Weymouth v Bashley and St. Neots Town

On the up at SY656798019

Weymouth 1-0 Bashley

Bob Lucas Stadium, Weymouth

Evostik Southern League

Wednesday 26th December 2012

Attendance: 820

and....

Weymouth 3-1 St Neots Town

Bob Lucas Stadium, Weymouth

Evostik Southern League

Saturday 29th December 2012

Attendance: 701

Giving a lifelong Weymouth fan an A-Z of the UK would be as useful as giving a slug a drivers licence. Years of lower league toil means that every Weymouth fan can provide you a six figure grid reference for any town in southern England. 

Ho, Ho, ohhh...

This Christmas one old village foe rolled into town, Bashley ( SZ240973) I've been there. It's basically a petrol station operating a neighbourhood watch scheme. A place so remote if you enter it into your Satnav and that woman's calm voice barks "I'm not faakin go there you buffoon" before an overwhelming weeping noise fills your car. 

Just the 15 (fifteen) different types of sauce then. Condiments table as previously seen on Adventures in Tinpot.

Our geographical knowledge was extended by the arrival of a new opponent. We've never played St. Neots Town at home or, to give them their full name, St. NeotsitssomewherenearCambridgeithinkisntit. 

Weymouth are entering the festive period on the up. We've been so far away from the up in previous seasons powerful binoculars and an underwhelming green laser light borrowed from the seafront was no help in locating it (gag for the locals there. Them lights hey, hey). Our current place on the up was secured due to four wins in a row and, more importantly, we're finally rid of the Ghost of Quiches Past, George Rolls. George left to focus on his attempt to become the first man in history to have hair greasier than a three bird roast from Iceland. 

Weymouth FC tape measure. Great value at £1 per metre.

The club is now being led by fans and the fact these Christmas games take place at all is thanks to the superb efforts of a green fingered bunch of volunteers. A doff of the novelty flashing Santa hat to you all. 

*opens text message* Hi Dave, hope you had a safe journey. I hope you're not wearing that ridiculous Santa hat and eating more chips. You know you are suppose to be on a diet. LOL. PS, the petrol station is fine.

There's an sense of optimism engulfing the club. It's odder than the popularity of the TV show Mrs Browns Boys. After the last few seasons of inept performances, relegation battles and broken promises of home made buffets like the feeling of being an optimistic Weymouth fan. A lot. I've forgotten how to be optimistic, how to travel to a game expecting to see Weymouth compete for 90 minutes and maybe even see them win.

180 minutes later, Weymouth have six more points and are now in the play offs. Bashley are sent back to man the pumps and sell out of date pasties to lost HGV drivers and a disorientated St. Neots are sent back to wherever it is they come from. 

 

Beautiful shading. 

Two wins. 4 goals. Two great team performances and jeepers I feel optimistic. It's time to get a little carried away. It's the right of every football fan. We're going up! (Note to self: Have a night off the Christmas booze hey.)

Token Bashley match shot. 

Token Bashley match shot II

Bashley were beaten one nil. A scrappy win, a battling performance and a game that would have been lost last season. In amongst that though were bits of great football, fluid passing moves and no little team spirit. 

St. Neots went a goal up. Last season this would have seen panic set in, defenders would run around like squad players from Super Cup football low on batteries and heads would be dropping quicker than at the Guillotine World Championships in France 1793. Not any more. Oh no. A great free kick from Scott Walker, a jinking run and well placed finish from Mark Ford and a header from Sam Poole gave us a 3-1 victory. 

Small man, MASSIVE hands.

The defence looks solid. There's no need to panic like every time the ball gets hoofed into our half. The defenders have positional sense and a midfield that offers them protection.  Ed Palmer looks like the brute defender any half decent non league side needs, a man ready to clatter that pesky nippy centre forward before removing the strikers leg from his shin-pad and calmly stroking the ball forward/belting it as appropriate. Ashley Wells is Steve Tully (the sweeper era) Light and Barry McConnell is older than last year's squad put together. This is a good thing. It brings the experience, organisation and leadership that we previously badly lacked. 

  

Token St. Neots Town match shot. 

The midfield isn't afraid of a battle, it won't be bullied into hiding. Dan Clay is always available for a crunching tackle or creating space from which to play a simple pass. It's also a  midfield with no little skill either and a goal scoring midfielder in Craig Duff, who got the only goal against Bashley. 

For those of you who have been writing in to ask what colour a Pukka Steak and Kidney Pie tin is here is the answer.

Up front though. Crumbs. It's been a while since we've had a player trouble the league top scorers list. Now we've got two. Ben Joyce and Mark Ford never stop making purposeful runs or harassing defenders. They seem to have a great understanding and, Ford in particular, possess a calmness in front of goal that's been lacking since Stuart Beavon left. 

 

Two blue tins and a pink tin please. What?

Think I'm making this all up. OK, well how about this then: The Babs stood and applauded the players off. Scary stuff. 

It's been a long time since watching Weymouth was this much fun. The pride of being a Weymouth fan was always there and it's finally complimented by watching a competitive team playing entertaining and exciting football. 2013 could finally be a good year to be a Terras fan. 

Up the Terras!

For photos and videos of the Bashley game click the internet mouse here.

For some proper photos of the St. Neots Town game headover here. 

