by Richard Smith
Although infrequent, it is always viewed as encouraging to be able to welcome (phew! 4 verbs already and the sentence is only thirteen words old) extra terrestials to York Street, whom were represented at the New Year's Monday game with Kettering, along with 3»343 humanoids.
Though it was particularly pleasing to see American T.V.'s alien creation Alf behind the goal. Instead of jostling for a view, he had the unhumanly sensible logic of sitting on top of a Kettering's fan head in order to obtain a better view of the proceedings. Obviously it was naturally perturbing to discover that Alf is in fact himself a Kettering supporter and he even sported his own red and white scarf.
One thing that the three and a half thousand people in the ground did provide was an atmosphere, with the away fans hearts full of songs, though their "what's it like to see a crowd" was immediately cancelled by "what's it like to see a ground" booming out from the York Street Stand's Lower Tier. Whenever evergreen Ernie Moss fell over, this was greeted with chants "He's died of old age" or, in Moss failing to chase a through ball, "hang on a minute Hardy, give him a chance to catch 'up at his age". Certainly Ernie Moss still looks very sharp and must command a lot of respect, especially for someone who made their Football League debut in 1967 (for Chesterfield), but at times he suffered from the illusion that he was the referee, and at two free-kicks which he awarded himself he forgot to raise his arm to signal "indirect".
However, the Kettering supporter's attending the game complete with full size cuddly toys should not detract from the fact that Boston genuinely outplayed the Poppies, but had to be content with a solitary point. The 1-1 scoreline was properly the greatest injustice in the history of the game since man first kicked an inflated animal bladder around in the 16th Century. Before Kettering equalised, there was a 25 minute period in the second-half when the ball never left Kettering's penalty area.
Maybe the way of determining winners and losers of games will change from the traditional and surely crude and outdated method of counting goals scored by each side, which can so easily depend on luck, and instead to employ judges to name the winner who give marks out of six for each performance for mid-field creativity, clever back-heels, unrewarded penetrative forward runs off the ball, defensive assertiveness and neat little lay-offs by the frontrunners, and initive in losing one’s marker, similar to the system used in ice-skating.
Still, with FIFA's policy of introducing silly rule changes as experiments in the GMVC, perhaps room is not affordable to joke about such interventions of rule changing, as last seasons useless no-offside-from-free-kick rule and the earlier 3 points for an away win, 2 points for a home win, 1 point for a draw and 4 and a half points for an away win if you didn't concede any throw-ins on the left wing in the first fifteen minutes of the second-half, ably demonstrated.
Certainly matches should only be 85 minutes long. If this was so then this season would have seen Boston attain a win at Welling, and register draws with Cheltenham, Fisher, Yeovil instead of all four matches culminating in defeat. Quite why our defence should part like the Red Sea in the last few minutes of League encounters this term is not easy to answer, though at times just when sheer inability is being cited to take all the blame, the Pilgrims produce a resolute performance in the next game with exactly the same players. This goes some way to explaining why 8-1 and two 5-0 wins have been followed by 0-6 and two 1-4 reversals.
The game at Welling provided a particular moment of fate at its most callous; when Paul Wilson headed us into a deserved 2-1 lead after 87 minutes, not even the most cynical amongst us expected that we would lose, but lose we did. This sparked off a run of conceding six consecutive league goals, none of which were conceded in actual playing time -Welling (46 minutes, 90, 91), Cheltenham (46, 91*92).
Not content with this, Boston continued their definitive guide to how to seriously blow it in injury time by entering the 90th minute against Fisher Athletic with the scores at 2-2, in spite of Boston enjoying the far greater share of the play, only to hear the referee blow his whistle after three minutes of added stoppage time with the score standing at 2-4 to Fisher. Justice is not very big around Boston. As usual we endeavoured to arrive that difference making ten minutes earlier than usual for the Fisher game in expectation of having too jostle for a view with the hoards of travelling Fisher fans. To my count Fisher had four supporters at the game, and that figure does include the referee.
