I love my job sometimes, last November I spoke to my boss about arranging some meetings in the North West, spending one day in Leeds and the another in Manchester. The day I chose to spend in Leeds and visit various media agencies and kit suppliers was January 27th, hmmm convient? I call it good planning!
So armed with an overnight stay in Leeds and train fare paid for I set off not entirely confident. Well, let's be honest, not confident in the slightest, but happy to know I'd be there to cheer our boys on.
I got into Leeds at lunch time rushed around my various meetings including one fella who had the decency to have gone home for the day despite the fact I'd travelled all the way from Grays to meet him and preach the FourFourTwo gospel. All finished by 5pm meant I could get back to the hotel and sort myself out before enjoying a cheekie one or two in town.
So I ended up in the Old Peacock, which I'd visited on a couple of occasions, the last when West Ham played them. On that occassion there were around 150 Northerners wanting to rip any Southerner eyes out but were being nicely marshalled onto buses by the Yorkshire Police and another where I went in and there was a burnt out car in the Beer Garden, oh how the other half live! This time though nothing more than a quiet pint with Sky Sports News on in the background, listening to the locals views on the night's game. They were confident and let's face it they weren't wrong, we hadn't won in 6 games and an away trip to Leeds wasn't a likely place to start.
When the game got underway our performance in the first 11 mins not only had me watching through my eyes but completely backed up the locals opinions and it was more of a case of keeping the score down. With Theo Robinson cutting an isolated lone figure up front it was always going to be a struggle but to then starve him of the ball made it almost a training match for Leeds who looked impressive in my opinion.
Mildenhall made some quality saves from Delph, Beckord and Douglas and the Whites knocked it around whilst we ran around like headless chickens. It got worse before half time when James Walker who had impressed me against Orient darted into the Leeds box only to pull his hamstring, he was replaced by Damian Scannell and it was only the fact that I'd never done it before that stopped me from leaving there and then.
In the second half, Beckford turned Mr Southend inside out but was denied by Midenhall who we had to thank for keeping the score down. Then came our two chances chance when Theo burst through and from a way out hit his shot at the outside of the post. This was before Craig David from Bo Selecta went through and his attempted chip was thwarted by Ankergren's body at the edge of his box. To cap off a quality nights work Midenhall made a point blank save from Becchio who from inside the 6 yards box. It finished at 2 and I dread to think what it could have been as Leeds toyed with us like a cat would a ball of wool.
Moving on to the debacle that was last Tuesday, having been snowed in from work on the Monday and having seen a big percentage of the fixtures called off via SkySports News I was impressed and very surprised that it was announced via the official website that our game was going to go ahead. I then sat anxiously on the Tuesday (Thanks C2C) again watching Sky Sports News seeing that any remaining games were being called off left right and centre with the notable exception of ours. With this Mrs TB decided that after spending a wonderful day in the snow would like to cap our argument free two days off together with a trip to Roots Hall, I phoned up the club and they said at 11ish that the game was going ahead and that the referee would be doing a pitch inspection at 1.30. I again (I'm impatient when I want to be) phoned the club at 5pm to see if the game was on and was cheerfully told by a fella in the box office it was on!
Mightily impressed I thought about the poor sods that would have to have travelled down from Scunny and the times that they would have to set off thinking there was no way they could call it off anyway and with that we wrapped the boy up in about 16 layers of clothing before getting the train to Westcliff and walking down.
We got to the West Stand at around 6.30 where we were greeted by the site of a big crowd of people and stewards stood bemused. We obviously found out that the referee had decided to have yet another look at the pitch and we weren't even being allowed to our seats, I would estimate that there was around 100 people stood on the slope down to the West Stand turnstiles and it was getting colder and more slippery, I almost fell over twice myself. The longer we stood there waiting the more people continued to turn up the stewards were getting even less information than we were and there was yet more people slipping over as we could only imagine that the ref was by now doing impressions of Todd Carty down the sidelines.
It was at 7.17 that we got told "I'm sorry ladies and gentleman - the game is off" this was done by some poor sod in a white jacket with an "I" on it. It wasn't unexpected but the whole situation was daft, why did they leave it so late to call it off? Why couldn't Mr Martin himself have come out and dished out the explanations and why still now has there been no - "We're sorry".
Yes, fair play to the fans, including two from Scunthorpe I believe, who helped the club sort the pitch out, but if there was any doubt at 3pm, and he wasn't 100% sure the game could start having knowledge of the weather forecast, why did the referee not call the game off and stop the Scunthorpe fans travelling down.
I've seen the excuses why it wasn't called off on the Monday and fair enough but why wasn't the ref who was from Norfolk not asked to travel over earlier than 1.30 to give the pitch a once over?