The FA's 'superfan' and historian David Barber has been to nearly 7,000 matches and added to five more during trips around London and Kent...
With the weather a little milder, I ventured out to five games in five days last week.
The results, with attendances in brackets, were: Sporting Bengal United 4 Waltham Forest 4 in the Essex Senior League (25), Trans Plant 1 Waterloo & City 8 in the London Underground League (8), Regent Rovers 5 Islington Admiral 1 in the Islington Midweek League (5), Erith & Belvedere 0 North Shields 2 in The FA Vase Sixth Round (503) and Detica 3 Deloitte Tristars 0 in the London Accountants League (1).
The teams come out at Park View Road
Sporting Bengal were eleven points clear at the bottom of the ESL table at my first night game for several weeks.
The normally 20-minute tube journey from Lancaster Gate to Mile End took 45 minutes – with the poor driver having to apologise for hold-ups every couple of minutes – and then the game started 12 minutes late.
It was great entertainment when it finally got going, 3-3 at normal time and both teams scoring in the four minutes of added time.
Even after getting on for 7,000 games I’m still seeing things I’ve never seen before. The LUL fixture at Market Road on Thursday afternoon was 1-1 at half-time and 8-1 to Waterloo at the end.
I estimate that the gap between Waterloo’s second and third goal was less than ten seconds.
Then, in Regent’s Park on Sunday morning, a game on one of the other pitches – i.e. not the one I was watching – featured two teams in the same strip of red shirts and black shorts.
One had red socks and the other black but it must have still been difficult for the ref.
North Shields fans enjoy victory during a 600-mile round trip
Saturday’s game was an FA Vase quarter-final at Welling, with a sizeable contingent of North Shields supporters boosting the crowd to over 500.
It was something like a 600-mile round trip for them but they must have felt it was worth it after a 2-0 victory. With Wembley just two wins away, it was bound to be a tense affair and the first half was quite uneventful in terms of chances.
Then the Robins from Northumberland scored twice in Erith & Belvedere’s net in a ten-minute period early in the second half and it was almost game over.
It would have made it interesting if Alfie May’s bullet of a shot towards the bottom corner had gone in for the Deres but ‘keeper Michael Robinson finger-tipped the ball round the post.
North Shields won the old FA Amateur Cup in 1969, beating Sutton United 2-1 in the Wembley Final after going behind in the fourth minute.
In 1992, after being runners-up two seasons in a row, the club finally won the Northern Counties East League. That summer they went bankrupt, reformed the club and joined the Wearside League, a drop of five levels.
It was Erith’s first game against a North East team since a home Amateur Cup Second Round tie with Shildon in 1960, which they lost 7-2.
Fans turn up at Welling
Two years earlier, when they travelled up to West Auckland Town in the same competition, Deres fans mucked in to help clear six inches of snow off the pitch and their ‘reward’ was a 3-0 defeat!
My morning game in Regent’s Park finished soon after 12, Deloitte Tristars perhaps feeling hard done by to have lost by three goals.
I didn’t fancy spending the afternoon standing in that wind, so I walked back to the hotel – via a mixed grill at ‘Micky’s’ in Paddington – and later saw the rugby on the telly.
