Did He Really Mean It?

The truly, truly glorious thing about this whole adventure isn’t the exploration of new places. It isn’t the feeling you get when the underdog scores, or when a last minute Dulwich Hamlet winner flies in. It certainly isn’t the high class standard of football that we’ve seen so far.

It’s the cementing of friendships, the forming of bonds. The banter and shared laughter and smiles between a group of people knowing that, ultimately, that task they are undertaking is pointless and will lead to nothing except a reduced bank balance and possible cirrhosis – but when you’re there, when you’re sharing that joke, laughing at a shared experience and shaking hands on arrival, with faces expectant as a child on Christmas morning – it all makes sense. It feels right. It’s one of those things that is hard to explain in words. Yeah, let’s be honest – this is patently a ridiculous idea. No one in their right mind actually wants to go to Port Vale on December 1st. But because of the people I’m with, because of the shared experience we’re having, I want nothing more than that journey.

The Saturday just gone, we went to Bath, for the tie with the most outside interest of the whole round. The tie between Team Bath and Chasetown gave one team the chance to enter the second round proper of the FA Cup for the first time in their history. It was a chance that Chasetown took, and a result that they fully deserved based on the game.

My FA Cup Saturday mornings tend to start with the same mixed feelings. Firstly, excitement – especially this week, as we faced our longest journey yet. Secondly, the familiar dull thud of last nights hideously misplaced sambuca festival. The fact that I also woke up with my legs still sticky from a friends ridiculous attempts to stand up from a table without spilling four pints of cider over myself and another equally unluckily-placed acquaintance didn’t exactly help the situation.

A wonderful hour and a half journey from the grand environs of Brunel’s London Paddington to the historic and delightful spa town of Bath, across some gently rolling hills and through some stunning scenery really set the mood for the day. Five gentlemen, a table full of alcoholic drinks and some Cadbury’s Mini Rolls: I’m not entirely sure that journeys come any better than that. The banter flew thick and fast, and childish giggles flew up and down the carriage in which we were seated. It was magnificent.

On arrival, we alighted to a nearby beer garden (a beer garden? In November? This country…) and settled down to meet our tour guide Phil (making his first, and possibly only, excursion with the Did He Really Mean It? team) and share the Autumn sunshine and some cider. A quick journey across to another pub (where the culinary demands of certain members of the group almost saw four ‘ciabattas’ returned under the claim of false advertising – a bap is not a ciabatta…) and the joining of the team of Steve – down from Manchester for the day after an enormous five-hour trek into Wales and out again - followed. A tremendous effort from the bearded genius, and an absolute pleasure to have him on board. After pleasantries were exchanged, and we’d watched most of the horrifically poor Sunderland/Newcastle derby match, we were ready to share a taxi journey across town to Twerton Park, former home of Bristol Rovers and now the adopted locale of Team Bath.

Twerton Park is a lovely, ramshackle old stadium perched on a hill. It’s how I like football grounds to be. Standing areas around three sides, potentially dangerous and always on the edge of falling apart, it’s a relic of the past. And frankly, it should stay that way. Unlike something else potentially dangerous and on the edge of falling apart - the taxi driver who took us to the ground. As we prepared to depart from the taxi rank, the driver sounded his horn to hurry some people from his path. Unfortunately, the gentleman standing immediately in front of the cab took offence to this and shouted something at the driver. Who then, for reasons known only to his self, opened his door to try and get out to have a ruck with this aforementioned gentlemen, whilst calling him (and I quote) ‘You bloody twat’. As comical as the site of a larger-than-life cabbie attempting to extricate his bulky frame from his seat to start a fight with a well-dressed chap in front of Bath train station was, it wasn’t going to get us to the ground on time, so we managed to restrain him and calm him down for the journey. The bonus of the whole episode was that he saw fit to knock £2 off the fare, so it wasn’t all bad. We got to the ground on time, still giggling, and with slightly more money in our pockets than we’d initially thought.

To the game itself, then. As others concentrate on the match itself, and describing the goals, I shall concentrate on the atmosphere and the camaraderie. The Chasetown fans massed behind the goal and sang, constantly, for an hour and a half. They were an absolute credit to a side that played out of their skin to defeat a team a league above them. A personal highlight of the game itself was the halftime run down the hill from the ground by a splinter section of our team (not including Colm, who somehow managed to spend 90 minutes away from the rest of us thanks to his own uselessness) to play one frame of pool, down a vodka and coke and then run back to the ground – stopping off at the off licence on the way to buy supplies for the second half. It was good to take advantage of the last time in this competition that we’ll be allowed to take our own drink into the ground, and have a cigarette on the terraces.

The scenes that accompanied the final whistle were FA Cup excitement personified. The Chasetown players, massed together in front of their fans, singing and dancing with sheer delight at the potential that lay in their sights. Joined by Rich and Tom of our team, as fickle as only this sort of run could make them. After a brief bout of dancing, we hurried to the pub to catch the football on the television.

And that, essentially, is where it ends – with one slight issue. We drank the next few hours away, smiling and laughing to ourselves, playing some comically inept pool games while certain members of our team annoyed a landlord by not understanding the etiquette of walking into a pub and actually ordering something rather than sitting down to watch the football. We slowly worked our way, via a Supermarket, to Bath Spa train station. And that was where the issue arose.

Myself and Rich nipped outside the station for a cigarette. But we got carried away having a conversation; the likes of which make you glad that you’re not the only person who thinks and acts a certain way, that there are mates there who you can talk to about things, any things; the type of conversation that makes you glad that you chose to set sail on this journey in the first place. We set the world to rights. Sure, it’s the sort of conversation that is drunkenly had by people in pubs up and down the country every day of the week. We shook hands, and hugged. We were probably that drunken stereotype of ‘I love you mate’. But you know what? I couldn’t care less.

Unfortunately, the conversation was such that we lost track of the time, and only realised as the train pulled onto the platform. Racing across the station, we ran up the stairs to see the train sitting waiting for us. Checking it was the right one, however, we realised that we’d got the wrong platform and that the London-bound train, the only one for an hour and a half, was about to pull away from the other platform. Back down the stairs, through the subway, up the stairs…the London train pulled away. However, the sound of the train pulling away was drowned by Rich’s ineffective carrying of the Strongbow we’d picked up from the aforementioned supermarket, and three bottles found themselves falling gracelessly from his arms, spilling their contents on the subway floor. As I stood there giggling helplessly at the situation before me, my first thought wasn’t about how we were going to get home, or the fact that we now had another hour at least to wait for the train, it was simply ‘This. Is. Brilliant.’

We broke an unwritten rule (Pub Rule Seven: Never go into the nearest pub to any train station), and hopped across the road, where for an hour we sat drinking Baileys, watching the boxing on the television and discussing the vagaries of life as a modern man. Our train eventually arrived to take us home at 10pm, and after the longest journey in history (a woman was unfortunately taken ill during the journey, resulting in a lengthy stop at Chippenham station) we arrived back at London Paddington after all of the tube lines had closed, and with no real clue of what to do. So we did what any sane pair of drunken buffoons would, and got a black cab to take us to a house party in London’s salubrious Hackney. Or at least, that was the intention. But as we near fell asleep in the cab, and the ticker moved quicker than a hungry Darren Campbell at dinner-time to show over £10.00, we cut our losses and abandoned the journey on Oxford Street. A goodbye, a hug, a handshake, a smile. A night bus journey home, my bed. Eight men, one game, a lot of laughter. The end of another rung on the FA Cup ladder.

Burslem, here we come.