Poolie Kev's Column: Donny, Daly and Dimi!

On our travels
By Poolie Kev
August 15 2005

Poolie Kev's a hardy soul, braving the open terrace in the rain at Doncaster while Albatross chickened out in the seats. The result was worth it - but he was none too impressed with the catering or with the Laughing Cavalier masquerading as a referee....

Easy one this, return to Hartlepool?? 216 miles, return to Doncaster?? A mere 26 miles from Kevland Pastures.

So picking up a recent convert (Roger, an ex player and current fan of Sheffield Utd, leave it, I’m working on him, he’s on game 3) and zipping a mere hop skip and jump up the A1/M18 we arrived in the car park of the Park Hotel at about 1.45pm. There was a healthy smattering of the chosen in there amongst a greater contingent of red hooped Rovers but not a great deal of banter was in evidence as, having spent all that money on Thornton, Heffernan et al, they’d so far beat nobody. Ergo, they seemed somewhat downcast. Good!!

The lunchtime match of Everton v Manchester United was on quite the largest screen I’ve ever seen outside of the cinema. The cheers that went up when Rooney capitalised on a cringe making defensive mistake to crash in a gift were a little puzzling. You’re either Donny or Utd in my book but I guess I should be used to it by now. ‘I’ve supported ‘em since I was a kid, me…....’ Sound familiar??

So after a couple of levellers and a half for the road, we ploughed the sodden furrows of Doncaster down to the shabbiest stadium in the league, I mean world. What a hovel, surely not made better by the heaviest rain since Swindon, May 2004. However, we got a great result at that one so lets not prejudge and at least they had urinals instead of those troughs at Chesterfield.

The game was Poolie heaven though and I hope the first of many successful away days to come. The downside being that after Jon Daly’s gloriously poached goal, and that ‘I can do this on one leg’ celebration, there was three nervous adolescents in the smallest snack cabin in the universe trying to service the desperate needs of 250 pie craving Poolies with little more than grub for 25 Stevenage Borough supporters. You got promoted lads, expand!! Believe it or not they still sell Wrestlers canned burgers at Donny like they used to do in Notriani’s at Seaton in the seventies. I kid you not. I abstained and my stomach is still grateful that I did. As is my plumbing.

So why do referees find it funny when they make a right dog’s breakfast of their job?? I’d get a rollicking off the boss or a written warning if I performed professionally like Mr Salisbury. At which point do you decide who you want to win and then do your best to do your worst by your non-chosen team?? Allegedly. And what’s so funny about it?? The grinning maniac laughed all over the pitch whilst giving several hundred of the least believable decisions in the history of the planet. I’m willing to believe in the susceptibility of the mere mortal but some of that was beyond the realms of possibility.

But really, who cares when we’ve got Dimi? What a performance and with the languidness of the superbly confident. We’ve got a belter there and he seems to get better all the time, even if his shirt name did start a little high on the left and ended up low on the right. If they stuck his first name on too, it’d meet at the bottom……….

See you on Saturday for Walsall and Westy.