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After an utterly shite January, we’re now unbeaten in five games. That’s good, innit? Onwards and upwards.
Last Saturday we made the trip to Solihull, the hometown of John Taylor, the greatest bass player to ever come from the West Midlands. Andy can threaten me with having to sleep in the shed all he wants, I stand by that assertion. A View To A Kill pisses all over War Pigs. Come the fuck at me.
I had a feeling the train might be a bit busy, and sure enough, it was packed with Latics fans. One of them – someone I don’t know – wordlessly handed Andy a can of Estrella when we were about half an hour away from Birmingham. We weren’t even wearing colours. The joys of an away day.
Birmingham New Street station is of course a subterranean hellhole, but Moor Street, by contrast, is lovely. Really pretty 1930s-style signs and fittings, it fully deserves its Grade II listed status. And there’s a very nice café that sells hot drinks with liqueur. The Cointreau hot chocolate was most welcome, given the wintry weather.
After a few drinks in the town centre, we got a taxi to the ground, and the driver was taken aback by the police presence. “Who’s playing? I’ve never seen a police van outside this ground before.” We tried to reassure him that there wouldn’t be any trouble and they were only there because there was going to be a much bigger crowd than usual, but I got the impression that was the last trip he was going to be making from the Wetherspoons to the ARMCO Arena in his nice Mercedes.
Having learned my lesson from Altrincham, we got to the ground in good time so that I could get a spot at the front of the terrace where I could actually see the pitch. It was good to see podcast supremo Andy Halliwell and his son, and, even as a vegetarian, I was slightly envious of Halliwell Jr’s sheepskin mittens. You just don’t expect grounds south of Lancashire to be as cold as Boundary Park, do you?
The first half was a bit scrappy; we should have been more dominant than we were, and Solihull found it easier than I would have liked to run through our midfield. Thankfully their finishing was terrible, we were solid at the back, and Hudson made some good saves. Waters was, once again, a Paul Dickov-esque nuisance.
With less than 10 minutes to go until half-time, Andy went to the bar, and you all need to thank him, again. In injury time, Rossiter (who is proving to be an absolute workhorse in the middle) trapped a loose ball and threaded it through to Waters, whose beautiful feint fooled the keeper, and it was a brilliant finish on his left foot at the near post. We were all delighted for him, he’s ran his arse off since he joined us, and he so deserved that goal.
(Were the stewards really directing blokes to use a designated piss fence because there weren’t enough toilets? Jesus fucking Christ. We HAVE to get out of this league.)
Having gone the bar at half time, I figured that I’d struggle to find a good viewpoint on the terrace again, so we went in the seats for the second half. That worked out well because it meant we had a cracking view of Caprice’s attempted cross smashing their number 3 in the bollocks, and him appearing to claim that Caprice had done it on purpose.
He got as much sympathy as you’d expect – Andy shouted “one of them’s come out of your ear, mate”, and the bloke behind us shouted “KICK HIM IN THE BOLLOCKS AGAIN!” every time Caprice was on the ball for the rest of the game. Mean. Hilarious, but mean. Caprice was superb once again, and the battered knackers won’t be the only reason that number 3 will be having nightmares about him.
The game was more open than it should have been, we should have taken control of it better, but they continued to be wasteful, and we continued to defend well. No goal for Fondop this time, but he put in a hell of a shift and did some excellent defensive work, heading the ball away at corners. It wasn’t pretty, but it was another valuable away win. Three on the bounce now. Or, as Mellon was keen to point out after the game, “Four results away from home, Alan, let’s not forget that.”
Mellon was rightly full of praise for Waters: “well deserved…...runs his socks off”. Although, obviously, the highlight of his interview was Frank’s bellowing laughter in the background. It was lovely to see Waters so happy at getting off the mark, hopefully that’ll do him the world of good. He talked about how he’s always played with energy, harassing the opposition and making a nuisance of himself, and we’ve certainly seen that. He’s great to watch.
And, on the way home, we learned that fellow Latic Jack Rafferty had successfully defended his British, Commonwealth and WBC International Silver belts in ruthless style, forcing Reece MacMillan’s corner to throw the towel in halfway through the seventh round. Get in, Jack. What a great day.
Having won three away games in a row, it would have been Typical Latics to lose our first home game in three weeks. Altrincham are yet another bogey side for us, they’ve been playing well, and the starting line up did nothing to settle the nerves. Pett being rested was to be expected, but losing Ogle with a hip injury was a blow, and Mat Hudson being out with a finger injury meant 20 year old Jake Dennis making his debut in goal. Not ideal. Altrincham had their own injury problems and had announced the signing of 19 year old Caleb Ansen on loan from Norwich that day, so it was something of a battle of the rookie keepers.
