When I got up this morning I was as bleary eyed as fook…I’d had hardly any sleep but when the alarm went off at 7.30 I was straight out of bed and going through the good luck rituals…NOTHING was going to be left to chance today.

The Beast was 49 today and on my last birthday before the half decade is up I wanted it to be a proper day out and to do that and ensure Wednesday got a win, I had to make sure all the boxes were ticked….shit, shower, shave…lucky boxers…lucky smelly…moisturiser…pastel shade T-shirt…the works….Oh aye, Reading wouldn’t know what hit em!

We’d arranged to meet Stan and pick him up so I pack the car with stop-over stuff for the overnighter at Pete’s in Aylesbury. I go get the young un and we head over to pick up Stan who I’d asked the neet before to bring food with him. He did…he brought bacon sarnies…excellent. OK, so they were a bit cold due to us running a little late but that didn’t matter. Just to make sure we hammered home the good luck and gave Reading no way back from the impending drubbing I got the car park attendant to present us with the bacon sarnies whilst we saluted them. If this good luck ritual worked then every fooker in this division was gonna get saluted right up the wazoo until the end of the season. We get Stan all loaded up and introduce him to a birthday present Hollie bought me…

A CD: 50 cockney knees up piano songs…almost one for each year on me birthday…ALTOGETHER NOW….’ROLL OUT THE BARREL…WE’LL HAVE A…’

Stan didn’t like em…in fact his face said they were painful…but TBF, his body language said otherwise as there was a definite jaunty edge to him…they got played over and over and over…...and over. Eventually it really got to him and he was humming along...he almost developed a cockerny wiggle to accompany the songs…wouldn’t surprise me if he bought some corblimey trarsers on the strength of this. 2 hours later and Stan’s glazed over but he’s humming ‘Any old iron’ like a good un…we pull up at Pete’s and we’re sorted double quick, back in the car and on our way to the ground… When Geoff and Pete got in, the CD went back on…Geoff wasn’t happy about the music selection but obviously Pete was right at home…’Laaaaaarvleee’….with his best unchuffed face on Geoff decided to try and get stuck into me…about my wonderful hair.

Geoff thinks I’ve got alopecia for some reason…he thinks me having natural radiant loveleh blonde hurr looks like alopecia…we all know he doesn’t mean alopecia but he’s convinced he’s right…then he realises…’not alopecia the opposite of alopecia, what’s that that’s the opposite of alopecia?

ALBINO! He shouts.

‘I mean Albinoism…you’re an albino’

So albinoism is the opposite of alopecia! Crazy mofo! That’s the Welsh education system for you

Just for that (and partly because he’s Welsh) I turn the volume up on the cockney music….’My owd man says follow…..’

An hour later and we arrive at the Medejski stadium…Geoff’s really not happy but is walking like a Welsh Cockney alongside Pete doing his more professional Cockney walk…He loves his tradition does Pete.
     

        
THE MATCH
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We’re sat quite near the front down near the corner flag…pretty good view and ripe for a bit of good natured banter with players and Reading fans alike….

I was right up for this…Oh aye…Fook em!
Pay back time for that 6-0 drubbing…get ready Reading you are taking this fooker right up the tailpipe…

After only 5 minutes I’d already texted folk to say we could and should be 2 down!

Sigurdsson takes a free kick right in front of us, just outside the box, near the corner and in all honesty, it really should have been buried by Rasiak at the back post…if that wasn’t bad enough he then gets another fookin chance minutes later that fortunately for us Grant tips over…FOOK ME! That Reading tailpipe must be sore now. Every single time Sigurdsson put the ball into the box it looked as though they’d score, and he put the ball into our box a lot! It was exactly the opposite of our corners or free kicks, there’s went right into the danger zone EVERY TIME, ours, as usual, didn’t. Now don’t get me wrong, we had a chance in between but it wasn’t as clear cut as these two…A very good bit of play from Varney and Potter saw Potter jiggle the ball onto his right foot to leather it pretty much straight at the Reading keeper. As Hollie said, how much did he telegraph that he is very right footed?

It was all a little too easy for the Reading keeper TBH and I don’t think he had to move, even though there was plenty of power behind the shot….False dawn? Hmmm….

