Game Forty Two - Crystal Palace home (FA Cup 3rd Round)

3rd Janurary 2009

FA Cup weekend. The highlight of the football calendar for many football fans in this country as for one weekend, the majority of the football leagues are stopped to make room for these fixtures. The pressure is off, and it's an opportunity to pit your team against (in most cases) a team you wouldn't be playing during the course of the season.

If you have read the previous blog from the spurs game, you'll know that I stopped at Helen's for the night which I have been ordered to write a retraction about.... she doesn't live in Birmingham at all! Tipton near Dudley is the accurate way of describing it which is nothing like Birmingham apparently. Picky!

We all got up in decent time though and made our way down to Leicester early as Helen had to be at the Walkers Stadium at 11am for a tour and meal thing she had planned before hand. Being the typical woman she didn't have time to get ready in time and so had to do her make up in the car.
We picked Jobber up from Braunstone on the way down and I left them at the stadium as I had to collect my tickets and then go and meet my old man.

As it was a cup game, we decided to try something different and sit closer to the half way line then we normally would. When we first started going to games together, he always wanted to sit at the halfway line whereas I fancied the Kop behind the goal... as a result, we compromised and so sat half way in between the two. Nice to have a bit of change every now and again although neither of us felt happy with where we ended up... something was missing.

I think this has the potential to be the smallest blog I've done for a very long time as nothing actually happened in the game. In the first half, a few long shots were had by both teams but neither keeper was troubled in the slightest. Possesion wise, it seemed to be mostly in our favour but there was never any danger of a breakthrough coming.

The second half continued in the same way.... neither side could get the ball down and put together a string of passes which threatened the goal in anyway. Finally though, after an hour of football, we were presented with a genuine chance. Good work by Dickov fed the ball through to Howard who was clean through on goal only for him to blaze a shot over. Nil nil written all over it from then on and only a long range effort from Gradel forced a save from a keeper. Disappointing and left us facing the prospect of the long trip down to Selhurst Park for the replay - gutting!!

The only real highlight I can take is finding a fiver on the way out of the stadium which contributes nicely towards the ticket cost of the replay providing I could get time off work. Would just be typical if my 100% record attempt was dashed by the competition that I love so much..... fingers crossed eh?