There was a horrible moment when Leake left a loose ball in the box expecting Dennis to collect, and when he didn’t and Leake had to put it out for a throw-in, both Leake and Raglan bollocked him. It was unpleasant, but, kid or not, he’s playing in the first team and he has to learn quickly.
The game could have gone very differently if Waters had finished when he was one-on-one with the keeper early in the game, having pounced on a defensive mistake, but it was a good save. You’d imagine that Fondop was looking on thinking “I know that feel, bro”.
Altrincham fired a few warning shots that went wide, and we couldn’t say that the opening goal hadn’t been coming. We were too hesitant to clear, Dennis got his hands to the ball but couldn’t keep it out. Maybe Hudson would have saved it, maybe he wouldn’t, we don’t know.
It had been a fairly even first half, and we were hoping that Mellon would give them a rocket up their arses at half time and they’d come out all guns blazing, so we were fucking dismayed when Altrincham doubled their lead about 30 seconds in. It was a great curling shot, and there wasn’t much Dennis could have done about it, but why the hell were we so sluggish?
Changes needed to be made, and we made a triple substitution, bringing on Norwood, Pett and Lundstram. It took us a lot closer to our strongest line-up, but Mellon revealed after the game that Norwood hadn’t trained for three weeks and Pett had a quad injury and didn’t train on Monday, and neither player was meant to be in the squad, but we were low on numbers.
While it wasn’t an excuse for us not getting our arses into gear until we were 2-0 down, it was one of the most breathtakingly awful refereeing performances I’ve ever seen. Continually ignoring fouls by them, continually blowing up for imaginary fouls by us, and someone needs to tell him: POLITELY ASKING THE KEEPER TO STOP TIMEWASTING DOESN’T WORK. HE WILL KEEP ON DOING IT UNTIL YOU BOOK HIM.
It turned out that it was worth taking a gamble on Norwood, and him and Fondop can play together. Norwood dummied receiving Kitching’s pass to leave it for Fondop, Mikey passed it back to him, and Norwood’s finish was worth paying five grand a week for.
📸 Oldham Athletic
With 10 minutes left, it looked like Altrincham had won the Battle of the Rookie Keepers with their pisstaking, but Ansen had something really special in store for us. In attempting to save a cross, he threw the ball over his head to former Altrincham player Lundstram, and he accepted the gift gratefully. I was fully expecting the referee to wrongly disallow it for offside, but common sense prevailed.
📸 Noah Miller. Put it in the Louvre.
Having wasted time at 2-0 up, Altrincham continued to procrastinate, knowing which way the momentum was going and that they weren’t likely to be the ones getting a late winner. Cooper took Caprice out of the game with a nasty, cynical tackle that left him visibly limping, which was a real shame as he was having another great game. We kept pushing but it wasn’t to be, and it was testament to the resilience and character we showed after going 2-0 down that we were disappointed with a point.
So, we still haven’t beaten Altrincham. But they haven’t beaten us this season either, and our ground doesn’t have fire exits made of wood.
The signing of Tom Donaghy from Fleetwood until the end of the season would suggest that Hudson is out for a while (Mellon confirmed yesterday that he’s broken his finger), and that Mellon doesn’t see Dennis or Moloney as being ready for the first team. Good luck to him.
We had a couple of unexpected visitors to Boundary Park yesterday. I’m not gonna lie, it’s really quite distracting, when you’re working from home, to have two Puma helicopters make your neighbourhood look like a scene from Apocalypse Now and fly into the ground like they’re about the drop troops onto the pitch to seize control of the club. Which, let’s face it, we all would have welcomed in the Lemsagam era.
It wasn’t anything that sinister, of course. OAFC Veterans arranged for them to visit during a training exercise, which coincided with the Football, Finance and Analytics conference. I hope that Avram Grant was suitably impressed.
Off the pitch, the club continues to do us proud. After a Latics fan took unexpectedly ill and was admitted to intensive care, Conlon, Waters, Lundstram and Pett visited him and gave him a shirt. Heartwarming stuff, well done to all involved.
We still haven’t won at home in 2025, and it’d be really nice if we could put that right today, especially as we’ve got people travelling from all over Europe to the game. Our friend Billy – who you may remember from him nearly scoring in the fans game at Avro – is coming over from Ireland with his family, and the Dutch OAFC supporters branch are visiting too. Come on lads, they’ve travelled a long way and the weather’s gonna be crap, make it worth their while. Fire up HMS Piss the League’s engine. KTMFF.
Written by Arlene Finnigan
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