Every now and again, for want of anything better to do as the planet collapses and the pagans run riot, we return to the vexed question of football away kits.
The pleasing purple haze that assisted our title triumph of a couple of years back met with general approval (Mitcham Lavender/Tooting Purpular Front).
However, this year’s sponsors Campus Society decided to make their mark by altering our away strip. Given the sensitivities around the Omelette invasion of Imperial Fields, no one dares use the word ‘pink’ in Terror circles for fear of turning peculiar or breaking out in boils as the bubonic plague rises up from the from the mists and deals out death to saints and sinners alike. But the current outfit looked dangerously close to Satan’s favoured shade. Scientists, poets and chemical quaffers at the Bog End toyed with ‘cerise’ and ‘fuscia’ before the Priesthood’s influential crumble and custard wing intervened and carried the day with ‘plum’. So it is that on our travels, we have become ‘The Tooting Plum(m)ular Front’. I have eaten a couple of said fruits recently and their dark complexions bore fuck all resemblance to the newfound travel wear, but who gives a toss?
Cerise thongs are now available in the club shop or ask Dave Irons for details and prices.
In any case, the plum attire spurred us to a couple of, sort of, memorable cup wins, the first of them in the FA Cup First Qualifying Round at Horsham YMCA of the Sussex County League, one level below us in the pecking order. More often than not, we struggle against this sort of opposition but things looked good for most of the first half, Dominic Morgan Griffiths running the show from midfield as we carved out numerous openings. The best chances fell to the ever-dangerous Zac Coleman, but this time he failed to put them away. Towards half time, the Christian Children began to turn things round and after the break, they took over as our own youthful prodigies lost their way.
It was no surprise when they took the lead with a deflected shot and an early cup exit loomed large yet again. Last season, we tended not to bother scoring from set pieces but things could be changing as the giant Nexus Beedon rose majestically at the far post to send a looping header into the net from Wedgworth’s corner. This should have signalled a rampant revival but we immediately fell apart, Tope Fadahunsi receiving his marching orders for a second booking within seconds of the restart.
After that, simple survival seemed to be the order of the day but we snatched an unlikely winner, engineered by two of our subs, in the dying seconds. Subbuteo sized midfield dynamo Abraham Odoh won the ball and surged forward before threading a precision pass through the defence for striker Elijah Simpson to burst through and slot home with the silken touch of a seasoned assassin. A heart crushingly harsh Cup exit for the Sussex children but delirium for the travelling hordes. The celebrations lasted until the FA Cup Second Qualifying round draw, which landed us with a pig’s arse of a tie at the then leaders of the National League South, Woking. Still, if nothing else, it meant another plum flavoured day out for the travelling legions …
At the moment I am a mere six weeks behind but in these days of incessant information and rolling news that tells us fuck all, we can expect the tale of Saturday’s Eggstravaganza to hit our screens by Xmas …
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