Borussia Monchengladbach Ultras Stickers

Borussia Monchengladbach Ultras Stickers

Like these? You'll like this Facebook group.  


More of this kind of thing from Fortuna Düsseldorf and Werder Bremen. 

Click on the photos to enlarge, or move the computer closer to your face, whichever suits. 

 

 

Borussia Monchengladbach Nord Kurve Ultras Photo Site. 

 

 

Obsession Ultras

Old school club logo from Obsession Ultras.

Anti FC Cologne sticker.

"Cologne, diarrhoea"

"Proud Borussia fan, for always and enternity"

 

Ultras Group Projekt Chaos

Sparta Bilk v Germania Ratingen 04/19 II

....and the goalkeeper wore Robocop.

Sparta Bilk 1-2 Germania Ratingen 04/19 II

Platzanlage Fährstraße 51, Dusseldorf

Düsseldorfer Kreisliga A, Gruppe 1,

Sunday 2^nd December 2012

Attendance: 50

"And Sparta Bilk II will kick off in the all yellow strip kicking towards the Gnome with Binoculars end.  Upfront today a man trying to impersonate a Swedish striker currently at PSG and the other a humongous lad who thinks Man vs Food is a cookery advice programme."

 

Sparta Bilk Ultras.

Zlatan and Fat Man.Tubby is clearly hiding a twix in his sleeves. 

A bonus of being early at German tinpot is even lower levels of tinpot taking place when you arrive. The standard is pubs league. The team names sound like proper team names. Which makes it fine.Zlatanalike is in the team due to his haircut and sculpted beard and, as is the rule with any big lad, fatty has a good touch. A good touch of obesity. 

 Steve Staunton's really let himself go hasn't he.

That game finishes and slowly the ground becomes slightly less sparsely populated. A scrawling wind blows rain in through the small stand, much to the chagrin of a couple of old boys who are sat in their usual seats.  They toil for ten minutes to mend the fence furiously working in tandem to keep out the precipitation and maintain their traditions. They defeat the elements. The wood is replaced, the gap blocked, the rain defeated.  Success!

They move seats anyway. 

 "To me Fritz, to you Gerd"

Sparta Bilk. More festive than a Snowman watching the Queens speech whilst wearing a paper hat. 

Inside the clubhouse were clearly awaiting the arrival of Pato Banton (or similar) to turn on the Christmas lights. The place is darker than a"Goth wardrobe by night" postcard.  Home-made frikadellas are served by the minimal illumination granted by the eyes of two sinister owls who clearly indulge in all sorts of head spinning voodoo shortly after last orders is called. 

We've come for your babies.

"Today's visitors, Germania Ratingen II, are wearing red shirts with yellow shorts and the goalkeeper is wearing elbow pads and a Robocop T Shirt.”

 

Robokeeper

Yep. A Robocop T Shirt. Now, either Germania Ratingen are sponsored by Omni Consumer Products or this is officially the most tinpot thing since the last one. Now clearly you'd expect me to coast here and make some week Robocop puns for the rest of this. Oh, believe me I would. But I've never seen the film. In fact I've no idea about movies in general. (Or women.....or fashion sense. Yes, yes...) So, you'll have to make your funnies and damn fine they'll be too. You're funnier than you realise. It's either that or I copy and paste stuff about the 1987 American science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Milner and pass it off as my own. 

Anyone thought of any good gags yet? I can always amend this blog, pass them off as my own. 

So from then on its 90 minutes of trying to take photos of the keeper without invoking a harassment order. It's not easy. He knows, everyone in the crowd knows what I'm up to. I should have just asked him to pose for a photo but that's against the tinpot adventures code of honour that I stand by. 

Token match shot. 

  

Token match shot II. He's Back To Protect The Innocent.

Three Euro entry. That's all. Nothing. Too much for one flash git though. He's parked his car in the car park behind the main stand and he's watching the game from there. He's even brought the missus along. This is a man who, like me, understands women [citation needed] and knows that women lust after men who are exceptionally frugal and want to tear the longjohns and thermal pants off  men who tantalise them with long afternoons of vigorous groundhopping foreplay,  where they are don't actually set foot in the ground and never quite reach the full tick in the box glory.

  

Have you ever seen a bleaker picture?

The match, well you can see for yourselves. There's ten minutes of highlights over here. The highlight of the first half is after 2minutes ish when you'll see me attempt to trap a ball and coming nowhere near. Thankfully a well placed railing means I don't get hit in the nutsacks. 

 

Exterminate, exterminate. What? Wrong robot. Ah, I dunno.

The second half is played out amidst bright sunshine, hail storms and a small rainbow that places a pot of gold under the anus of the owls in the clubhouse. Germania take the lead, Bilk equalise. Bilk dominate but Robokeeper keeps them at bay. He even threatens to take on the crowd and spends thirty seconds shouting at a couple of slightly rain sodden old men. Christ this paragraph was crying our for some links to Robocop to make it even mildly amusing. 

Here at Ai(das)Tinpot we're not afraid to call a spade a Schaufel.

A Germanian produces the one bit of skill in the entire match, a brilliant through ball with the outside of the left foot which Marcus Bonnie then tucks away to leave Bilk defeated like the evil Clarence Boddiker. Or something like that.