The Future Of The Moon Under Water

In Britain, we generally say simply that we are going to ‘the pub.’ Not a pub or even a specific pub, just ‘the pub.’ There are a few reasons for this. Either the person or people we are talking to know exactly which pub we mean - either through routine or habit - or because there is only one public house in the vicinity, or because we have no preference and just want to go to a pub, any pub.

The Red Lion is one of the most common pub names in England, but most people would call it simply The Lion.

Even when we name a specific pub, we are loath to use its full name, thus The Golden Lion or The Red Lion become simply, ‘The Lion.’  No one would call The Three Jolly Gardeners by its full name; it would just be The Gardeners. There’s a pub in Gants Hill called The King George The Fifth; it’s universally known as the KG5. Even pubs with single-word names, like The Victoria, get truncated to The Vic, and nicknames abound – The Black Swan might be dubbed The Mucky Duck for instance. Any pub in the Wetherspoons chain, whether it’s The Moon and Stars, The Eva Hart, or The Barking Dog, is just ‘Spoons.’

Whatever we call it, we know where we’re going when we say we’re going to the pub, except we’re not going to the pub at all at the moment since they were all closed on 20^th March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Immediately after the pubs were forced to call last orders for the foreseeable, it was reported that sales of alcohol for home consumption rose by 22% in March and this has been characterised by headlines like this one in The Times.

That headline misleads somewhat; off licence sales have undoubtedly increased, but no one is able to buy a pint in their local Spoons, so no one should be leaping on this and assuming that everyone under lockdown is permanently pie-eyed, they’ve simply modified their drinking habits is all.

I’m a fan of pubs, always have been. This is what I wrote in a blog called The Amateur Drinker back in 2015: “I like pubs. I make no bones about it; I like them a lot. I like country pubs with exposed beams and roaring fires, I like City pubs with their pin-striped clientele, I like "the local" with its cast of characters, I even like the slightly disreputable back street boozers you find in the East End. There are a few pubs I'd go out of my way to avoid, or at least not visit a second time, but generally, there are more I like than I don't like.”

In 1946, George Orwell wrote an article in the Evening Standard in which he described his ideal public house, which he called The Moon Under Water, a name which inspired the names of most of the Wetherspoon chain of pubs. 

George Orwell

Orwell’s Moon Under Water was architecturally Victorian; had a dart board in the public bar; was quiet enough to talk, “possessing neither radio nor piano”; sold snacks such as liver-sausage sandwiches; was staffed by barmaids who knew their customers’ names, and took an interest in them; sold creamy stout in pewter pots, and had a narrow passage from its saloon that led to a large garden. Few pubs combine all of the items on Orwell’s wish-list; not everyone would have subscribed to all of them in 1946, and fewer today, but his general idea holds true.

The Golden Lion (The Lion) in Romford was the first pub that I considered a place outside the home that I could call mine. It’s an old coaching inn that dates back to the 15^th century. It’s got old wooden beams in the ceiling and generally, it gives the impression that it is gradually sinking in much the way a person sinks into their favourite armchair. These days the bar lines one wall, but when I started drinking there in the mid to late 1970s, the bar was a horseshoe shape. It was comfortable, and a refuge where I would meet friends like Rob Godfrey, Howard Porter, Graham Bull, and Martin Bailey at weekends, but most nights of the week there would be someone there I’d know. I don’t get in there much these days, and it looks like it’ll be a while before I get the chance again anyway.

The Golden Lion, Romford

The Victoria (The Vic) in Barking was the pub of preference for the staff of the local Midland Bank when I worked there. A few of us were in there most lunchtimes, a sort of rotating cast of regulars of whom I, Paul Calvert, Dominic Healy, Danny Keech, and Gerry Baker were some. Friday nights would see some of the same cast, supplemented by Keith Markham, Bob Allam, and Robbie Smith, among others. Birthday bashes and leaving do’s would see the majority of the branch in attendance. Unlike The Golden Lion, The Victoria is a fairly modern pub, built in 1961 to replace a nearby pub of the same name that had been demolished. It’s fairly undistinguished, but like The Lion it wasn’t so much the building as the company of the people that frequented it that made it what it was.

The Victoria, Barking. Picture: Ewan Munro

The future of many of Britain’s pubs has been precarious for years, they are disappearing at an alarming rate, many being demolished or converted into flats or small supermarkets. In the East End of London, this is in part due to a shift in the local population, with many incomers to the area not part of the pub frequenting demographic. But other factors responsible for pub closures include price – it’s so much cheaper to buy booze from the supermarket and drink at home – and the dangers of drink driving that have seen many country pubs lose considerable trade. The smoking ban, the fact that fewer young people are drinking, and a culture in which staying in is the new going out are also responsible.

