(no subject)

My cold is still clinging on. The stuffy nose continued to make interviewing difficult for parts of today's shift, plus my throat feels clagged with guk and indeed I've been hawking up the odd gob of gilbert yesterday and today. Surely it's time it was gone now.

(no subject)

To Westleigh Park for Hawks v Braintree. Arrived 45 minutes before kick-off and met Steph in the clubhouse putting up posters for HawkSupport's bingo night next week. Hit the bar and ordered a Kopparberg; the guy standing next to me, after confessing he'd been thinking about the possibility of relegation (in truth, we all have), reckoned Shaun Gale could be gone if we didn't win tonight. We agreed that the next five games, all at home, will make or break Hawks' season.

Moseyed into the ground at 7.20 to check out the club shop, but they didn't have any programmes from the Fisher match :( Sharon was there, and said she had something for me. It wasn't my first guess, a voting slip for Player of the Month (although she gave me one at the mention of it), or my second, Christmas draw tickets (inspired by my seeing some on the table in front of Aly; she did ask if I'd sell some so I took four books). What she had for me turned out to be my Showaddywaddy ticket.

Hawks came out apparently resolved to play some better football, but despite plenty of forays forward couldn't get the ball in the net - Robbie Matthews hit the woodwork more than once and Brett Poate and Paul Booth also missed chances. Then towards the end of the half a Braintree midfielder got the ball unmarked on the edge of our area and scored.

The whole of normal time in the second half made depressing viewing for us home fans. Hawks seemed to have less fight for the game and what chances they created were either missed (two from close range) or easily dealt with by the Braintree defence. Meanwhile Braintree continued to threaten, and missed three sitters. The Radio Solent summariser (I sit a couple of rows right in front of him) went as far as to say on air that we could be "the most expensive team in the British Gas League next season". Several of the cynics around me were likewise talking about relegation, while Denise lamented that she was missing I'm A Celebrity - Get Me Out Of Here just to see this. At one point one of the two older guys who sit next to me said "Come on, the ladies," prompting his friend to observe that he thought that was who was playing for Hawks tonight!

"The ladies won 7-0 yesterday," I pointed out. One of the two guys alongside me suggested that they should play this Saturday in the men's place while a bloke in front of me reckoned that it must have been our men's team that the ladies had been playing against!

From 80 minutes people began to leave. Those of us who stayed to the bitter end were rewarded in the third minute of injury time when Jamie Collins equalised from a goalmouth scramble. Celebrations at us salvaging a point were muted a minute later when a Braintree forward collided with Kevin Scriven and Scrivs was stretchered off. Still many of us waiting by the tunnel clapped the lads off at the end and more than one was positive about the effort shown by several of our players.

Had to hang around on Havant and Fratton station platforms in the cold for 10 minutes at each waiting for trains. Got to go get into bed with the lights off and radio on.