On the Road Again!

After 127 years and 115 of them in the Football League, the current useless owners have killed the club. Relegated to the National League.  One bunch of arseholes after another have run the club into the ground.  Bastards. https://us20.campaign-archive.com/?e=b7525e06d4&u=38f469d852e751f99dd2edc02&id=5441d2ad24

126 years of history and end up 18th in English Football League Two. 

Tomorrow is a must win game for Grimsby away at Latics. They are in the relegation zone from EFL League 2 into the National League. In the current standings they are 24th out of 24 places in the table and nine points behind third-bottom Barrow FC.  Both teams have four games to play, so can amass a possible further 12 points. A loss tomorrow will relegate Grimsby whilst a win for Oldham will simply cement their mid table position. Oldham have only three games remaining. As an Oldham fan since 1959 and who has lived 200 miles away for most of my life, I like to see the southern most teams stay in the same division so I can go to games!  So it would be sad to see Southend drop out of League 2. I have been a few times over the years as it isn't far.  Another reason for them to stay up but with three games to play they are 8 points off Barrow and one ahead of Grimsby.  They could well be relegated this weekend. It's not good for Essex and the local derby earlier in the w...

I haven't bought the "latest" shirt for about thirty years for any club, but succumbed to buy this one.   The price of £45 (plus delivery) is frightening but as long as the money goes to the club to keep it afloat I guess that's not too bad a price to see the club through this anniversary year.

Another draw. Orient fortunate that the referee was a homer. A free kick when the Oldham player, Misselou, played the ball and it should have been a corner. In the end Latics far better team in the first half and Orient edged the second. I suppose a 2-2 draw was a fair result. It doesn't seem that way when the goal came directly from a mistake by the referee.

Bought my ticket today online - Oldham Athletic away at Leyton Orient. It's at the end of my week off for half term and so I need to weigh up whether to buy my weekly season ticket to include Saturday or travel on a cheap day return. There was a note on one of the supporters pages that there was an allocation of 256 tickets. It only opened to non season ticket holders today, and I have ticket 120.... We'll see when we get there. It's February 22nd and a 3pm kickoff.

I joined this fans' group to push for some action at the club where I saw my first ever football match as 4yo way back in 1959. This season is the 60th since I started to go.  Let's hope it ends better. I used to go with my Dad, Claude Devall, who was one of the blokes that kept the supporters' club running.  In a small scrapbook we have pictures from the Oldham Chronicle of him painting the stand during the summer break. He used to go and sit in the stand with his buddies from the club, John Hartshorn and Vinnie (I don't know his surname) and leave me to stand behind the goal, often with my Aunt Linda (Shaw now Johnstone) and her friend Anne. In those days the club was about where it is now, near the foot of the fourth tier, then called the Fourth Division.  A few years before the two regional third divisions, North and South had been merged into Third and Fourth. After the highs of being in the Premier League when it started in 1992/93 and staying for...

This was a game that Oldham needed to win.   I wheeled Pepé out of the garage and fitted up the TomTom with the amended route to AFC Wimbledon ready to rock. Luckily after the hottest and driest day of the year (so far)  on Thursday  (temp up to 27°C) it was still dry and warm today. With the forecast showing dry all day I pulled the Joe Rocket jacket from the wardrobe and back to Kevlar lined  cargo pants. The road into Hythe was a mile long of traffic and so I went out through the country lanes to the motorway. It took a little longer as there were cyclists riding three a breast on a road barely wide enough for two cars to pass. A bip on the horn had them scattered but hurling abuse. Had they met a car coming head on they might have been calling 999/911. Once on the M20 I dialled up to an indicated 75mph that TomTom said was more like 70. TomTom was suggesting 90 minutes for the journey and it seemed to pass pretty easily. Even the M25...

