That's correct- by 2.30 I was about two miles from the ground on a little street called Home Park which led to a hill with an ancient fortification from which I could see the actual stadium some way off. Luckily the iPhone battery lasted long enough to organise a taxi to the stadium with ten minutes to spare but without much in the way of warm up photography:
The game itself started off slowly but with City looking comfortable, until the 14th minute when in response to a free kick Westwood fell over forcing himself to make a great save a yard off his line pushing the ball towards the post only for it to be lashed back in and squeeze past him. On the 27th minute Vivienne dropped a lofted cross to leave an easy goal gaping and a minute later he had little chance with a great shot from 20 yards. Gunnar went off injured straight after. The fourth goal came from a corner which was whipped across the six yard box with no-one challenging. We had conceded four goals in 22 minutes and ought to have been five down.
Unsurprisingly the team got booed off at half-time. And then the next twist of the afternoon - the halftime raffle-selector was "Plymouth legend" John Sillett. He is legendary in the south west for playing 39 games for the Green Army. He is slightly more legendary with the Sky Blue Army for his 100 games as a player including in our last-but-one promotion season in 1964, saving us from relegation in 1986, getting us to the semi-finals of the Simod Cup in 1988 and the League Cup in 1990. Oh and winning the fucking FA Cup. The announcer had the cheek to ask him how he thought it was going - thankfully Snoz said that as he was wearing his sky blue tie he was not happy - to change the subject the announcer asked him to repeat a tale he had told to the announcer over a few beers. So JS tells them about the cup winning team seeing a bride on matchdays and winning and how for the final he got someone to check that the church near the hotel had a wedding so the bride could be invited over the night before to meet the team and that just in case the church was not booked he had a spare couple ready to get married just in case. At this point I started to think about gold bars to see if just thinking about them would make them appear later in the day...
Sillett then came over to the City fans and got a rolling standing ovation - his calming presence certainly unwound the SBA.
It's quite worrying to think that many of the people who stood and clapped, and who ran to the front to shake his hand were not even alive 22 years ago. Then again I have ovated Jimmy Hill despite having been four years pre-birth in our last promotion season.
And 1967 might well be our last promotion season if our golden hopefuls play this badly.
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