Many pubs that closed when coronavirus struck may never open their doors again, and those that do will have to adapt to social distancing measures that are likely to be in place for many months. Eyal Winter, an economist at Lancaster University, has speculated that pubs would be forced to ration drinkers to two or three drinks before asking them to leave in order to satisfy demand while still enforcing strict social distancing rules. I would suggest that the commonplace crush at the bar will have to go and that pubs may instead offer table service. Apps, like the one which Wetherspoons have and which enables customers to order and pay for drinks, and food, from their table could become the norm. Paying with cash will probably disappear from our pubs, with customers instead using contactless methods instead.

There is no official date suggested for when the pubs will reopen and any relaxation in the lockdown will be gradual; pubs may well be a long way down the list. As I write this, Sky News has tweeted that Wetherspoons say that they are planning for the reopening of their pubs “in or around June” which seems optimistic in the extreme. But there again Wetherspoons owner and amateur epidemiologist Tim Martin was vehemently opposed to pubs closing in the first place because according to him there had “hardly been any” transmission of coronavirus in pubs.

I’ve seen it mooted elsewhere that pubs will remain closed until Christmas but I would suggest that opening them for the festive season would be a spectacularly bad idea as they would be thronged – they are going to be whenever they reopen, but even more so at what is their busiest time of the year under normal circumstances.

The pubs that survive and are able to reopen whenever they are permitted to will undoubtedly do very good business, but one customer is going to be missing until things settle down and are proven safe, and that’s me. I like pubs, and I miss going to them, but it’s going to be a long time before I set foot in one again.

New Season, New Rules

No one knows when the 2020-21 football season will start; in fact, no one is really sure how the 2019-20 season will be concluded in the Premier League or the Football League, although below those levels administrators have largely decided to either declare it null and void or at least not to attempt completing it.

But whenever the next football season starts – and some pundits believe that this may not be until August 2021 - it will come with an amended set of rules (or Laws to be strictly accurate).[1] It may be my imagination, but it seems that every year the game’s law-making body, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) come up with many more alterations to the Laws of The Game than used to be the case. It’s my view that in a number of cases IFAB issue amendments not because there is anything really wrong with the existing law, but rather because it isn’t being enforced properly.

What do we have to look forward to when the new season starts? There are a number of proposed changes, and I am not going to go through them all, but a few stand out for one reason or another. If you are so inclined, you can read all of the proposed changes in former Premier League referee Keith Hackett’s blog,  https://www.keystoreferee.com/blogs/ifab-law-changes-of-the-season-2020-21-explained-by-keith-hackett/

We’ll start with a fairly fundamental one, the goals, one set at each end of the pitch. When I started watching the game, the goals at English grounds were almost exclusively wooden, and square. Over the years they became metal and round. This year’s change to this Law allows goalposts to be square, elliptical, rectangular, round or a combination of these shapes, and explains that ‘The goalposts and crossbar may be a combination of the four basic shapes.’ This allows for the somewhat bizarre scenario where the goals at either end of the pitch may be of different shapes, and indeed on either set the posts may be different shapes from the crossbar. I look forward to seeing someone constructing a set where one post is round, the other is square, and the crossbar is elliptical.

IFAB have decided that the law relating to penalty kicks needs some amendment, and have devoted nearly six hundred words to the subject which, rather than adding clarity, make the law maker’s intentions nearly incomprehensible. In seeking precision, the author(s) have tied themselves in knots; fortunately, they have added a helpful summary in table form. Frankly this was all they needed (although spelling for correctly would have been nice).

It seems that every season, either the offside law or the one relating to handball are tinkered with. These changes seem to be made because either the previous change resulted in some unintended consequences, players were exploiting loopholes, or referees were interpreting the change differently from IFAB’s intentions.

It appears that IFAB are fairly content with the offside law this year, as the only change is to say that a player in an offside position receiving the ball from an opponent who deliberately plays the ball, including by deliberate handball, is not considered to have gained an advantage (and is therefore not offside). The italicised phrase has been added, presumably to exclude the somewhat paradoxical situation whereby a player in an offside position receiving the ball directly from an opponent would not be offside if the opponent headed or kicked the ball to him, but would be if the ball reached him from an accidental handball by the opponent.

Finally, handball. The laws have been amended to include the following text, ‘For the purposes of determining handball offences, the upper boundary of the arm is in line with the bottom of the armpit.’ A helpful diagram showing the boundary is included:

This appears to merely codify what everyone has always believed to be the definition of handball, however as is often the case, this will – especially with Video Assistant Referees (VAR) – have everyone examining footage of handball decisions and exclaiming that, by a matter of a millimetre or so, the referee got it wrong. Maybe, in the interests of clarity, the law should be supplemented with a requirement that all football shirts are marked with a line on the sleeve that defines the point at which handball begins and ends.

At the beginning of last season, the law on handling the ball was changed such that an attacking player would be penalised even where they handled the ball accidentally if this resulted in a goal being scored or created. This change did not extend to defenders so, in theory at least, it is possible for a defender to prevent the ball entering their goal and not be penalised if their touching the ball is deemed accidental.

