Peterborough in the sunsheeeeine...Oh aye, it's the first away day

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                                             Peterborough United                         Wednesday

First away day of the season and once again…as is the law these days, it’s in blistering sunsheeeeeeine.

I keep saying it but when you wake up on a footy day and the sun is shining through ya curtains you can’t fail to be in a good mood.

I bounce out of bed, into the bathroom and absolutely no problems in getting my lucky 3 Sh’s out of the way…Don’t ask which one has been causing a few problems of late…but I’ve had to work very hard on of them of late.

Anyway…all systems are go today and I breeze through and am itching to go…Hollie comes round and we get a lift to Donny early to get the train…Oh aye…ya gorra love away days even more when it’s sur la choo-choo….

Just to celebrate that fact we start on our ‘Special Oasis’ early doors.

For those that don’t know how to mix one of these fine drinks, here’s the recipe…Don’t be scared about trying this out BTW, it’s not as difficult or complicated as it seems.

Preparation time is 30 seconds: It’s 3 parts Vodka to 1 part Orange juice (Don’t worry about exact measures, just make sure there’s far more Vodka than orange. As long as it ‘LOOKS’ orange, that’s all that matters) and served in an empty Oasis bottle.
The acid test is when you drink it….if you can drink it without pulling a face then there’s too much orange…drink some and add more Vodka until your face turns inside out when you drink it…you know you’ve got it right then…keep trying until you get it perfected. (I may set up a hotline later for to help folk out)

We jump out at the roundabout at Donny and leg it through the market…I suddenly realise I’ve forgotten me sunglasses…schoolboy error that on a day like this.

I HAVE to buy some more…

Donny market is a belting market, one of the best. A proper old-fashioned market with proper old-fashioned stalls.
There’s even a greasy spoon or five where you can get proper snap from, even if it’s early in the morning…none of ya panchetta-en-crute, none of ya watercress bollox, no fancy schmancy toasted ‘hamwiches’ with burn marks on em to look good…I bet they’ve never seen a piece of rocket…just normal proper snap.
Bacon sarnies…bacon and egg sarnies….Bacon and Sausage sarnies…Bacon and tomato…and of course, as every well respected normal and proper sarnie shop sells…the ultimate…B.E.S.T. (Bacon, Egg, Sausage and Tomato)
The dogs bollox of sarnies.

The smell of these places is synonymous with markets for me…no matter where I am, when I smell bacon frying…when I hear an egg frying…I always think of open markets and I love em….I wasn’t hungry at the moment though, which is a revelation in itself so just enjoyed the moment of knowing these places still existed…I wish I had had a sarnie though…it wasn’t long before I WAS hungry and we’d left the café behind….

It’s a well known fact that no matter where you are in the country when you sell fruit and veg and especially when you have two items for one English pound you MUST, by law, shout ‘TWO FRA PARN!’
Every single fruit and veg person in the land knows this and I’m willing to bet they can trace their roots back to cockney…I’m sure of it… Not only do you have to shout TWO FRA PARN!
You HAVE to say it in a cockney accent…It’s the same here at Donny market and the fruit and veg Yorkshire cockneys were out in force…everywhere you looked they were at it…

It was like a scene from Mary Poppins meets Kes.

‘Nathen sithi…look at these plums me owd flower, tha waint fin owt better’n them, and thi on special today luv...’TWO FRA PARN!’

Fortunately another thing you can rely on is the ‘everything for a pound’ stall….

A Stall where you can buy an industrial face mask….a pair of acid resistant industrial gloves, a donkey jacket, a superb interchangeable screwdriver set made from case hardened cheese, flip flops….and of course sunglasses, armbands and rubber rings…ALL FRA PARN!…apart from one thing..if you wanted a li-lo that was TWO PARN!

I can’t resist these stalls…they’re full of JML type products and I feel forced to buy loads of crap when I see them…I bought a pair of rainbow ski-ing sunglasses…some swimming arm bands, a rubber ring and a soft toy hammer that said ‘I LOVE YOU’ when you hit someone with it.

