Another point of view vs Cheltenham (L2)

I was surprised to get an email and a phone call earlier this week to say that I had won a pair of tickets for this match in an online competition/draw thingy. Not beause I didn't remember entering (I did!) but because I hardly ever win anything in raffles, draws or competitions. A nice surprise then, and a good reason to drag my occasional attendee teenage son along to the game. I know he'd come more often if home games didn't involve a three hour round trip stuck in a car with his dad!

I thought it would be interesting to listen to what he thought of the game and our team - just to get another point of view. When I collected our tickets from reception, I realised that we would be getting an alternative point of view in another sense as the tickets were for the South Stand Upper. I'm normally an East Stand right sider, and had never been up in the lofty heights before, but given that the tickets up there are dearer than the East Stand, I fully expected prawn sarnies and a pint of foaming ale to be laid on, and was hoping for hot and cold running floozies to serve them. What we got was wind. Not from eating too many canapes, but the sort that seemed to have been sent directly from the Russian steppes to remind up that winter was not yet over. It was brass monkeys. It was also very quiet. The SSUers can be lampooned sometimes, but it is the god's honest truth that a bloke a few seats down had a tartan travel rug tucked in over his legs and at one point , the only sound you could hear was a chap two rows back opening a packet of chewy toffees. I promise. But - you get a really good view. You do get a completely different impression of the game and I can see why some managers occasionally decide to sit in the stands to watch at least part of the game.

Anyway - let's get on or we'll all freeze to death sitting here. I'll try to type quietly, we don't want to wake anyone up now, do we?

Team unchanged. Toss won. Female cheerleader/gymnastics thing watched (for a bit then ignored).

It started a bit cagey, as they say. Not much happened until Wes Thomas, the leading Cheltenham striker, found the net from an offside position. There were no real protests from the men in red and white. Then Tommy Craddock found himself in a one on one with the Robin's keeper. A slightly heavy touch put him a bit close to the keeper and his shot cannoned away to safety. TC should probably have done better. Oxford then took charge, with Cheltenham looking to attack on the break. A couple of good attempts from Constable, a few passes that almost split the visitors defence, some excellent attacking play from Batt and the rejuvenated Tonkin and a whole load of nice passing lead to no goals. Then a rare Cheltenham attack lead to a goal. A hopeful punt up field looked as if it was no threat. Jake Wright left it for Ryan Clarke to collect, Clarke was either too slow or simply too far away to get it, Wes Thomas nipped in between the dithering duo and lobbed the keeper (very well) to put us one down. Undeservedly on the balance of play, but you can't do that in defence and hope to get away with it too often. So, 20 minutes or so of the half left. We had been creating so much, surely we could come back.

We did. Some lovely work from Batt down the right, a good cross and Craddock repeated his goal of a couple of weeks ago by side-of-facing the ball into the bottom left corner. Some of the SSU got up and cheered a bit. We then went into passing mode and looked generally comfortable if not very threatening (except for one corner that their goalie punched into his own net - disallowed for some pushing in the area. Hmm) until half time.

Now, as regular readers will know, I am a HUGE fan of Rosie's entertaining crossbar challenges, but with the temperature plummeting (Son - 'Dad, do you know your lips have gone blue?') we took refuge in the 'refreshments area'. I don't usually buy food or drink from the stadium but, despite last week's revelation that we do NOT get any of the catering income, I decided that we needed something hot. Two cups of coffee and a bag of smarties later and OGB was richer by £6.10. But at least our hands were warm, even if his heart is cold.

Unfortunately, we also missed the repeat performance of the cheerleaders/gymnasts. Damnation.

The teams re-emerged and from the kick off, Cheltenham put the yellows under considerable pressure for the first 10 minutes of the half. We simply couldn't get out of our own half. A series of corners, a missed header and not much else was all that resulted though. We then took the game by the scruff of the neck and looked as if we were going to take all three points. Batt and Constable came close, Tonkin made some good runs. Helslop came on for Hall and Potter replaced Craddock. Neither substitution seemed to help really, in fact probably the opposite, although both were fairly logical. Hall looked knackered, but Heslop didn't really provide much forward impetus. The idea of Potter running at a tired defence also appealed, but he didn't really do that either. Rather than staying out wide and beating the man that Batt had been tormenting all afternoon he kept wandering into the middle, often trying to do too much himself rather than looking for a final pass. We obviously thought we could win the game, but Cheltenham thought they could do the same and were dangerous on the break.

It all looked to have gone terminally pear shaped when the otherwise excellent Tonkin made a rash challenge inside the Us penalty area (yes, it was inside). It was a silly thing to do - the man was going away from goal posing no real danger, but he went over like a sack of spuds. Did Tonks get the ball first? Maybe. Did it look like a penalty? Well from the SSU it probably did. Up stepped the leading Cheltenham scorer, down went the best keeper in the division, and away went the ball for a corner. Phew. Squeaky bum time.

The final few minutes were a bit of a mess. We kept missing passes, kept trying to be just that bit too clever. The final whistle ended the match, giving us our first draw since time began. We tottered down the concrete steps on blocks of ice that had replaced our feet, past the pink bull and away.

Son's view:
Tonkin was the best player on the pitch
Beano spent far too much time offside

My view:
Tonkin was the best player on the pitch
Beano might have been in an offside position for much of the time, but he wasn't (as far as I can recall) actually given offside once, since he moved back onside before the ball was passed to him.
We still need more shooting. Not wild blazing away from the half way line, but the confidence to have a go when the opportunity presents itself. Clist had several chance to shoot today, but didn't. He wasn't the only one.
It was a game we should have won and could easily have lost. So perhaps a draw was fair in the end.
Whatever opposition fans say, you can hear the East Stand loud and clear. In the SSU you can also hear the oppostion fans better than in the East Stand and (because of the way the stands face) they sound louder in comparision to the east Stand than they really are.
We need a clean sheet (yawn). Maybe Tuesday?
An enjoyable game between two decent teams - going to football is a pleasure at the moment. I hope the more than 7,000 yellows fans there agreed. Perhaps they'll all come back next home game.

The SSU View:
Good.
But I'm going back home to the East Stand next time. I missed the noise and the banter.

A couple of tricky away games coming up. I'm off to both - see some of you there.

COME ON YOU YELLOWS!