The melancholy magic of the FA Cup

I watched the FA Cup final on Saturday. The timing worked well for me to watch it as I have been confined to the house isolating after being infected by covid.

A generic picture (by me) of the Wembley Stadium arch...

I have actually made more of an effort to watch the FA Cup final in the last few years. I enjoyed last year's game when Leicester won the Cup for the first time in this history. This year's contest was less exciting on paper, with both Liverpool and Chelsea winning it multiple times in the past and also being two of the really big teams in the league. FA Cup finals are always better when the less successful clubs get a tilt at winning. 

Back in 2019, I blogged about how the first FA Cup final after my Dad died was an unexpected moment where I keenly felt his loss. That feeling has diminished somewhat over the last couple of years, but it's still something missing from the occasion. Dad would always watch the cup final and talk to me on the phone about it afterwards, even when for several years I wasn't particularly fussed about it and hadn't bothered watching. 

People talk about the "magic" of the FA Cup and really what they mean is nostalgia. As I watched Liverpool and Chelsea punch and counterpunch their way to a 0-0 draw, extra time and penalties, I remembered watching the various cup finals when I was a kid. It made me feel melancholic as the nostalgia washed over me. 

Cup final day was always a big day in our house. In the 1980s it was one of those very rare times that a football match was broadcast live on TV. It almost seems silly now - my time off isolating has been spent watching live football from almost every level in the top five tiers of English football - but back then there was the Cup final, and that was about it.

It was also on both main channels, BBC1 and ITV, so it felt like a real moment when the nation stopped to watch the football. (They did that again this year, but we have way more than 4 channels now so it dominates the schedules less.) We always used to watch it on the BBC, often starting with the build up before lunch time. Some years we would switch over to ITV for the bit presented by "Saint and Greavsie" (Ian St.John and Jimmy Greaves, who had a weekly football chat show on Saturdays). But normally we ignored the ITV output. 

Those were halcyon days for FA Cup finals. I don't remember the one from 1984, when we had just moved into our house in Shrewsbury. But I remember watching Manchester United v Everton in 1985 - notable for Kevin Moran becoming the first player sent off in an FA Cup final, and Manchester United winning in extra time through a goal from wonder-kid Norman Whiteside. I wanted Everton to win and was disappointed that they lost. 

I don't particularly remember anything from the 1986 final when Liverpool won the FA Cup and became the first team to win the League Title and the FA Cup in the same season (the "Double") in my short life-time. Everton were the losing finalists again.

I have vivid memories of the final in 1987 when Coventry City won the FA Cup for the first and only time in their history, beating Spurs. Firstly, there were lots of goals, including a great diving header by Keith Houchen, and a looping own goal that sliced in off Spurs defender Gary Mabbutt's knee. But it was also played in brilliant sunlight and the Wembley grass was bright, bright green. We had a video recorder and taped the game. My brother and I rewatched that match several times, which is probably why it burns so bright in my memory.

And then in 1988, there was the famous win by Wimbledon over Liverpool. Nobody gave Wimbledon much of a chance, but they nicked a 1-0 win. By then I was fed up with Liverpool winning everything and all the gloryhunters at school, so I was very happy that Wimbledon won. 

Those are the finals I really remember. I'm sure I watched others. I remember Gazza being stretchered off after injuring himself with a ridiculous tackle in 1991. But other memories are hazy. What I mainly feel when I think about the FA Cup final relates to the whole family sitting down to watch the game, my father's infectious excitement, the sheer novelty of football on the telly, and this marking the end of a football season and in its own way the beginning of summer.

The other thing I remember is the family sweepstake. Once the team line-ups were announced, my dad would write all the player's names on tiny bits of scrap paper and we would take it in turns to draw them. Whoever had the piece of paper with the name of the first player to score a goal won. The prize was picking a box of chocolates afterwards, when we would walk across the park opposite our house to the little paper shop near the school, where there would be a small range of boxed chocs behind a glass screen. 

It felt like my mum won every year, even when she picked unlikely players to score first. This might be a trick of memory as I have no record of who actually won each year. It just felt like it was always my mum who was lucky in the sweep. It didn't matter anyway because the chocolates got shared. 

