ABC (Easy as One Two Three)

Well, we now have the prices we will need to pay to watch the Poppies in the forthcoming season. Things have sure changed from the days when you could buy a packet of Capston Full Strength on the way to the Working Men’s Club for a dozen pints of Old Peculiar before taking your place on the Rockingham Road terraces, and then taking a bint up west for drinks and a fish supper and still have change from ten bob.

The latest idea we seem to have borrowed from higher standards of football (alas not yet one-touch football played on the floor) is the banding of games into different categories with different prices.

This follows on from our farcical “premium game” scam where the prices you paid on entering a ground would differ on a match-to-match basis. You were often faced with the bizarre situation of hiked prices to face the likes of the mighty Hinckley United. Invariably there are good reasons for this, such as the need to pay off Branston’s latest fine, or to bung the Cops their protection money, but invariably it led to problems at the turnstiles with amounts different to the given prices on the turnstiles being demanded, which never seems quite fair or indeed legal.

Now we have hit upon the A, B and C level fixtures where we pay a bigger wedge for the supposed glamour games and less for the piss-poor opposition.

Leaving aside the difficulty of gauging the desirable from the dross, where each of us would probably pick a different set of games to fit into each category, we do seem to have a rather top-heavy looking number of “A” games. It will cost an adult at least £16.00 to stand on a broken terrace near a closed food bar to watch us play teams that are no longer good enough to be in the League. Putting aside the obvious running costs of the Club, which to the amazement of club officials, are not the immediate concern of the supporters, that is a lot of money to watch non-league football isn’t it? It almost makes you fearful of us gaining promotion.

And remember, the Poppies have to compete with a myriad of other leisure options these days: -

• For the same price as a single adult getting into Rockingham Road for one of these fixtures 2 people can go to the Odeon cinema to watch a movie, although this doesn’t include popcorn.


• You could buy an adults or kids wristband for unlimited rides all day long at Wickies and still have money for ice creams.


• You could spend a refreshing evening at a local hostelry.


• Make 16 individual purchases from Poundland.


• An afternoon 10-pin bowling across the car park.


• Rent a DVD of dubious content, a box of tissues AND an Indian take-away.


• You could just about stretch to hiring a taxi to drive you around for almost a quarter of a mile.