Originally posted @ 12:25 pm, Wed 12th Aug 2009
Nearly 1% of people in England and Wales attended a Football League match this last weekend - 450,000 (representing the highest since 1963).
I was one of them.
South Derbyshire borders nearly half of the town of Burton. So the only surprise for me when my club, Shrewsbury Town, was drawn against Burton Albion for their first Football league match, was that the match was not at Burton. (I declined polite suggestons to swap allegiences for the day.)
Shrewsbury's home record was the best in the league last season, we'd been in the play-offs, Burton had lost Nigel Clough as their manager, had scraped promotion despite a final losing runs of games, and since sold some of their best players. It seemed like a banker home win.
But then in the run-up to the game, Shrewsbury had sold their captain, their exciting winger, the league's top-scorer and the Managing Director had left. They were to start the game with only 4 of the payers who played at Wembley in May. Now it didn't feel so certain.
However, Burton Albion started with only 2 of the players who got them promoted.
So strange. So different from 30 years ago, when Shrewsbury got promoted to the old second division with a tiny squad and bought one player in the summer break. You really felt like you knew the team then.
To say that players were introducing themselves to each other during the match would be an exaggeration ("did we play each other at school?"), but neither team particularly clicked.
The game should have had a sense of history around it for Burton who I thought should have been seeking a series of firsts - first shot etc. Instead their first defender - goalkeeper mix-up took place after 30 seconds, their first goal-mouth scare came after 3 minutes and they conceded their first goal after 10 minutes. Their first effort on goal came after 30 minutes, their first shot on target after 44 minutes and their first corner was in injury time of the first half.
Salop were 2-0 up within the hour and I was absently-mindedly listening to chatter about how Shrewsbury were already 4th in the division, when Burton went and scored. And then the rather palid Shrewsbury performance become abundantly clear and for 10 minutes it looked liked Burton could draw, or even win.
Salop were to hold on and then extend their lead as a weak free-kick from distance crept in under the keeper's fingers at the end of the game.
The local press were to put the defeat down to 2 failings by the stand-in goalkeeper. No mercy shown.