The excitement of the Swans first home league game of the season had been building all week and with a near full house to watch the game against FEC Forest it was sure to be a cracker.
After my usual pre-match ritual of getting the match programme around lunchtime and having a good read pre-match the excitement was growing as 3pm grew nearer. The only downside was that the weather was so lousy – the rain was pretty much incessant. Nevertheless, it was good to catch up with the Dieters Bar Jacks once again after a summer of discontent (due to the weather and a lack of football!).
I took up my new seat in the ASBO stand (AKA Asda stand) and watched the Swans pulverise Forest for the best part of the entire 90 minutes. The football was slick and attractive to watch, but unfortunately we just couldn’t find that final touch. With Paul Smith in the Forest goal having yet another blinder – a la last season at the same venue it simply wasn’t going to be our day.
My after match thought was that we’d dropped two points, but the performance augurs well for the rest of the season and with 44 games to go, I’m not bothered about our league position or points tally just yet.
A couple of other points about today, in no particular order:
- The players were WELL up for it and the disappointment at the end of the game was very evident – which is the opposite of last year under KJ;
- Ferrie Bodde looks like someone who could easily play at a higher level;
- The Forest away following of 900 odd was very poor (by their standards) and not very vocal compared to previous seasons;
- Angel Rangel is a class act for an alleged 3rd division Spanish player;
- Grant Holt (Forest no.10) would be a far better player if he spent as much time on his feet as his he did on his arse and probably wouldn’t be out of breath as much if he cut of the backchat. Thank God we didn’t sign him!
- It was great to see Garry Monk back in action and I realised just how much we’d missed him;
- The match programme (in content terms) has improved yet again – although the quality of the paper and colour used appears to be lower;
- Moment of the game – Dorus De Vries dropping his shoulder and ploughing into the aforementioned sack of spuds Holt;
Away from the footy, the Mrs and DDWT Junior spent their afternoon cooking up some scrumpious homemade cookies – which I had the pleasure of devouring (with several cups of filtered coffee) on my return from the game.