We then got another really decent position through Gray but there were absolutely no options for him in the box and as he looked up to see who was with him he realised he was fooked and went for the shot…a shot from a very acute angle and to me it looked like he knew he couldn’t score so went for the corner, which we got as Federici got down low and sharpish to push it round for a corner.

This is it…TAILPIPE TIME!

Well….no not really…That seemed to be it for us…that was actually as exciting as it got and as close to a tailpipe stuffing as Reading came all day.

Reading seemed to be attacking a lot, we gave away free kicks a lot and corners a lot and they just kept putting the ball in the box….a lot….by the end of the game though, they’d stopped fookin about with all that fancy poncey stuff and just put the ball in the net.

They put the ball in the net A LOT!
     

        
OK, OK…maybe I’m getting a little previous there…
There was a splendid tackle from Beevers around the half hour mark and it was one of those where the opposition are bearing down and you really fear the worst after having a tailpipe reversal of fortune…you think….this is it, the pressure finally tells, get ready to take it…but he got the boot in superbly and denied them what looked a very good chance at least…

THAT REALLY WAS IT….

By contrast minutes later he didn’t quite make it back to get a tackle in and it looked like a red card offence to me and probably to all the travelling Owls fans as he brought the Reading player down…We all breathed deeply and expected him to be off…but he wasn’t…he didn’t get a card at all, though they did get the free kick….it looked primed for Howard to make us suffer…Oh fook me…Me and my big gob. He stood over it…we held out breath…he stepped forward…and put it wide…and obviously he got a barrage of insults for his troubles….But he was loving it….he loves the craic, absolutely loves it…When he came down near us and everyone was getting stuck into him he had as broad a grin as you’ll see anywhere…

I turned to our lot and I said, if we can get to halftime at 0-0 or just one down we’ll have done very well…I swear to you now…no sooner had words left me lips than they spozzed the first goal and followed that soon after with a second.

The first was a shot from just outside the box when Kebe was allowed as much time as he liked to aim and shoot…He could have rolled a fat one TBF he had that much time…fortunately Grant had it covered….UNFOOKINFORTUNATELY…. the ball took a wicked deflection and left Grant nowhere near.

AGONY…

If only we could have held on a few minutes…still…lets not get too downhear-…OH FOOK ME!….

Into first half injury time and the pain in the arse Sigurdsson gets right into the box way too easy, AGAIN, pulls it back and the shot gets blocked but kiss my bollocks if the fooker doesn’t fall to the feet of Rasiak to bang home…

Sweet Baby Jeebers!

Me and my big gob....AGAIN.
     

        
We were shell-shocked but if I’m honest, the amount of times they put the ball into the box and put us under pressure the scoreline, however fortunate in the end, was pretty fair.

When the teams came out for the second half I can’t believe there were many, if ANY Wednesday fans that truly believed we’d get back into this game.

Even taking off the ineffectual wingers Gray and Soares and bringing on Leon and Miller didn’t make us look much fresher, though TBF to them, I honestly thought they tried, especially Leon who put himself about a bit despite shockingly bad service from his team-mates.

We didn’t have to wait too long before our tailpipe was being abused again and it really was the point of no return…

The third goal came a few minutes into the half and if there was any doubt about the other two, there was nothing flukey about this,in fact it was a well taken goal…Fair play to the lad…it hurt and the Reading fans hammered it all home in great voice…. To take the pressure off Howard from our abuse they chanted his name and asked him the score…of course he showed them…several times he showed them…

Fair play they made plenty of noise did Reading fans but they had plenty to celebrate…meanwhile we had the dark mist descending over us…no singing, no noise, just whinging and with good reason…

Tango was trying to get things going in front of us with some of the youngsters around there and he had some good craic going on with the home fans…the usual ‘Have you ever seen your dick’…plus ‘when’s your baby due’…and at one point they had him doing sit ups and every fooker counting them out loud…I think he stopped at 6.

