City Win Again, No Sweat!

City beat AFC Totton yesterday 3-2 in the FA Cup Fourth Qualifying Round. It was an exciting game with an exciting (£12,500) pot of prize money for the winner. There was lots of exciting play and definitely an exciting finish. For reasons of my own the second half and the hour following the match were especially exciting. Basically, the whole thing was like a giant shot of caffeine.

I arrived at the ground feeling jittery and full of contradictory thoughts. Bath City had needed the prize money from the Second and Third Qualifying Rounds in order to avoid cuts to the squad. Now that those cheques are safely pocketed I should have felt relaxed and cheerful, but I didn't. The Fourth Qualifying Round boasted almost double the prize money of the previous round, and it confered on the winner the chance to draw a League side in the next round. There is also a certain cache in being in the final thirty-two non-league clubs in the the competition. Just being in the draw for the First Round Proper is a real accomplishment. It is the sort of achievement that fans can point to with pride at the end of the season, regardless of what has happened in the league. Winning the Fourth Qualifying Round, therefore, had become supremely important. I told myself that if we could just win this round then I could relax. Yeah, right.

To ease the tension I went through my pre-match ritual: buy program that I will not read until I get home, buy a lottery ticket I will forget to take out of my pocket at half time, and buy a cup of tea that I will put down half-full and forget to finish. When I arrived at the popular side terrace there was also a lot of gossip to pick up on. City's first choice goalkeeper, Ryan Robinson, was going to make his debut appearance for City. It was great timing for him to recover from his injury because our third choice keeper was on holiday in America (our second choice keeper went to ground a long time ago after conceding four goals in a fifteen minute stretch of the season opener). There was also news of Totton's recent acquisition in the non-league transfer market. After a successful spell on loan, Totton had decided they liked the look of Nathan Jack enough to offer cross-town rivals Eastleigh a 'record transfer fee' (a record for Eastleigh, anyway) to make his stay permanent. I doubt the amounts involved were that earth-shattering, but it is just the sort of confident move that you don't want your opponents to make right before a crucial match.

So, apart from an unknown keeper who is far from match fit and the opposition team flashing lots of cash to strengthen its squad, everything was all right. Then I remembered that Totton were on a fourteen game unbeaten streak. No problem.

Once the game started it was evident to everyone in the ground why Totton were dominating the Zamaretto Division One South & West. They were fast and well organised on the break. Robinson was called into action after only four minutes to stop a decent shot. I tried not to admit it to myself, but City had drawn doormats for the previous two rounds. Now they were facing a team with some quality and ambition. Totton were different breed.

Totton's fans were a different breed, too. For the first time ever in my time at Twerton Park I saw away fans congregate around the goal their team was defending. It is traditional in non-league football for fans from either side to cheer their team from the goal it is attacking. Both sets of fans then switch sides at the interval, often engaging in a bit of good-natured banter along the way. Totton's supporters had established themselves in the Bristol end of the ground during the pre-game warm up, and like fans at a League match, they stayed there for the entire game. Perhaps this is a sign that, like the club they support, they too have ambitions for higher things.

Congregating around the goal your team is defending can be depressing, as the Totton faithful learned twenty-five minutes in. Totton's bright attacking form was not able to make up for what was clearly a shaky defence. After some of his trademark Brazilian-style footwork, Sekani Simpson delivered a looping cross parallel to the goal line that neatly met the outstretched foot of Richard Evans in front of the left-hand corner.

More misery was heaped on the Totton fans fifteen minutes later when Adam Connolly fancied a shot from twenty yards out and took the score to 2-0. This was a quality finish and it did Connolly's confidence a world of good. He spent the rest of the match terrifying the Totton defence from the same distance. I know I am not the only City fan who hopes this becomes a regular part of the team's arsenal.

Half-time came and I felt the warm, fuzzy glow that comes with your team is up by two goals to nil. Totton were a credit to step four of the non-league pyramid, but they were no match for the likes of City.

