Lots of Magpies on the 10:52 train; how many of them,
though, had been offered a lift to the station by our Assistant Manager?!
Emergency tax, chickenpox, and the full names of the
characters in Rising Damp (Rupert Rigsby?!) among the pre-match topics of conversation
Yours truly had checked the Good Beer Guide 2018 on Friday
night but missed the Northcote Arms
(listed under Leytonstone rather than Leyton); thankfully, Craig was on the
ball
The walk from the tube was 'interesting': down Skag
Alley and past a girls' school resembling a disused gulag
Our beers in the Northcote - a feature of which is an Orient
club crest that once adorned the East Stand at Brisbane Road - were, I think,
the best of the day; mine (Signature Brew's Roadie)
certainly was
Next up was the Leyton Technical;
my beer in here - Redemption's Rock the Kazbek
- was another good'un, although Macleod (M) really didn't like his Winter Ale,
and he also rightly pointed out that the interior of this place brings to mind Jeremy and Super Hans' pub in Peep Show
Our line-ups have, at times this season, been confusing - and, in truth, the opposite of awe-inspiring - but, at 3pm on
Saturday, I turned to Craig and nodded my approval; the XI that started at
Orient is the XI that I would pick (with Odametey for Obileye, once his
suspension served; Fondop
and Kelly pushing Clifton and Akintunde for their places)
Red card all day long if Carl Pentney had charged out of his
area and tripped the Orient centre forward, as Dean Brill
did to Yaya before the break; only a yellow for Brill, though, obvs.
I wasn't alone in thinking that Yaya was miles offside
[UPDATE: he wasn't!],
as he netted shortly after the interval; #scenes ... once those in the away end
(224) had belatedly realised that the Assistant's flag was conspicuous by its
absence!
Exemplary team performance, with every purple-shirted
player contributing, but the centre-halves deserve special praise; I noticed
just one error each (Kilgour missing a header; Massey caught out on the
half-turn) and, as I said to the Kilgour family after the final whistle
(following no less than six minutes of added time!), I doubt that there's a
better pairing in the division at present
Not to belittle our 1-0 win here last year, but that was an
end-of-season game between two mid-table sides with nothing to play for; the
5,337 attendance on Saturday - seemingly a record
for Maidenhead United in a League game - a testament to the fact that this was a
big one, and I feel privileged to have been there (a week removed from the news of El Presidente's passing
and on what would've been Richard J's 74th birthday)
The journey home, after post-match pints in the excellent Supporters' Club bar, was unremarkable; the day on the whole, though, was anything but #onefortheages
(BBC report; match highlights)
