 |
| English: Fulham Football Club: Craven Cottage Craven Cottage is the house behind the traditional style turnstiles. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Get into the Allotments!
The Tiger BalmAllotments league is due to start on Saturday 21st September. There are still two members missing from the planned total of 18. If, by chance, we do not have a total of 18 by Friday night I shall close the League to new entrants and start at a slightly later date one or two weeks later. No problem.
You can work out how many weeks we need for 18 teams to play each other twice if you follow the Premier League paradigm. With the 20 teams of the Premier League our season is 38 weeks. (Total number of teams minus one, then multiply by 2)
Amongst the non-fantasy matches coming along in Gameweek 5 we have two local derbies: in London and Manchester. The London one is between two clubs whose grounds you can see on the District Line of the London Underground (above ground in this vicinity). If you look out to the left of the carriage before Putney Bridge you will see some of the stand at Stamford Bridge; further on you might get a glimpse of Fulham's stand on the north bank as you cross the Thames. If you don't see it you can get off the train and walk along the south bank to where the Boat Race starts and look across the river. Craven Cottage is where I think I saw Stanley Matthews play in 1952..........
......I only just got in. I had to stand at the top rear of a terrace and I could only see part of the pitch. Immediately from the kick-off Mathews must have got the ball. He was playing in the hinterland of the near touchline. I could not see the pitch. The thousands in front of me strained up on their toes flinging their arms about for the traction to push themselves higher in order to see the great Stanley. Those of us at the very back got pushed away down the slope of cinders and shale towards the river. We would climb back up just in time for Matthews to get the ball again and the same thing to happen: down we would go towards the river. The ground was so full that last of us to get in to watch were on the reverse downward slope of the so-called terrace anyway!
The second half, for this reason, was not much better. Matthews was on the wing at the far side of the ground but not in the half of the pitch that I could see something of.......did I really see him? Certainly: his head here, a leg there, a shirt certainly, a boot once - if I add it all up I suppose I can say, "Yes, I probably did see Matthews play!"
No comments:
Post a Comment