SATURDAY APRIL 6
Walton Casuals 1 Folkestone Invicta 3
ANOTHER offer of a lift, this time to Walton Casuals of the Ryman League South.
It seems spring has finally sprung and I arrive in plenty of time to take a short-sleeved stroll along the banks of the Thames before kick-off.
Flowers are in bloom and the birds are in full song: beautiful.
I pay £8 to get into the Waterside Stadium and another £1.50 for the programme. It's a good read but a glossy cardboard cover would have made it an even more attractive issue. The tiny club shop just past the turnstile is manned by two polite kids.
The burger and chips are excellent, eaten in the sun on the picnic tables outside the ‘greasy spoon' type café.
One can tell this is an affluent area with high education standards: near the ground is a sign advertising a Farmers' Market (note the apostrophe is present and in the correct place!) and when I hand the serving girl a ten pound note and forty pence for my £5.40 meal, she isn't fazed and immediately hands back a fiver. How refreshing!
Inside the spacious clubhouse, I discover plans for a 300-seater stadium on Walton's current site. This is daringly ambitious for a club at the bottom of their league.
The programme offers a reason for the precarious position in the table: Casuals have already used 90 players this season! The reserves, however, are unbeaten, so one has to ask why the club doesn't just switch the teams!
Both sides are poor but the blues of Folkestone are the better team. They easily win this contest at a canter. The star of the show (in his own mind) is Walton's Number 17.
After coming on as a substitute, he stomps around like Harry Enfield's teenage character, Kevin.
It only needs an outburst of, ‘I hate you!!' to the referee to complete the painfully accurate portrayal. It is no surprise when this idiot is involved in a scuffle at the final whistle and he has to be dragged away by his teammates, some of whom get a mouthful of abuse for their troubles.
sad.hopper@ntlworld.com (Now also on Facebook)
