Start
Song title to kick off the new season’s worth of match reports comes from the second number one from the greatest group of all time — The Jam (even if they did nick the riff from The Beatles’ “Taxman”). Definitely better than picking something by Tangerine Dream.
A new season is upon us, Saturday afternoons will have meaning again, and this season it will include Saturday tea times, Saturday lunch time, Sundays perhaps, Tuesday nights (and doubtless any other night of the week now). It won’t quite be a case of 24/7, but it might seem like that.
I won’t rehash the offseason, I covered enough of that in my preseason piece earlier in the week.
Although since then we have signed a Chelsea under 21 keeper on loan and I’ve got the new, what is now called the Utilita football handbook. However, I couldn’t remember it was sponsored by Utilita when I pre-ordered it in Waterstones, instead my mind went back to my childhood, and I called it the Rothmans yearbook. Whilst I was at it, I should have checked the cricket scores in the John Player Sunday league and the Bensons & Hedges trophy, the Embassy snooker world championship, and been cheering on the Maclaren, Lotus, and Ligier formula one teams sponsored as they were by Marlboro, JPS, and Gitanes. All of which were smoking hot.
I know all the info in the yearbook is online nowadays, but I like having the heft of the book. It is heavy. Heavy is good, heavy is reliable, and if there’s an argument over some stats you can always hit them with it. Although I do miss the now defunct News of the World / Nationwide annual, as it had most of the data of the Rothmans, but it would fit in your pocket. It just isn’t an effective a weapon to beat people with. And I didn’t realise Utilita were sponsoring Blackpool.
Who we play in the first game of the new season in League 1. They are the first of eight former Premier League sides we will be playing this season, half of whom begin with the letter B. The four season preview tables I included in my preseason piece had them finishing 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th, so all well above our predicted places.
For some reason when I think of Blackpool, I always think it is a shame Dion Dublin didn’t play for them. Seeing as Dublin translates from Gaelic to English as Black Pool, it would have meant Blackpool would have been playing for Blackpool. That’ll just be my stupid mind thinking that though.
Also, Blackpool does remind me of one of my old housemates from my Manchester days. He was a degenerate gambler whose common phrase when dragging us into the casino at three in the morning was ‘always bet on black’. Something he took to his fixed odds betting for a season with him always choosing Blackpool and Blackburn on the sheet every week. And winning nothing.
Mentioning Blackpool and Blackburn together reminds me of another story (yes, I even go off on tangents to my tangents). Back on Easter Monday 2002 I was persuaded to go to Ewood Park as an away fan to watch Southampton play Blackburn. In the away end there were twenty fans in orange Blackpool shirts. I thought to myself perhaps they have come to the wrong black town, but it turns out they had come to see Brett Ormerod play having sold him to Southampton earlier in the season.
We have played Blackpool just the twice, back in the 2016–17 season, and we won 1–0 at home and had a 0–0 draw away. I’d be more than happy with a repeat of those results this season.
I didn’t sleep well last night, not because of nerves, but because my stupid brain wouldn’t shut off and had thoughts of winning the lottery and sorting out premises for the Crawley Town megastore in town and then thinking of all the merch that could be stocked in it. I really need to get out more.
Whilst I was out at writing, Helen was on social media trying to drum up support / help to clean up the underpass to the ground. Some of the negativity in the responses was sadly predictable. And although there was no help forthcoming, the job she did on it was remarkable and it looks great.
I know I like to get to the ground early, but coming straight from writing would have been ridiculous, wouldn’t it? Due to the stupid 5.30pm kick off, what kind of idiot would turn up to the ground four hours before kick-off. The kick off time is for the benefit of Sky Sports, or Fuck Sky Sports (FSS) as I call them. It certainly isn’t for the benefit of the supporters. Anyway, I stopped and had a coffee and a chat and was only at the ground three hours before kick-off. When walking through town there was a band on at the bandstand and they happened to be playing ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ as I walked past them. Not something I want to be hearing come twenty past seven.
When I arrived at the ground everyone was outside as the fire alarm had gone off. Hopefully not another sign of things to come.
The new kit is in the shop. I got a shirt and as predicted I had to go two sizes bigger than I am in normal clothes. I could have got away with one size, but it would never go over layers when they will be required when the weather gets nasty. Custom name printing will have to come during the week. They also had new caps in stock, and even if it is packaged as an autograph book, it is a branded notepad and pen. All I need now is a fridge magnet.
Being early I took refuge from the sun and sat in Redz Bar watching the first half of the Community Shield. As I don’t drink, I don’t usually go in there, and when I have it has always been packed so I hadn’t noticed the framed shirts on the walls before. I now have shirt envy over this one.
I was inside the ground well over an hour before kick-off. The pitch looks amazing.
This lot have done a wonderful job.
Turns out it isn’t a solid backing on the east marquee, it is netting and at the top only. It isn’t flappy, but it will let the wind whistle through it later in the year. The team line-up was announced and there was neither Fish nor Faal on it. The officials haven’t even started the game and they’re getting abuse. Little high pitched kids voices are shouting ‘run faster lino’ as they jog past on their warmup.
