Sprout and About in the Valley

If you know of me or have read any of my stuff before you will know what is about to follow, if you don`t a quick introduction. My name is Simon, known to all as Sprout (except me mum), hence the incredibly unoriginal title for my literary works. I used to write for The Pirate offering an insight into the travelling fan, sometimes serious, sometimes irreverent and probably mostly blurry recollections of what actually happened. So without further ado.

I have started to go less frequently to away games than I once did, those 27 and a bit years starting to catch up with me, but had earmarked Charlton away as a must do game. A nice ground and one to cross off the list, and one that unfortunately isn`t getting much shorter following the Gas.

Being a Tuesday night match, I didn`t fancy much having to travel across London traffic on an evening by coach or car and so decided to mix business with pleasure and stay over a couple of days letting the train take the strain and visiting the sights such as Oxford Circus` new multi-directional pedestrian crossing, and as a fully fledged Whovian (That`s a Doctor Who nerd if you didn`t know) the Police box outside Earls Court tube station, as well as the dreaded Christmas shopping.

I set off from Temple Meads with my back pack on the 11.30 train, with the prerequisite reading materials of a couple of newspapers and the crosswords to pass the time. I had arranged to stay in the Paddington area, so after checking into my new abode for the next few days I caught up with a friend who had been on a slightly later train and we headed off on the tube to North Greenwich with my new Oyster card in tow (A trip to the Orient awaits), followed by a short bus hop to the Charlton station shop.

Aided by information via mobile phone (How did we manage?), we met up with some fellow friends and quite a few Gasheads and the designated pub The Rose of Denmark. A good, honest boozer and one that is extremely happy to accept the travelling hordes, so much so they have compilations of photos of various travelling fans adorning their wall over the past few seasons. I did happening to get snapped along with the people I was with, and can be seen on addicks.fotopages.com

Then game the important part of the proceedings and the game. I didn`t think that we played to bad all in all, but once again were undone by conceding some very poor goals, not helped in my opinion by some poor tactics and selection to start with. Duffy is not a left-sided player (and some will say worse than that) and neither is Blizzard when we went to a better 4-4-2 formation.

Charlton scythed through us for the first and there was that air around that we were in for a Paxo job (that`s stuffing). Then we gave a penalty away moments after being warned before getting a Pen of our own to pull one back before half-time. Then the formation change game and we looked a much better team. The ever improving Chris Lines pulled us level and were on top before missing a couple of chance of our own to go in front. Finally we were undone by some real rank bad defending, the likes that Mr Hansen would have a field day with, with the final nail a simple unmarked shot with 5 or 6 minutes left.

On the trudge back to the station, you couldn`t help but thing we had done okay but again just conceded poor goals again and they were poor goals. This seemed to be the talk of the train, or at least 3 of us anyway. Until these defensive errors are minimised it will seriously hinder any potential play-off challenges as we cannot go on having to score 2 or 3 just to get something from a game.

Not having to rush to get back to Bristol, the rest of the evening was spent in Paddington drowning my sorrows with a few drinks via The West Cornwall Pasty Co (Which I highly recommend). You wouldn`t want to know about the rest of my trip, but thankfully pay day arrived on Thursday, as I was soon going to be in need of a Government loan.

With no Rovers on Saturday, it will, or will have been Bath Vs Forest Green for me, before the Exeter game on Tuesday night. Not sure when my next trip on the road with The Gas will be, but no doubt I will be Sprout and about somewhere. Up The Gas!

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