This is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, I’m afraid, so bear with me. The Laws clearly specify a number of circumstances where a player must not be penalised, even where the ball touches their hand or arm, for instance ‘when a player falls and the hand/arm is between the body and the ground to support the body, but not extended laterally or vertically away from the body.’ So, if a player falls on the ball – for example, on their own goal line in the manner described in italics - and prevents a goal from being scored, they should not be penalised.

Most of the time however, referees will penalise defenders who accidentally handle the ball, where the defender gains an advantage. In many respects it is within the spirit of the laws to penalise a player in those circumstances, but under the letter of the laws, it is not. I have long maintained that an accidental event does not become a deliberate one as a result of the outcome, but that is how referees are judging some accidental handballs. I don’t have a problem with accidental handballs being penalised if the player gains an advantage, in fact, I would support it, especially since it applies to attacking players if they create, or score a goal as a result and so ought to be extended to cover all players. But if referees are going to apply that thinking, then let’s get it in the Laws, otherwise we have a situation where referees are simply making up laws for themselves.

IFAB’s methodology of amending existing laws in recent years has not succeeded in clarifying matters or simplifying them, but has in some respects had quite the opposite effect. Add VAR into the mix and what used to be an apparently simple game is becoming hideously over complicated, largely thanks to over-engineering of its laws.

With football being off the agenda until further notice, IFAB could make good use of the time by going back to basics and carrying out a root and branch analysis of The Laws of The Game to actually simplify and clarify them, rather than tinkering and overcomplicating them.

  

---

[1] Football is a bit precious about The Laws of The Game. The difference between rules and laws is technically that while both impose a sense of order, fair play, and safety, the weight of a law is much heavier than the weight of a rule. Check synonyms for rules though, and laws is there. It’s all semantics really, especially since one test of the difference is that rules are less strictly enforced than laws; just watch any game of football and see how many times the laws are ignored by officials.

The Empty Chamber

Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQ) was interesting this week. In a nearly deserted chamber – MPs were observing social distancing – new Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer asked Dominic Raab a question. Raab answered and Starmer responded, dissecting Raab’s reply without having to compete with the normal braying from backbenchers on both sides of the House. It was unusually dignified and grown-up and in stark contrast to the atmosphere of the bear pit that is normal for PMQ.

When Boris Johnson returns to the despatch box – and I imagine that for Dominic Raab that cannot come a moment too soon – it may be that the blustering style with which he normally approaches such occasions, and especially when he is asked a question which he would prefer not to answer, will not serve him well in the more courtroom like atmosphere of the nearly empty chamber.

The fact that the Prime Minister recently contracted, and subsequently recovered from coronavirus may make the government place a different emphasis on how we move forward. It is my hope that Johnson’s brush with COVID-19 will make him more cautious and less gung-ho about releasing the country from the current lockdown, which is scheduled for review on 7^th May. My expectation would be that it will roll over in its current form for at least another three weeks after that, and more likely for many weeks to come in three-week tranches. This was borne out by remarks made by the government’s chief medical advisor, Chris Whitty who said that it was "wholly unrealistic" to expect life to suddenly return to normal soon.

This will presumably be greeted with dismay by Nigel Farage, who recently used his radio programme on LBC to describe the renewed lockdown as "house arrest" and "another three weeks of hell." Despite Farage having frequently invoked the Blitz spirit and given the impression that he believes that this country (and presumably he himself) can deal with any adversity thrown at it, it seems that the minor inconvenience of having to spend a few more weeks confined to quarters in order to stem the spread of coronavirus and try to turn the tide in the number of deaths is a cross that is too hard for him to bear.

Coronavirus has polarised opinions among those whose views on how best to deal with it differ in terms of whether herd immunity, lockdowns, or testing, track, and trace are deemed the most appropriate method. We also see, as has become increasingly common, a conflict between those who marshal their arguments with facts and those who believe that their opinions and instincts carry equal weight, even if they are mere conjecture. There is a certain orange-hued politician on the other side of the pond who has been this way inclined through much of his time in office, and coronavirus has not changed his way of thinking, as his recent touting of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for COVID-19 proved. A subsequent medical study showed that not only did the drug have no benefits, use of it may result in higher rates of death.

There has been much praise for New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the country’s early lockdown policy which has resulted in just 14 deaths associated with coronavirus. Ah yes, the contrary argument goes, with a population density of just 46 people per square mile, New Zealand was in a much better position to deal with the pandemic than countries where the population density is much higher. Except the USA has a population density of just 94 people per square mile, but nearly 43,000 deaths, and Greece has suffered only 121 coronavirus deaths despite a population density of 211 people per square mile. Singapore, where the population density is an astonishing 21,646 people per square mile, has recorded just 11 coronavirus deaths. These figures alone don’t paint the full picture, Singapore has adopted a very rigorous test, track, and trace policy in addition to lockdown.

