Super Seymour Arms: Cup finalists!
It is easy when you spend a lot of watching football to become pretty cynical about it. The politics, the shady business, the cheating, the diving, the shameless exploitation of fans. A game in which Sepp Blatter is the most important single individual… I often wonder why I spend so much time watching football, reading about football, talking about football. I certainly come to question why it is referred to as “The Beautiful Game”.
The great thing about football, the reason why it is a global game, why sport the world plays is you never have to wait all that long to be reminded why you love it, and why it is “The Beautiful Game”. I remember being utterly disconsolate at the end of the 2002 World cup, after one of many broken hearts from following England at international tournaments.
A couple of months later I was staying with my Grandmother in Weymouth and decided to go and watch some non league football. I went up to the then Wessex Stadium to watch the Weymouth play Grantham Town in a non league game. Midway through the second half Weymouth got a free kick out wide in a remarkable similar position to that from which Ronaldinho scored his remarkable/lucky (delete depending on your personal prejudices 😉 ! ) goal. Amazingly the ball went into the goal in identical fashion (though there is little doubt that this one was entirely luck). As I stood there, in a uncovered stand, in the rain singing “It’s just like watching Brazil” with a couple of hundred Terras fans, cup of Bovril in hand I thought how much I loved football. Faith was restored, the game was indeed beautiful!
Skip forward to 2011 and I have been once again having my doubts, my team Plymouth Argyle stand on the brink of liquidation, Malcolm Glazer’s awful Manchester United seem to be on a relentless march to win major honours despite not being very good, FIFA’s reputation sank further into the mud with the murky World Cup host bidding fiasco and somehow both Blatter and the execrable Jack Warner are still the king pins of world football. It is fair to say football was lacking a little lustre for me once again.
Ok so maybe not this cup final!
But not any more, because I had yesterday one of the most joyous experiences I have ever had as a fan of football. The Seymour Arms, the team I was a founding member of, and a former manager of competed in their first ever Devon Cup semi final and I went along to watch. Going away on “on tour” with the Seymour was fun in of itself but getting to compete in a massive for us cup semi final was special.
We were drawn away to play Sidmouth Town FC from Eastern Devon. A couple of minibuses of players and fans made the trip up to watch the biggest day so far in the short history of our club. Arriving at Sidmouth’s digs made me pretty glad we had been drawn away (we play at a council pitch called Tothill Park which is in a pretty bad state). We were made to feel very welcome right from the get go.
The match itself was a close affair. Both teams were pretty evenly matched in terms of standard and it was clearly going to be a game in which the first goal made a massive difference. Thankfully Seymour midfielder Neil Wyatt was put into the box shortly before half time and fired us into the lead. This led to a pretty god damn nervy second half, I paced up and down and I am pretty sure there is a patch of bar earth next to Sidmouth’s pitch were I was stationed!
Sidmouth predictably came back into the game and started putting us under pressure, a number of good chance were very well saved by Seymour’s stand in keeper Chris Langmead. We withstood the pressure well but I was pretty darned nervous all the same. Then we got a breakthough club captain John Tremblett (who wasn’t enjoying one of his better games for the club) went through the middle and struck a long range shot straight at the keeper, it bounced on its way through and (i’m sure agonisingly for him) somehow trickled under the keeper into the net.
Football though is rarely so easy, and there was always going to be a twist in the match. Minutes after the Seymour spawned a glorious two on one against the Sidmouth keeper (Adam Lake tried unsuccessfully to round the keeper rather than pass) Sidmouth scored a good goal to make the score 2-1 with only minutes remaining. The tension became virtually unbearable, as Sidmouth through everything forward. But after 120 seconds that felt like about 18 months the ref blew the final whistle.
For the first time in our clubs history we had reached a cup final… a bloody cup final. And the Devon (supplementary) Cup final at that. I don’t think I have ever roared in such delight at the final whistle of a game it was a truly amazing feeling. This is why they call it the beautiful bloody game!
In truth, back in the summer of 2002 when myself and my friends Recardo McDowell and Tom Williams decided drunkedly on a boozy Friday night to set up a new Sunday League football team at the pub I didn’t really expect us to even get to the end of the season. For me the club still existing and reaching a county cup final nearly a decade from that night is nothing short of magical.
That football is a sport where one can derive as much, or often more entertainment from watching 11 of your amateur mates in a Sunday League cup game as you can from say watching the Wizards of Barcelona in the Champions league speaks volume for what a fabulous game we have.
So if oyu are fed up with the cheating, diving, moaning, murky finance, back handers, over paid prima-donnas of professional football then remember there is a wonderful world of great drama and awesome stories just on your doorstep and in your local park. Long live Sunday league.
And if you are interested the final will take place on the 17th April, in Newton Abbot against the “Jolly Judge” of Torquay. Hoping to get as many fans, and ex Seymour Arms alumni as possible to attend. See you there!
