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Ben Herd on playing football again, pre-match meals and too many mayo sandwiches!
Welcome to this week’s column, it's actually quite nice writing this after actually playing a game! That's not to say that we haven't had our frustrations over this past week. We travelled up to Darlington last Friday, stopping off at Leeds lovely training ground which I can only assume they must have bought when they were half decent, eventually reaching our destination at about 6pm.
Upon waking up on the Saturday morning we were informed that there was going to be a pitch inspection at 10am, understandable considering how much it lashed down overnight. The 10am inspection came and went without the referee actually making a decision, instead calling for another inspection, this time at 12pm. As a player it is a horrible feeling when a game becomes in doubt just hours before kick-off and when I was younger and there was any doubt about a game it used to completely mess me up mentally and more often than not I would just want the game off.
With age comes wisdom, or so it should have by now, but I am sure I speak for all of the lads when I say we were desperate to play the game as we hadn't kicked a ball in anger for about 4 weeks! Well, the 12pm pitch inspection came and the referee, minus his kit, called it off citing his fears for safety for the general public and not to forget his linesman! I am not being funny but I thought the people of the north east were a hardened lot? You don't see shopping centres close because of the weather do you? As for the linesman, if he was officiating down my side then I am sure I could have made sure he was alright! Nevertheless the game was off and we had to endure another 6 hour trip down the M1, thank god for my laptop, if it wasn't for winning the Champions League with Real Madrid on Football manager, Scott Donnelly's screaming would have finished me off!
The game that we did manage to play this week was against a very good looking Rochdale side, obviously their players were ugly but they played decent football! Having played pretty much every other team in League 2 so far this season, I have to say that Rochdale were by far the most creative team we have come up against. I don't think we will be coming up against a better forward partnership than Dagnall and O'Grady this season. We were a bit ring rusty during the 1st half of the match and probably gave "Dale" far too much room to get it down and play. Credit to the lads in the second half we probably just shaded it in terms of decent chances. Seeing as though this is a betting website then I have to urge you to back Rochdale to win League 2, Keith Hill has done a fantastic job up at Spotland and he will lead his men out of this division for the first time in like 40 odd years.
Another team in the greater Manchester area who have caused a bit of a stir in the last week is Manchester City. If it's not them beating their fiercest rivals in the League Cup and obviously Tevez getting one over on "Bootlicker" Gary Neville, then it's their manager Roberto Mancini having a right moan up at City's pre match meal declaring that there should be more wine and pizza on offer. I think that would be brilliant, imagine players in the not too distant past being given alcohol before a game. I think you would have seen one or two "half cut" players given the ref a bit more abuse. Our pre match meal here at Aldershot is pretty standard, chicken breast, pasta, beans and a bit of toast. Myself, this season I seemed to have changed my habits slightly, I now get up slightly later and have a big full English breakfast which sees me through until after the game. The reason for this is I like to feel light and empty before I play so I miss out the usual pre-match meal at about 12pm. When I was at Shrewsbury, during the first couple of years we rarely stopped off at hotels for a pre-match meal so the kit man used to go to M&S to get a load of sandwiches for all the lads. This was quite nice for a couple of weeks but after a while the amount of mayo they put in them things really takes it's toll - that's probably the reason why we lost so many away games!
Posted: Friday, January 22nd, 2010 @ 05:01 pm by Ben Herd
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