That vignette in itself is wrapped in nostalgia, like all these memories. The paucity of television channels. The simplicity of a sweepstake with very little at stake. Just those little family traditions that made the day special. That's where the magic lay, if there was any magic at all. Not on the field at Wembley, but in our living room. We made those moments happen and then froze them in sunlit amber as happy-sad memories. 

Maybe Dad was trying to keep those moments alive, with those phone calls after the game all those years after I left home when we didn't watch the game together any more. I understand that now. Now that the phone calls have stopped. 

End of a football season that never really started for me

Yesterday, Shrewsbury Town played their last game of their Football League One season. I have felt increasingly disconnected from football over the course of the season. It's an equivalent conundrum to the old philosophical question about trees - if two teams play football and nobody's watching, then does the result still matter?

Fenced off from football

Shrewsbury finished in 17th, a slot they inhabited for most of the season after climbing out of the relegation zone under their new manager, Steve Cotterill. They maintained that position while the manager was in hospital recovering from Covid-19, including a stint in intensive care. So it has been a difficult season, with very few positives. They reached the third round of the FA Cup, and so I watched their game on BT Sport. But the rest of the season has passed by without me really noticing. 

The one occasion I really felt a pang of missing out was back in February, when I couldn't go on my annual trip to watch Shrewsbury play Bristol Rovers. I blogged about it at the time. I felt that pang again this past weekend, when I realised that Barry Town were playing TNS in Oswestry on the Saturday and then Shrewsbury were away at near neighbours Crewe Alexandra on the Sunday. In pre-Covid times, that would have been a perfect double-header weekend for me.

The initial cancellation of the season and early days of the UK lockdown back in 2020 meant several of my plans to watch football matches got nixed. I had planned to go up to Sunderland to watch Shrewsbury play in the Stadium of Light for the first time in April 2020, but that game never happened due to Covid. This season's match was restricted too. If Sunderland win the play-offs and go up to the Championship at the end of the season, then my chance to see Shrewsbury play them in the league will probably disappear with them. (Similarly, Bristol Rovers got relegated, so no February trip to that game next year either.)

The Euro 2020 games last summer got postponed. I had a ticket for a game at Wembley and for a first ever trip to Hampden Park, but have since cashed those tickets in for refunds. The games are likely to go ahead with very reduced capacity this summer and other people who held on to their tickets are now being told they can't go. 

The other summer event that I missed was Barry Town's trip to the Faroe Islands for a Europa League game. I would have loved to have gone on that away trip, and I would have probably taken my Mum with the hope we could connect with some of my Grandma's family. We went to the Faroes as a family when I was 12 and I have always wanted to go back. 

Obviously the Euro 2020 games and the trip to the Faroes would have been quite big events. But I feel equally sad at missing out on trips to the Memorial Stadium and end-of-season double-headers of meaningless games. 

It has been over 14 months since I last went to a football match and this is the first season where I have not been to a single game since I started chronicling my football matches in 1992. I miss it sometimes, and I'm not really convinced that the season has happened at all. 

A second "decade in review" blog post

Back in 2010 I did a summary of the preceding decade and concluded by saying “Roll on 2020!” (Oh, how that feels hilarious right now with 2020 being a terrible year in so many ways.)

Sometimes I find that when I go back to old blog posts, reading that review feels like reading the life of a different person. I've always been struck by that (possibly untrue) statistic that says all the cells in our body are replaced over an 8 year cycle, so in a way that blogpost was written by an entirely different person.  But, anyway, ten years later, I'm still here and still blogging, albeit not as frequently as I did back then. So, a decade on, I thought I may as well review what I have been up to from my early-mid-30s to my early-mid-40s. 

I’ll do this on a year by year basis and just pick a couple of things per year. Most of the links will be to my original blog posts about things.

2010

The big things happened here on 1 day in particular, the 1st April. This was the day I had a job interview to go and work in the NHS, returned back to my current employer where I was called aside and given my official redundancy notice, and then in the evening I went to the theatre and saw Dirk Benedict in a Columbo play. Dirk Benedict was Face Man in the A Team. We used to pretend we were the A-Team in the playground at school and we all wanted to be Face. I was star-struck, as you can tell in this photo.

On the 4th May (Star Wars Day) I started my NHS job and I have been proud to work in the NHS ever since. 

