Northwich 13/10/07

D 0-0

Attendance: 1061

Match day report by Kirstie Bowden.

We set off for Northwich full of optimism after our back to back home wins against Grays and Salisbury. The journey up was eventful. There was a ginsters related incident as a certain member of the bus flaunted his ginsters slice with pride. The ginsters culprit then organised a bus quiz, which pitted a team of 4 against a team of 20. After I had questioned this distribution, being captain of the somewhat smaller team, the quiz commenced. Unsurprisingly team 'Back Half' with its large squad beat my team Buckle Off 3-0. This led to scenes of celebration amongst the winners, who enjoyed chanting at the losers. They seemed to forget that it is of course the taking part that is the most important! Anyway, they needn't be proud of their victory, having an in-depth knowledge of Mr Men characters isn't necessarily a good thing!

We arrived at Northwich just before the kick-off of the England match. We were invited into the social club by the Northwich fans, who were surprised but pleased to see that we had made the journey. There was a strange atmosphere, unsurprising given the uncertainty surrounding the future of the club that day. Given the parallels with our past history, East Devon Grecian Di Lee gave the supporters a card telling them to keep the faith. For that we received a standing ovation, having moved some of their supporters to tears. As we watched England, or the globe lights depending on where you sat, some programme sellers appeared selling a variety of old programmes. When asked where we could buy this season's programme from they simply said, "There isn't one", another reflection of the sorry position Northwich were in. However, we did later manage to all get a copy of the team sheet. Leaving the social club we had to pass through a crowd of home fans. Normally this would be accompanied with a bit of harmless banter, but on this occasion we were applauded.

For one member of our travelling party, our return to Northwich was more a case of back to the scene of the crime. Back in March we stood in the covered terrace on the side of the ground. I was stood with the person in question, none other than super supporter Di Lee. After pointing out rather politely to the Northwich safety officer that a partition between home and away fans consisting of 2 stewards was not good enough, he accused her of being "foul and abusive". She pointed out that she had been neither foul nor abusive, and he replied stating that should she keep "shouting" at him, he would have to eject her from the ground. Travelling home later that night from what was our fourth away defeat in a row, we took comfort from the fact that we didn't return empty handed for Di had received an ASBO! This season we were surprised to see that a physical barrier had been built to separate home and away fans. We suggested that it should be renamed "The Di Lee barrier".

The game, watched by thousands live on Setanta was a disappointment and City really should have got more out of the game. For those who watched, either at the game or on TV you will no doubt concur with me that there is little, if anything, worthy of noting that happened in the game. Thankfully the final whistle signalled just the end of the game for Northwich, as they have now applied to go into Administration and will therefore live to fight another day.