Adding to this catalogue of hitherto previously inexperienced despair was the way that all this was capped with losing two vital home games without the opposition scoring a goal in open play. First Boston squandered some good chances in the futile attempt of offsetting a penalty conceded by Mckenna (certainly Wycombe's forward could claim the penalty, but he made a banquet more than a meal of it).
Next came Kidderminster to Boston -they kicked the ball about at the back a bit and just left Boston to give them the goals they needed, which they provided with gusto - Dave Cussack headed into his own goal without a Kidderminster playing literally within 50 yards of either him or the penalty area, and then Steve Buckley stuck his hand up to pat away a harmless cross and another needless penalty was converted. Worse was to follow when a certain Boston defender so charmingly opted to v-sign the crowd when a for once competent clearance was met with ironic applause from the supporters who provide the wages.
Yet even more drama was to follow with the resignation of Ron Reid after the Fisher game - only three days after being named as the assistant manager of England. Something was certainly amiss here, with Reid*s statement to the press saying that "I will not involve the club in a public slanging match so 1 will not say why I went". So speculation is all we have left. Issue one of "FBYF" described Kerr as possessing the shyness and reticence of Brian Clough with a stubbed toe; was it a personality clash? Or simple dillusionment with results? A falling out with the Chairman? Or just to concentrate on the England job?
Following the Fisher defeat was always going to be hard, but the long excursion to Weymouth proved to be not entirely fruitless. Twice coming from behind, Boston earned a point against quite mediocre opposition who must surely soon reinvest the £50,000 received from Bournemouth for Shaun Teale; the indescribably inept decision to keep Paul Wilson on the subs bench for the first three quarters of the proceedings was made to appear as the act of wanted stupidity we all knew it was, when once on the field Wilson immediately rifled one home to earn the Pilgrims a point.
The plot thickens, but never congeals. Next can a spate of quite amazing results. A comfortable 2-0 home victory over basement club Aylesbury was followed by a Boxing Day 2-1 win at Kettering before a healthy gate of 3»;500, and then came a 1-0 victory at title contenders Macclesfield, with Cook certainly scoring vital goals, but missing an awful lot more.
Soaring above all of this was a quite dazzling display against Barnet, with the north Londoners extremely lucky to embarrassingly run back to the coach and speed away from Boston with merely a 5-0 thrashing, with Stewart Hamill becoming the first Pilgrim since 1985 to score a league hat-trick. In true GMVC formbook style, this defeat of Barnet was sandwiched between what would have otherwise been nine straight wins for the Bees.
Naturally Boston fell back to earth with a painful bump when entertaining Newport County - Martin Hardy missed a penalty and the aide struggled to achieve a 1-1 draw with moderate opposition. As Boston supporters entered the ground the news filtered through that Kerr had sold one of the Pilgrim's very best players, namely Glen Beech, to Kettering the day be fore the Newport game; this left Boston with 12 (TWELVE) (to employ Grandstand's teleprinter way of printing big numbers) fit players, in spite of the fact that Beech was ineligible to play in Kettering1 s side due to meet Halifax that Saturday in the F.A.Cup as he was cup-tied. As for the Newport game itself, the team who had been so impressive only a few days before, were back to usual with- our defenders each looking like they possessed the turning circle of a combine.
All it took was a mere two minutes for the home game with Newport to degenerate into a farce. Precisely this much into the match, the referee blew his whistle and supporters glared in bewilderment as the entire Boston team trooped guiltily off the field. The reason for this was that the referee had spotted the Boston lads all wearing jewellery and were made to dispense with it - Paul Wilson appeared to be the main offender with him probably taking longer to take off his collective rings, ear-rings and chains than Madonna does to unload hers. Significantly not one single Newport player possessed any items of jewellery at all. Perhaps this serves to underline the difference in prosperity between South Wales and the rich farming area of Lincolnshire.
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All content copyright Richard O. Smith 1988-2002