2011

The big thing about 2011 was becoming an uncle for the first time. Baby Joy arrived in our lives. She yawned while I was talking to her on the first day she met me and has been tired of my antics ever since.

I've subsequently accrued four more niblings (that's a real word!) during the decade. They're all cool.

The footballing highlight of the year was a trip to the Emirates to see Shrewsbury play Arsenal in the league cup. I bought my first half-and-half scarf. #NoRegrets. Shrewsbury were even winning for a bit and the fans sang that Arsene Wenger was getting sacked in the morning. He stayed on another 7 years.

2012

The big event this year was the Olympics. I remember getting up really early to see the Olympic Torch being carried through Grangetown. 

During the actual games, I went to see the Olympic football in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, including a double header of group games and the third place play-off match.Is still think it was a swizz that they promised us a medal ceremony then decided at the last minute that the third place winners would receive their bronze medals the next night in London. It gave me an opportunity to see a rare sight, a Great Britain international team.

I also almost got eaten by a hippo in Paris, when we visited the city for my sister-in-law Abby's 40th birthday.

2013 (there's a sort of review of the year here)

The stand out thing for me was going to London with Connor to see the Tragically Hip play a gig in Trafalgar Square to celebrate Canada Day. We then went the following night to see them play a gig in Camden. 

Later in the year Cathy and I spent our fifteenth wedding anniversary building a Lego camper van.

2014

I can't really blog anything about my experience doing Jury service, but I found it hugely interesting and there was an incident during the judge's summing up which made the national newspapers. 

I also did a work placement in a health board comms team that coincided with the Daily Mail spending an entire week running stories smearing the reputation of NHS Wales. They literally dug up story after story from the preceding ten years, many of which had been resolved, and ran them as if they were all happening that week. I learned a lot about what utter scumbags some sections of the press can be in that week. The photo is from the flu vaccination campaign I was involved in.

My work placement was based in Caerleon, where I also started my MSc course in Business Psychology. That had an unexpected outcome. In the first module we did a session on motivation and burnout and my scores were a lot higher than any of my fellow students. It was a good indication that I needed to move jobs.

2015

Three big things happened to me in 2015. Firstly, I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in January. That came as a shock and I was put on some hardcore medication because I was extremely ill.

I lost weight (over 10kgs; 4 inches off my waist; 2 t-shirt sizes) and got my blood glucose back into the healthy range. For the last year and a half I have been off diabetes medication. I haven't blogged much about having Type 2 Diabetes. There is a lot of stigma attached to it, and it's the punchline in a lot of jokes. It takes a certain amount of confidence to tell people you have it

In June I started a new job, still in the NHS, taking on a national role as a clinical network manager. I'd spent 5 years in my previous job and had reached a point where I needed to move. I took a lot of good memories with me.

Two months after I started my new job my Grandma died. She had been hospitalised after a fall, but that was just toward the end of a long decline. I gave a tribute at her funeral. This photo taken in 2014 is one of the last photos I took of her. I like it because you can see the mischief in her eyes.

2016

I turned 40 in 2016 and had a big party. The next month we went on a massive road trip in the USA and Canada. We watched the Red Sox at Fenway on Star Wars night. We went to Cooperstown, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. We went on pilgrimage to Kingston, Ontario. We fell in love with Toronto and visited Niagara Falls.

(Those pancakes were the "healthy" breakfast option. They came with fruit!)

2017

Our holiday the following year was a bit more low key. We had a day exploring Lundy, which felt like visiting the end of the world even though we didn't even really leave the Bristol Channel.

I also graduated with my MSc. It was a lovely graduation ceremony and I felt very pleased to have completed the course, given some of the difficult things that had happened in the duration. One of my favourite pieces of work was analysing the psychology of Lego's marketing. My final piece of work seemed to uncover a link between personal self-worth and a diminished opinion of your manager.

My gigs this year were a bit eclectic. Midnight Oil in London (after many year thinking I would I never get the chance to see them in concert again) and Sir Tom Jones, recording a TV show in Cardiff Bay.

2018

Shrewsbury Town went to Wembley twice, and lost both times. They are five for five in losing there now. I can't even express how incredibly frustrating the 2017-2018 season ultimately was.

