A proper matchday experience: a pre-match pint watching the early game, a tenner in and a quid apiece for stovies and a Bovril, snow-streaked hills, swapping ends at half time so you can stand behind the goal your team's attacking - and exchanging concrete steps and a metal roof for grass and wooden risers, stamping your feet all second half to stop them icing over, a flukey late winner through a crowd of legs, straight into the bottom corner of the net.
The game itself was much more forgettable. Arbroath had been the better team until they had a man sent off, their passing neat and tidy but with no real threat. The home side huffed and puffed, their number nine running the channels willingly, but lacked the guile to break down a defence, the persistence to force an error. "That was not good," the bloke next to me put it at half time. I wasn't about to disagree.
Date: January 30th 2010
Ground 113, by the way, was a pre-season friendly at Stainton Park, home of Radcliffe Borough, where the hosts lost three-two to FC United of Manchester (July 27th, 2009). Two scuffs and a long-range shot, if memory serves me right.
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