Munching my supper in a motorway service station now and finally reflecting on what I witnessed today. Basically a great deal of effort for little result (except we got the draw we needed of course!). For the first twenty minutes we were all over them but could not create a genuine chance. The rest of the first half was more equal and more or less petered out with little sign of quality on either side. The second half became increasingly tense and frenetic but neither side really looked like scoring. Although every time KAF broke with the ball we looked dangerous. Our defence was solid and made no silly mistakes. Our subs were effective and we played out the lengthy additional time with few alarums or excursions. Job done. Congratulations to the Three Amigos, COSU and the players. We need fear nobody in the playoffs.....well, except York City. Let's hope that one of the other play off teams defeats York before we have to face them in the final.
As I said earlier, I sat among the Heed fans. The attached selfie shows my successful camouflage attempt. I have on occasion sat among the home fans at away games before but this was the most difficult because the Geordies were so damned friendly. Everyone seemed to want to chat. Now, I can do some fine accents - Brummie, Yorkshire, Irish - but I discovered that I can't do Geordie. So I settled for Scottish to disguise my Essex voice. No one seemed to mind.
It was clear from the start that the Heed fans morale was very low, and not surprisingly. But they roused themselves to cheer on occasion and had a good go at GSM for his gamesmanship and later roasted Bonne for felling their keeper - I thought he was fortunate because some refs would have red carded him.
At the end the Heed fans didn't seem too depressed. It appeared to me that they were expecting to lose so they drew some small comfort from drawing. I felt a little sorry for them.
Only when I got in my car could I cheer our lads. And I did. Much to the surprise of the woman in the car parked next to me who I hadn't noticed!
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