DOVER AND OUT

 

Published in the National League South game v Dartford on Tuesday 25th October 2022. We lost 2-1 in front of 439.

It wasn’t the warmest of welcomes for me and the Brown Boys as we stepped into the pub opposite the station. ‘Slough is full of idiots’ muttered the old skinhead at the bar. Welcome to Dover whose football club had already blotted their copy book by not letting Rebels Radio broadcast and saying there would be no food on offer for our players after the game. Would they even be allowed to play on the same pitch? I really hope it wasn’t going to be one of those away days.

Because I just love a Slough Town away day. Waiting at Brighton station to see if my trains cancelled, chatting to fellow football fans who on any normal day of the week would think you were mad for striking up a conversation.

I was already grumbling that I had to come into London to get a train – why can’t there be a coast service. Er, except there is, I just got muddled up. Which is another reason I support the train strikes. I know it’s dressed up as all about railway drivers wages but it also includes mass redudancies for maintenance staff and closing hundreds of ticket offices including Brighton’s, which is always packed with tourists trying to make sense of different ticket prices and idiots like me who can’t believe its fifty plus quid to Bath.

The Priory Hotel was it turned out, very welcoming, has rooms as cheap as £25 and live music all weekend. It could do with a scrub and there’s a massive sunny beer garden that looks like a railway station waiting room that has been shut for years. Let’s just say the garden has potential.

There were a few Dover fans in there and a Worthing scout who’d come to check us out. We did warn him we had no strikers for him to scout.

Dovers Crabble ground is a couple of miles out of town so we jumped in a cab to find our pub of choice still shut, so piled into a workingmens club instead.

The Crabble – which means crab hole - really is a lovely ground, on the picturesque outskirts of Dover that feels more like a village. They’ve done a lot since I was last there; new stands, much bigger clubhouse, but it hasn’t lost its charm and is everything you would want with deep terraces and covering on all four sides. Pre match and the clubhouse was as usual full of Slough supporters all stinking of chip fat. That wasn’t some Rebel perfume Sue had been flogging to everyone but thanks to old oil that the chips were being fried in.

What was surprising after all the computer-says-no edicts, was just how friendly everyone was.

Like Weymouth, Dover didn’t have the best of times last season in the National League. They refused to play behind closed doors during the pandemic as it would bankrupt them. So the National League sympathetically docked them 12 points and slapped on a £40,000 fine just to make sure their books wouldn’t balance. They released nearly all their players, went part time and were more or less condemned to relegation before a ball had been kicked.

There wasn’t a wheelie bin on site to bang but with young Dover fans next to us there was a great atmosphere trading songs and insults and joining in when we questioned what Deano was doing with the big flag and our ‘we want a beer on the terrace’ plea. Mind you, they did miss an opportunity to counter our ‘biggest Trading Estate in Europe’ song with ‘Biggest tailbacks in Europe.’ But let’s not mention the B word in these parts.

Slough seemed to be on top, it looked like Dan Roberts was pulled back for a pen, two crosses fizzed in front of the goal waiting to be bundled in, then a loose pass in midfield led to a Dover goal. The second half we never really seemed to be in the races with Slough fans stuck behind the far end like Billy-no-bins. Dover scored twice to send us home pointless.

Football is all about ‘What Ifs.’ What if Ben Harris had been on the pitch, would he have bundled in those chances? What if we had got a penalty? Or had more money in the bank? Or I knew how to read a train timetable. 

At the end of the game, joint-manager Jon Underwood tweeted about this: "Fine margins is a phrase used by managers up and down the country for a reason. Every win we've had this season has been a result of Fine Margins and yesterday despite the scoreline it was the same in defeat. Our fans brilliant as always. Thank you."

We all scuttled off, a quick half back in the Dover Priory, then the coast train back to Brighton, already planning my next Rebel adventure. Because this is what amber and blue football dreams are made of.