I like to go along to the horse racing when I get the opportunity and after our stay in New Orleans Jen and I had moved out of town to Arnaudville. It’s a small town that’s only around twenty minutes drive from the Evangeline track. As there was a meeting going on during our stay we called in one evening.
The track seems to be secondary to the casino, which was far busier than the racing. It was free to get in although few of the people present had much of an interest in the live racing and spent their time on the big betting hall that had races on the telly from other locations around the country.
It was a strange atmosphere indoors as smoking was allowed. It felt like going back in time twenty-years. Maybe it’s a casino thing, although the casino wasn’t what I consider a casino. I always expect to see Bond in a tuxedo playing Baccarat, but instead we got Bart Simpson’s aunts feeding the fruities.
The racing was probably the most unusual that I’ve seen, bar the races for midget horses in Jeju where the jockeys could bring them to a halt by putting their boots to the ground. Each race was no longer than 350 yards, with some of them just 250 yards. It meant that only those horses that could make a lightning start were in with a chance.
Something else that was unusual was that there were always exactly six horses in each race, like going to the dogs. There were only six jockeys in total as well, each of them riding in every race.
Our betting strategy of Jen selecting a horse on the basis of its name paid off and we finished up well ahead. I resisted the urge to play the slots on the way out and we headed back to Arnaudville quids in.
Staying out in the sticks was all very well, but every now and then you want a little more action going on and so Jen and I booked three nights in New Orleans, staying in an Airbnb about forty-minutes walk from the busy part of town. Each day we had a wander into the touristy bit for a mooch around.
On one of the days, we got caught up in a jazz funeral that went past our house. You can’t miss an opportunity like that and so we followed it along to the church next to the underpass where the rough sleepers congregate. I’m not really sure who benefits from a jazz funeral, certainly not the dead and probably not those grieving. Maybe it’s just for bystanders like me.
One of the events that we’d planned was seeing Jonathan Richman at some old French theatre. I’m not that familiar with his music, but I’ve seen the tribute band, The Modern Ovens, that some of the Sea Power members play in, a few times. If it’s good enough for them then that will do.
We met up with Luke, one of Jen’s brothers who lives in New Orleans, and had an enjoyable evening.
Next night was the Pelicans in the NBA. Another of Jen’s brothers, Jeff, picked us up and commenting on the place we were staying asked “Were the projects too expensive?”.
I don’t think Jeff was too impressed with the seats I’d bought either. He used to be a marketing guy for a minor league baseball team and has the contacts to always sit somewhere good. We were quite high up, but I thought it was a decent view. The venue hadn’t sold out and Jeff let me know that if we’d waited until the day of the game we’d have picked up seats for buttons on the resale sites.
The Pelicans had only arrived back in town that day, having been stranded overnight after an away game. With sixteen games scheduled for November they chose to rest both of their star players which may have impacted on the crowd. On the plus side it meant we didn’t ever have to queue to get another ten dollar can of beer.
The lack of stars didn’t seem to hinder the home side and after a sluggish start they found themselves twenty-five points up at one stage. Thunder pegged it back towards the end, but the result was never in doubt in what turned out to be a good evening for the Pelican’s fringe players.
As the US trip went on I found that the options for seeing another football game opened up a bit with the MSL play-offs. Houston had qualified and had a home game in Texas, which is just a five-hour drive from Baton Rouge. It’s the sort of distance that Americans will drive to pick up a Gazette and a pint of milk and so it seemed far less weird than travelling that far would in the UK to attend a game in say, Cornwall, between two teams I had no affinity with.
A benefit of travelling long distance in the States is the variety of service stations. I’ve previously broken a journey to fire an AK47. This time I got to manhandle an alligator. Despite me telling the lady in charge that alligators generally like me, she still wouldn’t remove the band from around its mouth in case it ripped my arm off. Nevertheless, it beats the services in the UK and perked me up far more than a coffee would, although perhaps not as much as blasting away with a machine gun did.
As the game was on a Sunday Houston was pretty quiet and we stayed at a hotel next to the baseball stadium and about a twenty-minute walk from Houston Dynamos Shell Energy Stadium. Somewhat surprisingly (to me) the game hadn’t sold out. Maybe Houston isn’t really a soccer town.