Cathy and I had a better time in London a couple of months later when we went and saw The Muppets live at the O2 Arena. It was brilliant. The Electric Mayhem rock!

The second half of the year was spent in a state of flux because we had our kitchen gutted and rebuilt. It was a very stressful experience. I really love our new kitchen but I've yet to take any photos that do it justice. Or show the finished floor.

Cathy had a lot of health news in 2018, beginning with a visit to Addenbrookes in Cambridge where she was given a diagnosis of lipodystrophy. It's an ultra-rare condition, affecting fewer than 4 people per million. I always knew she was special. Then towards the end of the year she was diagnosed with cancer and had to have surgery. We literally had the kitchen and other construction work finish on the Friday and she had her surgery on the Monday. Thankfully they got it all in one go. It was a stressful way to end the year and I was glad to see the back of 2018!

2019
The last year up for review. I went out to Pizza Hut with Cathy one night and didn't take my phone. Cathy had a message on her phone from my brother asking if she knew where I was. So I rang him. We were due to go on a fishing weekend together and I thought he was calling to get me to pay my half of the costs.

He wasn't.

When I called him back, he told me my Dad had died.

I'm still getting used to not having Dad phoning me every week. In my tribute to him at the funeral I told a story about a time he was described as being "stuck on transmit". I miss those transmissions.

I miss my Dad.

Trawling through photos for this blogpost I found a few of him that I'd forgotten. I really like this one of him with my nephew in 2014.

The rest of 2019 was a bit of a blur in comparison. There was the trip to Belfast to see Barry Town play in the Europa League, and we had a lovely week in Caernarfon in the autumn. But most of the year was spent helping my Mum sort out stuff in her house and slowly coming to terms with not having Dad around.

So that's where I will close out this inordinately long post. After the optimism of the post back in 2010, I have no desire to tempt fate by saying roll on 2030! Hopefully I will still be blogging then. If not, well, this was 2010-2019. 

Catching the feather - My tribute to Dad

This is a long post. I was asked to give a tribute to my Dad at his funeral. He was difficult to summarise in a few words, and I'm not a good enough writer to try. But this is what I came up with. 

Dad ready for Stamp World London 2010

In all the cards we have received as a family – and thank you all for those – and in the many comments on Facebook in tribute to dad, those personal notes and stories from so many people talk about a man who was a genuine one off.

All of us here will have our stories about dad and I’ve been asked to tell a few that give a flavour of his character, on behalf of the family. Some of these are from Mum, some from Dave, Sarah, Cathy, Esther, Dan, and suggestions from the grandchildren too.

But I’m going to start with one of mine...

A couple of years ago I went to the Memorial Ground in Bristol to see Bristol Rovers play Shrewsbury Town. I met Dave and Dad who had arrived a while before me. Naturally, Dad had managed to befriend a Rovers fan who had smuggled him and Dave into the home supporters bar for a drink, and then smuggled them out again.

When I arrived, this chap offered to do the same for me, and we queued for the bar. I thanked him for taking care of my brother and my dad and he smiled. He said, “Your dad... he’s a lovely guy. But he’s, erm, he’s stuck on transmit.”

That is probably one of the best descriptions ever of my Dad. There were few people he met who didn’t depart from a conversation with him without knowing he was a doctor and a Shrewsbury Town fan and about the church he went to, and the community work he was involved in. He would tell everyone at length about the work of Street Pastors, or Kidz Klub, or Shropshire Philatelic Society or whatever.

In fairness, Dad did find out a lot about people too. He loved asking questions, often asking several in rapid fire succession without waiting for answers in-between. Mum often had to intervene to save a person he had just met who was being interrogated, and it was excruciating if as a kid he did it to one of our friends. Sarah probably wins in terms of the most embarrassing story – Dad innocently asked her ex-boyfriend if Sarah was a good kisser, and unfortunately asked him in front of her current boyfriend. Sarah sums that up as “how best to embarrass my teenager”!

One of my favourite stories about dad was one I heard many times growing up. It happened before I was born when my parents lived in Birmingham. Mum had gone Christmas shopping. Ailsa, who was lodging with them at the time, was poorly with flu. Dad was left to fend for himself and decided to cook himself bacon and eggs. When my mum returned home laden with shopping bags, dad met her at the door and told her about his culinary travails.

