No light, no warmth, November- weekend matchgoing

[Gangster Octopus]

I'm intrigued; I seem to get more angry at Wembley games than any other...

[Gangster Octopus]

Dribbling arses, Hadley score again. Undeserved.

[Gangster Octopus]

I've gone into the bar before the end. I've obviously got a problem...

[Gangster Octopus]

And it finished 1-2. Bollocks.

[HORN]

Nice performance from Newport to move into third spot. Shame that the Radio Wales post-match phone-in centred on how likely Mike Flynn was to take the Shrewsbury job. Bloody mardarses.

[NickSTFU]

The hot news is that it might Sam Ricketts from Wrexham. Which, would be fucking hilarious on several levels, frankly.

[Patrick Thistle]

Wales 1 Denmark 2
Barry 0 TNS 2

Two disappointing home defeats. I thought Wales played some nice football at times but they need a decent striker. The highlight was Ethan Ampadu taking revenge on the Denmark sub who'd just put him into the advertising boards with a proper old school "Fuck you" forearm to the back of the head. Unfortunately the ensuing fracas distracted the Wales defence and left Denmark's Braithwaite in enough space to score their second goal.

I'm more disappointed by the Barry result, really. TNS went ahead about ten minutes from time with a spawny penalty that also meant Mo Touray got sent off for a second yellow card. And then a couple of minutes later their big central defender scored from a corner and killed the game off. Overall TNS were the better side and they had more chances but it's still gutting to lose to them.

Barry manager Gavin Chesterfield was presented with an award as it was his 400th game in charge. He took over when they were in the basement and has taken them up to the top of the Welsh Premier League.

[Third rate Leszno]

Swindon 0-4 Carlisle

Highly improbable result if you'd watched the first 40 minutes, in which both teams tried to outdo one another in needlessly giving the ball away. Then Carlisle made the breakthrough when Fleetwood loanee Ashley Nadesan neatly scuffed one into the corner, and once Sheffield Utd loanee Regan Slater scored a second just after the break it never felt like Swindon would get back into it.

Jamie Devitt (a player who's actually ours) scored with a smart free kick to make it 3, by which time a surprisingly large number of Swindon fans were making for the exits with 35" still to play. The diminutive Slater capped a terrific second half performance by working a gap and planting a low shot from the edge of the box for our fourth, after which it was just a case of seeing it out without conceding.

Not a glorious start for new Swindon manager Richie Wellens - it might have been a different story if they'd scored first, but once we'd taken the lead you could see the confidence drain out of them. Meanwhile I'm fully expecting that we'll follow that up with a tame home defeat to FGR next week.

[Merlin the happy pig]

Southern League Premier South. Tiverton Town 0-0 Hendon. Ladysmead was the final ground I needed in that league, hopefully finish the National League next week.

England - Croatia tomorrow, a bit more on the game than I anticipated when I got the ticket.

[Southport Zeb]

Had a pleasant afternoon in Windermere, centred around Windermere v Shap in the Westmorland League. On paper it should have been a comfortable win for the home side, and they started much better. However, shortly after Windermere had hit the post, bottom placed Shap took the lead. From then on it was a fairly even game, with Shap looking better than their league position suggested. The visitors thought they had a second when a shot hit the crossbar and bounced down, but the referee ruled it hadn't crossed the line. Windermere kept pressing for an equaliser and, with about five minutes left, saw a shot of theirs hit the crossbar and then come down; on this occasion the referee ruled it had crossed the line.

Windermere play on a park pitch but it's fair to say that the views to the surrounding countryside are a bit more scenic than most.

[wiblflibl]

Horsham 4-0 VCD Athletic

My word the Hornets played good football yesterday against third-placed VCD. Next Sunday's FA Trophy game against Bath City doesn't seem quite so high on the scary biscuits scale now. Obviously not expecting to win that game but hopefully Bath will have to play well to progress.

[Bored Of Education]

Well, wiblfibl, I am not sure that any scouts you sent yesterday would have been too terrified. As suggested in my previous post, both teams were fairly well-matched and negating each other for the first half an hour until our centre back Cundy scored a most beautiful headed goal from a corner. He almost got an identical second a couple of minutes later but it looped over the bar and that was pretty much it for the first half. In the second half, we let Eastbourne Borough into the match way too much and would, I was sure, have rued relinquishing so much possession to them. We did have a discussion as to whether anyone outside "rued" anything. Anyway, we survived that and rode out the rest of the match to win 1-0 in a pretty humdrum match for both sides, goal notwithstanding. Notably, our chisel man of the match was one of the worst performers on the pitch and, also, for the first time ever, we towered over a team. We have had a fairly small team for all the time I have watched Bath City and, while we have increased the average height of our players in the last season or two, it was still remarkable to see how much shorter the Eastbourne Borough players were. Defensively, we look fairly resolute presently - although Borough didn't have many shots on target - so it may be a draw at Horsham and back to Twerton Park for a replay where we should beat them. Should