I seem to be at that stage of life where quite a lot of
things in my day annoy me. My family and friends will probably advise you they
had realised this rather sooner than I have.
The lady I sit next to said something yesterday that
certainly reflected how I feel at the football. She said she was fed up of
queueing to get out of the stadium being regaled with the delighted cheers of
the away fans who, in many cases after months of struggle following their team,
came to Lincoln to be gifted three lovely points that their team barely had to
work for, there you are, you don’t deserve it, but there’s the points, have
them on us.
Once again, a very modest team, one that had sacked their
manager, the likeable football genius, according to him, Steve Evans, had left
a club teetering on the brink of relegation but, help was at hand in the form
of a benevolent Lincoln City who gave them a bit of relief from their troubles
and their fans, starved of success, getting some air in their lungs singing
some songs they thought they wouldn’t be singing again this season. Happy to
help. Safe journey.
I’m starting to get in my stride now. We seem to employ a
man whose sole responsibility is to chat to the fourth official. In my seat I
have an unrivalled view of this. Here he comes, he’s sent back to the dugout.
Undaunted, two minutes later he’s back again. I know other teams do this, not
as much admittedly but they do. Usually, but not yesterday he wears an Imps
bobble hat. Again, nothing wrong with that but he looks like a fan and I think,
I could do that, for free. Chatting to the spare referee, how difficult would
that be?
You’ll notice I’m doing anything but talk about the
football. One more annoying thing though. Alan Long, announcer, we love you but for
goodness sake, welcome the away fans by all means but please don’t encourage
them to start cheering, it’s us home fans you’re supposed to be geeing up. Oh,
and we know you’ve done your research but the away fans don’t need to know how
far they’ve travelled, they’ve done it and we’re not bothered. Rant nearly
over.
Yesterday was a new experience for us. I’m not going to jump
on the Appleton out bandwagon, it’s getting a bit crowded anyway but often I
can see how difficult it is to break down a team whose sole aim is not to be
beaten. Time after time teams have come to Lincoln after getting a pasting
elsewhere and City have looked pretty good, to be fair. Take Doncaster. Incidentally,
they were very loud, well done you. Anyway, they looked as if they wouldn’t
score if they’d played till Christmas then they were gifted a penalty and, as
we know, you score, we lose. Wycombe was a bit different, although pegged back
when we could have won it was a good performance but again, one point when it
could have been three and here we are, no points and definitely not a good
performance.
Michael Appleton, manager, BBC Radio Lincolnshire, what
happened there? What do you want me to say? He really did say that, what do you
want me to say? We really don’t help ourselves sometimes.
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