22nd September 2018 - Altrincham (a) FA cup 2Q

The previous weekend, family duties had taken priority over the Bay as I had taken my eldest to university. The 2-1 defeat at Whickham had put a real downer on the weekend and if I could have made a pact with any kind of celestial entity, trading a guaranteed place in the next round of the FA Vase with a place in the FA cup, I would have done so gleefully. In the FA Cup, the games are only going to get harder. At least in the Vase we had the chance of more winnable matches. As it was, the Bay faced the likely prospect of being knocked out of both of the money-making competitions in the space of eight days. While we were losing to our fellow Northern Leaguers, Altrincham were winning away to Bradford Park Avenue 3-2. I was not hopeful.
My expectations dropped even further when I saw that top scorer Foalle was abroad at his father's stag do. Wandering up Hillheads Road, I had come to terms with this loss.
 I was singing:
"Foalle's not on fire, He's gone to his dad's stag do!" to Mr Programme David Hall when he told me that our striker wasn't the only absentee. Dan T, Callum A, Kevin Carr...the list was growing. They obviously hadn't thought that they would be involved at this round of the FA Cup: the curse of semi-professional football! We would just have to manage without them.


The bus was filled from the front first with all the usual suspects with an average age of ______ (actual age has been removed to protect the innocent). Therefore, there was only one place to go: to the back with the wild boys and girl! Smithy, Pogo and his dad, Pc Paul, Kieran Brannen's mam and dad, George 'Whitters'... the ultimate collection of anarchists!
The anarchy started straight away when Mammy Brannen started handing out the mini sausages and scotch eggs. Then Barry emerged with the chocolate toffees! Bedlam. There was a further period of anarchy when one member of the group decided to teach all of us to swear in sign language... his dad wasn't impressed!
The journey passed quickly and in no-time we were stopping at a services near Manchester. Happily, we greatly outnumbered the combined numbers of Wolves and Manchester United fans: none of whom had a clue who we were. Philistines!
It's always a great moment when you've been on a long bus journey and finally see the ground and this time we actually had the bonus of arriving at an actual stadium, with stands or banks of terracing on all sides. The stands were covered by a multitude of roofs of different heights and styles, which reminded me of a big version of Jarrow Roofing (RIP). One of the stands seemed to have an open air toilet for the use of the camera crew... or maybe it was just me!

From the programme sellers to the bar staff, everyone I talked to was extremely friendly and humoured me with my photos but my favourite had to be Dawn, the pie seller. She has already emerged as the front runner for pie-seller of the season with her amazing Balti chicken pie! It was packed with stuff and had herbs and everything! Beat that Northern League? I'm not so sure. It has blasted Stockton Town's mince and onion pie into second place. Well done Dawn! Can we eat here every week? On the down side, Pogo was not impressed with his mince pie bought from the opposite end of the ground. Should have gone to Dawn's and should have had the Balti mate!

Spot the concealed baby!

Look at Dawn's pie!

Look at her condiments!

Flaky pastry, herbs and that, chicken baltiness inside!
Thanks Dawn..... not so keen on the polystryrene, though!

The next friend I made was the wandering mascot who turned out to be a robin! How excited we would be if we could have our own seahorse patrolling the the touchlines of the Northern League!

It's a robin!

It was great to be on a bank of terracing again and there was a good collection of Bay fans and flags.

Ground of many roofs.

Courtesy of WBFC Twitter: thank you Julian!!!!!!!

The first 28 minutes were going smoothly for the Bay. They were holding their higher placed hosts at bay and Flynn was dealing comfortably with the few long distance efforts that came his way. We'd even managed a couple of efforts on goal ourselves. Could this be our day after all? Then things started to go wrong...

One nil down, it looked like the tie was slipping away from the lads. However it looked like qualification would be impossible when Altrincham were awarded a penalty and Issy was given his marching orders as he was the last man. For me, there seemed to be very little contact and a disappointing twist in the game that threatened to undo all of the Bay's hard work.

Up stepped the Altrincham forward...

We did our best to put him off and were delighted when it worked. His shot hit the upright, bounced in front of Flynn and then the half time whistle was blown. The Bay were still in it! I was later to find out that it hadn't been my exotic dancing that had put off the forward off but Karen (KB's mam) and George "banging on the boards". Enough to put anyone off!

Unfortunately that was as good as it got. The Bay hardly visited the opposition half as Altrincham laid siege to the visiting goal. Some heroic defending was not enough to hold back the red and white tide. Roared on by occasional chants from the home fans...the goals kept coming and my best videoing of the season captured no Whitley efforts. With the Dunston scoreline in mind, it became damage limitation.
The ground rang out with the voices of ten individuals in the cow shed to our right.

"Ey oop alti...Alti ey oop"
The Alti chimes!

"A oL Ti!"
BLT would have been preferable but without the lettuce or tomato....so just the bacon please.

" Oh Alti Alti... Alti Alti Alti Alti Altrincham"

When a perfectly targeted lob finished the scoring at 5-0, there was a final chant of "Wemberley" from the home fans and then the final whistle blew. To rub salt into our wounds, the final piece of music was "Another one bites the dust" by Queen. Predictable really. A nice touch was the way the Whitley players and coaching staff came over to our end and applauded us for coming. It meant a lot.
There was time to play "Where's our bus" before heading home in a disappointed state.

Disappointment didn't last long.

We were joined on the way back by Baldie Bruce and after half an hour, the banter returned and we had a great return with some lovely people...what football should be about. Regardless of the score we had had a good day out. Karen KBM (Kieran Brannen's Mam) was taught more sign language while George revelled in telling everyone about his "Banging on the boards" with KKBM. CKBD tried not to listen.

5-0 final score but that was just a sideline.