WE’RE STILL STANDING: Match Off

A taste of English football from Brentford devotee The Worm...

The Worm is at a loose end after our fourth postponement of 2010. The Griffin Park pitch is waterlogged and in a sorry state; with water tables still saturated from the December snow, moderate rain becomes an insurmountable problem. Games that do go ahead are leaden-footed, heavy affairs on a churned up surface. Games that don’t are building up. It’s not just us, across the country weekend plans have been disrupted with football fans asking what normal people do with this free-time that gapes before us like the hole between Terry and Carvalho? There has to be more to Saturdays than going to the shops. I am told that Bradford City did not play an away game for five weeks over Christmas (a run of home matches which sadly did not help Stuart McCall keep his job as manager). As for the cabbage patches themselves, Colchester’s Community Stadium and Rotherham’s Don Valley Stadium are probably vying for the worst-pitch-in-football award though I’d be willing to accept nominations from elsewhere. So I get to re-familiarise myself with Jeff Stelling’s loony-crew whilst fighting the onset of cabin fever. We’re at Leeds next week - I hope they had enough money left over from paying Seth Johnson and Robbie Fowler to work on their drainage.