                                  

Now the sunglasses were amongst the best I’ve ever bought and I’ve spent a shitload of cash on sunglasses over the years…the arm bands were a good buy…I inflated them and put them…made me arms all sweaty and I wasn’t convinced I could get em off again and they reduced me circulation a little but a good buy nonetheless…the rubber ring had a hole in it so it needed blowing up every five minutes…BUT THE HAMMER WAS A BAD BUY! For some reason the young un thought it was hilarious to smack me on the head, belly, groin, arse…anywhere in fact…just to hear it say ‘I LOVE YOU’

                                    
When you’re trying to snooze or not expecting it…I’m telling ya now…it wears very thin very quickly.

It doesn’t help when the young says ‘Do you know where you’re going?’ and I say ‘Yes. I know Donny like the back of my hand’ She says ‘Like a hand from the 1920's that's been in an industrial accident! That doesn’t help us in modern day Doncaster does it? I just took ONE wrong turn, that’s all…admittedly it took us in the opposite direction to the station but it was just ONE mistake…and it did all look different… We got there eventually though.

…and I was now hungry…well we’d taken a detour hadn’t we? I always get hungry after a walk….

This is where I wished I’d had a proper sarnie at the café…on the platform at the station I got a toasted ham and cheese…which involves putting a sarnie into a bag and boiling it for a minute. The bread comes out limp and un-brown and the inside isn’t melted…if you toast cheese, the laws of physics says it should melt…not with this fooker!
I tried it, I left it, and I wanted to nip back to the market café.

A bit more Oasis would take me mind off it…it did…

I tried for a little snooze on the train, only to be woken up every 5 minutes by a welly to the head and the words ‘I LOVE YOU!’

There’s nowt worse (apart from soggy crisps or soft Sugar Puffs) than just falling into the nice bit of a snooze….just beyond nap stage…and being wellied on the head by a ‘soft toy…I say ‘soft’ because the thing that makes the noice is anything but fookin soft…so I feel a THWACK! And then ‘I LOVE YOU…I LOVE YOU’

I hated it already.

We get into Peterborough and head for ‘Charters’ which is where everyone is meeting…where everyone in Peterborough is meeting by the looks of things….Charters is a barge on the river turned into a bar and restaurant and there’s some kind of festival on with a live band outside…a big crowd has turned up and there’s plenty of football shirts amongst them…both Peterborough and Wednesday.

We find our lot and see the Norfolk contingent sat around a table and everyone else arrives…A few beers (or Vodkas) pre-match, music, good company…Oh aye, sunshine away days are what it’s all about….

The Ground.

For most folk the view from the away end, behind the goal, not those few in the seats at the side, will have been quite poor…considering where I sit at home games it was pretty good for me and you’re up close and personal with the players on the pitch.

I like this ground a lot…an old style ground with just a little bit of updating gone on.
We’ve got old style standing terraces behind the goal and a new stand to our left with the corporate boxes separating the two levels…but it doesn’t detract from what is a lovely ‘proper’ football ground.

It’s to get into, no real problems queuing to get in…one toilet for all the stand and a pokey little alleyway round the back to get into the stand…it also leads to the one little pie shop at the end of the cul-de-sac…It really gives a great feel of old style footy to me. It’s like a slightly upmarket version of one of my other favourite footy grounds, Layer Road…We’ll really miss these grounds when they’ve all been modernised and they all look and feel the same.

The stewards in here were first class BTW…more than once I saw a huge steward joining in the craic with Wednesday fans and the same one helped me to my feet after the game when I had sat down for a little snoozette whilst Hollie was at the toilet….but they were all pretty chilled and helpful…apart from the woman who wouldn’t give Hollie her rubber ring back as it was thrown onto the pitch….’I CAN’T LET YOU ON THE PITCH!’…I don’t want on the pitch, can you just pass me it…it’s there at the side of you…’I CAN’T!’
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THE MATCH
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I see both managers are moaning about not winning the game and both believe they should have done so but they’re kidding themselves IMO. Neither side did enough to win this game and the draw was without doubt the right result on the 90 minutes play.