As we went in we were given a tea towel and a voucher for a bottle of Bud Lite. I doubt I’d ever buy American Bud unless there were very limited options but as it was free, I was happy to save the tenner that I’d have needed to spend on a stadium beer. Jen very kindly gave me hers as well, although the savings then became moot as she switched to twenty-dollar Margaritas.
Our seats were in one of the corners, so we watched the warm-ups from a bar. If you got there early enough you could watch the whole game from tables there and that might have been a decent option, particularly if you were more interested in a chat and a drink than the action on the pitch.
The play-off structure has been expanded so that half the league seems to qualify. What is odder is that the format provides for a best of three scenario. That seems like overkill to me, surely a two-legged affair is enough for anyone.
Anyway, Dynamo went a goal up and Salt Lake equalised. With the rain coming down and Jen and I having relocated to the bar to take advantage of their roof, Houston nicked a late winner to go a game up with two to play.
After the Mississippi stay, Jen and I moved on to Denham Springs in Louisiana for the dog-sitting. Even though Halloween was quite a way off, the neighbourhood was full of decorations. There was a residents competition to see who could put the most effort in and if you didn’t have a couple of twenty-feet high inflatables in your front yard then you didn’t really stand a chance.
It’s also a big football area, or specifically an LSU town. Everywhere you go people are sporting the colours. Player images adorn the drive-throughs and on game days the supermarkets are stripped of beer and snacks for house parties.
Whilst I’m all in favour of beer and snacks I like to watch my sport live and so Jen and I went along to Tiger Stadium for the fixture with the Army. Not the whole army, but presumably their version of Sandhurst.
It was a right arse-on getting parked but eventually we were directed to some free parking in a field that was only twenty minutes or so from the venue. We passed by some serious tailgating that involved gazebos and big tellies. Some of those people won’t even have bothered going inside, preferring instead to enjoy the atmosphere in the vicinity.
We did a lap of the stadium and had a gawp at Mike the Tiger. A real tiger in an enclosure that Jen assured me was much larger than the small pen that one of the earlier Mikes lived in when she was an LSU student.
Once inside we were able to take elevators to our forty-dollar seats way up high and in time for a helicopter drop of parachutists as pre-match entertainment. There was a band too, on a much bigger scale that the one at the soccer game, with perhaps a hundred or so members marching up and down.
I got myself a crawfish pie from one of the concession stands on the basis that I’m unlikely to get the option of buying one at a game anywhere else. I don’t see them catching on.
As a contest it was far too one-sided with LSU racking up the points at will. They were so dominant that they hooked their star quarterback at half-time denying him the opportunity to set whatever records he fancied. In the end, it finished up 62-0, which is a score that you wouldn’t expect to see anywhere other than at the cricket. Nevertheless, it was a decent evening out.
Jen had arranged to spend a month in the States, primarily to do some dog sitting for her sister who was going on holiday. As the work I’m doing can all be done remotely I thought I’d go along as well. We started off at her Dad’s house in Mississippi where the highlights were cutting down a couple of trees with a chainsaw and taking his dog Roscoe for a walk.
Soccer-wise, the season was drawing to an end, and I don’t think that there are any local sides in the MSL or the second-tier leagues anyway. The college season was just about done too but I was just in time for a women’s university fixture between LSU and Arkansas.
It was free to park at the LSU Soccer Stadium and free to get into the game. They even gave me a complimentary ‘fanny pack’ for turning up. Once inside I got myself an enormous coke and a sausage Po Boy, which is really just a hot dog in a bun.
I took a seat in the main stand and watched the two sides warm up. Both of them had massive squads. LSU had twenty-six outfield players and four goalies. Arkansas must have had an injury crisis as they’d only brought twenty-three players.
The home side were in their traditional purple with the visitors in white. Both sets of players wore their shorts a lot tighter than in the English game and hitched up in the style favoured mainly by teenage girls and Glen Hoddle. Sepp Blatter would no doubt have been pleased.
Another noticeable difference to English game was that the scoreboard clock counted down and was paused whenever there was a break in play for VAR checks, yellow card admin or injuries. We also got a greater involvement from the stadium announcer who, in case any of the crowd were blind, would advise the reason for a break in play with “Offside, Arkansas” or “Free-kick, Tigers”.