Saturday was the first opportunity to see Latics in the south this year when I could go. I missed the relatively local trip to Gillingham last year as it clashed with something else. This year I got a ticket for my brother as well.  We met at Gillingham station and walked down to the ground.  It was bitterly cold.  Even with four layers of clothes and a woolly hat it was still freezing. The game wasn't too bad and a draw was a fair enough result, but Latics could have won had they shot a bit more often and the keeper made a save from a swerving ball and they cleared one off the line.  The Latics' keeper, Johnny Placido, made a world class save from a free-kick in the last seconds of the game. The journey home was okay. I got a seat at Ebbsfleet. I was home in good time. Due to both side being eliminated from the FA Cup.  On December 2nd they are once again down south at Southend United.  If the weather is too shitty to go to Ostend. I might...

Although I have supported Arsenal since 1965 when we moved down to the South from Oldham when I was ten years old, my first flirtation with football was with Oldham Athletic - The Latics. This was primarily as they were my local team, and when I say local, from my house less than a mile across the field next to Fernhurst (cotton) Mill. My Dad worked for the supporters club as the Pools Promoter and also helped out at the Bingo evenings they ran. These were very vital earnings streams in the 50's and 60's.   I started to go with him and then with my Aunt Linda and Anne,  a pal of hers.  For a couple of years I had a season ticket and  then we moved south to Surrey.   My Dad was an Arsenal supporter and many of the family were too. Over many years as an "exile" I have tried to get to games when they are in the south and accessible.  Although I have been to games at Wimbledon before, in their original guise as a non-league side playing in ...

The trip to Oldham ended up being  a 608 mile round trip from home via my brother's to the football ground and then down to our Aunt's house in Manchester. The journey up from Neill's took four and a half hours to Oldham, and back Home from Manchester about the same. In the end it was worth it as Oldham won and stay in League 1 another year. This is the brick I bought in my Dad's memory. It's in the outer wall of the new stand. Dad's brick Away fans... there are some. Honest!

What can I say about the ride from home to Southend. On Google Maps it shows a distance of 34 miles, as the crow flies. Once it works out the route that changes to more like 81 miles depending on the way you go. Why did I want to go there? Well, to see my football club, Oldham Athletic play Southend United in a League One match.  With a 1945 kick off as the last time I could get there, counting back and allowing for traffic I set off at 1615. Traffic was relatively light on the M20 considering the hour, but as I got nearer  London it started to build. The swoop from M20 to M25 is quite a nice experience as long as there is clear road and Pepe managed it as the legal limit without any trauma.  That’s when I was faced with a four lane wall of traffic crawling along at walking pace. Even filtering through between the outside two lanes I lost over 20 minutes getting from the M20/M25 junction to the tunnel itself.   The last couple of miles had c...

Checked on google maps yesterday how long it would take to do a mere 126 miles. With traffic taken into account it came up with over three hours. Okay. Leave at 11am, get petrol at Ashford and cruise up. All went to plan. Tesco packed but squeezed to the front. Worst mpg since I had Döra!! I put that down to the 85mph run back from France. The M20 was free running and Döra in her stride with 75mph on the cruise control. The traffic to the Dartford Tolls was back to the M20, maybe 4 or 5 miles?  I slipped to the front and was away. Cruising speed was down to 60 as far as the A12. From time to time we were down to walking pace but about 90 minutes before the game I was in the cafe attached to the services near the ground. A coffee and millionaire slice later I rode the remainder of the journey and parked right by the stadium. The game started a bit slow and Oldham were under pressure, and conceded the first goal after failin...

The drive up proved pretty pain free. The TomTom took us to Beth Chatto without any problems and we had a really good morning walking about and looking at the different gardens.   Photos from  Beth Chatto. Once away from there we had a relatively simple run back to the A12 and down a few junctions to where the stadium can be found.  A nice small ground with parking and not hemmed in by the city and housing. At least, not until they build thousands of homes nearby!! The car-park ticket I had bought allowed us to drive in and park easily enough. We were probably the only car with an Oldham Athletic window sticker though.    The "away" supporter entrances are across the other side of the ground from the parking, but unlike some grounds, the banter was not too offensive between locals and me in the Latics away shirt for that season.  See selfie! Selfie! For some reason away fans are in this end of one of the stands at the side and ...

