The View from the Bar
Happy New Year! Here we are then – 2019 is upon us and, to all intents and purposes, the season starts here. There’s some massive games coming up, not least the back-to-back matches with Brockenhurst on the 22nd and 26th of this month. We’re actually in a very similar position, with a very similar record, to this time last year, but this time around the bottom half of the table is a lot tighter – no-one’s been cast adrift yet, and a couple of wins for anyone could move them halfway up the table. Buckle up, everyone, I think things are about to get interesting…
I thought we acquitted ourselves pretty well against Baffins in our last home match and wasn’t too disappointed with the resultant defeat. Baffins were clearly a good, strong side and from the moment we equalised up until they bagged their third against the run of play we were definitely the better side. The view of the visiting gaggle of Manchester City fans – down south for the Prem game at Saints the next day – concurred. They were more than welcome visitors, and did their best to put a few quid over the bar and into the merch fund also, all leaving Westwood replete with scarves, mugs, badges and the like. I’m not sure when we’ll make the return trip to The Etihad, mind. Not so sure they need our money…
Reports from Portland last week suggest a similar story to Baffins, with a couple of errors at the back and a swathe of missed chances at the other end costing us dear. Things are definitely going in the right direction though, and I fully expect results to start going our way before long.
The burgeoning commercial department this week proudly presents the new Golden Goal ticket scheme – make sure you get yours today! 50% of proceeds will go to the club and average prize should be around £40, so well worth a go. On occasions where the winning ticket isn’t sold the prize will roll over to the next home game, so watch this space for EuroMillions-style rollover frenzy! Of course, if the prize-pot ever gets bigger than £93 (there’s 93 tickets available each week) we’ll enact some kind of military-style operation to ensure no-one can just buy all the tickets to claim the prize (yeah, yeah, there’s a least a few of you who would’ve thought about that as soon as the rollover $$ signs flashed before your eyes!) Based on recent events, we did consider selling the tickets for the first 5 minutes at a premium since they’d have such a higher chance of winning, but common decency and a sense of fair-play meant we decided against it (plus the fact I just completely made that up).
On the subject of merch, don’t forget the second batch of mugs will be available at the Brockenhurst home match. A good half-dozen of them are already accounted for so make sure you don’t miss out if you did first time around.
Right, that’s enough of all that. Be loud, be proud, and get behind the boys today for what will undoubtedly be a tough challenge. But win, lose or draw, enjoy the game.
Toby