S
uddenly the announcer informed us that the
teams were about to enter the arena. As the crowd began to cheers and clap my ears were suddenly assaulted by one very loud and enthusiastic drummer together with some friends who tunelessly de- clared that „We are the Shrimpers and we support Sarfend‟. My senses were sent reeling and it took me about five minutes to adjust to a fact that a match had broken out. My team, Sarfend, looked magnificent in their purple shirts and, after an initial flurry by Walsall, settled down to play some attractive football. Fortunately the big security man was seated by now and the ladder did not play a big part in obscuring my view. The problem was that much of the game was being played over the other side of the pitch .I was a bit disappointed by the fact that one poor lad in our team was booed whenever his name was mentioned or whenever he did something good with the ball. It took me a while to realise that said player‟s name was Moussa and in fact the crowd was not booing him they were Mooing him. It did not take long before our Moo boy scored and the drummer really got going. We had a
bit of help when one of the Visiting team (a huge defender who must have been well over six feet in height) was sent off for a two footed tackle. Despite the scare of Walsall hitting the goalpost twice in the first half we maintained our one goal advantage as we went off for half-time. I had to smile to myself as the rituals of abusing the officials came back to me. I was reliably informed by several of the crowd that these poor people of dubious parentage also suffered from impaired vision. I felt quite sorry for them.
A
nyway together with Brian, I then took part
in the half time ritual of Pie Eating. Yes, I actually had a Pucca Pie and I have to say I was quite impressed. It was hot and had quite a lot of filling. It was just a bit difficult, when the second half kicked off, to eat, ap- plaud, shout abuse at the of- ficials and sing along with Bass Drum Boy. In fact it was while I was trying to lo- cate a piece of pie which had disappeared down my jacket that our boys scored the second goal. Never mind I thought as the team all piled on top of the scorer (on the far side of the pitch) I will be able to see the replay in a minute! Yeh like what was I thinking, this was live
football. My encouraging shouts of Sarfend and Shrimpers obviously encouraged the team to even greater efforts because Moo boy scored another super goal, which I actually saw, and he was declared man of the match. We all felt suitably satisfied as we trudged back to the car. We Rotarians had helped to swell the crowd to over six thousand, the programme had featured our polio initiative and hopefully the boys shaking their buckets outside the ground made a lot of money. I did feel a tiny bit sorry for the few travel- ling supporters. There were probably between 50 to a 100 of them who occupied the whole of one end behind the goal. But not for long! Our gloating gang of five headed back to the car singing and chanting and wishing old Bass drum boy was with us to keep us in time. If you think that really happened then you have got an over active imagination. We were too worn out from all the excitement to even talk as we trudged down the road to find our car. I jest of course; we were full of beans and we all agreed it was a worthwhile experience and that we had done our bit to support a truly magnificent Rotary initiative.
Story & pictures supplied by George Larkey
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