Blackpool are in a mainly dark blue kit with some kind of squiggle pattern on the front of the shop. The two fan coaches were cutting it fine, but the away end looks reasonably full. Their number 3 is called Husband, but there is no player called Wife in their squad, so they aren’t a husband and wife team.
Into the game and the early pressure is from Blackpool, and it takes us more than five minutes to mount an attack down the left wing. It is well worked but we can’t quite get a clear shooting opportunity, and the final attempt from Scott Malone is blocked at source.
Quarter of an hour into the game and we have settled now. A ball from Jeremy Kelly is lofted over the defence and Rushian Hepburn-Murphy takes it down and then dinks it over the keeper and we are 1–0 up.
And there is decent pace from RHM again a couple of minutes later and it takes a last-ditch challenge to just take it off his toes before he can get a shot away. There is some back and forth, and we get a ball to Armando Junior Qunitirna, but his shot is over.
A free kick from in the attacking half is played to RHM and he dinks it past the keeper and into the net again, but the joy is short lived as a somewhat dubious foul has been given in the build-up. Blackpool attack, a shot is saved and then cleared, and we break, and Ronan Darcy’s cross goes out.
A ball is played from midfield by Darcy to Armando on the left. He cuts past a couple of players and into the box, and his shot/cross takes a deflection and loops over the keeper and into the net to make it 2–0. And that puts us top of the table at that point in time.
Jojo Wollacott is booked for timewasting when taking a free kick (in the first half without any warning FFS), only for the free kick to be returned to be taken again as the ref wasn’t ready. That’s really taking the piss. There were a couple of Blackpool chances but both shots end up going wide. And there is one minute of added time at the end of the first half. In which there is another chance for Blackpool, a shot from outside the area is blocked near the line and cleared, but they attack again, and another shot from distance hits the outside of the post before the whistle goes for half time and a 2–0 lead.
The second half starts with another Blackpool attack and their shot is dragged wide. It’s fairly even but Blackpool are trying to put more pressure on. Josh Flint hoofs a clearance out over the KRL Logistics stand for ball loss number one of the day and a corner. Which we break from and Max Anderson’s shot is wide.
We get the ball back quickly and Darcy’s shot takes a touch off a defender which takes the pace of it and it is comfortably saved by the keeper. We get a free kick by the left corner and the cross is cleared to Darcy on the edge of the area but his shot is high and wide.
Flint appeals about giving a corner away and is booked for his protestations which looked nearly as harsh as Wollacott’s booking in the first half. The corner is cleared and a minute later ball two disappears out over the side of the west stand. Blackpool are upping the pressure and get a couple of corners in quick succession, and the second is cleared at the third attempt.
There is fannying about at the back and Wollacott’s attempted clearance is straight at the onrushing striker and it bounces back off him and into the net and it is now only 2–1.
It is getting tense now, but we win a corner, which comes to nothing. There is more and more Blackpool pressure, but we break, and Ade Adeyemo gets a shot on target which is just about bundled behind for a corner. There is a pattern emerging in the last few minutes of the game. Blackpool pressure and us breaking. We do so again, and the ball is in the net from Panutche Camara from a Jack Roles cross, but the linesman’s flag is up for offside, and it doesn’t count.
There are five minutes of added time and Jay Williams clears a ball out over the east marquee for ball loss number three of the day, the throw is cleared, but comes back in and Blackpool get a corner, and after more pressure we break again, Adeyemo feeds Camara, but his first touch is a bit heavy and the keeper gets a hand to it, but it comes back to him and he tries a back heel, which goes past the keeper but it is slow moving and the keeper turns and stops the ball before it goes over the line.
And the full-time whistle goes, and we win 2–1. What a start to the season. The crowd was announced as being 4,718 (so I was only 98 out with my silly guess of 4,816 — and my score prediction was 2–1, so not a bad week), and Josh Flint was named as the sponsor’s man of the match.
The result leaves us sixth or seventh depending on which muppets are producing the table. And it is now onto the Carabao Cup on Tuesday night with the visit of Swindon Town before the next league game and the first away trip of the season to play Cambridge United.
And it would appear that FSS managed to drop the final couple of minutes of the game which no one watching at home needs.
Come on you reds.
Originally published on my own website (without the pictures) at the link below.
For other Crawley Town articles check out the list below
If you liked this post, follow me or get on my email list for future posts. Some may even be more enjoyable than this one.
You can find articles I have already published here.
And feel free to clap (any will do), or highlight (pick something at random), or comment (any old gobbledygook will do), or best yet all three.
After years of prevaricating, I have finally gotten around to self-publishing some books. I now have three books available. The first is the novel “Where The Lights Shine Brightest”, this is available on Amazon at
Next up is a collection of drabbles, three hundred and sixty six of the little hundred word stories, under the title of “A Drabble A Day Keeps The Psychoanalyst Away”, this is available on Amazon at
Finally, there is an autobiographical work, released under my alter ego of Kevin Rodriguez-Sanchez, which covers a two year period in the early noughties when I lived in Manchester — “Five Go Mad In Manchester”. Again, this is available on Amazon at
They are all available as paperback or eBook. And if you have Kindle Unlimited then they are available on there to read whenever. Please buy / read / leave reviews.
