Saturday, December 23, 2006

Ain't it thrilling, though your nose gets a chilling

There are few things on Earth quite as inspiring and comradely as turning out to watch your team of underdogs get a well-deserved draw against the league leaders in freezing temperatures two days before Christmas. The result doesn't flatter us at all - there really was nothing to choose between the two teams, and we could easily have won. What's more, it was a clean, sporting kind of game, with no Boston players booked, for only the second of their 23 league games this season! Although Andy Marriott did his best to tempt the referee with some ludicrous time-wasting near the end.

With our new star striker Drewe Broughton suspended again after his second red card in his six games for the Pilgrims so far (to be fair, they were both reportedly very dubious decisions), Dany N'Guessan got into the starting lineup, and after a first half full of half-chances for both sides, opened the scoring on 55 minutes by catching the Walsall defence napping and classily tapping it past their goalie. It looked for a while like we might hold on for a win, but they equalised from a corner. Still, in between goals there was plenty of time for our fans to launch into the most popular Boston Utd chant - "We're shit, and we're one-nil up!" The Walsall fans didn't seem to have heard this one before, and took a minute to confer before retaliating with "you're fat and you're Chelsea fans". In fact, the banter between fans was very good-natured all through the game, it must have been the Christmas spirit at work.

This leaves us with a very symbolic 24 points from 23 games at the half-way point of the season, and the dizzy heights of 19th place in League Two. It's definitely starting to look like we might survive another year in the league at this rate. It's the local derby at Lincoln on Boxing Day, and I think we're well capable of winning it, although there'll be riots if we do. But to be fair, there are always riots after Boston-Lincoln games.

There were notices at Nottingham station to warn passengers that all Central Trains services on Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day have been cancelled due to strike action. I mean, come on, conductors. You could at least pretend that there's some motive to the strike other than wanting the holidays off work! Since I'm not going anywhere, I admire their cheek.

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