The Brakes

Today I had my first experience of going to a local football match. I went with my Uncle to see his local team (Didcot town) play the Leamington Brakes. So that I don’t keep you in too much suspense, the result was a 2-1 victory to Leamington, though I must say that the run of play in the second half was generally with Didcot, so the scoreline was a touch lucky (or unlucky depending on your perspective).

The event was quite different to anything I’ve seen before. There were 503 admissions, which doesn’t seem like that many people when you see them at a football ground, but is apparently quite a respectable turnout. Most of the guys there seemed to know all the players by name, and because the ground and seating were right alongside each other they were able to call out to them. It was also clear that large portions of the Leamington fanbase knew each other very well, which I suppose you’d expect.

Compared to an international cricket or football match (or even just the Phoenix playing at home) it was a much more local experience. All the advertising around the ground was for local Leamington companies, although the primary sponsor, Building & Plumbing Supplies, or BPS, apparently have branches all over the country. Weirdly, considering that you’d imagine the flags at the end of the ground would all be local, there seemed to be flags from other regions supporting other teams that also bore the name “Brakes”, which was quite confusing. Anyhow, that didn’t seem to be that important anyway.

There were, as far as I could tell, 4 types of fan at the match.

1. The rivals – there was a small contingent of Didcot supporters sitting in the stands near where we were.
2. The louder, younger, men. They chanted all the same things that more heavily drinking fans chant everywhere, only substituting “Leamington”, “The Brakes”, and other such terms where appropriate.
3. The older, more restrained, men. They still shouted, but more such things like “Wake up!”, and “Good play <player name>!”
4. The families with young children, who were evidently trying to engender a love of football in their kids.

It was basically a pretty good afternoon – a couple of action shots follow:

I’ve also been diligently following the cricket on Cricinfo, and I was stoked to watch the score tick over on Friday as we managed to get through to the semis. It’s all been very exciting, and has made me wish we could actually watch some of the matches without going to a bar. I’ll admit, I didn’t think we would beat South Africa, and now I don’t have much faith in our ability to win our next match with Sri Lanka, but I’m supporting our boys, and hoping they manage to pull out another upset! Go the Black-caps!