Away Day - Kendal Town 01.10.21

After NINETEEN months without a proper TFC club coach awayday, Saturday 2nd October 2021 saw the Trafford Family gathering in the Shawe View Car Park waiting for the Jonas Bus to finally come and take us all away, haha! The departure time was 11.45am, but as the clock ticked towards this almighty hour there was no sign of Jonas Jones and his big white machine. Every two minutes Foxy sent someone down the lane to see if he was on his way up Flixton Rd yet – cos like doin’ that makes buses move quicker innit! 

Eventually Jonas Jones arrived. He’d been caught in traffic heading for the Theatre of Dreams (12.30 KO) but we weren’t bothered about that – we were heading to the beautiful Lake District and the theatre that is known as Parkside, the home of Kendal Town FC. The journey was uneventful – alcohol is banned, and rightly so. We must ALL be thoroughly professional pre-match. The rumour was Foxxy had a breath testing machine with him, but thankfully he didn’t need to use it. We were all well behaved except for Cockney Crooky who kept shouting “Arrr we there yit?!” 

 Foxxxy allowed the YOT lads to exit the coach in the centre of Kendal so they could do some imbibing in cheap-as-chips Wetherspoons, while the rest of us, not fancying a walk up the hill to Parkside in the pishing rain, decided to go straight to the ground and partake in Moretti at £4.50-a-pint! Tommo was even more gutted by this ‘cos they had no red wine! 

DC fielded the same starting XI as the last game, and after firstly taking up residence on the big open terrace behind the goal, we fans decided to go in the little tin hut to the right to avoid getting pish wet through! The super yellows started with zip, and pizazz, and pizza, and pie. Curtis Miller put us 1-0 ahead after only 12 minutes, giving rise to a rip-roaring new song based on the Heartbeat TV theme – “Curtis, oh Curtis Miller runs down the wing for me!” The more rhythmical elements of our support soon discovered that if your try to play drums on Kendal’s tin hut, it’s that rusty it could collapse. So we stopped that. An idea about using bin lids was also thrown quickly in the trash and we just used our voices for the entire half. When Max made it 2-0 we noticed the scoreboard still read “0-0” so Spenno went over to investigate…. KTFC had obviously planned ahead following previous visits by the YOT, and had hidden all the numbers!! 

 2-0 up at half time, we headed into Kendal’s HUGE clubhouse for some more Moretti’s, pies (choice: meat & potato, or potato & meat) and hotdogs that despite being a pound more expensive than the Shawe View hotdogs, they were at least an inch shorter! Serious note: The staff at Kendal Town FC worked damn hard during the day. The club seems to have hit hard times – struggling a bit on the pitch and with a section of fans who stay-away in protest. We don’t know enough about it, but we hope the club can pull together and move forward – Kendal is a decent town and deserves a decent football team to represent it. Keep the faith lads & lasses! 

Second half: By this point, we’d emptied a barrel of Moretti (which is, we were told after the game, the first time that’s happened this season!) so we were suitably imbibed enough to decide “sod it! Let’s go and stand at the open end and get pish wet through!” The vocal backing of DC’s boys was marvellous, and the players reciprocated by scoring another three goals and looking like they could have scored another six after that! As we went through the full TFC songbook, ANOTHER new song was aired – we’ve long been searching for a song for James Neild…. Well how’s about “Number one was James Nield, number two was James Neild….etc etc.” WE ALL LIVE IN A JAMES NIELD WORLD! YOT Liam tried to resurrect the Tarzan Yelp! That was hilarious! He sounded like an elephant with a sore tusk! The final score was 5-1 to Trafford, a late Kendal goal spoiling Super Cooper’s clean sheet bonus, but I tell you what, as the players were handed their expenses in the clubhouse after the game, Coops absolutely FLEECED them ALL for fines for all sorts of trivialities – he doesn’t need any bonuses that fella!! 

Eventually Foxxxxxxxy ticked us all off his clipboard and we boarded the Jonas “Jonah” Jones bus for the journey home, all weighing about a stone heavier due to being pish wet through. Except Sniffer – he brought some dry clothes with him……. The damp was well-worth it though, cos following the Trafford on days like this is MINT, CAKE! Even if the singing on the bus on the way home is terrible! I thank you! 

(written by Ken Dalmintcake)