I was not totally relaxed, though. You never can be in football, and I had something extra on my mind as well. After humming and hawing for quite a while I had finally gotten enough nerve to ask a player to let me interview them for this blog. Since he had been very friendly previously I decided to start with defender Sido Jombati. Besides being one of the team's most popular players he is also from Portugal and I wanted to know what had brought him to Bath. Sido was also at the center of this season's biggest mystery - how had he arranged for his Romanian friend Florin Pelecaci to show up on City's doorstep six weeks previously? And how did he end up with a Romanian friend? To my surprise Sido agreed to let me speak to him after the match, and he arranged for Florin to come along as well. I was elated when I got the news. Now that the event was less than an hour away I began to doubt myself. Who am I to interview players? Will they figure out that I only recently stopped calling their sport 'soccer?' How badly could I screw this up? Could I screw it up so badly that I'd be to embarrassed to come to another City match for fear of running into them again? I decided I couldn't' screw it up that much. Maybe just enough to wear sunglasses for the rest of the season.

To the great relief of the City faithful the second half began as the first ended. Lewis Hogg's corner was deflected by the Totton keeper, Gareth Barfoot, directly onto Gethin Jones' forehead. City had a three goal lead and I was just about at the point where I felt I could relax.

I did not get the chance, though. A few minutes later I was jolted from my focus on the game when I heard my name being called over the tannoy. I was asked to come to the press box because of something 'urgent.' Figuring out why I was being called over the tannoy was easy enough: I had left my mobile at home in the charger. Figuring out who needed to speak to me urgently and about what, though, was harder. In the three to four minutes it took me to get to the press office I managed to think of about every scenario. Nervously I opened the press box door and was met by my friend Phil who handed me his mobile to use. 'It's something to do with work,' he said.

I breathed a sigh of relief that it was only work, but only for a second. In my line of work things rarely go wrong, but when they do they usually go very badly wrong and are expensive to fix. I dialed the number and quickly received the news that....actually nothing really serious was wrong at all. A customer had been overcharged in a credit card transaction and they needed my access code to arrange a refund. Now I let out a really big sigh of relief. It turned out that Phil had said over the tannoy quite clearly that it was 'not urgent,' but I had just missed the 'not' part. As I left the press office, feeling a mixture of relief and embarrassment at having left my mobile at home, City chairman Geoff Todd asked me if everything was okay (I bet Roman Abromovich has never asked a concerned fan if he is okay at Stamford Bridge).

Back on the popular side I settled in to watch what I was hoping would be a romp to a large-margin victory. The player that stood out at this point of the match was clearly our midfielder Lewis 'Hoggy' Hogg. After this match, though, calling Hoggy a midfielder may be inaccurate. In an interesting bit of tactics manager Adie Britton had left the talismanic Florin Pelecaci on the bench, moved Sekani Simpson to midfield, and, most surprisingly, put Lewis Hogg in as a forward to partner Darren Edwards. Hogg was a revelation. Totton had no idea how to handle him. He was less a striker than a saboteur operating behind enemy lines. It appeared to make no difference whether he won a header or not. The ball would soon become his and he would whip around whatever defender had tried to block him in seconds. The only thing that stopped the game being a route was the linesman's flag constantly being raised every time he fed the ball forward to Edwards.

With the game seeming secure Adie Britton made a series of sensible seeming substitutions. On came Mike Perrott, Marus Browning, and Pelecaci. Other than Browning taking a position in midfield instead of defence, nothing about those substitutions appeared out of order. Things began to go badly wrong anyway.

Nathan Jack, the 'record' signing, put Totton on the scoreboard with less than five minutes to play. The score became 3-2 in injury time when a City failed to clear a corner kick in time. All the old nervous feelings from the start of the match reappeared, but fortunately, Totton were not able to extend their unbeaten run to fifteen games. The ref blew his whistle and a mighty roar rose from the City fans. City would be in the hat for the First Round Draw, and no matter what else happened the club's budget problems would be eased significantly. All was right with the world. All I had to do now was to find two players I admire greatly, ask them lots of questions that hopefully they would want to answer, and somehow cobble it together into something readable and interesting. No sweat.

I am pleased to say, though, that I did find Sido and Florin in 'Charlie's' after the match. They were both kind and gracious and allowed me to stumble through my enquiries, and they gave thoughtful and interesting answers. I felt totally out of my depth but they put me at ease. You will be able to read what they said later this week. I can promise that you won't be disappointed.