View from the Cemetery

Cannot get my cousin stirred. Never known him have such a long lie down. Must be the excitement from promotion last season. So, I've taken the opportunity to give my view. Hope he doesn't get upset! I'm a bit further up from the Ghostly Gadgie and further to the left. Gives me a decent perspective, I reckon.

Well, closer and closer we get. Will we make it this time? Just a couple of weeks now to find out if it is to be the dreaded fourth place again, or if we can stagger over the line at last. Few interesting events since my last communication, including a very feisty game against the Stokesley lads, on and off the pitch. But such days are not everybody’s cup of tea, oh no, definitely not.

Woe, woe and thrice woe! Beware the humps and bumps of Whickham as my old grandad used to say. I knew it was going to be a bad day when the lounge bar came to life as that fine upstanding late night fisticuffs maestro Carroll, maintaining a tradition built up over very many glorious years of players' adventures in the hot spots of Newcastle, nodded the Mags an undeserved equaliser while doing his day job. Before that the clubhouse at the Glebe was like a burial ground, or so I am lead to believe. But one defeat does not make you a bad side; oh no indeed, lots of other things do that...

Well, back with a bang or what? Eight goals, a sending off and a missed pen, this will bring the crowds back; but not yet by the looks of things on Saturday. No football for more than a month, the big boys down at Portsmouth, surely this should have been an opportunity to fill the ground with fans old and new. But how many turned up? Official figure said 58 I heard, but that must have included Winston the dog, and most of them were in the bar, sorry, clubhouse, for most of the afternoon. I bow to no one in my appreciation of the hidden delights of Ryhope, but surely a dozen or so can be tempted out of the Guide Post to watch a winning team? Maybe not, maybe not...