Our First Silverware of the Season

Last season Manchester United competed for six trophies and succeeded in winning four. This season Bath City will compete for at least five trophies and succeeded in winning the first today: the Coronation Cup. The Coronation Cup has a long and illustrious history of sitting under a thick layer of dust in the basement of Twerton Park, interrupted occasionally by its use to add a veneer of importance to pre-season friendlies. Today was no exception, as the Bluebirds from local rival Chippenham Town pitched up and City put the trophy on the line for the first time in fifteen years.

Today was also notable because it was my step-father's first time to attend a real football match. He and I have been to untold number of baseball games together, but this was his first visit to the UK since I have started supporting the men in stripes. It was interesting to see Twerton Park again through the eyes of a newcomer, and he was also useful as childcare help. Because City had very kindly made entrance for under-16s free, and because they do like coming (even though they struggle to pay attention to an entire match) I brought both my boys. They try hard, and benefit from the child's gift of finding entertainment value in the mundane. I had managed to miss how exciting City's old fashioned loos could be. You wee against a wall! How cool!

I was not sure how my step-father would react to the game. I feel a lot of affection for Twerton Park, but I will admit it is sometimes an acquired taste. I was also worried how much he would enjoy the game as he does not have much experience watching football. My worries were further heightened when he asked me why there were ten referees on the pitch (referees in America usually wear black and white striped shirts). This was, thankfully, a joke, and I was further reassured when he successfully explained the off-side rule. He was very impressed by how close he was to the action. This was good, because one sure thing about non-league football it is that you are never inconvenienced by large crowds of people between you and the pitch. We settled in with cups of tea and doughnuts and watched the game begin.

Right away it was pretty obvious that City were not in danger of storing the Coronation Cup in Chippenham Town's basement for the next fifteen years. Before promotion three seasons ago, City played in the same league as Chippenham, but you would not have known it from today's play. City dominated from the outset and scored a quick goal at three minutes. Stuart Douglas (Dreadlock Doug) flicked a quick cross over the Chippneham keeper to winger Richard Evans who tapped it home easily. As City continued to press after this early score I began to hope that they would put the game away early.

I was hoping this despite knowing full well that City's most pressing problem this closed season is a lack of goalscoring power. All of last season City struggled to score goals. Since the object of football is to score goals it is a pretty serious problem. It is amazing that City managed to come in eighth place last season mostly on the strength of its defence, but that is what happened. Against strong teams City's back line was able to keep the side in the game by refusing to back down. Against weak teams, sometimes ridiculously weak teams, City would dominate the entire pitch except for the six yard box in front of the goal. Weak teams eventually grow in confidence if they are not stomped on early, and sometimes sneak in a goal against the run of play. This is how we lost to Aylesbury United in the third qualifying round of the FA Cup, a loss that led to a manager resigning and several players leaving the squad. As today's match continued without further scoring, and as Chippenham resorted to the lower league tactics of rough tackles and sitting deep in their own half, last season's worries for City came to the fore again.

The problem was not that City were taking poor shots - they took very few shots at all. I would guess, even counting the wildly inaccurate ones, City took no made no more than a dozen attempts to score. This was despite Chippenham showing a remarkable inability to clear the ball out of their own half (there were stretches of the game when my five year old could have replaced City keeper Steve Perrin without any detriment to the score line).

Despite this rather gloomy observation, I am not really worried. I think this is perhaps naive stupidity, but I'm going to go with it anyway. I enjoy going to City matches because I enjoy going to City matches. Sitting around afterwards worrying about how we are lacking at least one quality striker isn't' on the agenda. If I need stress I can find plenty of that at work.

Of course, even naive stupidity needs a shred of evidence to launch its delusions from, and today that came in the form of Jamie Taylor and Mike Perrott in the final minutes. Taylor has been signed after being released from the Swindon Town youth squad, and Perrott is homeless after the demise of the ill fated (and not missed) Team Bath. Both of them came on in the final minutes, and both of them played with a lot of desire and decent amounts of skill. Taylor showed the ability to penetrate the Chippenham defenders with ease even though he did not manage to do much once he had penetrated. Perrott came closest to scoring a second goal when he glanced a header crossed in from Sekani Simpson off the bar in the closing minutes. He missed, but he did something no other City player had done since the third minute: be in the right place at the right time. The fact that Perrott is billed as a midfielder and yet appeared to play as a striker was interesting and will need further investigation.

My children began to flag mid-way through the second half. They squabbled a bit and I had to separate them a few times. Immature play was not limited to off the pitch, either, as Chippenham resorted to rough tackles and shirt pulling more and more as the game progressed. Faced with such an onslaught of fouling the ref was inconsistent. Chippenham had four yellows and a straight red card shown to them. What the red card was for exactly was not really clear, but it is unlikely it was the most serious offence on the pitch today. The Bluebird's rough tactics was further evidence that City's play had progressed in the two years and a half years since leaving the Southern League. It was, in a backwards way, a nice advertisement for the quality of play in the Blue Square South.

After the final whistle we filed out to the sound of 'Drink Up Thee Cider' and paused briefly at the Bath end to watch the captain Jim Rollo lift the Coronation Cup. My step-father told me he enjoyed the game and will come back the again when he visited next. For the kids, the highlights were the doughnuts and being allowed to pee on the wall.