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Guest Post

Not the best away day

Guest post by Voice of Reason

Saturday 3rd March – Swansea away

In attendance: BSB, VoR, The OriginalRuss, Barney Magrew. Tickets also purchased for Irons 1959 and Safehands.

For 24 hours before the game we endured a logistical nightmare! Irons 1959 had been on a City Break to Venice with his sister who lives in Wales and wanted to go to the game, but we couldn’t get a ticket for her. They were coming back to Bristol Airport on the Friday and we arranged to pick Irons up from his sister’s house near Cardiff on the way to Swansea. All sorted. Safehands had to pull out on Friday, due to forgetting about the heats of the World’s Strongest Man, so we arranged to only take one car. BSB and me would pick up Russ, we would pick up Barney near Chippenham, then Irons and everything is hunky dory. Still sorted. But then Irons and his sister got snowed in at Venice and all hell broke out in our Administration Offices. Numerous texts and emails went back and forth between BSB and Irons before we found out that Irons and Ms Irons were flying back into Gatwick late Friday night and we would be contacted with an update asap. Then Iron’s battery on his phone went flat. He had packed the charger in his sister’s suitcase so that was him out of immediate contact. He used to be a teacher you know. Amazing. Still with me?

I heard nothing before I went to bed and, when I rose from my pit, I luckily checked my emails (which I don’t normally do at that time of the morning) to find one from Irons ordering me to pick his sister up from his house in Ilford at 6.45am and give her a lift home. Failure to do this would result in detention and being banned from games for the rest of the term. Irons had decided that he was not going to the game now as he was too tired. This left us with 2 spare tickets and Iron’s sister didn’t now want one.
From Iron’s house to BSB’s with a lady and a large suitcase on board (I almost wrote a large lady and a suitcase there which really would get me into trouble!), transfer into the BSBmobile, off around the M25 to pick up Russ, down the M4 to meet Barney, drop off Iron’s sister at Newport station so she could get a taxi (I’m not sure she wanted us to be seen loitering around her gaff) and then along to Swansea. So you see what we have to put up with?

Then, of course, it got worse. A shambles of a performance, resulting in a 4-1 loss and every ‘orrible ‘erbert turned up, despite the snow and travel warnings.

Much was made of David Gold being accosted by fans while he was getting back into his roller, but if it is any consolation to him, it was probably worse for us with what was around us in the stadium. They were not complaining about the board, they just lacked, err, a few basic social skills. Although I have to say that there was some world class pointing going on, the best of which came from some bloke in front of us who wanted a Swansea fan removed for “looking at him”. And you know what? That bloke looked at him more than once. Disgusting. A good drive home and thanks to Russ who did the majority of the driving and congratulations to Irons for having the good sense to give it all a miss.

VoR: 6 out of 10 for effort but could do better.

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