It is easy to get sucked in by stories that appear respectable and plausible, and which are crafted in a way that gives them an air of credibility. Such was the story about the NHS sock-puppet Twitter accounts which the Department of Health and Social Care was accused of creating. It seemed believable, so I retweeted it (the fact that it had already been retweeted by an account that I follow and which is generally very reliable and scrupulous in what it posts definitely lowered any scepticism I might otherwise have had). I was inclined to dismiss the denial since the original story seemed so credible; until I read Full Fact’s investigation (you can read it here for yourself, https://fullfact.org/online/evidence-network-fake-nhs-tweets/). Just shows that no matter how sharp one thinks one’s critical faculties are, it’s still possible to be deceived.

Whether it is incompetence, genuine confusion, or a simple lack of transparency, there is the matter of the government’s mixed messages over the EU ventilator scheme. Whatever the truth of the matter (and I have no idea what that is), the inability to communicate a simple, coherent answer that the public can place faith in is worrying in the extreme. Likewise, incoherent and conflicting stories about PPE raise doubts about the competence of members of Her Majesty’s government. Having mentioned in a recent blog that Home Secretary Priti Patel had been conspicuous by her absence from government briefings, she promptly popped her head above the parapet, but was struck by an awkward bout of dyscalculia – one even more embarrassing than her Shadow, Diane Abbott’s well-publicised arithmetical blunders – and was quickly put back in whichever Whitehall cupboard she had previously been self-isolating in. Truly at present, I find it difficult to think of a single member of government in whom I have faith.

When a highly critical piece appeared in The Sunday Times last weekend, the government issued a 2,000-word rebuttal. Were times normal, and were the matters exposed by the newspaper some run of the mill affair, this would be unprecedented enough, in the current crisis it is unedifying and inappropriate for government to be squabbling with the press.

I appreciate that we face an unprecedented crisis, and it is perfectly understandable that there have been mistakes and false starts in dealing with it, but what I find difficult to accept is the government’s apparent inability to accept and acknowledge those mistakes, and to learn from them. In all walks of life, whether it is government, commerce, or merely in personal relationships, the best measure of maturity and effectiveness is not taken when things are all going well, but when they go wrong, and how the organisation or individual reacts. In that respect – regardless of their actual response to coronavirus – this government could do better.

Every Day Is Like Sunday

Any idea what day of the week it is? No, me neither, and here we are just three weeks into ‘lockdown’ and to borrow a lyric from Big Big Train, it seems like we are not even halfway through a month of Sundays. I’ve put ‘lockdown’ in quotation marks because in comparison with lockdowns in other countries, we are perhaps a little more permissive, which might explain why we aren’t ‘flattening the curve’ quite as much as the government hoped.

When you read stories about large gatherings – according to the BBC, Greater Manchester Police had to break up 494 house parties, some with DJs, fireworks, and bouncy castles, and 166 street parties between 25 March and 7 April – and see videos of people out enjoying the Easter weather in large groups, you wonder if the message is getting across. In part it’s that attitude that most people have, that bad things only happen to other people. This means that many people think it’s ok to visit or mix with family or close friends because they are sure they aren’t infected. It seems that there is a belief – conscious or not – that it’s only people you don’t know who might be carriers. But if everyone adopts that attitude, then sooner or later they will come into contact with someone who is.

To quote Morrissey, every day is like Sunday at present, and a 1960s Sunday at that, so what am I doing, what am I missing, and what am I looking forward to? Well, one thing I am not doing is all of those little jobs that I’ve been putting off, the ones I told myself I didn’t have the time for, because guess what, the reason I wasn’t doing them was because I didn’t want to! 

I’m going for a walk most days, and I’m grateful to have the country park on my doorstep. 

According to my Fitbit, my daily average mileage has dipped below five miles, and on the odd day I don’t go out, it has fallen off a cliff. I'm trying to do a minimum of three miles outdoors every day, so hopefully, when this is all over my average won't have fallen too far.

Our daughter has returned home from university and among the things she brought home was a printer, which I have set up and connected wirelessly to my laptop. This has come in handy as it means that the scanning of old Romford FC programmes that I have been doing, and posting the results on Facebook and Twitter, has been easier since I don’t have to book an appointment with the printer in the study!

A selection of Romford programmes through the years that I have been scanning and adding to Twitter and Facebook

I also shaved off my moustache – which I’d had since the late 1980s – as I thought it was making me look old(er). I did this a week ago; it took three or four days for my daughter to notice, but to date Val doesn’t seem to have spotted the change (or if she has, she hasn’t seen fit to mention it).

I’m doing more writing than usual, this is my nineteenth blog of 2020 whereas in the whole of 2018 I only published fourteen, and it was just twenty-seven in 2019. My preference of publishing new blogs on Thursday mornings has gone for a Burton, however, and they are now appearing almost at random; in part, this is because I’m not always sure what day of the week it is. Scanning old football programmes and doing some writing have become a new routine, and routine has long been important to me, so with not being able to do a lot of the things that normally form part of my schedule, I’m grateful to have been able to introduce new ones.