There is a long version of this story but I’ll tell a truncated version. I’ll skip the bit where he burned his fingers picking up the bacon to see if it was cooked underneath, because my favourite bit is about the eggs.

As my dad explained to my increasingly exasperated mum, who was still stood on the doorstep, still holding the heavy shopping, he had picked up the egg box, and opened it, and a feather had flown out, and he caught the feather!

But he dropped the eggs.

My mum says she found one of those cracked eggs under the washing machine three weeks later.

I love that story about Dad. He caught the feather, but he dropped the eggs.

When Dad got talking, time often got away from him. As kids, we would wait as he had conversation after conversation with people after church. Usually we would be having a kickaround with some of the other kids in the Sunday school room, and family by family the others would leave until it was just me and Dave left. Dad would literally be talking to whoever was on locking up duty that week while Mum, me and Dave waited for him to get in the car, so we could go home and Mum could try and rescue the Sunday roast.

Dad’s post-church conversations backfired on him one night after an evening service. I was learning to drive and was in the driver’s seat of the family Vauxhall Astra sitting in the car park outside the old Barnabas Church Centre in Hill’s Lane in Shrewsbury.

Mum was in the passenger seat. We were waiting for Dad. Eventually the back door opened, dad got in and the back door closed. The clunk of the door closing was my cue and I put the pedal to the metal the way a teenager does.

We turned out of the car park and hit the first traffic lights. They were green and we sailed through. The traffic lights at Welsh Bridge were green and we sailed through. The traffic lights on Smithfield Road were green and we sailed through. I said, “Wow, this is amazing, can you believe all these lights are green, dad?”

There was silence from the back seat.

“Dad?”

My mum turned her head.

The back seat was empty, except for Dad’s large shoulder bag full of papers. My mum yelped with shock. I almost drove into the kerb. Where was he?

We quickly decided it couldn’t have been the Rapture, because dad would have taken his bag with him.

(My dad always carried a bag of stuff with him. I remember him going into a fancy shop in The Parade in Shrewsbury where he was sold a Continental “man bag”, when such things were really unheard of. When one of my teenage friends referred to it as “your dad’s handbag” he protested to them that “It’s not a handbag. It’s a Frenchman’s Purse!” Because that’s so much better...)

Anyway, it wasn’t the rapture. So we did a loop around the one way system and returned the car park, to find my dad waiting for us rather annoyed. Apparently he had got into the car, but then he had seen someone else in the car park he wanted to talk to, so he had got back out of the car to talk to them.

Apparently Dad ran down Barker Street after our car as I sped through green light after green light. But, what can I say? I didn’t check my mirrors.

Dad was annoyed because he thought we were pranking him and he didn’t like to be the object of a joke. He would often tell people “Welshmen don’t like to be teased”.

But he liked to play jokes. He liked to answer the phone saying “Church Stretton Naval Base”, which confused my friends, then Dave’s friends, then Sarah’s friends.

He was playful. He loved playing games with his children and then his grandchildren, whether that was setting up a Hornby trainset on the dining room table, pretending the toy animals on the sofa were talking in silly voices, or even just going over to Springfield Mere opposite our house to feed the ducks.

As you grow older your relationships with your parents often change, and for me, as an adult, I can honestly say I became friends with my Dad. Our friendship grew after he retired, but his old life as a doctor poked through occasionally. We would meet former patients who would greet him with “Hello, Doctor.”

On one of our trips to Wembley with Shrewsbury Town – and Dad, unfortunately, has left this earth with a one hundred per cent record when it comes to Wembley. Five Shrewsbury games there. Five defeats – we were in the crowd outside the stadium before the game and a lady came up to Dad and greeted him really warmly. She was accompanied by her son, a tall six foot something well-built powerful-looking young man. She and Dad chatted briefly and then she went on her way. I said to Dad, “She seemed really pleased to see you.”

He smiled a modest little smile and said, “Well you see her son, there? When he was two years old I was called to their house. He was having an asthma attack. I nebulised him on the kitchen table and saved his life.”

He didn’t say it boastfully. If anything he was a bit embarrassed talking about it. I saw something else in my dad that day. For all his funny quirks, he also did things that were extraordinary.

