Saturday 6 November 2010

Gillingham 0 Dover Athletic 2

For posterity......... Gillingham 0 Dover Athletic 2

Unfortunately I couldn't be there, but it must have been great - like being at The Valley for Charlton v. Maidstone United in 1979, and (of course) at Wembley for Deal Town winning the FA Vase in 2000.

The last time Dover reached the first round of the FA Cup, they were at home to Oxford United and I had a ticket. Admittedly, I was in Indonesia until a couple of days before the match, but the flight would get me back with 24 hours to spare so that shouldn't be a problem.

I saw very few birds in Indonesia as it was one of the populous parts but one of the few (probably one of the egrets at the side of the runway) inconveniently flew into one of the plane's engines on take-off so after it circled and landed I was stuck in Semarang with no replacement aircraft available.

Eventually another was arranged, and the very efficient airline staff in this small airport managed to rearrange my flights to Jakarta, Singapore and home. After a 36 hour journey I reached home with time for a couple of hours nap before the game.

Dover lost 1-nil.

One of the factories that I visited was about ten miles from Mount Merapi - they were lovely people and I hope the're OK.


2 comments:

Greenie said...

Steve ,
Well done to your boys .
You never know , a win in the next round , and it could be the 'Theatre of Dreams' in the one after that .

Kingsdowner said...

That would be Theatre of DreamsTM, according to Chumbawamba.

If they get through the next round, they'll probably get FC United of Manchester!