[LU] Yeovil

[MATTHEW GAYNOR]

What a bloody stupid idea moving this to a Friday night was. Apart from anything it meant an early start to avoid the M25 rush hour, so we set off pre-noon for the journey down. Good progress along M25 and M3 before a couple of hours of nothingness on the A303 which were enlivened by the prospect of going past Stonehenge, but as we drove past the general response was along the lines of “Is That It”, “I Thought It Would Be Bigger”
   
  We had to stay outside Yeovil, as there was deemed to be no room at the inn. Yeovil tourist info helpfully telling us there were no hotels in Yeovil big enough for just our busload, let alone all the Leeds fans. After a quick detour when I sent us up the wrong road, we were checked-in and in a local pub within half an hour, although in hindsight taking up the free bottle of wine with 2 steak meals offer may have been a mistake.
   
  Managed to park up pretty close to the ground, before finding that there was a ticket checkpoint before getting to the burger stalls compound behind the away end. Of course plenty found their way past this point without a ticket and some even made it into the ground without one. It’s odd how weird it seems to be on terraces nowadays and one factor is that without pre-designated seats after a pie and a piss I had no idea where the rest of my group had ended up. Still game started, with fat-bloke 2 (Elding) upfront for Beckford and Douglas back in the middle.
   
  Within a couple of minutes, a cross in from the right was missed by everyone and travelled to the unmarked Johnson at the far post, he appeared to be unaware the game had actually started and simply spooned the ball back into the 6 yard box, where Freedman lashed it in, whilst Elding appeared confused by the round white thing. In truth as the goal was at the far end, no-one at our end was really sure who had scored. It was immediately apparent that there were lots of Leeds fans in other parts of the ground (not surprising as Yeovil seemed happy to sell tickets to anyone-which led to a record crowd) and their celebrations meant a few police rushing around at the end. A lot of them were moved into our end, about 100 extra people appeared about 20 minutes in, but at the far end there was a fair amount of activity til the end of the match.
   
  Not so much activity on the pitch though. With the early goal Leeds were largely content to try and pass the ball around and keep possession and even with the benefit of a strong wind behind them Yeovil didn’t really manage to threaten, though on the couple of occasions they did get near goal we were lucky they hit their shots straight at Casper.
   
  Of course the wind and the open terrace meant it was also bloody cold and the long journey and refreshments seemed to have take it’s toll on some Leeds fans, one lad next to me managed to achieve the feat of being fast asleep whilst standing up for much of the first half. A half-time wander to try and find the rest of our group only found the Rickman brothers huddling together for warmth near the front and soon enough it was time for the second half. 
   
  We continued our normal tactic of appearing to dominate the play but never really looking like finishing them off, and the closest we got was a long shot by Johnson that fizzed just over the bar. A distinct lack of pace upfront meant we weren’t really able to play an effective counter-attack game and the midfield seemed a bit slow to support, so the odd promising break ended with the ball being held up and passed back to halfway. Still with Kilkenny sticking to the right a bit more than usual we were pretty solid defensively as well.
   
  Then the moment that may have changed the game. Sheehan tried to run the ball out of defence, over-ran it trying to avoid the first tackle and in trying to recover the ball did lunge in a bit. A red card was probably fair enough, although there was no injury and the Yeovil reaction was probably a contributory action to the refs decision. Within a couple of minutes a tackle from behind led to another melee and it looked the game might spiral out of control. 
   
  However it soon calmed down and with Hughes on for Elding we continued to look comfortable. Lubo lashed a free-kick over the bar from distance and a corner was cleared off the line by
Freedman who didn’t seem to be able to get out of the way. Dougie showed his experience by managing to win the odd free-kick by strategically falling over when left one on four. Yeovil only really created anything after bringing on Owusu in the last few minutes, but were restricted to a couple of corners and headers over the bar. Towards the end the police decided we were all going to invade the pitch (why) and stood in front of us, causing a bit of grief where none previously existed, as now we couldn’t see.
   
  Ref blew the whistle soon enough and it was a comfortable win, albeit in a 0-0 game where we had accidentally scored. We wandered off fairly quickly as the Yeovil fans stuck around to celebrate their relegation avoiding season but found Leeds aren’t popular even in deepest Somerset, as some local kids decided to chuck stones at our bus, and they were a bit more accurate than the 100+ Swansea muppets earlier in the season.
   
  Still off to the pub with no serious damage, where we found that young people playing hippy jazz music was still popular in these parts, it is near Glastonbury I suppose. Somehow our well behaved group were infiltrated by a group of touring policemen later on in the night, which led to some confusion as they demanded to know who the Senior Officer was after a drunken argument later on. We decided to leave, whilst Inspector Risdale continued the search for the terror of Yeovil, “the short-ars*d strangler”.
   
  Next morning brought to light a few facts;
  We were far from the only Leeds fans in our hotel.
  Miles of rolling countryside gets a bit dull after a while
  Stonehenge hadn’t got any bigger overnight.
  Chelsea v Man U has become largely irrelevant to us nowadays.
   
  Still home by 2 and 12 away wins in a season is a pretty decent achievement.
   
  Matt