He loved people and he loved being with people. As his children if we came to stay, we knew we could never leave quickly. He would often come and knock on the car window as were about to drive away to check one more thing with us, ask one more question, tell us one more fact.

On the Saturday before he died, I’d come to Shrewsbury for the day and had tea at their house. My last memory of Dad was looking towards the house as I got ready to back out of the drive onto the road. He was standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the light in the hallway, watching me go when really he wanted me to stay.

Ultimately, the reason so many people have felt this loss with our family is because you knew that he was interested in you; in your lives, in what you were doing, in your dreams.

He lived out that Scripture to rejoice with those who rejoice and to mourn with those who mourned. He welcomed people at the door of Hope Church because he believed that everyone should be welcome. He was an encourager to so many because he wanted everyone to succeed. He believed that people mattered and that powered his faith, his politics, his friendships.

I know a lot of people here but I don’t know everyone. I may not know why you came today, or how you knew my dad. He was many things. He was a doctor, a colleague, a mentor, a boss. He was a leader, a preacher, an advocate, a trustee. He was secretary of the society, a prayer co-ordinator, a fellow fan in block 14. He was a husband, an uncle, a grandfather – “little Grandad”, and some of us had the privilege of calling him dad.

John Matthias was my father and my friend, and I loved him. That’s all I really needed to say today. Thank you for listening to everything else as well.

2017-18 football season review - new records in the modern era

With the World Cup over, I no longer have an excuse for not writing my season review of 2017-18.

2017-18 was a record high season for me in the 'modern era', which for me is any time after about 1996. I went to 30 football matches, the second most I've been to in a season ever and the highest number since 1993-94. Along the way I saw the champions elect of England, I went to Wembley twice, and I saw Wales blow their best chance of making it to a World Cup since that time they lost a qualifying play off to a bunch of juiced up Russians.

As per previous seasons, here are the overall stats:
Season: 2017-18
Total games: 30
Most goals in a game: 8
Fewest goals in a game: 0
Total goals seen: 81
Number of football grounds visited: 7 (2 of which I’d never visited before)

In previous years I gave a little pen picture of each game, but that would be exhausting for 30 games. Instead, I'm just going to do a rough overview and then give out some awards.

I went to thirty games for three main reasons.

1) Shrewsbury Town had their best season in a generation, spending a lot of the season in a promotion place before slipping to third in the final weeks of the season. They went to Wembley twice - in the Checkatrade Trophy final and in the play-off final.

They also had a sell-out televised third round FA Cup game, which included Joe Hart's return to his hometown club. I saw them win away at Bristol Rovers, I saw them beat Walsall for the first time in many encounters, and I even saw them win on my birthday, against Oxford United.

2) Football is a people activity. My friend Sara is a season-ticket holder at Cardiff City, and so are most of her family. But sometimes they can't all go to games and they invite me along to fill a vacant seat. I saw five games with them this season. My mate Steve sorted me a ticket in the away end of Cardiff City Stadium to see QPR, and we also went to a couple of other more random games. And my mate Ben came with me to a couple of matches, and I went to see him play in the Welsh League a couple of times. Until he decided to swap sunny South Wales for some place called Los Angeles, California. What was he thinking?

3) Barry Town are back in the Welsh Premier League. I decided to go along to one of their first games, and ended up there five times over the course of the season. It's a nice atmosphere, it's affordable, and the games usually had a decent number of goals. There's a hard core of fans who sing throughout and I really like that. And you get unexpected stuff like this.

THE AWARDS

Best team: Without a doubt, Manchester City. I have never seen football played like that.
Best moment: Seeing Shrewsbury win with a late, late, goal at Bristol Rovers, courtesy of an unpredictable bit of skill from Alex Rodman. It was the first time Shrewsbury had won at Bristol Rovers since the 1960s. I'd driven over there on my own. The weather was crap. The stadium is crap. The game wasn't great. And then there was THIS!
Second best moment: Ben Woodburn. The dream was still alive! Russia, here we come...
Biggest disappointment: After two trips in a season, Shrewsbury have now been 5 times to Wembley. I have been 5 times to watch them. I have seen them lose 5 times. That's all you need to know about Shrewsbury's season, really. Ultimately, after being surprise candidates for promotion, they ended up with nothing. Here's a suitably dismal photo.

