Today I'm going back 14 years to 2007 and Racing Club Warwick's League visit to the Tipton Sports Academy to play Tipton Town in the old Midland Football Alliance.
I think I've mentioned previously that it is my experience that memories of the pre-match journey and how you feel during a match tend to linger longer than the match itself. Goals and incidents during a match have to be spectacular (or repeated ad nauseum on television) to become etched in my memory and it's not that unusual to have little recollection of goals from a game last month without some form of prompting from Youtube or similar. Today's featured match is most definitely one where the trip was more memorable than the match.
In previous seasons, when Martin and I had visited Tipton Town's Sports Academy home, we had driven past and looked longingly at Mad O'Rourke's Pie Factory, a pub with a speciality menu which basically consists of pies! But we weren't interested in just any pie. No, we wanted to sample the legendary Desperate Dan's Cow Pie. For those that don't know Desperate Dan, he's a cartoon character who was to be found in the pages of a long since defunct children's comic "The Dandy". Dan was portrayed as the world's strongest man, a tough guy who could lift a cow with one hand, whose pillow was filled with building rubble and who had a beard so tough that he shaved with a blowtorch. He drew his strength from eating Cow Pies which were enormous and had horns sticking out of the crust! This was the inspiration for the Pie Factory's offering: a huge pie containing meat, vegetables and gravy plus (pastry) horns sticking out of the top. There are no side dishes required! We had been warned and made sure not to have any breakfast that morning in order to leave room for the mammoth pie. Amazingly (for me anyway), we both managed to polish off our pies along with a couple of pints but I have to say that I finished with what Shannon terms "a supper baby" (I looked about 8 months pregnant!).
It was a freezing cold day at Tipton and the match didn't do much to warm the cockles of our hearts. Luckily for us however, the Cow Pies did that job and we ended up concentrating on standing up, keeping warm and digesting our mega-meals. Annoyingly, but not terribly unusually, Warwick lost the match 2-0 and the majority of the crowd of 48 went home happy. We went home happy too but no thanks to the football. I don't think I needed any supper either!
Tipton Town had a relatively good season in the Midland Football Alliance (since merged with the Midland Combination to form the Midland Football League) and finished 9th in the 22 team League. Racing Club Warwick, reverting to more normal form in the years following Marcus Law's management, finished a lowly 18th albeit that no teams were relegated that season. Champions of the Division were Atherstone Town who were promoted along with Runners-Up Loughborough Dynamo. Meanwhile, in recognition of the legend that is Desperate Dan, there's actually a statue of him and his dog Dawg that has been erected in Dundee, home to The Dandy's old publishers DC Thompson. Now that's got to be worth a visit if you're ever up that way. Failing that, there's always the Pie Factory but don't eat anything before you go. You have been warned!
CRB Match No. 1598
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