After last weeks crushing victory over AFC Wimbledon, the lads were in high confidence, and we stepped onto the coach to Ayr, I knew it was going to be a ?unique? ride up North. The lads are a right set of clowns some times, setting practical jokes here there and everywhere, and only an hour into it, we seen the first thing. Burnsy was asleep (he said he had a late night and to leave it to our imagination) and he fell asleep, so, as one of the players had a marker pen, they decided to lift his shirt and draw all over his chest, they also got some chilli water in a water gun (don?t ask, I really don?t know where they got it from!) and they squited it into his face, he soon woke up! I was on edge after 3 hours, we were only up to Carlislie and we were still 5 hours away from Ayr, I wanted to sleep, but with there not being a practical joke played for 2 hours, I knew they were looking for the next victim, and they got him, It was Williams, the young lad. He was starting to fall asleep, and the next mintue one of the guys, I think it was Fleetwood, pulled out a Trumpet!! I just looked at him and laughed, they bring allsorts on away trips, Stuart waited until Williams was fast asleep and he went on to place the trumpet next to his head and play a nice little tune, Williams woke up straight away and threatened to get Stuart.
We stopped off about 2 hours away from Ayr for a service stop, and I could tell the lads were getting annoyed and wanted to get they, so some of them (Im not going to name them!) decided they wanted a Burger King (fat players!) so, I Just lauged at them when they got back on and I said to them: ?I hope your going to so some weight training on the way up to burn off the fat!? They soon stopped eating! Ha ha. We got to Ayr at 4.00pm on the Friday night, and most of us just wanted to get some training in, so I took the guys to a local five a side pitch as Ayr refused to let practise on the proper pitch until the day of the game, we walked on in our training kit and the kids just stopped and looked at me and said ?Are you the team that We are playing tomorrow?? I replied ?Yes, that?s right, we are the mighty Droylsden FC? I asked them could we possibly use the pitch to train and the kids said no! Unless they get signed shirts from all of us! So I walked the 10 mins back to the bus, and I managed to find a spare shirt of Smithy who left us, from last season, so I got all the lads to sign it and give it to the kids, I don?t know who got it, but Im sure they were fighting over it!
Saturday 21.07.2007
Game day! And we started our pre-season tour of Scotland, and the weather is horrible! I openened the hotel curtains and all I can see is mighty heavy rain! The players said how hard it was up north to play in the rain, and It was that heavy I thought it might be called off, so I rang Ayr and they said they had the pitch covered up fully, so it would be on, We got there and the pitch was heavily saturdated, because it was that wet, the staff thought it would cut up horribly, so they told both teams that they would not be allowed to train on the pitch before the game, so we had to do a light warm up in the changing rooms! I couldn?t believe our luck, then, when we started training the sun came out and blue skies appeared!
Droylsden FC Starting XI:
A Williams
G Silk
M Somner
A Parrish
C Regan
A Smart
J Pitman
B Barry-Murphy
M Jones
M Adaggio
S Fleetwood
The kick off was approaching and I told the lads to go out and just be confident, it was only a friendly, so there wasn?t really a lot hanging on it, they just had to go out and show we what they had got, I was looking for the right players to start the season. We had brought 400 fans down which I was really pleased with, and the lads looked pretty happy aswell. Ayr are in the Scottish Second division, and looked dangerous last year, missing out on promotion by 1 point.
When the game started we looked very well, Fleetwood and Adaggio went close and tested the keeper, but what we didn?t want to happen, happened on the 10th Minute, a long ball forward from Ayr looked as if it was going to Matt Somner, but the ball skidded along the surface and past him, Roberts just ran onto it and beat the keeper, we were 1-0 down after 10 minutes. We battled well for the rest of the second half, we created a few chances and hit the post once, but on the 31st minute, Roberts again cushed us, he beat 2 men, and scored from 20 yards out to make it 2-0 to Ayr, Disaster. We again went on the counter attack, but it didn?t work out, and 7 minutes later Faulds scored with a 25 yard volley, hit pulled it out of no where and we were shattered. We were given a life line a Minute later as Fleetwood was one on one after a great ball from Somner, and he rounded the keeper and put it into the back of the net, 3-1 at Half time, we had a lot to do from there.
The second half started and I told that lads to go all out attack to pull one back and then attack again to get the second. But, that went out the window on 47 minutes, Kenny McLauchlan played a wonderful ball behind our back line, it was flicked on to him again and then he managed to make it 4-1 and we looked dead and buried, but, I decided to bring Burns and Fallon on to add a bit to the attack, and only 11 minutes later we got what we were after, Jamie Pitman swung the corner in and Fallon beat everyone to the ball and headed it home, 4-2, could we pull it back? We kept going forward and on the 74th Minute Aaron Burns scored a beautiful free kick from 20 yards to get his 7th goal in 2 games, and we were right back in it! 4-3. We just kept going forward, but Ayr kept 10 men behind the ball at all times and we were forced to shoot from range and it didn?t work out, they held on for a win, and we were all gutted, we did so well to pull it back to 4-3, but we just couldn?t get that last goal.
I might try that after the game, and see if its true . I really was overwhelmed at how many fans had come down to watch us. So, I told the boys to do them proud.