Neither keeper was called into action too many times and although the stats say each team had around half a dozen shots on target, if there was more than a couple of them that needed serious consideration by Grant and his Posh counterpart I can’t remember them.

In the pub people were telling me they weren’t impressed with Peterborough but there’s a lot to like about this club and this team…both on and off the pitch.

Even allowing for the fact that we had very little by way of attack I thought their defence looked pretty solid and they’ll have looked at our teemsheet…JJ, Tudgay, Gray, Esajas, Potter…and will have thought they’d be under the cosh a lot of the game and expected to be worked harder. The fact they weren’t owes a little to our lack of drive but it must also give some credit to the Peterborough defence. This is their first test at this level in front of their home fans and they have every right to be pleased with themselves….there’ll be sterner tests than we provided though.

I liked the look of Mackail-Smith and McLean up front…Fair enough, for the main part our defence coped pretty well with them but they looked bright and breezy all afternoon…they reminded me a bit of the Swansea attack when they arrived in this division…they looked so fresh and really up for the challenge ahead…full of running and a willingness to prove themselves to everyone watching. It’s good to see IMO.

When we first got to our standing spot in the stand…I say WE but I mean ME…For some reason I’d lost Hollie and was stood on me own…As I walked the full length of the stand to get to the end of the terrace, she’d taken an earlier turn and gone up the middle for some reason…I’ve no idea why she didn’t keep following me….Obviously I got a bit ratty and edgy mythering about her, she may be an adult but she’ll always be my little un…but she eventually found me…as if nowt had happened BTW…WTF!

There’s me worried like she was 8 year old again and she strolls up saying ‘what’s up?’...and hits me on the head with that chuffing hammer ‘I LOVE YOU!’

How can you stay mad at kids? (Mindst you…anymore of that chuffing hammer and I might change me mind)

Anyway…the main point on arriving at my spot, was that the Wednesday fans were in absolutely fine voice and this covered terrace really makes the sound echo and boosts the atmosphere no end…This was our first awayday and we were making the most of it in the sunshine….

Peterborough started the game very brightly and the finished it brightly and the fact that we took the lead didn’t deter them from their task.
They had a lot of the play early on and got in a few shots to give us notice of their intentions but TBF, at this stage it was all huff and puff and nothing really to myther about…True enough, we’d need to stop them getting in like this but there was no end product from their play and we looked reasonably comfortable.

When we took the lead after 20 minutes or so we looked even more comfortable…
A superb cross from Tudders to find probably the smallest player on the pitch, O Connor, who leapt, rock like, to nod home…very poor defending by them as he just seemed to find himself in acres of room and stood there to easily place the header in the back of the net for his first ever Wednesday goal right in front of the Wednesday fans…Of course we went ballistic and I lost one of me armbands as a result and that’s when Hollie threw the rubber ring….never to be returned.

Tudders though…what a vital part of our team this lad is…whether he’s wide or up front or even back in the heart of defence heading clear from free kicks or corners…even if he isn’t scoring, he’s setting others up…one of the best crossers of the ball we have, ]certainly one of the best headers of the ball we have and it’s easy to see why he’s such a popliar figure with the Wednesday fans…this is the best signing we will make for a good while….and definitely the best we’ve made in a long, long time….maybe the best since Sibon.
He’s certainly as vital to Wednesday as Gerald was and kudos to the club for getting him signed up.

It wasn’t until pretty much the final whistle that Peterborough had another attempt as we settled into a decent rhythm, and as I said, we looked pretty comfortable with our 1-0 lead…in truth we didn’t look like we would extend it either, but we played well within ourselves and on the first half play we just about deserved to be ahead.

