Today I'm going back 16 years to 2006 and Racing Club Warwick's league visit to the War Memorial Athletic Ground to play Stourbridge in front of 185 hardy souls. I wrote the following piece in a subsequent Racing Club Warwick programme.
"I’m writing this the day after Racing Club’s visit to Stourbridge’s War Memorial Ground. 24 hours on and I still can’t quite believe what I witnessed yesterday. Warwick’s 6-1 defeat was the heaviest under Marcus Law and the worst since a 5-0 defeat away at Oldbury United back in September 2003 when we were so poor that we masqueraded as the Dog & Duck Sunday side. However, yesterday’s score line doesn’t even begin to tell the real story. Even the most biased Stourbridge supporter would surely have to admit that the final score seriously flattered their team. By my reckoning each side had around ten chances but the difference between the two sides was that Stourbridge took the majority of their opportunities whereas we looked like we couldn’t trouble the onion bag if we had played all night.
It was a tale of sloppy defending in the first 20 minutes. Racing Club, playing against a strong wind, were 3-0 down and the match was more-or-less over. We had kicked off playing three up front and, needing to perform miracles to get back into the game, we continued to take the game to Stourbridge. During the course of the game Ben Mackey and James Wood could each have had a hat-trick. It was clearly never going to be our day when, immediately before half-time, Stourbridge’s keeper Solly saved a Woodie penalty – I certainly can’t remember him missing one previously so this was one for the record books! Talking of penalties, it could have been even worse for us! In the last minute Stourbridge were awarded their second penalty and hot-shot Mark Bellingham, who is leading the Midland Alliance scoring charts by a country mile, had his effort well saved by Michael Payne. Poor Paynie! By my reckoning he wasn’t at fault for any of the goals and must’ve ended up with backache recovering the ball from the back of the net.
Deep in thought, Marcus sat in solitude in the dug-out long after the final whistle had gone searching for answers. The following points are my conclusions if you’re interested Marcus!:
- Racing Club played a Stourbridge side on the back of a good run and therefore very high on confidence – they’re second in the league and gunning for the title
- Strikers! Stourbridge have Bellingham who is presently on-fire having scored in eleven consecutive games so far in 2006 whereas the Racing Club front-line are in desperate need of a confidence boost – we’re making plenty of chances but are simply not taking them – we’re going to hit somebody for six ourselves pretty soon I’m certain.
- We played well! OK so the defending was dire in the first half but we had to leave a few gaps at the back as we chased the game in the second half.
- The players determination is great to see and a credit to the management – heads never went down and, after a Robert Betts goal pulled the score to 4-1 down with twelve minutes to go, we were fighting to get the ball back for the kick-off! I actually came away from the game feeling that we had given a good account of ourselves!
- Wind! Stourbridge played the conditions much better than we did - this was a freak result played in difficult conditions and we shouldn’t read too much into it.
- The knock-back of being ineligible for promotion has coincided with a poor run of form – the puncturing of all our hopes this season has hit the players harder than we feared. Time for an early end-of-season party before settling down to a 15-month title charge?
My view is that the preparations for next season’s title push must start now. It’s likely that the three best sides from the Midland Alliance will be promoted at the end of April - that should leave us as one of the strongest sides remaining. Off the field, with our ground improvements expected to begin before the end of the season, there’s no reason why we should fail to meet the relevant grading criteria at this time next year. We’re in ninth place after the Stourbridge knock-back - which is where we finished at the end of last season. I’m sure that Marcus and the boys will want to improve on that in order to show continuing on the field progress. We have 14 League games remaining and we’ve got some difficult games coming up – we play Coalville and Romulus away and Chasetown home and away plus the small matter of local pride against the boys from Harbury Lane – all are a major test of our pedigree. In my view, provided that we play to our full capabilities, we can finish inside the top six this season but this will require us taking a reasonable share of points from the aforementioned fixtures. Come on boys! You can do it! Believe!"
Racing Club did indeed finish in sixth place that season, one place and one point behind Leamington. There were three teams promoted from the Midland Alliance: Chasetown, Malvern Town and victors in my featured match Stourbridge.
CRB Match No. 1484
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