Toy Virgin trains, honest
The train had a number of claret and blue shirts of, I presume London Villa, as West Ham were playing Wolves and the train didn't stop there, they might have changed at Coventry! The Hammers fans certainly joined us on the way back and in very good voice!
There was the joy of completely missing Birmingham city centre to have a pint but with 15 mts. before the local service I did sneak a beer in the station bar, big mistake and one I will never make again.
It is an awful place. Filled with extras from a bad gangster film, it cost £3.15 for a pint of crap lager, and then one of two drunks spilt a complete pint over himself with sadly the odd drop splashing on me as I was waiting to be served. Mine disappeared down the traditional route as I got out as quickly as I could!
It was definitely Villa fans that were waiting for the 14.17 Walsall service that took less than 20 mts. to the Bescott but half the time for the train to get to Witton where 90% of the passengers got off, it became a ghost train with only the Villa chants slagging off Birmingham on the platform making you realise you weren't alone.
All those optimistic faces at the start of a new season, if only they knew what Wigan were going to do to them over the next couple of hours!
Straight in the ground, this time in the stand behind a goal, there was trouble finding a seat where you avoided a pillar but good to see a good number of Shrimpers, (350?), and in good voice before the kick-off.
The poor couple in front of me must have thought they had the nutter off the bus behind them as I repeatedly put my head in my hands and strange noises, usually of pain, left my mouth.
I know it's League One, I know we don't have the best players, but the basics of a game of football, like passing to your team mates, were going so horribly wrong in a horrible first half where both teams, but Walsall less than us, were doing a good impression of teams that would be fighting out for a twelfth place in the table, and that's being optimistic, come May.
Then a bizarre five minute spell where another Saddlers player got sent off, so much for discipline lads, and home keeper Ince throw the ball directly to the feet of Lee Barnard, who placed it back through Ince's legs into the net, changed the game.
(To enjoy all over again, and again, go here:
www.southendunited-mad.co.uk/news/loadnews.asp?cid=TMNW&id=458138)
If only we could play ten men every week, and we have for periods in our first two league games, it certainly made us look a different team here. Suddenly from being the Faroe Islands we became Brazil.
Well, maybe the Czech Republic, on a good day.
Spreading the ball around the pitch, it was the Southend of the long unbeaten run of last year, and sure enough Dougie Freedman headed in from a wonderful Moose cross ten minutes from the end to give us a lead everyone behind the gall presumed we were going to keep.
'1-0 up and you fucked it up'. I remember when you had to be two up to sing that song, with slightly changed lyrics, and it was sung too early here unfortunately. (It was at Rotherham I first heard it, when they pulled back a Blues two goal lead to make it 2-2. Sadly for them we went a goal up not long after they started singing, eventually winning 4-2, it made me laugh.)
So what did we learn?
Mildenhall is not playing with the greatest of confidence, maybe that's not news.
Captain Adam has returned too early, we have a big Sunderland bloke on the bench, let's use him.
Being over 6ft, al la Heath, does not make you any less vulnerable in the air at times.
If teams swamp the midfield we don't seem to have a plan B with the current formation, the energetic Sawyer must start against Wycombe.
The Moose is a good bet for player-of-the-season, even in August.
Walker is......Walker.
One thing we are not is Arsenal, let's stop trying to play pretty football in the corner with over four minutes left, a third goal would have been easier if we'd tried to get the ball into the box where we had two inform strikers waiting.
(The match report is available in full here:
www.southendunited-mad.co.uk/news/loadrprt.asp?cid=MTCH&id=457945)
After the game time for a couple of pints in the excellent Saddlers Bar with WalsallMAD and occasional S24 contributor Dave, aka Sadlad, (thanks mate), before the 17.34 back to New Street.
Joined by a hundred odd Villa fans with long faces a few stops later.
A 30 minute wait allowed time for a quick pint in the Shakespeare Inn close to the station where there were more reflective Villa fans, blimey I wish they'd won, it was a pretty miserable place, unless you were a Birmingham fan, but they were laying low!
The 18.30 Virgin train, another fiver, was on time, and became packed with fans from various games in the midlands, some noisier than others.
We could have won two, we could have lost two, we've drawn two.
Roll on Spud's Wycombe, time to finish with a win one.