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Oct. 25th, 2009 08:37 pmHawks Ladies away at Forest Green and, joy, I managed to get a lift with lovely Sally our physio and lovely Jordan her assistant. We sat in the car park, with the minibus carrying the girls, waiting for Dick who'd got stuck in traffic and two straggling players, until Mike the coach phoned Sally and they agreed that we'd set off then and pick him up at Winnall trading estate.
We had a lively drive up, with selections from Sally's diverse CD collection and plenty of conversation about football, X Factor and Strictly (Mike was most amused by my confession that I've always fancied Jade Johnson - "You like an athletic physique, then?") and which celebrities we all fancied when we were teenagers. We arrived at 12 noon, ahead of the team bus thanks to our not stopping, and found the stadium deserted so drove into town to get lunch at Tesco's.
When we came back, Mike found a girl inside the stadium's fitness centre to give him directions to the players' and officials' entrance, so he, Sally and Jordan went to unload their stuff there and meet up with Trev and Dick who'd now arrived, while I toddled off to the club's excellent Green Man bar to chat with Becky and Val over a pint of Marston's Smooth.
When the team bus arrived, Carl, owner and driver of the bus, joined us in the bar, then Trev came in while the FA Cup First Round Draw was on. As we reflected on some of the ties just drawn and I observed that the tie of the round would be Paulton Rovers v Norwich, Trev groaned. "That would have been us." (Chippenham, who knocked Hawks out in the 2nd Qually, were beaten by Paulton in the 3rd.)
We were playing at Forest Green Rovers' actual stadium, a Conference National ground, and the pitch was absolutely lush. Forest Green Ladies were a good side and gave us a hard fought game, but Jodie nodded home a cross from Charley on the stroke of half time and, after Forest Green had equalised straight from a free kick early in the second half, Jenna F netted from a goalmouth scramble, and the girls withstood a lot of pressure to take all three points.
Back to the Green Man for another Marston's Smooth. The home side had laid on a good spread of pizza, cakes, crisps and biscuits and, waiting till all the girls had had a chance to dip in, no-one minded me partaking of the nibbles. At the bar a guy I'd met at Winscombe said hello; his daughter had played for Winscombe then but had since transferred to Forest Green, so we compared notes about the game and the teams in our league.
Sally, Jordan, Mike and I stopped at a McDonald's near Swindon for dinner. We had a bit more banter on the way home as well as discussing the game, but the return journey was a bit quieter. As Dick said when we got back to Westleigh, "These long journeys home are all right when you've won."
We had a lively drive up, with selections from Sally's diverse CD collection and plenty of conversation about football, X Factor and Strictly (Mike was most amused by my confession that I've always fancied Jade Johnson - "You like an athletic physique, then?") and which celebrities we all fancied when we were teenagers. We arrived at 12 noon, ahead of the team bus thanks to our not stopping, and found the stadium deserted so drove into town to get lunch at Tesco's.
When we came back, Mike found a girl inside the stadium's fitness centre to give him directions to the players' and officials' entrance, so he, Sally and Jordan went to unload their stuff there and meet up with Trev and Dick who'd now arrived, while I toddled off to the club's excellent Green Man bar to chat with Becky and Val over a pint of Marston's Smooth.
When the team bus arrived, Carl, owner and driver of the bus, joined us in the bar, then Trev came in while the FA Cup First Round Draw was on. As we reflected on some of the ties just drawn and I observed that the tie of the round would be Paulton Rovers v Norwich, Trev groaned. "That would have been us." (Chippenham, who knocked Hawks out in the 2nd Qually, were beaten by Paulton in the 3rd.)
We were playing at Forest Green Rovers' actual stadium, a Conference National ground, and the pitch was absolutely lush. Forest Green Ladies were a good side and gave us a hard fought game, but Jodie nodded home a cross from Charley on the stroke of half time and, after Forest Green had equalised straight from a free kick early in the second half, Jenna F netted from a goalmouth scramble, and the girls withstood a lot of pressure to take all three points.
Back to the Green Man for another Marston's Smooth. The home side had laid on a good spread of pizza, cakes, crisps and biscuits and, waiting till all the girls had had a chance to dip in, no-one minded me partaking of the nibbles. At the bar a guy I'd met at Winscombe said hello; his daughter had played for Winscombe then but had since transferred to Forest Green, so we compared notes about the game and the teams in our league.
Sally, Jordan, Mike and I stopped at a McDonald's near Swindon for dinner. We had a bit more banter on the way home as well as discussing the game, but the return journey was a bit quieter. As Dick said when we got back to Westleigh, "These long journeys home are all right when you've won."