When the fans stopped playing with Tango their team found time to add their 4th… I couldn’t believe what I was seeing to be honest…when the ball was put across the box, right across…on the deck…seemingly without too much pace and it manages to roll past…one…two….three…four…ALL OF OUR FOOKIN PLAYERS! No one seemed to be able to stop it…WHY? It went past the lot and it seemed to be in slow motion…I’m fookin sure I could have walked up that end and trapped the fookin football myself…instead it ambled past all our players to Rasi-bastard-ak AGAIN! Lurking at the back post….FFS!

That was enough for the Reading fans to want a repeat of last season…

WE WANT 6!
WE WANT 6!
WE WANT 6!

NEVER BASTARD MIND 6…..WE WANT FOOKIN 1!

I honestly thought the Reading fans were gonna get their wish as we now entered comedy central and they got their 5th… it was keystone kops stuff…you could almost hear the comedy piano and we were waiting for the other clowns in the exploding clown car to come on as the ball cannoned between Hinds and Beevers and right into the path of the impressive Kebe again who twatted it into the back of the onion bag….that ‘We want chant 6’ looked ominous now….

That was the cue for even more Wednesday fans to leave the ground…they’d seen enough…fortunately I was out of lube and my tailpipe was stuffed to the gunwales as that was the last goal of the day.

Tango went, but not before applauding the Reading fans and them applauding him and singing ‘Loyal Supporter’ to him….We’re all fookin loyal supporters aren’t we? Some of us stuck it out to the death.
     

        
We couldn’t do anything right now and I watched us to see whose head dropped and who was still trying…they DID try to keep playing football…passing the ball across the midfield…but it was all side to side stuff…we never actually looked threatening. I never once, after that first five minutes got excited and thought…THIS IS IT! GO ON HAVE THE BASTARD!

I watched Beevers strolling forward with the ball from our box and he just kept going and going, to well over halfway line…and I looked to see who moved for him…who looked to help him…who WANTED to help him and there was no one. NO ONE looking to help and eventually he ran the ball out…we’ll ruin that lad if we haven’t already.

In the last few minutes Reading brought a player off and played with 10 men…Salop said, ‘are they gonna take one off every 10 minutes till we score?’ In reality they could have taken their keeper off and we STILL wouldn’t have scored if we’d played all week. The whistle went and there was a lot of anger and frustration amongst the Wednesday fans. They’d spent a shitload of cash on this game and travelled a long way for what we all thought was a crucial game…a relegation battle…in truth it was no battle…it wasn’t even a skirmish. Reading were so much better than us it was scary.

We’re back to lack of spark again…it’s gone…I watched them pass the ball across the middle….I watched them NOT moving for each other…I watched them not dragging defenders about….they had no spark…they played without without vitality, without pep, they lacked that bit of vim…without imagination or invention…I never at any point really felt like we would score….I didn’t get the vibe at any point and TBH that doesn’t make me mad, I’m not angered by it…it simply saddens me.
As I looked around at the Wednesday fans that had stuck it out they were arguing amongst each other. When things are going shit you can always tell its getting very bad, when we argue amongst ourselves…if anyone dares to suggest there’s a glimmer they’re pounced on…we argue about the smallest of things…about attitudes of players….workshy bastards…shitness….anything, we argue about anything, something to distract us from what we’ve seen…to take our minds off what is happening and it isn’t nice…it isn’t nice at all.
     

        
It will be very interesting to see how Irvine sorts them out for the NEXT big game because I don’t know what to make of it at all ya know….If JJ comes back and Jeffers…YES Jeffers then it MAY freshen things up. Don’t give me any of that shit about Jeffers either, we had 3 strikers on the pitch at the same time yesterday and in the Donny and Ipswich games and they haven’t scored between them...well Jeffers can hardly do any worse can he?

No doubt he’ll get booed when his name's read out because that’s what we do best, when we’re really and truly in the deep shit we make OUR players feel like they’re loved and we need them….Oh no, hang on, that’s not us is it?
     

        
Walking back to the car and and I can’t get that bloody Sky Darts music out of me fookin head…they play it after a goal at Reading which means we’ve had it banging out most of the day…Bollocks!

Time to go out on the town and put all this behind us…
     

        
It’s a pretty glum mood in the car on the way back, made worse by the local radio telling us how they love playing Wednesday and don’t want us to be relegated because they can bank the points and load up their goal difference.