Halftime

Snoozetime

Darren Fergusson will have seen plenty to encourage him though and must have set about his players at half time, telling them they could get back into this game and not give up….When they came out, they did just that.

Mackail-Smith came blistering down their right and fired a shot in…fortunately it went across goal and way wide…he should have done better TBH but he beat Tommy all hands up and not for the first time…or the last…

We had a chance to get on the scoresheet again with a great bit of skill from our players which eventually got the ball to JJ who spun on a tanner to get a cracking shot on goal…we were ready to celebrate TBF as from our view it looked perfectly placed, but the Posh keeper with a great dive to his right got a hand to it to push it wide. Good build up, good shot and great save but it wasn’t long before the almost inevitable equaliser came…

Their goal was similar to ours …apart from the fact I thought it was a foul on Gray before the Peterborough player got the cross in…he just seemed to push Gray to the ground and I fully expected the whistle to go…it didn’t though and a wonderful cross came in in, met by Mackail-Smith at the back post…the sort of thing we’re used to seeing Tudders do so well.

God knows what Granty was doing…his position was awful and Tommy didn’t even jump so maybe we could have done a little better defensively… but I don’t want to be sour about Peterborough scoring, they probably deserved it overall and they could certainly say the same stuff about our goal.
I still couldn’t help but feel a little let down, that we should have dealt with it better…and Mackail-Smith scoring a couple of yards away from us, didn’t help…

BOLLOX!

They didn’t let up then and Peterborough tried to find a way of winning this game as they pushed forward…they tried bgut TBH they hardly troubled us after this…One shot on goal that Purse blocked well but they didn’t test Grant at all.


Having said that, apart from a free kick from Tudders late on, we didn’t bother their keeper either…it was a cracking free kick though and again, from our view, looked really well placed and yet again a superb save from their lad. Easy to see why this young lad is part of the England set up, he looks to have a very bright future.

The game ran it’s course again and the final whistle came and I suppose most fans will see it as a fair result and certainly most Wednesday fans were saying they’d have taken that before kick off but I couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed.

We were totally dischuffed again at having let a lead slip for the second time in as many league matches.

It doesn’t make it any easier to swallow that the opposition have deserved at least a draw, it’s the fact that we’ve had the lead and we haven’t been able to hold onto it and part of that reason is that we don’t seem able to extend our lead at crucial points in the game. We don’t seem to be able to create enough in front of goal for our strikers, whoever they are, to close the game and finish teams off.

WE ARE DESPERATE for a striker now.
Now don’t get me wrong I accept that we don’t have a lot of choice playing JJ up front at the moment and fair play to the lad, he’s doing his best…but it simply isn’t good enough at this level….PLUS…we lose the stuff he CAN bring to the team…his pace down the wings, his ability to beat defenders….(frustration)
With Sodje, Clarke and now Jeffers injured the longer we go without a proper out and out striker the worse it will be for the confidence of both Tudgay and JJ. Tudders just isn’t getting the service or the help he gets from a natural striker in pulling defences out of position, in making runs for each other…as hard as JJ tries, he just doesn’t have that natural ability that strikers have.

Again a few times we lumped the ball forward from Grant only to see it come straight back…how anyone can think this is a good idea is beyond me and Grant himself has to take some responsibility for this. When we play it out, we have the players to be able to make good use of the ball and get it forward with good, swift passing moves and indeed, we did this a few times during this game and it proved successful every time…without an end product of course but whilst WE have the ball they can’t score and we did play it forward well at times….but those useless punts upfield can undo all the good work as they put our defence under immediate pressure again.
                                 

A word about James O Connor here…He’s taken some right stick from our fans of late…from the back end of last season really but I think he’s played really well in both games so far this season and would probably be my MOTM here. Not just because he scored his first goal in a Wednesday shirt but he didn’t stop all game, working hard, winning tackles, winning headers, he seemed to be everywhere. Kudos to the lad and hopefully Wednesday fans will cut him some slack now.