I’m not missing football as much as I might have expected. In some ways I am quite enjoying not to have to do the admin things that are associated with it, and if I’m honest, I’m not really missing going to games. The thing that I am missing about football is meeting up with my friends, but the online chats and calls that I’m having instead have softened the blow a bit. I am missing going to see BBC radio programmes, though. Val and I had trips to see Newsjack, The Now Show, and Brain of Britain lined up before lockdown, and when going to the BBC we would usually walk along the South Bank and have a coffee somewhere before going to Broadcasting House – I do miss that. I should also have been to a number of gigs by now – Fischer Z, Jump, and Fish among them – but they have been cancelled or rescheduled, not that I am entirely confident they will take place on the proposed new dates either. I’ve got a number booked for the rest of the year that I am not sure will go ahead.  I’m definitely missing going to live music events.

If Bioethicist Zeke Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives and director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania is to be believed, it’s going to be a long while before anyone is going to be able to watch live sports or concerts, unfortunately. Emanuel has said, “Larger gatherings – conferences, concerts, sporting events – when people say they’re going to reschedule this conference or graduation event for October 2020, I have no idea how they think that’s a plausible possibility. I think those things will be the last to return. Realistically we’re talking fall 2021 at the earliest.” He may have been talking about the US when he said that, and you may think that he’s just another ‘expert’ whose opinion is no more valid than those who think that come this September we’ll be back to normal, but I suspect that unless we want to risk further periods of high infection rates and lockdowns, his cautious view is one to which we should subscribe.

Getting back to normal is what I’m looking forward to, except what will normal look like? I very much doubt that we will return to a Britain we recognise from even just a couple of months back for at least a year, so although I am looking forward to going to the BBC, going to gigs, and going to football matches, I cannot see any of those things happening this year, or even next Spring. On a more mundane note, I’m looking forward to being able to go to the supermarket on the spur of the moment and not having to make plans for it, not having to remember the anti-bacterial wipes, and not having to queue up outside. I imagine that some of those restrictions will get relaxed sooner rather than later, but I tend to go along with the view that there will be periods in the coming months when restrictions have to be reintroduced.

The world that emerges from the coronavirus outbreak is going to be very different one from the world we are familiar with. Apart from the inevitable sense of loss – many of us will be touched by the loss of friends or family members – there will be businesses that we rely on or use regularly that will go to the wall. For those of us who follow football teams, the game as we know it will be changed to a large degree. Because of my interest in non-League football, I’ve been keeping up to date with the news from that part of the game, and following online forums that speculate about and discuss the end of this season and the next season. Sadly, it is inevitable that some clubs in non-League football, and quite possibly some in the Football League, will not survive this crisis.

Most importantly, I hope we emerge from this trying and testing time with a greater appreciation of what is important and what is not. One hopes that that includes an appreciation on the part of this government of how important a properly funded and supplied National Health Service is.

On The Road With Romford – Part Four – Horsham

Supporting a football team is not all about winning trophies. Sure, that’s what all clubs, and all of their fans, want, but realistically only a handful of teams are every likely to win the Premier League or the FA Cup. In fact, at all levels there are only a few teams that will realistically challenge for silverware. The rest may dream, but for their fans it isn’t always about winning pots, it’s about the memories.

Going to football is not just about the ninety minutes in my view. I would hate to just go to a game, watch it alone and go home again. Football is for me, as much about meeting friends, and sometimes the trip, if it’s an away game.

As a diversion from current events, I thought that I would take a trip down memory lane, and revisit some of the away games that I have experienced watching Romford. In this, the fourth part, it’s an autumnal Sunday afternoon in West Sussex.

For novelty value, Romford’s visit to Horsham on 30^th October 2016 ticked more than a few boxes. It was a Sunday, the day after the clocks had gone back, with an earlier than usual kick-off, and it is the only football match I have ever been to that I have come home from with a Bible.

Playing a game the day after the clocks changed, and with a different from normal kick-off time was possibly tempting fate, but so far as I’m aware, no one turned up just as the final whistle blew. The match was played on a Sunday due to Horsham being tenants of Horsham YMCA, whose home game on the Saturday took precedence, having been scheduled before Romford’s trip there for this FA Trophy game. Horsham have since moved out and have their own, brand new ground a couple of miles away.

  

Neither Romford nor Horsham are clubs who are likely ever to win the FA Trophy, for them the aim is to go as far as possible and accumulate as much prize money as possible. Having won 3-1 at Molesey in the previous round, Romford had won £2,500 to date, and a further £2,700 was at stake in this fixture.

