A trip to the meadow

Tomorrow sees BCFC playing at Shrewsbury Town; not only that, but it is The Shrews first home league game at their new stadium - I use the word 'stadium' in its broadest sense, it will probably be more like a shoebox with about as much character as my shed.

However, I am not downhearted about this trip, quite the opposite in fact. Shrewsbury has been one of my favourite away trips over the years; Gay Meadow was a strange but enticing ground where we've generally played well. I once saw a Jimmy Quinn goal there in the late 80s that could've quite easily been scored by Pele or George Best in his prime; he didn't quite get the same recognition though - just a load of marauding bastards going mental in the away end. A 3-1 win that day if my memory serves correct!

On another occasion I remember a trip to the Meadow where we lost in a cup replay - one of my mates 'Evs' decided that the loss for too tragic for words and decided to launch his hat from the car window as we miserably drove back up north through the windy Shropshire lanes.

Then there was the time where we managed a 1-1 draw there in the 1995-96 promotion season. The result seems trivial enough but I believe it was The Shrews 10,000 home game in the football league so quite a celebration was put on by the locals.

I think that was probably the last time we played Shrewsbury; since then we've been up to the very top and now find ourselves down at the very bottom. Let us hope that our slide does not continue and that we can start to claw our way back up the north face of the football league, starting tomorrow.

I wonder what the man in the coracle is doing now? Was he on a bonus for every ball he rescued from the river?