Did He Really Mean It?

So, away to Hornchurch in FAC3QR. While it will be good to get the first Saturday afternoon FA Cup away trip in (Tuesday night in Deal was less a trip, more a punishment sent from a laughing God at the stupid idea that we can make this run last longer than the First Round), I would have picked a lot more exciting locations that Hornchurch, that’s for sure.

I’ve been there once before, funnily enough also for an FA Cup Qualifying tie. The visitors that day were Gravesend & Northfleet (now, rather disgustingly, named Ebbsfleet United. I’m sure Rule Seven of the Football Supporters Guide is ‘Teams should not be named after train stations’. The only possible exception that I would make is if someone forms Cockfosters United) and as at the time I was living in Gravesend, I took it upon myself to support my ‘local’ team on a cup run. The fact that that ‘run’ was over before it started thanks to an inglorious Defeat on the District Line on that Saturday afternoon didn’t really make me warm to the good people of Hornchurch, but then I had just spent more than two hours on the sodding District line, followed by a bus journey, DLR trip and then some more District Line action purely to get there in the first place, because of London Underground’s ‘Only Do Line Upgrade Work On The Weekend Bamos Needs To Get Somewhere’ policy.

The defeat; the journey; the fact that I’m sure I lost a tenner in the copy of the Guardian I left in the tube carriage as I alighted (meaning I could only just afford to get into the game let alone drown my sorrows); the hideous running-track-around-the-pitch layout meaning that you feel like you’re watching the game from some point in the next postcode and the strange chants of ‘We Hate Canvey Island’; all of these made it rather a day to forget.

If, as expected, Hornchurch beat Dulwich, I’ll be slightly disappointed, and will be praying that they draw a Conference side in the Fourth Qualifying Round, preferably away from home.

I have to admit I’ve grown rather attached to Dulwich over the last three games. If this FA Cup run has already achieved anything other than a lightening of my bank account and a hideous crush on the barmaid at The Vale (by the way: no longer ginger, but with flowing black locks. We also discovered that she is Danish, and likes Belle & Sebastian. I actually think she might be my ideal woman. I am aware that it doesn’t take much, and that sambuca may be clouding my judgement, but I am going to every Dulwich Hamlet home game from now on, purely to stare at her beforehand and drool aimlessly) it’s that I feel almost…part of Dulwich Hamlet. I actually care about the results, where Chuck Martini ends up, if Phil will ever manage to run around someone rather than into them and if Steve May will ever repeat that glorious, right-footed moment that still makes me smile, even now.

Football is brilliant. And so is everything around it. At the moment.