Home and Away

We all know that our home form over the past couple of years has been appalling, but do we all know just how appalling?  The slide had well and truly begun under Cooper, when a wedge of home draws and good away wins helped mask the lack of home wins.  This continued and became more acute under Harper's tenure, and became more noticeable as the away wins started to dry up.

This season we are rock bottom of the home form league table, with only Hayes & Yeading put to the sword at Rocky Road.  And this is in the sense that "put to the sword" means we clung on desperately for the last 30 minutes, not daring to venture further forward than the edge of our penalty box.

Our away form puts is the 3rd best in the league, with us gaining just 3 points less on our travels than the Crawley millionaires.

Why is there this enormous gulf between home and away form?  Well, wonder no more!

Printed below is PATGOD's handy guide to all the excuses we have heard and/or used over the past couple of years.  Please feel free to dip into them come 4.45PM today after the Cambridge game.

The players are scared of the fans (possibly true given the number of uglies we attract)

The players are scared of being booed if they shoot and miss (it would be nice if they at least put this theory to the test now and again)

The supporters nervousness affects the players (Nervous!  Of course we're bloody nervous!  We don't win at home!  I'm amazed we don't all just chain-smoke through the entire game!)

The opposition players raise their game because they are playing at Rocky Road (that's right, a player who performs every other week in front of several thousand fans, or at shiny new stadiums is going to play out of his skin at our rusty ground in front of a thousand grizzlers)

The supporters don't support they team like they used to (we all like to think that in the past every man, woman and child at the ground screamed themselves hoarse for 90 minutes in support of the team.  In reality it has always been left to the drunken fringe to try to lift the quiet gloom - it's just that we have less of them these days)

The uncertain future of the Club hangs around the payers necks (I doubt that our precarious future is keeping many of the players awake at night.  In an industry where players can be employed or a monthly, weekly or even match-by-match basis it is unlikely that any of them will be worried by what might happen to the Poppies in a couple of years time)

The state of the pitch doesn't suit our style of play (but seemingly suits everyone else's!)

Pete Simcoe's plays shit music (True, but does that necessarily make the team play shit too?)

We are too friendly to the opposition (Try telling Rene Howe that!)

The players are bottlers (All of them?  All the time?  What about away from home?)

The ground is under a Gypsy / Egyptian / Druid curse (Well, we did once kill the copper-stealing Pharaoh who hailed from Glastonbury, but that was years ago!)