At Home with John and Debbie

My weekend is over late — I took Monday off and stayed an extra day at my parents’. We were supposed to be there on Saturday, but the small matter of an FA Cup tie in Ossett.

On the drive up the M1, we saw quite a few fellow members of the Gold and Black Convoy, and got some friendly waves. We stuck to Yorkshire music on the journey — the Kaiser Chiefs, The Human League, Pulp, etc. My LFO album never made it to MP3 unfortunately.

Steve, who had set off 30 minutes after us, caught us up, and we arrived in Ossett together, to park in a pay-and-display car park with no machine (and not tickets displayed in any of the cars).

With an hour and a half to spare, we went into the Bar Royal, which already had a good number of Brakes supporters in effusive mood. There was a table free, and space to order at the bar, so we had some soft drinks (since all of us were going to drive at some point in the day) and some food. Debbie and I enjoyed giant Yorkshire puddings with beef stew, while Steve had a burger. By the time we left for a quick look around the town, the pub, like my stomach, was bursting at the seams.

The match itself was well recorded in the national press, although it appears only the Murdoch rags, who had people at the match, got the score right (2-3 to the Brakes). We ran the gamut of emotions, from fear (of some malevolent Ossett crowd members, team colours conspicuously missing, who were later ejected from the ground), dejection (at the first goal going to Ossett), optimism (as Brakes rallied then eventually equalised), elation (as we scored again and again), disappointment (as we gave away a player and a penalty, giving Ossett a goal), nail biting tension (as we defended hard through protracted stoppage time), then finally joy as the final whistle blew.

With a 4 hour drive to Aberystwyth ahead, we made a speedy departure. Police vans had gathered outside the ground — it seems 4 drunken troublemakers had come from Leamington (out of approximately 600 fans) — but we didn’t witness any trouble ourselves.

We were on the M62 when Five Live read out the FA Cup first round draw — Brakes play Colchester away in two weekends’ time. We chose a good year to go glory hunting!

Incidentally, The Secret Migration by Mercury Rev makes a better soundtrack to a drive through the Moors at twilight than it does for a drive through the American Deep South.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at 10:06 and is filed under Brakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.