2012-13 Uncovered: Saturday 11th August - Leiston Said, Soonest Mended

   At long last.  With fate (or more precisely a change of venue, a dodgy rail line, rain, and a radio station happy to scrap it's flagship sports show just before the Olympics) conspiring against it happening, the familiar surroundings of Blunts Wall Road came into view.

   I was always a Basildon United fan, mind, and in the 70's there was certainly a bit of rivalry.  With 'Ricay off on their Vase glory runs, the Bees had the temerity to win the Essex Senior League on New Lodge turf.  My first pitch invasion, no less, resplendent with cola flavoured Spangles and tank top in German national flag colours.  I was deeply unfashionable even then.

   Despite that, as a kid, you always wanted your local sides to do well, much as I wanted all English sides to do well in European competition (apart from Leeds, but well, f*** 'em, that's what everyone else thought too).  I thrilled to Billericay's Wembley wins and march up the leagues.

   I still do now.  Conference South just a week away.  Rubbing shoulders with the odd professional club.  One step from the highest echelon of the non-league game.  Yeah, go on 'Ricay.

   Perhaps it was all those thoughts that were overloading my circuits as the Blues and visitors Leiston took to the pitch in front of a sparse crowd.  I began to file my pre-match preview and then tried to attach my dictation thingy to my netbook.  It was then I found I had brought the wrong USB thingy.  Oops.  Live updates online only it is, then.

   Leiston were good.  Although it was a shadow Billericay side, there were definitely players on that pitch who would be involved the following weekend.  The visitors raced through the Ryman One North last season and it showed.  In the second half especially, they took Billericay apart.

   The hosts done well to come from behind twice in the first half.  But Leiston were lethal, with pace and accuracy going forward.  They won 4-2 and it was altogether more comfortable than the scoreline suggested.

   A good run-out, I thought.  It'd wake up a few people, for sure, and Craig Edwards is a man known for not exactly being backwards in coming forwards when it came to kicking players arses if need be.  A wake-up call was how I described it.  Though 'crap in the second half' may have been more succinct if a lot less diplomatic.

   Anyhow, travelling home on the train, I looked gloomily at my MP3 dictating thingy, cursing myself that I'd taken the wrong lead.  It was then that I had my second moment of 'oh f***'.  I then remembered that it didn't need a lead, that it already had a USB thingy in it that you just slid out and in. 

   Passengers on the train between Rayleigh and Southend gave a wide berth to this guy on his own, with a bag, cursing out of the window.  Billericay, as it turned out, wasn't the only ones today that needed a wake-up call before the season started.  So did the person writing this, the stupid arse.

   Billericay Town 2,  Leiston 4