English Second Division vs Wrexham (a)
After everything that had happened, maybe a nice trip to Wales to play Wrexham was just what I needed. Despite Jen’s idea that we should stay friends, I didn’t really want to do that right now, and with the main alternative to hanging around with Jen being hanging around with Beth...well, let’s just say that if I didn’t see another woman in my life it’d be too soon.
Anyway, I wasn’t going to Wales just to hide from my friends. I was there to play a football match, and a particularly important one at that. After the horrendous defeat at home to Blackpool four days earlier, we needed a positive result if we were going to maintain our promotion challenge, and happily we could return to pretty much a full strength line-up. Leo Roget and Martin Rowlands, who missed the last match, returned to the side, replacing Scott Marshall and Eddie Hutchinson respectively. Hopefully Roget’s presence in the back three would help us regain our composure at the back after leaking four goals in his absence, and maybe Rowlands’ return to the team would inspire our attack to achieve great things.
In the end we got the former, but not the latter. Roget helped the defence to stand up to the barely existent threat from the home side, although to be perfectly frank our under 11’s girls side wouldn’t have had much trouble keeping them out. They’d have probably done a bit better than us up front too, what with us managing to create a whopping total of one decent chance, one sliced shot that could be counted as a half chance and a match full of wasted possession whenever we got within sight of their goal.
It was probably fortunate that when the solitary chance came along we managed to take it. It wasn’t a pretty goal in the slightest. Ibrahima Sonko hoofed the ball forward which wasn’t dealt with by the Wrexham defence, and the ball fell kindly for Leon Constantine. He used his pace well to get to the by-line where he pulled the ball back for the unmarked Kevin O’Connor, who was waiting for the pass on the edge of the six yard box.
When the goal came towards the end of the first half, it was the only vaguely remarkable thing to happen in a game that would have rivalled the world championships of watching paint drying for excitement. The referee had obviously got tired of the lack of action happening in front of him and decided to spice things up by flashing his yellow card at various players, most notably Carlos Edwards. The ref obviously enjoyed booking him so much the first time that he decided to do it again, as well as bestowing the honour of the game’s only red card on the Wrexham number seven.
On the long coach trip back to West London, we had to be pleased with what we’d achieved really. We’d played abysmally, created nothing, looked like creating nothing in a million years and still come away with the three points. They always say that the trick to success in football is if you can win games that you don’t play well in. Maybe we were discovering that very trick at just the right time...
Final Score:- Wrexham 0-1 Brentford
Team:- (3-5-2) Smith 7; Roget 7, Christanval 8, Sonko 7; Naysmith 8, Dobson (c) 7, Rowlands 8, Healy 8, Greenan 7; O'Connor 8(1), Constantine 7. 
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