I’d spent some of the week leading up to the Bristol City game in Bilbao for work. One morning we walked to the office along the canal and passed the San Mames stadium. I’d seen a game there in 2018 when Athletic Bilbao took on Celta Vigo. Unfortunately, there weren’t any football fixtures within travelling distance this time, so I had to settle for a visit to the Guggenheim Museum.
There were one or two exhibits that were ok, but most of it was pretentious bollocks that I could have knocked up in my lunchbreak. I remain convinced that success in the art world can be achieved with good connections and minimal talent.
For the trip to Bristol City, Jen and I stayed over in Stroud for two nights. I don’t think I’d ever been to Stroud before. In fact, I don’t think I’d even heard of it.
Stroud is fairly picturesque and on the Saturday morning we had a wander around. There were a couple of farmers markets, and I had a spiced scotch egg that was really good. If farmers switched from growing turnips and broccoli to spicy scotch egg production they’d do so well that they wouldn’t have to worry about having to pay their fair share of tax.
After lunch I drove down to Ashton Gate and left the car in the Long Ashton Park and Ride car park. It’s a few years since I’d been to the ground, the last time being the first season back in the Championship after the Southgate relegation. My main memory of that last visit is tripping on the way out and saving myself by rugby tackling an old bloke around the waist. He was understandably alarmed by events.
There seemed to have been a lot of development at Ashton Gate since 2009 with at least two new stands. We might even have been at the opposite end to last time. I was in row eleven, but the first eight or nine rows were covered over. As my row was the last of the lower tier, I had a bar to lean back against.
The Boro line up is getting more consistent and was pretty much as expected. Gilbert came back into the midfield, but otherwise it picked itself. Early results elsewhere had gone our way and if we could pick up three points then we might possibly go ten points clear of third place.
If Morgan Whittakers’s shot against the inside of the post had gone in after three minutes, then I think that we would have run out easy winners. We dominated possession and territory, but their goal after a quarter of an hour allowed them to defend deep and we never really looked like breaking them down. When their second goal went in it was clear that it wasn’t going to be our day. Still, we go into Christmas in second place, five points clear of third. We’d all have taken that in August.
Trail of the Lion King 