WEYMOUTH HOLIDAYS AND A TRIP FOR A BALTI

 

Printed in the National League South game v Weymouth Saturday 30th August 2024 We won 1-0 in front of 889 to stay top of the league and go ONE YEAR WITHOUT LOSING AT HOME !

This is a tale of our first away day of the season, the first supporters run club in the country and a football team in Weymouth named after a curry house.

First up was Salisbury, a newly promoted club who should have beaten us in the FA Cup last season if it wasn’t for the heroics of our Cardiff loanee goalkeeper at the time.

Now I love an away day on the train but it seems train companies are doing their best to suck any joy out of travelling. ‘Success Starts Here’ read the sign as I trundled past Havant. Well, not for their lovely football team. Miss you already. But I did miss the early Saturday morning phone call from Kieran Wall asking where I was. When I got on at Southampton it was already the Sardine Express. By the time I got off at Salisbury, another 100 or so wanted to join a train busting at the seams, that would have been totally illegal if it was a building. 

So please don’t tell me about the perils of the old British Rail– our train services have already been nationalised, they are just owned by other countries rather than our own. How very patriotic. And passengers just seem an annoyance.

Even our train stations are crap – Farnham has a great independent cafe but cash only but no cash machine nearby. I remember sitting here one freezing New Years Day after a boring 0-0 draw with Salisbury. Happy Chattering Teeth New Year and all that. Southampton Central can’t cope – all the usual boring corporate brands selling weak coffee and stale croissants with massive queues for the toilets.

This journey did give me the fear when travelling with family and friends to Weymouth but to be fair the midweek journeys seem so much better.

Salisbury is a really friendly club but they’ve got a group of scumbags who’ve swallowed a Premier League songbook and a limited vocabulary swear-book. Often in situations like that, you can launch the odd song that makes others laugh and clears the air – ‘We discovered Uranus’ we sang, ‘Your just a bus stop near Stonehenge’ we joked but they kept up with their Neanderthal growling. Our supporters deserve medals for some serious restraint. A few kept offering me out, despite telling them thanks but i'm already married. The Supporters Trust quite rightly wrote a letter of complaint and its’ going to have to be segregation for that club from now on unless they show the door to a few individuals.

The ground is a good bus ride away past Old Sarum, which used to the original town, until the religious orders gave permission to relocate the cathedral to New Sarum – which eventually became Salisbury.

They wouldn’t allow a drum as the ground is slowly being surrounded by houses with some neighbours having the audacity to complain about football noise! We really need the law they have in France that says if you move to the countryside and start complaining about animal sounds or smells you are told where to go. Or in Brighton where music venues are getting protection from people who move next door then say its too loud. At the end of the game me, Wootton Bassett Steve and Ian the Shirt managed to hitch a ride back to New Sarum from one of their nice officials and drown our loss with a few beers with more friendly locals.

I missed the Enfield game cos rather ironically I was on holiday in Weymouth. A Weymouth we choose after many a visit watching the Rebels. So come on Slough the Town, smarten yourselves up – having a National League team is the perfect way to show off your wares. Canal boat tours to the ground anyone?

I’ve got a lot of time for Enfield, who we used to have some real ding-dong battles against in the old Isthmian League. They became the first supporters run football club in the country and deserve a hell of a lot of respect for that. I’ve not visited their art deco new home yet but that will have to wait another season. Everyone praised what a friendly club they were despite us leaving with a 6-1 away victory. What a time to miss an away trip made slightly better by hearing of countless Slough fans missing three late first half goals cos they went to the bar!

Still I wasn’t going without my football fix so I scrolled the local paper for some football - £18 to watch Weymouth play Chippenham – no thanks. Instead it was time for a Balti to ease the Rebel withdrawal symptoms; Balti Sports v Bridport Town Reserves in the Dorset Premier League. Or Division 11 in the footballing pyramid which is a league made up of 16 teams, half of which seem to be called Sports and the rest reserve sides.

Balti Sport are you guessed it, named after a curry house, which used to sponsor them when they formed in 2005. They play at Weymouth College who won’t pay for floodlights. I assume they won’t pay for electricity either to light up their cosy clubhouse – well more dentist waiting room, which serves hot drinks and also acts as turnstile as I parted with my £4. There’s a small stand and a wobbly iron perimeter fence that for some reason had a plastic bobbing owl tied to it. The match was slightly delayed cos they needed a goal peg but the thirty or so spectators were treated to a decent first half and it ended 5-2 to the curry boys.

The early kick off meant I scurried back to listen to Rebels Radio with special guess Lenchy enjoying our biggest away league victory for some time. Now where did I put that poppadom.