We were treated to a twenty-odd strong brass band that every now and then would go walkabout through the stand. I suppose if you have to practice the tuba, you might as well do it whilst watching a match.
The game was only half an hour old when we got four Razorback subs and one from LSU. Ten minutes later another Razorback was swapped as were three Tigers players. The substitutions took no time at all as the oncoming player sprinted on with a bib in hand, gave it to the subbed player who similarly sprinted off the field. I liked that.
I lost track of the total number of subs throughout, but it was more than eleven for each side with some players coming back on and some subs only getting a few minutes pitch time before returning to the bench. I’m aware of rolling subs in the over-forties leagues in England but hadn’t expected it here.
The game was goalless up until the a few minutes from time when LSU took the lead with a header. I thought that would be enough to clinch the victory but Arkansas equalised pretty much straightaway to take a share of the points.
I’d done the Uni stuff that was of interest to me in Chelmsford and so skipped the final session of the day. That meant that I had time to call in at Barnston on the way home to see some action in the eleventh tier Essex and Suffolk Border League Premier Division. It’s a game that I very much doubt I’d have known about before the advent of the Futbology App.
It was free entry to the High Easter ground and I was able to get into the car park outside the clubhouse. There were around twenty people watching, most of them with a pint in their hand. I started off leaning against the perimeter fence along one side and gradually worked my way around the pitch. There weren’t any seated areas.
Barnston were in blue with Lawford Lads in white and light blue. The standard was well below the equivalent Wearside league with lots of fat lads stumbling around and falling over as if they’d had a pre-match pint or three. Despite, or maybe because of the lack of talent on show, there was plenty of stick dished out to teammates, opposition, and the ref alike. I don’t think I’d appreciate criticism from someone who struggled to run ten yards without tripping over his own feet.
For what it’s worth, Barnston took the lead in the first half and then added two more after the break for a three-nil victory.
For the past four years I’ve been doing some college stuff in Chelmsford and so usually head down there for some chit-chat every few months. Whilst I’ve still not managed to see Chelmsford City play, I usually try and tag a game onto the weekend either on the way down or when coming back.
On this occasion I targeted a Friday night FA Trophy Qualification game in Potters Bar, which although around an hour’s drive from Chelmsford, made it an easy journey the following morning for those ten o’clock starts that are the norm in the academic world.
The other attraction of that game was the opportunity to stay at the Comet Hotel in Hatfield. It’s somewhere that I’d last stayed back in 1981 after leaving home as a sixteen year old following a house party that resulted in all sorts of damage including a toilet bowl with a sheared off front section.
It’s all a long story, that if I got into, I’d be here all day. Anyway, those of you who were around in those days will know how it all panned out. Pun intended. Suffice to say, the nerd in me found the idea of revisiting the Comet Hotel forty-two years on an interesting prospect.
It was of less interest to the receptionist, whose eyes glazed over as she came to regret asking me if I’d stayed with them before. I cut the tale short there as well and headed for the match at the LA Construction Stadium.
I’d not had time to eat before leaving the hotel and so called into a chippy on the row of shops outside the ground. It was nearly twelve quid for fish and chips. How can that be? They were southern style as well, with the skin left on the fish. Dirty bastards. We should start selling jellied eels up our way and top them with breadcrumbs and bechamel sauce to see how they like that.
It was thirteen quid in for a game between sides in the seventh tier. Something which I should have been more outraged about than the fish and chips, but as Mogga would say, it is what it is. I took a seat in a three-row covered stand along one side. There was another one a little further along as well as three covered standing areas in other parts of the ground. I like it when grounds evolve like that, with an additional space to sit or stand appearing every few years, perhaps as ground improvement requirements after promotion.
Potters Bar Town had a lot of debutants, suggesting that either they weren’t prioritising the FA Trophy or perhaps they were suffering from an injury crisis. At this level it’s also possible that there had been a management change and the outgoing boss had taken his players with him like a pied piper. They were in a maroon kit with Berkhamsted in white and black, so imagine Hearts v Darlo.
The ref seemed familiar, but I soon concluded that was because he was a dead ringer for that posh army major who was rattling Lady Di back in the day.