Sometimes there have to be trade-offs.  I want to go to the football at the new Weston Homes Stadium at Colchester, but as it is Good Friday it needs the trade. Claire comes with me to the football and then she gets to choose something.  She did.  Beth Chatto's Garden, luckily not far from Colchester so we have a double-header. The gardens open at 9am and so with 127 miles to drive, we need to be away from home pretty quick pronto, as it were. The football kicks off at 3pm, so we need to be a little earlier to get parked.  With a new out of town stadium there is parking. Incredibly the club website says 700 spaces!  OMG! I ordered the game tickets from the eticket website from Oldham Athletic. And that brought me to parking. The Colchester United website wasn't very helpful saying that away supporters had to call and see what spaces were available. But, better still, on their ticketing site there it is, the parking space can be booked sepa...

Whilst I usually go to football at Arsenal in the Premier League. I also go to matches that feature my first ever football love, Oldham Athletic. As Oldham is over 200 miles away it is difficult to get to home games, so I make do with away games in the south. This year I have been to Gillingham and last night to Leyton Orient. After plenty of chances fluffed Orient scored against pretty much the run of play.  The game ebbed and flowed and plenty of huffing and puffing and the game looked to be over until Korey Smith popped up with goal of the week. 1-1 on the night. Some of my pix below. Ticket for a night of wonders Zoomed in No zoom Home fans "Tommy Johnson" stand Celebrating the equaliser #wearelatics

Day 1 of the Ashes Tour was the run from Kent to Manchester. Not too bad but in places pretty unexplainable traffic stops whist still on a three lane motorway. Pressure of traffic? Day 2 saw us set off for real visiting places from Mum's past, where she lived as a child and where we lived as a small family, and the football club that dad and me used to go to most weeks. Oldham Athletic Oldham Athletic The route north took us by Hollingworth Lake where we used to go on the bus to have a day out. Things were more simple in those days!! Then to places I've never been, like the Ribblehead Viaduct. A piece if Victorian engineering to cross a long wide valley. Ribblehead Viaduct Ribblehead Viaduct Then across some lovely roads through  the north of England stopping at piece of Hadrian's Wall and then the border at Carter Bar. Dora at Carter Bar Carter Bar The Beig Inn hotel in Glenfarg is really nic...

On The Ashes Tour we stopped off at one of the places from my early years of living in Chadderton in Lancashire. The trip was to take our Mum's ashes to their final resting place and on the way we visited a few places from her life and also from ours. My Dad used to work for Latics as the "pools promoter". Back in the days before lotteries and scratch cards, people had to make do with more cerebral pleasures like trying to guess from 49 football (soccer to my US friends) games each weekend which would end up in a draw (okay for you a tie). On the coupon you marked 10 games with a cross and if you managed 8 or more you could win. Some people won fortunes. Okay by today's standard it wasn't much, but by 1960 standards it was more than you could ever imagine.  Instead of scratch cards, they had tickets with the time in them. If a goal was scored that matched your ticket you would win a small prize. My Dad managed those fund raising activities  in his ...

Going through a box at Mum's today as part of the clear out, I found this badge. I have searched high and low for it for a number of years, then forget, then search again! All the time it was in a box tucked away in her house with a load of other stuff. It was given to me when I was an adorable kid at the football (soccer my US chums!) who stood behind the goal at Boundary Park with my Aunt Linda and her friend Anne. My Dad however used to sit in the stand with his friends. It is a little battered but I was given it before my brother was born in 1960! The back is a "bat shape" as it was intended to fit in a lapel button hole,  that seem to have been consigned to sartorial history in the modern era.