What a bloody stupid idea moving this to a Friday night was. Apart from
anything it meant an early start to avoid the M25 rush hour, so we set off
pre-noon for the journey down. Good progress along M25 and M3 before a couple
of hours of nothingness on the A303 which were enlivened by the prospect of
going past Stonehenge, but as we drove past the general response was along the
lines of Is That It, I Thought It Would Be Bigger
We had to stay outside Yeovil, as there was deemed to be no room at the inn.
Yeovil tourist info helpfully telling us there were no hotels in Yeovil big
enough for just our busload, let alone all the Leeds fans. After a quick detour
when I sent us up the wrong road, we were checked-in and in a local pub within
half an hour, although in hindsight taking up the free bottle of wine with 2
steak meals offer may have been a mistake.
Managed to park up pretty close to the ground, before finding that there was
a ticket checkpoint before getting to the burger stalls compound behind the
away end. Of course plenty found their way past this point without a ticket and
some even made it into the ground without one. Its odd how weird it seems to
be on terraces nowadays and one factor is that without pre-designated seats
after a pie and a piss I had no idea where the rest of my group had ended up.
Still game started, with fat-bloke 2 (Elding) upfront for Beckford and Douglas
back in the middle.
Within a couple of minutes, a cross in from the right was missed by everyone
and travelled to the unmarked Johnson at the far post, he appeared to be
unaware the game had actually started and simply spooned the ball back into the
6 yard box, where Freedman lashed it in, whilst Elding appeared confused by the
round white thing. In truth as the goal was at the far end, no-one at our end
was really sure who had scored. It was immediately apparent that there were
lots of Leeds fans in other parts of the ground (not surprising as Yeovil
seemed happy to sell tickets to anyone-which led to a record crowd) and their
celebrations meant a few police rushing around at the end. A lot of them were
moved into our end, about 100 extra people appeared about 20 minutes in, but at
the far end there was a fair amount of activity til the end of the match.
Not so much activity on the pitch though. With the early goal Leeds were
largely content to try and pass the ball around and keep possession and even
with the benefit of a strong wind behind them Yeovil didnt really manage to
threaten, though on the couple of occasions they did get near goal we were
lucky they hit their shots straight at Casper.
Of course the wind and the open terrace meant it was also bloody cold and the
long journey and refreshments seemed to have take its toll on some Leeds fans,
one lad next to me managed to achieve the feat of being fast asleep whilst
standing up for much of the first half. A half-time wander to try and find the
rest of our group only found the Rickman brothers huddling together for warmth
near the front and soon enough it was time for the second half.
We continued our normal tactic of appearing to dominate the play but never
really looking like finishing them off, and the closest we got was a long shot
by Johnson that fizzed just over the bar. A distinct lack of pace upfront meant
we werent really able to play an effective counter-attack game and the
midfield seemed a bit slow to support, so the odd promising break ended with
the ball being held up and passed back to halfway. Still with Kilkenny sticking
to the right a bit more than usual we were pretty solid defensively as well.
Then the moment that may have changed the game. Sheehan tried to run the ball
out of defence, over-ran it trying to avoid the first tackle and in trying to
recover the ball did lunge in a bit. A red card was probably fair enough,
although there was no injury and the Yeovil reaction was probably a
contributory action to the refs decision. Within a couple of minutes a tackle
from behind led to another melee and it looked the game might spiral out of
control.
However it soon calmed down and with Hughes on for Elding we continued to
look comfortable. Lubo lashed a free-kick over the bar from distance and a
corner was cleared off the line by
Freedman who didnt seem to be able to get
out of the way. Dougie showed his experience by managing to win the odd
free-kick by strategically falling over when left one on four. Yeovil only
really created anything after bringing on Owusu in the last few minutes, but
were restricted to a couple of corners and headers over the bar. Towards the
end the police decided we were all going to invade the pitch (why) and stood in
front of us, causing a bit of grief where none previously existed, as now we
couldnt see.
Ref blew the whistle soon enough and it was a comfortable win, albeit in a
0-0 game where we had accidentally scored. We wandered off fairly quickly as
the Yeovil fans stuck around to celebrate their relegation avoiding season but
found Leeds arent popular even in deepest Somerset, as some local kids decided
to chuck stones at our bus, and they were a bit more accurate than the 100+
Swansea muppets earlier in the season.
Still off to the pub with no serious damage, where we found that young people
playing hippy jazz music was still popular in these parts, it is near
Glastonbury I suppose. Somehow our well behaved group were infiltrated by a
group of touring policemen later on in the night, which led to some confusion
as they demanded to know who the Senior Officer was after a drunken argument
later on. We decided to leave, whilst Inspector Risdale continued the search
for the terror of Yeovil, the short-ars*d strangler.
Next morning brought to light a few facts;
We were far from the only Leeds fans in our hotel.
Miles of rolling countryside gets a bit dull after a while
Stonehenge hadnt got any bigger overnight.
Chelsea v Man U has become largely irrelevant to us nowadays.
Still home by 2 and 12 away wins in a season is a pretty decent achievement.
Matt
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DELETE THE FOOTERS WHEN REPLYING YOU LAZY SODS!!!!
DELETE THE FOOTERS WHEN REPLYING YOU LAZY SODS!!!!