It started badly for the home side when a Berkhamsted striker who was miles offside and ambling back towards his own half had the good fortune to be played onside by a Potters Bar defender who inexplicably headed the ball towards his keeper. The attacker swivelled and whacked it past the goalie who, on his debut, must have been wondering just what shitshow he had got himself into.
It turned out ok in the end though with Potters Bar taking control and running out four-one winners. I headed back to the Comet Hotel, where nothing except part of the building façade seemed to be as I remembered it. Maybe I’ll come back in another forty-two year’s time. I doubt it though.
After the wins against Southampton and Watford, I was hoping that we could continue the run against play-off placed Cardiff. Alistair was available to come along with Harry and I and we were there early enough for him to have a go on one of the game consoles in the Generation Red area of the ground where we sit.
I watched him for a while, playing Manchester United against Manchester United. It was the same players on either side and therefore a fairly well-matched contest. So much so that it ended up nil-nil. Thankfully he didn’t opt for a replay, and we were able to let some other kid have a crack at it.
There was a better outcome on the real pitch. After a quiet first half Cardiff had the chance to go ahead when hitting the woodwork, before Jones tapped in a cross from close range for us. We scored a second goal towards the end when Latte-Lath broke at pace, checked his run with a trip and then recovered to finish with the coolness of someone who hadn’t just fell over his own feet in front of twenty-odd thousand people.
That was enough to clinch the points and move us up from the edge of the relegation area to the dizzy heights of sixteenth place in the table.
Vicarage Road is one of two Championship grounds that I’d not yet been to and so when I found myself back in the UK it was an easy decision to head south for a couple of nights. I had thought about staying in London but as I’ve never knowingly been to Watford thought we might as well see what it had to offer.
There’s a busy town centre where we ate and drank in a Spanish bar on the Friday night. They served draught Estrella Galica which took me back to my Ferrol days, although I suspect that it’s probably now brewed in Tadcaster or somewhere.
London has its attractions though and on the Saturday morning we took a Metropolitan Line train into the city for the Paul McCartney photo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It was the final weekend before it moved on to the US.
It was worth a visit to see the two hundred and fifty or so photos that he taken around the world in 1963 and ’64. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of seeing or hearing new Beatles stuff.
We were staying in the Watford Travelodge and so it was only a fifteen minute or so walk to Vicarage Road. I was able to just follow the crowd through the backstreets to the ground. I was hoping that we might have turned the corner after our poor early season form, with wins in the League Cup against Bradford and over recently relegated Southampton in the League.
It was an end-to-end game that could have gone either way. Riley McGree scored twice for us in the opening twelve minutes, before Watford quickly pulled one back. When Watford levelled in the second half my expectations of taking anything from the game were minimal. I was wrong though, with Josh Coburn beating their keeper in a one-on-one and then the bar coming to our rescue in added time.
The win lifted us out of the relegation area on goal difference and Jen and I celebrated in a Romanian restaurant. It was decorated in a way that our house may end up one day if we don’t tone down impulse eBay purchases. I think we might have been the only non-Romanians in there but from what I can remember of the rest of the evening it was as enjoyable as the match had been.
It’s easy to lose track of the Durham teams. I’ve seen Durham City getting mauled a few times in the last couple of years as they dropped down the leagues, but I think that it’s the first time I’d seen either of these sides.
From what I gather, United are the Durham University team whilst Corinthians have been around for five years or so and in that time have managed to merge with another recently formed Durham side.
The game was at Maiden Castle, which has pitches for cricket and hockey as well as football. Newcastle used to train there in the Keegan era and Durham Women currently play their home fixtures on the main pitch.
I was there for an eleventh-tier Wearside League Premier Division fixture, along with about forty other people. A lot of them seemed to be students and either fringe players or friends of the university team. They all had that ‘posh boy’ haircut where it’s a little messy and has never been touched by clippers.
I watched the opening stages from the main stand until the constant yapping from those around me drove me away. In the absence of any catering facilities, they were sorting out a delivery of food from MacDonalds, a task that seemed far more complicated than it needed to be. Just have your fucking tea before you go out or when you get home.
It took a while for the game to come to life with the students eventually taking the lead with a shot from distance with twenty minutes to go. In added time it looked as though Corinthians had snatched a point with a long range shot of their own, but United went straight down the other end, regained the lead and clinched the victory.
Trail of the Lion King 