                                 
Everyone was telling me yesterday that Purse had a cracking game…and who am I to disagree with everyone?
But they also told me that Peterborough weren’t a very good attacking team though…well if they weren’t that good why did our defenders need to be good?
You can’t have it both ways surely?
I accept he was better than previous games, but that wasn’t hard…I accept that I may be a little blinkered…and I accepot that I may have had a few too many yesterday…I also accept he made a couple of decent tackles and one outstanding block that looked for all it’s worth that it was goalbound but those things are the very least I expect from him…the very LEAST I expect.
He still looks like he can’t head the ball to me, in fact change that, on one occasion it actually looked like he WAS heading the ball TO ME! 2 or 3 times it looked like his head was peanut shaped and it always seems like he hasn’t a clue where it’s going when he heads it…I’ve also still to see this great leadership I’ve heard so much about….but there’s time yet and as I say, this was certainly an improvement on the last couple of games.

If there aren’t at least 3 teams worse than Peterborough in this division then I’ll be astounded but I think they’ll do better than that, I think they’ll finish around halfway

We needed to find somewhere to natter about the game and get a few more drinks in so Tommo decided we needed to walk for around 5 miles before settling on Yateses wine bar…we were all set to have a few pitchers of ‘Dirty Vimto’ until they told us they’d run out of rum, or port or sommat so we had some other concoction…it were blue and had alcohol in it and that’s as much as I can tell you….I’d felt a bit worse for wear at the game but I felt quite fresh now and ready to go again…

So as we’re nattering about the game, ‘That fookin hammer’ comes out…let’s have a look at that says Tommo…He has a go…Dessie gets it…He has a go, hitting stuff to hear it chelp…I’m sick of hearing it say ‘I LOVE YOU!’…Tommo walks round the table and starts hitting Walkley with it…he’s insistent on showing Walkley how much he loves him…and starts wellying him with it ‘I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!’

Walkley says…You’ll be sorry…you don’t wanna do that!…You’ll be fookin sorry, and grabs the hammer from Tommo.

As Tommo sits down, Walkley places his beer on the table and hurls the hammer across at Tommo…

It hits Tommo square in the chest, the words ‘I LOVEYOU!’ are barely out as it rebounds back, over all the other glasses and hits Walkleys beer head on…beer and glass everywhere!

You couldn’t have choreographed it better!

We left there around 7.30 and met the Wakey massive at the train station…got the train back with them and finished off with a night round round Wakey….Been a while since I’ve been there on a night out too….That’s changed a bit as well…

One of the good things about Wakey on a night though is ‘The Pie Hole’ you can get pie and peas into the early hours of the morning…I think it shuts at 5am or sommat daft…I was Hank Marvin now having had nowt since that shit sandwich in the morning…Oh aye…Pah n Pays…that’ll do nicely, ya can’t beat that…proper food…hits the spot every chuffing time, no matter what the time of day.

Over to an 80’s bar for a bit of Wham! Hall and Oates, Madonna and other 80’s classics…including ‘I’ve had…the time of maaa laaarf….’ Which for some reason every single person always knows all the words to…and which, again by law…MUST be sung as loud as possible and you MUST find someone to point to when you sing ‘and I owe it all to yooooooou’…and look at them like you REALLY mean it….no matter how old they are, they know this song…and most of the folk in the bar weren’t born in the 80’s….It was around this time I realised I’d had enough…literally no more alcohol could go in my body…it was full to the brim…if anymore went in, it would just come straight back out…and then that was it, day was over…..

I finally got home early hours of the morning and just flaked out…I was absolutely shagged…a long day…I’m not sure I can take a full season of these ya know…the Beastie bones are getting a bit old for this game…Only 3 days to the next one as well…Bloody hell…

Roll on Newcastle.

Steve:Beastie

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