We try to dissect the match but it just makes ya feel worse…

We get into Pete's house, get changed and get ready for a few drinks…I say got changed…

Geoff decided he was going dressed as some kind of Village People reject…he had a little neckerchief scarf thing. He looked like a cross between an Ewok and a Gay Bronco Billy…

Pete says…let’s start at the Slaaaaag n Lettuce….so we do…let’s start on doubles….so we do… Someone suggested we should have Jagerbombs too….so we do….they seemed to be in-between rounds…and all of a sudden there seemed to be a lot of empty glasses on the table and things started to get a bit murky. When we end up at the roughest pub in town ‘This used to have bullet holes in the walls’ says Pete…no one cared really…we just wanted more drinks…

There was a young giant Man Utd hippy, he looked like the undertaker off the Wrestling and he was giving us some grief…until Aylesbury’s daughters and Hollie brought him down…they were like a pack bringing him down like the giant Wildebeest that he was…it was a scary sight and he never stood a chance. He was one of them Man Utd fans that had obviously never been to watch them but he prolly had a new shirt every season…he’ll have Man Utd TV though and a Sky Football season ticket…

As we’re getting slowly…no, that’s not right…as we’re getting rapidly drunker and the conversation is getting blurred and slurred…Salop says, quite matter-of-factly ‘Oh there’s Geoff being escorted out’

As I turn to me left there’s three bouncers carrying Geoff out and his feet are nowhere near the floor…I wave….'Hi Geoff'

A few minutes later I get a phone call…it’s Geoff…’come outside’

Geoff wants us....We didn't move...

A few minutes more and another phone call….it’s Geoff…’COME OUSIDE’

We go out and there’s Geoff with a bandage on his head and blood on it… Apparently he’d been glassed to the back of his head…We thought…Ok Geoff. What the fook have you done…..you must have really upset some bastard for them to do that. You must have copped off with his bird…felt someone’s arse…copped a feel and really pissed someone off…someone found out you're Welsh... Turns out he was glassed for……his scarf! Someone had said he MUST be a Taliban supporter if he wore a scarf because they wear em as well…. Can you believe that?

If they don’t like neck scarves in Aylesbury then the National Boy Scout jamboree in the town centre is in for big trouble next week…it’s gonna kick off big style.

I’ve heard some shit excuse for punching someone and you could validate most of them when it comes to punching Geoff TBF, but that takes the biscuit does that….mindst you…if you saw the scarf it WOULD make you quite angry…it really is that bad.

We called it a night and headed back to Petes where, whilst we all ate kebabs Geoff bled everywhere and then asked for a bucket as he was gonna be sick….which he was…and whilst he was bleedin and puking, Hollie was being sick in the toilet….Me Stan, Salop and Pete ate kebabs…they were lovely.

When I woke in the morning it was like a battlefield, bodies and buckets of sick all over the place and the racket was fookin incredible…there was snoring from every fooker…and from both ends…

There was the deep growly snore from Salop…the high pitched scarfy snore from the Taliban Cowboy, some kind of posh snore from Stan, which had a bit of a whistle to it and Hollie's was her usual long and loud grunt… We had time for Bronco Billy to empty his sick bucket and Salop to join the ranks of throwing up before Pete made us coffee and the worst bacon sarnie in history…it had a hand print in the middle of it. Me mam used to do that when I was little…she would press so hard on the bread when she was cutting it it left a perfect indentation of her hand…Pete goes to the same school of cookery I think.

I couldn’t eat it anyway…I was feeling rough as fook meself.

We got packed up and set off home…a long drive after a long weekend…and me head was chuffin killing me!
     

        
I’ve got to tell you now…the football was shit…the 90 minutes spent watching it on the pitch was horrible…we stuck it out though…right to the bitter end…but this was about more than football, it always is for me and it wasn’t going to and DIDN’T get in the way of a belting birthday neet.

He’s a fookin outstanding host is Pete he really is and he looked after us royally…it was a pleasure to spend my birthday in such good company, with him and everyone else…Next year should be even better.

Can’t wait.
     

        
Steve:Beastie
Owls Alive