Most frustrating game: Shrewsbury's 0-0 draw against West Ham in the FA Cup. Live on TV and West Ham were poor. Shrewsbury's Stefan Payne missed the one chance that fell to him that would have won the game. This was my only 0-0 of the season. But I did see Alan Shearer and Ian Wright in their temporary TV studio. Later they got their make up done.

Strangest goal: Kevin de Bruyne against Cardiff City in the FA Cup. I saw this from behind the goal and he made an absolute idiot out of the whole defence.
Most memorable miss: Neil Maupay for Brentford against Cardiff. I was again stood behind the goal and I have absolutely no idea how he missed. Cardiff then almost immediately went up the other end and scored a second goal to seal their win.
Most touching moment: It's unusual for a visiting player to get a round of applause from the home fans when his name is read out. But Joe Hart did when his name was read out over the tannoy when West Ham came to the New Meadow. Then the rest of his team-mates got booed. As you'd expect.
Strangest scoreline: STM Sports 4 v 4 AFC Lwydcoed. I went to see my mate Ben play for STM Sports in the Welsh League Division 2. he got subbed off when STM were winning and we watched his team score one and concede two goals in the last 10 minutes of the game. I took this photo of him in action, along with a STM Canine Superfan who had made his owner bring him along.

Most unusual match up: Wales 'C' v England 'C' at Jenner Park, down in Barry. I have now seen Wales, Wales B, Wales C and Wales Under-21s play. Read a full review here.
Best crowd: Has to be the Barry Town fans. They always make me laugh.
Unlikely moment of fame: I went with my friend Steve to see Cardiff Met play in a post-season play-off against Barry Town. The game was live on Sgorio. And so were we at one point!

And finally, the most stupid thing seen at a football match: This sign by the concession stands in Wembley!

And that's it. Roll on next season.

25 years of football - some Shrewsbury highs and lows

I've blogged recently about 25 years of watching football, with most of the games being Shrewsbury Town games. I've seen a few highs and plenty of lows in that time, or, as the joke goes, I've stuck with them through thin and thinner.

I've already mentioned a couple of Shrewsbury FA Cup triumphs in my blog post about memorable matches, and a couple of Shrewsbury programmes slipped into my blog post about random games, but here are a few more that mark special moments.

The second season of my record-keeping (1993-94) was a promotion year. Which is why I'm beginning this round up in the sunny glamour of Rochdale.

My friend Jim was the reason I went to Rochdale. He convinced me it would be a good idea for us to go on a supporter's coach for a regular Saturday away game. I'm not sure if we were a couple of miles from the ground, while we were mired in the traffic you get mired in when you visit Northern urban sprawls, that we heard that the game had been called off, or whether we had actually arrived at the ground. Anyway, after three hours on a bus, we basically got back on the bus for a three hour ride home. I don't remember much about Rochdale, except that it seemed like the biggest post-war council estate I had ever seen. The only other memory is when the bus pulled over next to a canal for a large contingent of men to cheerfully relieve themselves straight from the bank, oblivious to the cars trundling past behind them.

We had paid for the coach seats, so got to go to the rearranged fixture for free, on a Tuesday night.  Rochdale away in 1994, is a legendary game amongst a certain generation of Town fans, however. Because Rochdale away is the game we went top of the league for the first time that season. And I was there.

Thanks to my habit of the time of defacing programmes, you can see that Dave Walton scored the winner right at the end of the match. I remember having a restricted view from the terrace and not really seeing the goal. But everyone went nuts so I joined in.

This is the programme from the final game of the season. It's a promotion special, not that you'd know from the cover! We played Wigan Athletic, one of those perennial minnows that have never really done very much.

And the table. confirming we were champions. This was a time when programmes included average attendances for all the teams in the league, and even ordered them in the table. You can see how Shrewsbury had the 5th highest gates in the league, while the day's visitors, Wigan were second from bottom. That must be why they've never really done anything.

In all seriousness though, whatever you think of Dave Whelan, this is where he started from. Lots of people throw money at football, but to take a club from this level and into the Premier League requires a certain bit of nous.

In another aside, four teams in the table, including promoted Chester, have since gone bust and had to reform way down the pyramid.

