PEDANTIC ATTENTION TO DETAIL

What did I (we) learn from the Wembley experience yesterday? It was the Vanarama Conference Play Off and Barnet FC, having won promotion outright, did not have the luxury and privilege of an appearance at our national stadium. I guess they were happy to go for the uncomplicated promotion rather than go through what the two sets of fans at Wembley had to endure. It was a good day out with Grimsby supporters arriving at various car parks along the Jubilee line and making the most of the new shopping centre in the shadow of the football ground. Lots of tinnies and Sainsbury's bags.

Surrounding the mecca is a nasty car park blighting the new Wembley, a new children's playground which I liked, some metal poles sticking out the ground by the tube station and plenty of Bristol accents coming in from the west.

The game was dire, long ball, lacking in structure, players not able to do clever things in the final third, no cleverness at set pieces-thumpo thumpy, and a lot and I mean A LOT of defending heading. 

The game wasn't without incident, the ref was lenient, so it went to extra time, having had goals after 2 mins and 29 mins. Penalties decided it and how sad that one poor Mariner had to carry the burden of defeat. (if you look carefully below, you can see the ball way over the bar) Rovers were delirious, promoted back to the FL after one year away.

However I learned that the occasion was actually brilliant as a spectacle and a record 47,029 crowd graced the stadium and felt the emotion of success and failure.

One little Grimsby fan near me was nearly burned by a flare thrown 5 seconds after Grimsby scored; What mindless knob, FROM GRIMSBY OBVIOUSLY, would do such a thing in a crowded space? The little lad was looking over his shoulder for the rest of the game. What were the searchers and spotters doing? I managed to smuggle in a pair of binoculars in my bag which was frisked in a millisecond by a hiviz man on the door. Hardly thorough; could have been a hand grenade.

I bought a very informative programme and discovered that an old school colleague, Dennis Strudwick, a couple of years older than me, who spent his time playing at Horsham FC and administrating various leagues in the Sussex area is the General Manager of the Football Conference. If only I had known earlier-prawn sandwich? Dennis? get in touch mate!!

I know that both teams may well have been overawed by the occasion. My chum, Bob, has seen both Grimsby and Rovers play at Aldershot this season and I have seen Grimsby before also; we both agreed that they looked as they could play. So what went wrong? Nerves!

Two years ago in the League One final, Brentford turned up to Wembley on a stinking hot day wearing heavy duty dark suits whilst Yeovil wore trackies, flip flops and looked more comfortable. Yeovil won. Perhaps both the Mariners and Rovers missed a minute detail somewhere? Perfect pitch, good weather, sunny day, crowd noise, everything to play for, scouts watching...what could go wrong?

Ian Holloway made his play off players visit the stadium before and not only get a feel of the pitch and dressing rooms but also know exactly where their families would be sitting so they wouldn't have to worry about that during the warm up!