Daily Archives: 03/05/2020

Covid-19, Football

LOCK-DOWN U.K. DAY 41

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Day 41 Sunday 3rd of May

Today should have been a pretty special day. It should have been the last game of the 2019 – 2020 season. We (AFC Wimbledon) were supposed to be playing Coventry, who would, possibly, have been champions elect, and we would, of course, have been safe from relegation. For the last game of the season, we arrange a hospitality meal before hand. This year the EFL had decided upon a midday kick-off for all League One games, I was looking forward to my brunch. Covid-19 and lock-down put paid to all that.

Above and beyond all that, today would have been our last ever game at Kingsmeadow*. Kingsmeadow has been too small for us for years, the ground only holds 4,850. We sell out the home areas most games. We can have a maximum of about 600 away fans. Not every team fills the away end, Fleetwood and MK usually struggle to bring 100, but some clubs, Sunderland, Portsmouth and Ipswich would bring 2000 if we had the capacity. The stadium and it’s facilities are tired, the sight lines are abysmal, especially from the Rygas terrace, The hot tap on the sink in men’s toilet at the Chemflow end hasn’t worked for years. I could go on. We will all be glad to move back to Plough Lane next season (whenever it starts) but Kingsmeadow helped us move from being a crazy dream in 2002 to being an established Football League club in 2020. A lot of people will shed a tear at our departure.

Every one will have their particular favourite memories of Kingsmeadow. Mine is a bittersweet one. It is our 4-2 victory over West Ham in the cup last season. It was also the last time I saw my friend Steve. He died suddenly a couple of days after the game.

It does seem a a bit of an anti-climax to think that the last game there was a boring 0-0 draw against Bolton.

Hopefully this lockdown will be over by the time Plough Lane opens. I would hate to think of Will Nightingale leading the team out for our first game to the sight and sounds of empty stands.

I will leave this video that the club made to commemorate our time at Kingsmeadow.

*It is possible that the team has not played its last game at Kingsmeadow. If closed door games are played either to finish this season, or at the start of next season, I could see them being played at Kingsmeadow.

Covid-19

LOCK-DOWN U.K. DAY 40

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Day 40 Saturday 2nd May

As I said yesterday, we have wallpaper and we have paint, so we couldn’t really delay applying it to the bedroom walls and ceiling any longer. At this point I should say that I do not like decorating. I’m not sure why. I think a bit of it is the mess, and confusion that goes with it. A bit of it is that I don’t think that I am very good at it and can see all the mistakes that I made. Possibly a bit of it is that I don’t really like things changing around me.

After the ceiling collapsed we didn’t have a lot of choice. I suppose we could have boarded the door up and forgot about it. The ceiling and the walls above the picture rail are now painted in “White Mist”. It is, as the name sort of implies, a very pale shade of grey. It does look good, and is a great improvement on broken plaster. Tomorrow we tackle the wood work, and hopefully on Monday get round to papering the walls. Then all we have to do is paint the walls, choose a carpet, get the carpet fitted, and move all the furniture back in.

After that we decided that a take-away was in order. What we would really have liked to have done was walked round the corner to Chennai Dosa, our local Sri Lankan restaurant. It is probably more like a café than a restaurant. A bit like this place. The food is good and it is cheap, a starter, a main and a Cobra for each of us, and the bill is usually not much over £20.

But we couldn’t, so we did the next best thing which was to have the food delivered. The food was good, as it it always is, but the quantities were enormous compared to the restaurant meals. We ordered a vegetarian thali each, one would have been enough for both of us.