Instead we have the reality that our season is most likely over in the space of three days. The second big nail is when I see the team line-up and realise that no one what so ever is getting a run out. Not even Dundo. I mean, there are first teamers that will not feature on Saturday not playing and to be fair to some a run out would be better than training. Moore bagged a hat-trick and lo and behold gets a goal at Harrogate. Is that linked by any chance?
It’s Thursday night and whilst I’m trying to look down the back of the sofa for a Lady Godiva, oh yes, I need to pay for the pleasure of having my arse handed to me these days. When it got me to thinking about a fella I remember. Now, fuck knows why I was thinking about it at this particular moment, but I’m sure we all have sometime or other had those random thoughts. Now this fella was a close mate of mine knocking around in my teens. I even took him once to a Sutton match for my birthday during Our Lord Dos’ second season at Wealdstone. Think we won 2-1 that day. I remember having a beer with him in the ‘Spoons there and introducing him to the rest of the Gandermonium rabble.
Anyway, I digress. Now over the years and life has a way of changing it and we obviously grew apart. But we would still text each other and keep some form of contact. Eventually this ended as just a simple birthday text. But then one year he didn’t text me and with his birthday three weeks after mine, I still text the number I have for him. I believe that kids these days would say what I text every year is “Highly offensive”, but it what we’ve said to each other over the years. Eventually I would send my text and receive no reply on my birthday or even to the one I sent. So this got me thinking. Why doesn’t he reply? Has he changed numbers? Is he alive? Am, I texting some random person once a year with a tirade of abuse? Do they dread this day every year because they receive this text from an unknown number? Either way I will continue to text this number every year until I get a reply or answer. Pretty much like the relationship between me and the Surrey Senior Cup. I have always done it and will always do, fuck knows why because, I get no reply. Up the U’s!
A fiver is the demand for entry into this needless exercise and I trudge in to find the usual rabble of reprobates that still keep the candle burning for this once much respected competition. Sutton lose the toss and are attacking the home end and we take our places behind the goal and braced for impact the forthcoming barrage.
Roberts, Eccleston, Reeves, Traore, Williams, Ogundenga, Edwards, Khinda, Tume, Moore, Tomes. Bench Warmers: Fennelow, Bell, Lambourne, Jones.
Fighting the conditions and a team well on a high of a successful season. The Sutton children did as best they could to withstand the tidal wave of Farnham pressure you would expect from a team five divisions below them. The Youth managed to last ten minutes before taking a leaf out of the first team’s book by not picking up a player in the box and it was a simple header for the first goal. Already it was goodnight Vienna for the contest and the first person in our group called it quits and left the ground. Minutes later and we were down another goal. This time it was a poor clearance that fell to an unmarked Farnham player outside the box who smashed a worthy goal to solidify the early Farnham dominance.
Things were getting out of hand as it was sloppy defending that cost Sutton with a Farnham third goal that raised more questions as a low shot left everyone flatfooted. The third goal in such short space of time had some of us think about what our record defeat was. 13-0 away at Barking in the 20’s was our resident historian’s response, right of on the spot and the way this match was going, we thought that might be in danger. And if not that, another Stockport perhaps. Every time that Farnham attacked it looked like they might score and if I was one of the few Farnham fans with that fuckin’ drum, I would be in dreamland. Somehow Sutton managed to go in at half time just the 3-0 down and a few of us were thinking weather to call it there and then to save us more bitter disappointment.
But alas I stayed and walked down to the away end to await the second half. The conditions were getting worse with the wind picking up and the rain getting heavier. And the second half was as boring as anything we’ve seen from the first team. Both teams seemed to have called it a day or that the Farnham gaffer had told his players that and more of what we had seen in the first half would amount to child abuse and to go easy on them. They were a few bright moments during the 2nd 45 but too many times did the kids try to be clever and fail to get the basics right.
Passing, running, shooting, tackling, marking and a few other staples of football are areas that the kids need to work on if they want to make a career out of this noble game. I reckon some of us old boys could give a good account of ourselves against the Sutton academy lads. Still, there is always the next match to witness. So another year has passed us by and we are yet to catch up with that elusive win to level with Dulwich Hamlet on 16. We now have to hark back to the days of Eddie Akuamoah, Paul Honey & Scott Corbett in 2003 to find Sutton last lifting the trophy. Been over a decade since we’ve even been in a final. But you never know our league demise might put some pressure on winning some silverware at some point. A man can hope! My next blog could very much be the first as we re-enter the GM Vauxhall Conference once again.
Enjoy
Duke