Bouncing Back

The saying that runs along the lines of, "It's not about how many times you fall, it's how many times you get up", has been attributed to many people.  Whether you believe it was General George Custer, presumably some time before Little Big Horn, or, indeed Rhys Hoenes during the first 10 games of this season, then sentiment is true.

Despite our excellent start to this season, our last 4 home league games read a very poor lost 2, drawn 1, won 1.  So, suddenly, we face a home game against lowly opposition and everyone's calling it a "Must Win" fixture.  It's not exactly a relegation haunted mid-April 6-pointer, but there's truth in this statement too.  Anything but a convincing victory is going to make the rest of this division think we are there for the taking.  A month ago they had resigned themselves to competing for the play-off placings, and now they can see serious chinks in our armour.  I'm not sure if it's an actual saying, particularly as I've just made it up, but everyone knows - "No-one who gets spanked by St Ives deserves to get promoted"  We are now in the chasing pack's sights, but our fate is still in our hands.

Players used to look like men,
not skinny-latte drinking,
skinny-jeans wearing,
hipster beard-wearing,
metrosexuals.  

(c) kappasports

A lot of us oldsters have been comparing this season's start with the 1990-91 season when we went the first 15 games unbeaten until Wycombe thumped us 5-1.  We ended that season a distant 4th behind Barnet, despite being 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 point clear top at Christmas.  The total number of points clear depends on who you ask, and how much they've had to drink....

In the Wycombe bar after the game (the lengthy queue to leave the ground's car park via a single track still haunts me) I made one of only a few ever approaches to a Poppies player and asked Dougie Keast what we were going to do in our next game (a home fixture with recent Football League expelees, Colchester United). 

Dougie gritted his jaw and growled, "We'll have to pull our socks up", which honestly sounded more threatening and definite from Dougie, then it reads here.  I had a sense that he had been quite vocal with his teammates about our abject display in the changing room just a few minutes earlier.  I also had the sense not to ask him anything else!

Well, the following game, Dougie was as good as his word.  Socks were indeed raised.  We beat Colchester in front of over 5000 at Rockingham Road.  Not only that, Dougie scored the only goal with the sort of thumping drive that only thighs of his girth can deliver.  He then spotted me in the crowd, and pointed me out, making sure everyone knew the goal was both dedicated to and inspired by me.

OK, that last sentence was a complete lie, but then again we were never 20 points clear at the top of the league either, so, ya-boo sucks to you!