It is a bit of a non-League cliché, but one of the very enjoyable aspects of the game at this level is the freedom with which fans of rival teams mix and enjoy each other’s company, but it’s true, it does happen, and the matchday experience is all the better for it. Having arrived at Horsham on the coach – which had a bit of a job negotiating the narrow entrance to the ground - with the players, supporters repaired to the bar for a pre-match cordial and the opportunity to chat to Horsham’s officials and some of their supporters. Romford manager Paul Martin had come prepared with a huge tub of sweets to distribute to the younger members of the crowd as an early Halloween treat.

A tight squeeze at the entrance to Horsham's then home at Goring's Mead. Picture from Google Maps

 

Romford manager Paul Martin distributed some pre-Halloween sweets to the locals

With Romford’s opponents being in a different division, the relative strengths of the two sides was difficult to gauge. Romford were experiencing an up and down season, with good wins at Bury Town and at home to Norwich United balance by disappointing, and heavy defeats at Aveley (where they were abject) and Bowers & Pitsea. While Romford sat 20^th in their division, Ryman North, Horsham were 14^th in Ryman South.

One thing that Romford had going for them was the form of striker Chinedu McKenzie, who had ten goals to his name in all competitions before this match. McKenzie would go on to score 29 for the season, including three hat-tricks, one of which he would bag that afternoon.

The weather that October afternoon was mild and sunny, the sort of weather that can make Autumn such a joy, with the leaves just beginning to turn golden, and an invigorating freshness in the air that never threatened to turn to cold.

Thirteen minutes had been played when Chinedu McKenzie got the first of his three goals, forcing the ball over the line after Ryan Mallett’s header from Jamie Dicks’s corner had come back of the crossbar and Matt Toms had headed the rebound goalwards. It was a close call, with the linesman flagging that the ball had crossed the line. McKenzie’s second was a stunning right foot shot from outside the penalty area, and Romford – despite having plenty of defending to do – were cruising towards the interval when, in the very last minute of the half, they were reduced to ten men. Full-back Tarren Dhariwal, who was making his Romford debut, found himself last man, and the wrong side of a Horsham forward, who went to ground as Dhariwal challenged. The referee’s verdict was a red card and so Romford were left to face the second forty-five minutes a man light.

Romford's Tarren Dhariwal (in Blue) brings down a Horsham forward and picks up a red card/. Photo: John Lines

Despite the numerical disadvantage, and despite Romford keeper Callum Chafer being called upon to make some smart saves in the second half, Boro didn’t just hang on for grim death, they actually put the game beyond doubt within eight minutes of the restart when Ayo Olukoga intercepted a poor pass in the home defence, found McKenzie and the in-form striker buried his shot into the net.

Horsham got one back with half-an-hour remaining, but Romford’s defence held firm and the team were roundly cheered off by their supporters at the final whistle. Some of the locals seemed a mite perplexed at the fervour with which the Romford supporters lauded their team, but as much as having seen their favourite’s produce an excellent result, there was also the little of an extra £2,700 finding its way into the cash-strapped club’s coffers to cheer.

The Horsham branch of Gideons were handing out Bibles after the game, ostensibly to Horsham’s players and committee, but they seemed to have overestimated demand, and there were plenty lying about, which we were encouraged to take.

With a place in the next round and the prize money secured, it was a happy coach journey home, even a queue of a few miles to get through the Dartford Tunnel didn’t dampen our spirits.

Romford’s reward was a trip to AFC Sudbury in the next round, and with the home side then a division above Boro, it was a fruitless trip as Romford went down 4-0. As much as I like going to Sudbury, that was one trip I didn't enjoy so much.

The Chase

I am lucky enough to have The Chase country park  almost literally on my doorstep. A lot of it was once a sand and gravel quarry, but when excavations stopped it was landscaped and the pits were filled with water. It is now an area of open grassland, woodlands, marsh and lakes that is popular with anglers, although the lakes are off limits at present. There are water fowl a-plenty; there are grebes, moorhens, geese, ducks, swans, and herons to name just the ones I recognise.

The country park is somewhere that I enjoy walking and have done for years, although I’ll admit that my rambles over there have become a little more frequent in the last couple of weeks as it is where I choose for my daily exercise. There’s little fun tramping the local streets at the best of times, even though I do a lot of urban walking under normal circumstances, however that is more often than not walking with a purpose – such as to the shops – rather than just for exercise.

Usually when I walk through the country park there are few other people, and the ones I see are generally dog walkers. The most people I see are usually camped by the lakes, watching their fishing lines and waiting for a bite. With the swims closed, there are people simply sitting at the swims and there are more people than normal walking, some alone but many in groups, and many of those groups do not necessarily seem to be family groups.

The fact that there are so many more people in the country park than normal, and many of those who are walking or lolling about on the grass, is because they have no work to go to, or alternative diversion such as going to the shops, coffee bars or pubs, are now not open. By and large, these people are doing little harm, even if they are not supposed to be just sitting round, or picnicking, although contrary to government advice, some seem to have driven there (even though the car park is closed, there are plenty of cars parked in the road). I don’t know if it’s a uniquely British trait, although from news stories I have read I suspect not, but it does seem that a lot of people have difficulty in accepting the need to limit their trips out of the house. And because a lot of people don’t seem to think that the restrictions apply to them, or perhaps simply don’t believe that they are necessary, it is probable that the somewhat informal lockdown we find ourselves in now will either have to become more rigid, or will have to last longer; probably both.

