WHEN A DIVER ASCENDS rapidly from a dive, or fails to complete decompression stops after a long or deep dive, they can suffer from decompression sickness. When I visited Colchester United versus Leyton Orient in the First Round Proper of this season’s competition, I suffered the FA Cup equivalent.
Throughout the ten previous matches that I have witnessed this season, I have been pretty much plumbing the depths of semi-professional football. Just take a look at the list of games already under my belt so far this trip:
| Home | Away | Step | ||
| VT FC | 0 | Newport Pagnell Town | 2 | 5 |
| Royston Town | 4 | Wembley | 0 | 6 |
| Saffron Walden Town | 2 | Desborough | 1 | 6 |
| Chichester City United | 3 | Crawley Down | 1 | 5 |
| AFC Sudbury | 1 | Lowestoft Town | 1 | 4 |
| Broxbourne Boro V&E | 1 | Dulwich Hamlet | 2 | 5 |
| Dartford | 3 | Hastings United | 2 | 3 |
| Bishops Stortford | 3 | Wingate & Finchley | 2 | 2 |
| Ware | 1 | Sutton United | 2 | 4 |
| Bury Town | 4 | Basingstoke Town | 1 | 4 |
My lowest footballing depth has been Step Six of the Non-League Pyramid, and the highest point has been Step Two when I visited Bishops Stortford, although they were playing Step Four opposition on the day. All of a sudden, I woosh up to League One and wham I get ‘The Bends’. Everything about my afternoon in Colchester was so fundamentally different from what has gone before, it was totally disorientating.
When I had watched the draw for this round – the first to be televised – the very first balls out of the Perspex bucket had seemed to be the obvious destination of choice. Colchester being just half an hour from my Braintree home, playing in a brand new stadium that I’ve never visited, against a team which has featured in the greatest FA Cup tie I have ever seen (14/11/1992 – Dagenham & Redbridge 4, Leyton Orient 5 - a match which gets a full chapter of coverage in my latest book The Road From Wembley), and an Essex / East London derby of sorts. It was so blatantly obvious that I felt a bit miffed that it had come out first, as it rendered the remainder of the live draw as a perfunctory exercise.
I left it a couple of days to digest and then returned to the legendary Tony’s English Football Site to scrutinise all of the ties in more detail, just in case I had been a bit hasty, but it was a fait accompli, amplified by the fact that Eden and Evie both fancied going and the kid tickets in the Family Enclosure were only three pounds each. No contest then.
But about twenty minutes before leaving for the ground on Saturday, it suddenly occurred to me that some of the things I had become accustomed to in my travels this year, may not be so convenient this time around. Like parking for instance. With Non-League Football it is simple. You drive to the ground, you either park at the ground – even on the touchline in some cases – or in a nearby street, and then you walk in through the turnstiles. League football’s not that simple. I broke out in a semi-sweat and then looked up the travel options on the Colchester website. It was as I had feared. A massive parking exclusion zone in operation all around the ground. I started to juggle with all of the options. Take the train? Left that a bit late, plus the ground is two and a half miles from the city centre so we would have either a long walk or the dreaded ‘shuttle bus’. Ditto that for any Park and Ride schemes. Eventually I called up the club and learned that I could park right outside the ground, although that would set me back the princely sum of ten pounds, and that I better get my skates on because there were limited places available. In the end I bit the bullet and paid simply for convenience’s sake.
So I rounded up the children, packed them into the back of the car, and set off into the gloomy afternoon, destination Colchester. Now I’d seen the gound a couple of times before as it was being built, as it sits directly by the side of the A12 north of Colchester. Back then it was always referred to as Cuckoos Farm, which I thought would make a tremendously unique name for a football ground, and totally apt as my last FA Cup game had been at Bury Town’s Ram Meadow. But of course the Essex football mandarins must have thought it inappropriate as the signposts just off the A120 were all directing me to the Colchester Community Stadium. Bleurgh. A name as grey as the November weather which had been drizzling a melancholic precipitation from the second we had stepped out of the front door.