Of course, Shrewsbury built on that success to establish the club as a formidable force in football. Why only less than 10 years later, they were relegated out of the league altogether.

'The Scunthorpe connection' was a nice bit of book-ending. Shrewsbury and Scunthorpe were both elected to the football league in 1950 and played each other on the opening day of the Division 3 (North) season that year. It was kind of fitting that they played each other on Shrewsbury's last day in the league as well. We didn't have time to miss each other, though, as the clubs were drawn against each other in the first round of the FA Cup the following season.

Rochdale make another appearance in this blog post. Town bounced back into the league at the first time of asking, and had a new star in the making to boot. I saw Joe Hart play twice for Town - away at Cheltenham, and against Rochdale on 6 August 2005 - the opening day of the season

Team line up. He was our Number One.

And there he is in the team poster as well!

There is a nine month gap in my football-going during that season, from a Wales game in early September to a summer England friendly the following June. In the November I was signed off work with depression and spent the next few months getting my head back. I didn't see Joe play for Shrewsbury again and when the next season rolled round he had transferred to Manchester City. (I have seen him play in Shrewsbury since, in goal for West Ham United in the FA Cup third round this season.)

Shortly after Joe left Gay Meadow, Shrewsbury also left, for a new stadium. I found these in my box of programmes.

You don't have to be a silly sod to support Shrewsbury Town, but you could have bought one.

The final season at Gay Meadow ended with a trip to the new Wembley stadium in the play offs. I actually watched the last game at Gay Meadow in a pub round the corner from my house.

Shrewsbury earned some firsts that day. First goal scored in a football league play off final at the new Wembley. First player sent off at the new Wembley. First team beaten in a play off final at the new Wembley.

Two years later we were back.

Yes, that is Grant Holt on the cover. One of the best strikers I have ever seen in Shrewsbury colours.

Unlike the previous play off final, when we were chasing the game for most of it, this time it was nil-nil until the very last minute. Then Gillingham scored. Town kicked off and the referee blew for full time.

I said at the time it was like a punch to the gut. I can still feel the visceral emptiness as if someone had reached in and torn all my emotions out through my bowels. I'd never felt like that before at a football match.

I remember looking at my mum and dad, shrugging, turning away and trudging up the steps to leave. Just numb.

On a lighter note. Some fun league cup games that we lost but it didn't feel like we lost.

Arsenal was where I bought my first half-and-half scarf.  I MAKE NO APOLOGIES FOR THIS.

Town took the lead through James Collins. At this point, the Town fans started singing 'You're Getting Sacked in the Morning' at Arsene Wenger. Spoiler: he wasn't.

The Emirates is by far and away the best football stadium I've been to. And, hilariously, the crowd there is the biggest crowd Shrewsbury have ever played in front of, and I think it's possibly still the lowest attendance ever at the Emirates.

A few years later, Jose Mourinho came to the New Meadow with Chelsea. I've yet to see a proper Shrewsbury giant-killing in the league cup. This was close.

Chelsea led early on, but then Shrewsbury got into gear and grabbed an equaliser. The momentum was with the Town, so Mourinho brought on his real players like Willian. A few minutes later a Shrewsbury defender slipped under pressure and spooned the ball off his knee past his own keeper.

Fun fact, Mo Salah, this year's goalscoring dynamo, was playing for Chelsea. He was shocking. At one point he had a shot at goal from the edge of the eighteen yard box that went out for a throw in nearer to the halfway line than the corner flag. He got subbed and very soon after this game was sold.

Fun Fact 2, in a media interview afterwards Eden Hazard forgot who he had been playing and called the team 'Strawberry'. It was quite funny, really.

So, that's a round up of some of the highs and some of the lows. I didn't mention the conference play off final that Shrewsbury won on penalties to get back into the league. Because I didn't go. It was on a Sunday and I was scheduled to preach in the church that Cathy and I went to at the time. I also haven't mentioned the Auto Windscreens Shield final against Rotherham in 1996, because I didn't buy a programme so had nothing to scan. And they lost anyway. My Dad still rants on about how the manager, Fred Davies, picked the wrong team that day.

But that's the reality of following a team like Shrewsbury. The triumphs are hard fought. The disasters are one bloot off a defender's knee away. The line between glory and muddled obscurity is a mighty fine one.