Whether people are walking, or picnicking, or sunbathing, at least social distancing is fairly easy in parks – my local country park consists of about 300 acres – much easier than in supermarkets, despite the best efforts of the stores. I went to my local Tesco yesterday as we had run out of salad, vegetables and bread among the essentials, while levels of other, slightly less vital supplies had diminished a bit too. I joined the queue that snaked round the store, and although it was a little longer than the line I had been in when I last went, I figured that I would be inside in about twenty minutes: how wrong I was!

Once the queue reached the store entrance, it veered off at right-angles, and snaked up and down the car park five times before actually reaching the entrance. In all, I was in that queue for just over an hour. Fortunately, it was a sunny morning and the time passed fairly quickly. Inside the store there is a one-way system, adhered to by most people (and there are staff pointing people in the right direction if they wander off course), but it has to be said that social distancing is a bit hit-or-miss. Outside the shop it’s fine, but inside it’s a different matter; the way we troll round supermarkets is second nature, changing those habits, as ingrained as they are, is difficult but given that we are probably going to have to shop this was for at least another month (two, or three months would be my guess), we will probably get used to it in the end.

A number of people at Tesco were wearing masks; even more were wearing gloves. The glove wearers seem to have adopted the attitude that the gloves make them invulnerable. I watched one glove wearing woman unload her trolley into her car, return the trolley, then get in her car, fiddle with her phone, touch her face, and drive off – still wearing the gloves, pretty much negating the benefit of them, which I would have thought she would have been better off removing before getting into her vehicle.

I saw other glove wearers touching their faces, fiddling with their phones, and generally behaving exactly as they would have done before the coronavirus outbreak, presumably because they feel that the act of wearing gloves is effective simply by itself.

All credit to Tesco and their staff (who must be quite apprehensive about going to work at the moment) all of whom were cheerful and helpful. The shelves were well stocked, and although most people were leaving the shop with full trollies, there were no shortages. Yes, people are buying more – probably in an attempt to have to visit the shops less frequently – but the panic buying seems to have abated.

The profile of many workers whom we tend to take for granted – like the supermarket workers – has been heavily promoted in recent weeks, which brings me to the Four Great Offices of State. In the UK, these are the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of The Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary, and the Home Secretary. We have seen plenty of the first three in the media recently – Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, and Dominic Raab respectively – and, as you would expect, we’ve also heard a great deal from Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

But what of our Home Secretary, Priti Patel?  Her responsibilities include policing, immigration, law and order, etc, responsibilities that one would imagine are fairly important in a time of pandemic, but she has been conspicuous by her absence from the media. In February, Ms Patel made some pretty uncomplimentary remarks about what she described as ‘low skilled’ workers, in which group she presumably included carers, radiographers, occupational therapists, farm workers, paramedics, and shop workers (based on her definition, which was on the basis of their normal earnings), all professions that find themselves at the front line at the moment, and all of whom are frankly more useful than the Home Secretary. It is also noticeable that empty vessels Jacob Rees-Mogg and Mark Francois seem to have faded into the background during this crisis.

Have you seen this woman?

When this crisis has been averted, the contributions of nurses, shop workers, bus and train drivers, and many supposedly ‘low skilled’ workers will, in the final analysis be judged more crucial in getting the country through it than those of many of our MPs, especially those who, in 2017 voted to maintain the 1% annual pay cap for public sector workers, but who this week awarded themselves an additional £10,000 for having to work from home during the pandemic, on top of the 3.1% pay rise they gave themselves in March this year.

The respective contributions of our low-paid or so-called ‘low-skilled’ workers, and of our MPs (on all sides of the House) is something which I am sure will concentrate the minds of voters when we next go to the polls.

On The Road With Romford – Part Three – Norwich United

Supporting a football team is not all about winning trophies. Sure, that’s what all clubs, and all of their fans, want, but realistically only a handful of teams are every likely to win the Premier League or the FA Cup. In fact, at all levels there are only a few teams that will realistically challenge for silverware. The rest may dream, but for their fans it isn’t always about winning pots, it’s about the memories.

Going to football is not just about the ninety minutes in my view. I would hate to just go to a game, watch it alone and go home again. Football is for me, as much about meeting friends, and sometimes the trip, if it’s an away game.

As a diversion from current events, I thought that I would take a trip down memory lane, and revisit some of the away games that I have experienced watching Romford. In this third part, we are back in Norfolk.

If Romford’s trip to Wroxham in 2013 (featured in the first blog in this series) has passed into Boro folklore, then the trip to Norwich United on Tuesday 10^th October 2017 is very much the stuff of legend.