On arrival though, things initially brightened up. The car park was indeed right outside of the ground, we were in time to secure a spot within, and I picked up my tickets from the pre-ordered booth without any hitches. With the dank weather in mind, we sat in the car until about half an hour before kick off and then made our way into the ground. In my book The Road From Wembley, now available on Amazon, I describe the apathy with which I receive these brand new, cookie cutter football grounds, and I’m afraid that I have to file the Colchester Community Stadium in that same folder. Tremendously symmetrical, well appointed with amenities, clean and shiny, and yet something is missing. Something is always missing from these grounds. Maybe they are too symmetrical. Maybe a football ground at this level needs some misshapen angles and asbestos roofing. Afraid that I was just becoming a miserable od git who would rather harp back to ‘the good old days when we stuffed newspapers down our socks for shin pads’ I asked the girls which they preferred, this ground or Southend United’s Roots Hall and they both agreed on the latter. So I don’t think this is an age thing. It’s more to do with soul. Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium is breath-taking, but Highbury had soul. And to be fair to Colchester, I imagine Layer Road had soul, it just didn’t have enough room for spectators…
Anyway, regardless of taste, when compared to my previous destinations this season, it was clear that I had missed the first decompression stop. Perhaps I should have taken in another Blue Square South game first.
My next bugbear was of course our allocated seats. Now it seems that no matter what I do when pre-ordering tickets for a match, I always seem to get it fundamentally wrong. No matter how much time I spend studying the seating plan on the website, or reviewing the 360 degree virtual view, or how much money I spend, I pick wrong uns. Whether it is getting stuck behind a pillar at the old Wembley or being put down by a corner flag as far removed from the action as you can be, it always happens. This time around was another case in point exacerbated by the weather. We were in a fairly good position maybe fifteen yards to the right of the halfway line, but, we were in the third row from the front, and the angle of the stadium roof was such that the rain was freely cascading down onto our heads. Now of course if you were caught out by the elements at a Non-League ground then you would simply retire to the back of the stand, retire to a clubhouse window, or as was the case at Royston Town, just go and sit in your car and put the windscreen wipers on. Not so here where you have your seat and you’re stuck with it. Decompression Stop number two.
Next up was price. The programme, while glossy and voluminous, was expensive for what I wanted (simply a scan of the front cover for this report), a round of drinks and one bag of sweets for the three of us left little change out of a tenner (and the kids were only drinking bottles of coke). Had this been Chichester City United, then I would have emerged from that series of purchases with notes still intact. But then you pays your money (in this case you certainly do) and you takes your choice.
And so to the game itself. As the two teams were led out it was clear that this would not be a sell out as the stadium was still dotted with empty seats, and to be fair to the Colchester stewards they said we could move back up into any of those vacancies if the rain got any worse. Orient had brought a good contingent of fans who were camped behind the goal to our left and making a fair bit of noise. The U’s faithful were also chanting their tribal anthems but without much vigour, no doubt reflecting the poor season they have struggled with since their move to the new ground. And again I think the new stadium designs are to blame here as they certainly don’t seem to funnel the sound and atmosphere the way the old compact grounds would.
After a superbly well observed two minute silence for Rememberance Day, we got underway and here came the third ‘missed decompression’. The level of ability, combined with the trueness of the playing surface, left me wondering whether I was watching a different sport to the one I had seen at Ram Meadow. I definitely should have gone up at least through a Blue Square Premier, or even a League Two team before the heady heights of League One, the highest standard that this stage of the competition has to offer. Both teams were six promotions away from Bury Town and boy did it show.
But, and this was a big but, it was a terrible, terrible game of football to watch. The passing was faster, the control neater, the players fitter, but the pitch was congested, the game scrappy and there was a distinct lack of invention on both sides.
By half time, Eden and Evie were asking whether it would be a good time to go, and only the appearance in the stand of one of their school teachers – a former Us season ticket holder – kept their attention. The second half was equally dire, only improved by a solitary goal for the visitors when Jason Demetriou converted a late strike in the 80th minute.
The final insult came after the final whistle. Despite the fact that all of us mugs in the car park had paid a tenner each for the priviledge, we were held back by the officials who let all of pedestrians and buses go first. There was then a car scrum to get out of the parking and we final departed the stadium a full hour after the game finished. Grrrrr.
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