At Home with John and Debbie

Steve took us to the New Windmill Ground nice and early, as big crowds were expected for the local derby between Leamington and Warwick. Sure enough, the car park filled quickly, and three double-decker buses emptied into the ground, but while impressive at 785, we didn’t quite beat the Boxing Day crowd of over 1,000 for the away match.

Whether Bruce Forsyth counted for the 785, I don’t know.

Racing Club came out of the stalls at a gallop (do you see what I’ve done there?) for a goal in the third minute. I was still jockeying (this is too easy) for a viewing position and didn’t see the details, but it seems goalie Richard Morris made a mistake.

A strong wind across the ground made high balls difficult to control. It looked fairly even although there were a number of scary moments in the wrong goal area.

Then Josh Blake finished off a complicated set of passes for an equaliser. “Right, we can start again”, said Debbie.

Just before half time, Jon Adams headed in a second goal.

The second half was closely matched and exciting. Warwick were awarded several free kicks close to the goal, but failed to capitalise each time. From such a large crowd, the atmosphere was somewhat muted: many of the infrequent visitors not being all that vocal, and much of the crowd noise being carried off by the wind.

In the closing minutes of the game, Warwick repeatedly threatened to bring the game equal, and I was surprised to see so many people returning to their cars during these nail-biting moments.

The end result, though, was three points in the league, putting us 6th for the moment, and the right to brag that Leamington won all four South Warwickshire derbys this season (Stratford being the third team).

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 9th, 2006 at 08:01 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.