The fact that Romford had to make a 200-mile round trip in midweek had arisen because on the Saturday when the fixture was originally scheduled, Romford had been involved in an FA Cup tie against local rivals AFC Hornchurch. Midweek trips of this sort of distance can be problematic for teams at Romford’s level, with players having to get time off work to travel, and so it was that when players and supporters gathered to catch the coach, the thinness of the Romford squad was noticeable. There were a bare twelve players available so when the team was announced, the subs bench consisted of one regular player - Ben Clarke – plus manager Paul Martin and his assistant, Mark Lord; the combined age of the bench was 117 years!

The age of Romford's subs at Norwich was worthy of a photo opportunity that appeared in the next home programme.

Norwich United’s ground at Plantation Park is only seven miles from the centre of the city, but the location is rural and on an autumnal Tuesday evening, not the most inspiring. The ground, like many at this level, is quite basic with cover on one side, a clubhouse and changing room building behind one goal, and open fields behind the other and along one side. Romford’s only previous visit had resulted in a 4-1 defeat, given this, the thinness of the squad and the club’s league position did not fill Boro fans with optimism.

The game was between the two bottom markers in the Bostik League North. Norwich United had just four points to their name from ten games, while Romford had just one more, but the home side would have been quietly confident that they would be able to lift themselves off the foot of the table on this evening.

It may not actually be the case, but it always seems to me that the moment Romford set foot in Norfolk they concede a penalty (Boro conceded three penalties in their first two visits to Dereham Town, for instance), and after fifteen minutes at Norwich, the referee was pointing to the spot (rather too eagerly in the view of some Romford supporters). Norwich’s Henery sent Boro keeper Stephen Reynolds the wrong way with his penalty.

Romford had a goal ruled out for a foul on the Norwich keeper (Boro fans were of the opinion that the Norwich goalkeeper had brought the foul on himself by rushing from his line and running into a Romford player), and then had a penalty appeal waved away when Vlad Sighiartau was brought down. To add insult to injury, Sighiartau was yellow carded.

There was no little grumbling and groaning among the Romford supporters at half-time, about the penalty that was given, and the one that wasn’t, and the goal that was ruled out. A certain amount of hostility towards the officials was festering, and even though indignation at the performance of referees tends to abate in the cold light of day after games, this was a display of refereeing which no amount of hindsight could throw into a favourable light.

The antipathy towards the officials grew during the second half as Romford were denied another penalty claim and various, sundry 50/50 decisions seemed to go against them. With limited options to change things from the bench – the only regular player, Ben Clarke, was introduced in place of Vlad Sighiartau after 67 minutes – it seemed, as the game entered the last five minutes, that Romford would slip to the foot of the table. Three minutes from time, manager Paul Martin brought himself on to replace Connor Hammond. Paul Martin had played for Romford’s reserve side more than ten years previously before taking up the role as first assistant manager, and then manager of the stiffs. He took over as first-team manager in 2008 and guided Romford to the Essex Senior League championship in his first full season. He had not played for the first team before (or since, come to that), so even most loyal of Romford supporters were doubtful whether his introduction could, or would salvage anything from the game.

If memory serves me correctly, Paul Martin made three contributions, the last of which – as he was keen to point out to us supporters after the game – would prove crucial. His first contribution was to concede a free-kick, his second was to take one. His third came off the ball, as he implored Romford striker Nick Reynolds to shoot for goal as the game entered stoppage time. Reynolds shot, Norwich keeper Wilton saved, but the ball escaped his grasp, with Boro midfielder James Ishmail bearing down on him. Collectively, Romford fans held their breath. Ishmail got to the ball first and fired the ball into the net. Cue – as they say – pandemonium!

Skipper Danny Cossington leads his team off at the end. Manager Paul Martin is on the right.

Boro manager Paul Martin praised the fans for their support in the local paper that week, and we gave the team a rousing reception as they left the field. Any uncommitted spectators – and maybe some Norwich fans – in the ground probably wondered why we were virtually delirious having picked up just a point against a team as poorly placed as ourselves. There was huge relief involved, and as most football fans will know, a point -especially one gained against the odds, can be as satisfying as a win. Drawn games are like that, some are as rewarding as victories, some as deflating as defeats.

The coach deposited us back in Romford in the early hours of Wednesday, and for a few days there was room for optimism, but Romford lost the next three and were soon bottom of the pile, a position they shared with Norwich United and, for a brief spell, Cheshunt for the rest of the season. The final week of the season saw Romford trail Norwich United by six points with each side having two games left. Two defeats for Norwich and two wins for Romford saw Boro pull off The Great Escape and avoid relegation by a single point.

That final week deserves a chapter of this blog all to itself, but in the final analysis, this point on an autumn evening in Norfolk was crucial in keeping Romford up, and its memory will stick in the minds of all the Romford faithful who were there.