Cheltenham

Cheltenham is one of those trips that comes round with regular monotony. It may be only just down the road but always seems to take a bit longer to get to and from than it should.

Once there, things looked up. We gave the no longer Good Beer Guide listed Kemble Brewery Inn a miss and took in the Sandford Park Ale House for our pre-match beer. This is a new drinking establishment that is something of a mix of the new and old dedicated to serving top quality beer.

Having downed a couple we were ready to face the stewards. (Probably not the best of approaches when tale has it that fans have been denied entry just for having the faintest smell of alcohol on their breath).

I’d gotten well into moaning old git mode before we reached Whaddon Road, home of Cheltenham Town FC. I’ve got this thing about people flouting the rules which are there for a good reason; like parking on yellow lines and the pavement, for instance. As far as numbers go the match appeared to me to quite possibly be over policed. Easy money. The under employed constabulary, presumably not having illegal parking in their remit for the day walked on by with not a glance even when such parking was within a stone’s throw of the ground.

(Nothing compared to the invasion of Bicester by thousands of thoughtless motorists on Black Friday to visit the Village of course. Perhaps it was that  I was really still seething about.) 

Anyway, it turned out that this year the stewards I encountered were as good as gold. As I approached the Thomson and Bancks Stand I held out my ticket. The stewards looked at it and said, “There’s been a bit of a cock up with the tickets. Sit anywhere in block 6.” So in I go, unsearched, clutching a block 6 ticket.

Once inside it was obvious sitting in block 6 wasn’t going to happen. Block 6 was to the side of the netting where there was a mix of empty seats and home fans. A steward (a different one, obviously) took my ticket which had seat no. C153 printed on it and said, “It’s allocated seating” he looked at the ticket “row C, sit anywhere in row C.” He then looked up at row C and said, “It’s a bit full isn’t it”. Yes, it was a cock up. I then picked a seat of my choosing, which certainly wasn’t in row C.

There were plenty of empty seats behind the goal and also some in the side where we were. That is down to the extortionate entry fee and our results and performances. We are not regularly winning football matches and imho are nowhere near as entertaining as some people like to think. I reckon £23 is at least a fiver too much but that said it was by no means the worst view we’ll have this season.

At half time I was oozing negativity. We had not played well. I thought Cheltenham were crap but we were no better. At the break there were some amongst our travellers who thought we had played well. I certainly couldn’t see that, nor could my mild mate Kevin and when he begged to differ with someone expressing such a view it really is saying something.

Until we are beating teams like this I will not be convinced that we are truly moving in the right direction.

This was the poorest Robins side we have come up against for a long time. Big, strong, quite physical and a lot of the long ball but they’re just not as good at it as they used to be.

In comparison we were too lightweight. Alfie Potter and Callum O’Dowda in particular fell into this category. Muscled off the ball way too easily and rarely did anything incisive. Many in our fan base are starting to despair when it comes to Alfie. If he is to stay in the team he really does have to start contributing more.

And as for CoD he is again looking a bit like the player we saw at the start of the season when I said he was the answer to nothing. He did produce one bit of twinkle toed skill right in front of us in the first half but then ran on without getting his head up. And he nearly got the winner in the second half but I thought he should have done better than hitting his shot into the turf which naturally took some sting out of it. So on balance when my mate Mark suggested that he would be playing in the Jersey League in five years time, that was probably quite a bit OTT, but I wouldn’t put money on him having a lengthy Football League career.

Free-kick on the half way line. Short pass, ball worked back to Clarkey, ball played out, ball lost. Tick – yes we fecking did that again before half time. Well bloody coached.

Playing the ball short in dangerous areas in front of our box and losing it. (Danny Rose in this instance). Tick – we did that too before half time. Well bloody coached again.

Such is my frustration at watching the U’s in their current state I’m looking for something or someone to take my frustration out on from the off. As I’m not one to slag our own players off during a match it is our opponents and the referee that bear the brunt. But I’m fair. I wait until it is justified. (Yeah, right).

I think it was Craig Braham-Barrett I took against. After a well timed sliding tackle by Joe Riley that took the ball and nothing else CBB indicated to the referee that he had been stamped on. So it was a great delight every time he cocked up thereafter.

It wasn’t long in to the game before referee, Pat Miller, was in my bad books for not producing a yellow card after what looked like a nasty challenge on our ginger warrior and man of the match Andy Whing. On reflection I maybe should give Mr Miller credit for not dishing cards out like confetti as some do and will now admit he was one of the better officials we’ve had this season. Like so many others though he overlooked the pulling, holding, pushing and shoving that took place at every corner. It has now become an accepted part of the game. Teams that don’t do it will miss out.

What I was pleased with in the first half was our defensive display. That side of our game now looks to be sorted. Our centre halves are playing well and for their size do really well in the air. If one is beaten the other usually does the necessary. And of course there’s the cover Whingy provides. Joe Riley’s free kick which came within a whisker of giving us the lead shouldn’t be forgotten either.

But seven minutes after the restart we had conceded. I’m not going to apportion blame but will just say it was a good goal and rather out of keeping with most of what the Robins produced. I even clapped it. How fair is that? Or stupid?

Byron Harrison was on to the cross in a flash to angle the ball home.

A bad thing to concede? Possibly not. Our play then became much more about going forward than it had been previously and we took almost total control. If it had not been for an inspired Trevor Carson in the home goal we would surely have taken all three points.

The equaliser didn’t take long to come. There was nothing hit and hope about the long ball with which Whing found Tyrone Barnett. Vision, followed by precision from our on loan striker. Good touches, the second of which took him into the box and the third rifled the ball home.

At last I felt I was being properly entertained but still went away disappointed at the end.

I don’t understand why, when we’ve got the League’s leading scorer, we don’t stick him down the middle more. He could hardly fail to be more effective than Alfie was there. Although out wider Danny Hylton had yet another good game.

I don’t understand why we didn’t get Michael Collins on much sooner, for either Potter or O’Dowda. Or perhaps have taken them both off and got Brian Howard on too.

If the right moves had been made I really think that we could have won this game.

I’m left pondering which the exception is and which is the rule – the way we played before or after conceding. If and when that becomes clear we’ll know the direction of travel, if any, of our football team.

In the meantime we still sit 19th having won two, drawn two and lost two of our last six League games.