At last there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Playing performances have gradually been improving and Saturday’s 3 – 0 win against Orient was sweet news indeed – especially to those of us living in London! December and January have been busy months for the London Branch. There was the annual Christmas meal, in true traditional style Thai cuisine at a restaurant in Farringdon was chosen and seemed to be enjoyed by all who attended. Then more importantly there was an excellent turn out of London Branch fans at both Rushden where we deserved more that a draw and Orient where our members filled our usual meeting place, The Birkbeck Tavern, to bursting. It even prompted the landlord to thank us for coming along and boosting his takings once a year. The result, of course, was a travesty. Some poor defending saw us lose a lead we deserved and in the second half Orient scarcely managed a shot on target. January started with the usual long trip down to Exeter (one of our closer matches!) to see a miserable 1 – 0 reverse. I did however manage to meet up with John Courtenay and Paul Bell in Carlisle just before Christmas and as a result John agreed to hold a forum with London Branch members at the players’ hotel on the evening before the Bristol Rovers game. At the time of writing we have our fingers crossed that the predicted big freeze will not see the game called off. This is not the end of the world however; as we have another opportunity to meet John at the London Branch sponsored game at Brunton Park against Cambridge on March 22nd. An event that is usually well supported and enjoyed, whatever the result. After Bristol Rovers our attention turns to Oxford United on the day after Valentine’s Day, but there will be no love lost when we take on our ex-Manager’s side who are currently riding high in the division. It is good to see Ian Atkins doing well and we wish him the best as he did a marvellous job with incredibly meagre resources at United and kept us in the league. All of that will be forgotten, of course, on Saturday 15th, when we will be yelling Roddy and the lads on to get the points that will make us safe for another year. To make it even more interesting, the London Branch are arranging an eleven-a-side match against an Oxford Supporters XI on the morning of the match. The social side of the London Branch is booming in fact. In addition to our well-attended monthly meetings, not only do we field the occasional soccer team but we compete every season in the Darts and Pool leagues run by the Association of Provincial Supporters’ Clubs in London (of which there are now over 60 teams represented). In our last Pool game against Sunderland we managed to field an entire team of ex-London Branch Pool Captains. It didn’t stop us losing however, probably because they couldn’t agree on the tactics! It wasn’t helped when Sunderland sportingly awarded themselves a 2-0 lead when one of our players turned up late so the 3 – 6 reverse was actually a lot closer than it sounds. Mackems eh? What do you expect? Malcolm Fawcett |
