Twenty One and Counting

Although it was obviously disappointing to drop a couple of points at home yesterday to a Chalfont St Peter team that scored with pretty much their only attempt, the fact remains that our team has now gone 21 league games unbeaten.  A phenomenal statistic, no matter what division you play in.  But, other than our unbeaten run reaching the "key of the door" stage, what else did yesterday teach us?

Hail can be painful!  My ears are still tingling from the first half pelting they took.

As a team, the Poppies still struggle to win in front of large crowds.  Yesterday's attendance of 729 was the fourth highest in the division this season.  We have been involved in the top 5 gates of the season, and only won one of them, the 4-3 against Aylesbury United, which barely counts as it was one of our "last ever games" and the script for that topsy-turvey game was already written!

Perhaps it wasn't the best idea in the world to remove the trees from around the pitch.  Now we have uninterrupted views of a huge empty field, and the backs of dozens of Burton houses.  And the balls take longer to be retrieved without the effective backstop of conifers.  And there was nowhere to shelter when the heaven's open.

I finally understood a joke from a copy of "Viz" from about twenty years ago.  In the strip, "Nobby's Piles", the aforementioned Nobby is forever hurting his piles and resorting to strong language and colourful rhyming slang to describe his continued agony.  One expression he used related to him "crushing his Chalfonts".  For some reason I'd always thought this to be a reference to Chalfont St Peters, and assumed this pun was beyond my understanding.  My good friend and fellow Patgodee, PW quietly explained that the "Chalfont" in question was Chalfont St Giles.  St Giles!  Piles!  I get it now!!!!  Very good.

Nobby's Piles - Chalfont St Giles.
We can all get a joke when it's clearly
and patiently explained to us......

When our gates are about the 600-650 mark everyone seems to be behind the team.  Once you get beyond 700 we've used up all the encouraging fans and start to tempt back the moaners.  One particularly confused moaner near me berated the team for being pegged back to 1-1 with the curious deduction that "A draw's no good to us, it's worse than a defeat!"

If we continue to get penalties awarded to us like this one, we will surely break the world record for most penalties in a season.  I believe the accepted term is, "soft".

The burger van is the right colour, but otherwise just takes up room.

Crows take no shit from Red Kites.

Henry Eze in full flow is more fun to watch than Michael McIntyre, Eddie Izzard and Lee Evans put together.

When the forecast is for rain, perhaps waterproof clothing should be considered!