I’m going again with John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop, specifically his prompt #6 – ‘write about the most recent time you went to a sporting event.’ This one is right up my street, though sadly my final time was much longer ago than I would have wished.

As all good dads do, mine tried out many things with me to see what I liked. He took me to my first football match when I was five, to cricket not long after that, to go-kart racing, motor racing, and introduced me to playing sports – even the occasional round of pitch and putt golf. The two that really stuck with me were football and cricket, and later tennis: both of my daughters played, one of them at national junior level, which involved many weekends acting as a taxi service, cheerleader and a shoulder to cry on. And there have been many visits to Wimbledon along the way.

Football – the one with a round ball that players actually kick, to be clear for American readers – has occupied a large part of my life. I played a lot as a kid, both for the school and in local leagues, but hung my boots up when I went to uni – one training session with the sadist in charge was more than enough! I grew up in Dover, and have supported the local team since that very first game. We all had a ‘proper’ team that we followed: mine was Spurs (i.e. Tottenham Hotspur), and after moving to the area following uni I took a big interest in the local English Football League (EFL) side, Leyton Orient (the O’s). This culminated in my having a season ticket for them, and for some years I never missed a home game.

I had to give up going when health issues got in the way, meaning that I could no longer get to the ground. This was during the 2015/16 season, when the O’s were in the fourth tier of the EFL, which of course is called League Two, having been relegated from League One at the end of the previous season. I’ve looked at the full fixture list for that season but am having difficulty remembering which of them might have been my final game, so I’m going for one I am certain that I went to.

The game took place on 7th November 2015, and was in the first round of the FA Cup, our main national knockout competition. The O’s had been drawn at home to play a side from three tiers below them, Staines Town, in a match which the local paper rather pessimistically called ‘a potential banana skin!’ This is how the game went:

Not so much a banana skin, more of a cakewalk – 2-0 up after 12 minutes wasn’t something the O’s faithful were used to! The local rag should really have known better: the previous season we had played another non-league team at home in the Cup – Southport – and had won 5-2. Even if these were against supposedly ‘lesser’ sides seeing your team score loads of goals is always a pleasant experience. I thought about writing to the local paper to suggest that their football correspondent should take a few lessons, but thought better of it. Someone else did, though!

There is a sad ending to this story. The opposition that day, Staines Town, ceased to exist as a football club in 2022, following a protracted dispute over the land on which their ground was sited. Their owner felt that he could no longer afford to fight the legal battles and wound the club up, after nearly 130 years in existence. The O’s almost suffered the same fate in 2017, so I know how their supporters must have felt. They were a great bunch when we played them, as you can see from their joy when Staines scored. No supporter deserves to see their club die. And the owner? He now spends his time racing monster trucks in competitions around the world. There must be an analogy in there somewhere!

A footnote to the story. The picture at the top of the page is of the scene just before that fabulous free kick for the fourth O’s goal that you saw in the video. That was taken by Dean Cox, who was very much a fan favourite. In all he played 275 games for the club, scoring 59 goals, many of them spectacular like that one. In the previous year against Southport he scored one so good that even their fans applauded it, and the referee had a word of congratulation too. He was the sort of player that every club loves to have, trying his heart out every time, and as he stood at the diminutive height of 5’4″ it gave us the chance to sing things like “we’ve got tiny Cox” to keep ourselves amused. Footie fans were never the brightest, really!

I really miss going to games, as I used to have a seat with a great view, near the halfway line three rows from the front, and enjoyed the company of fellow fans. Being in the lower levels of the EFL we don’t get on the tv much, either, but we played really well though losing 1-2 to Manchester City in a televised FA Cup match earlier this season. We are actually live on tv this evening, as for some reason Sky have chosen to show what would have been this Saturday’s game. It isn’t the same as being at the match, but I’ll be there in spirit! And at least I won’t have to wrap up like this: