Ruabon Rovers v Llanfairpwll FC

Hello again people and pooches. Joe the Cocker here after spending an afternoon at the football. Me and my human have been going to watch Ruabon Rovers, our local football team, for a couple of seasons now. I thought that you might be interested in finding out what a numpty my dad actually is. Read on, and I will prove it to you.

We watch quite a few home games at the Rec, and we have driven and even walked to a few away matches. The game against Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantisiliogogogoch Football Club was a Welsh Amateur Cup match. I am not going to repeat their name in full again for obvious reasons. I will call them the away team, OK? We made the two minute walk to the ground and arrived just as the match was starting. My dad likes to take me to these football matches for company. I humour him, but I can’t see the point of people kicking a ball to each other and not including me in the game. I love chasing balls, and sometimes, I would be prepared to give it back. Anyway, I have to stay on my lead and close to my human overlord!

My human found his favourite spot on the field. He says that he sits in the stand! It’s a rock! I think that he is deluded. He sits on it, usually until half-time, and then has a stretch of his legs. He then starts complaining about the cold and somebody called Farmer Giles. A numb bum is the price he has to pay to be one of the few who manage to find a seat.

I always get fussed over when I go to the match, so I enjoy that side of the experience. What I don’t like is having to stay in one place for what seems to be hours and hours. Every so often, I think that somebody kicks a ball into the net, and people shout and clap. I don’t like that because I think that they are shouting at me even though I have been a good boy. There were only about 60 or 70 people there, but they all shout at once. Why can’t they take it in turns to shout. It would’nt be so scary then.

My dad asked me if I wanted to go for a walk around the edge of the pitch. I can’t understand his babbling on, but I did pick up on one word. Walk! I like that word. It means that I dont have to sit by his side bored out of my brain. I can meet people and other pooches.

On our stroll around the pitch I met three other bored pooches being good boys and girls while their humans watched all the men running around in shorts and t-shirts even though it was ‘brass monkeys’, as my human called it. I knew two of them already. I met Dot, who is an eleven year old spaniel who doesn’t like to play as roughly as I do. She is nice though and very friendly. We exchanged sniffs while the humans waffled on about the football. I met Luna, who is a Frenchie, and goes to a lot of the games. We managed to get our leads tangled up as usual. Then I met this nutter of a pooch called Sid. I don’t know what make of pooch Sid is, but he was mad. He is only seven months old, and we had a great play-fight. I thought that I had a lot of energy, but this one was crazy. He had travelled from Anglesey to watch the match with his humans. He must be a dedicated supporter of the away team!

I suppose that you might be wondering about how the football was going on. Well, it wasn’t going Ruabon’s way. They were losing 3-1 at one point, and both teams were kicking chunks out of each other. I heard a few new swear words from some of the players. They all seemed a bit tetchy to me. They had probably drank too much coffee like my human sometimes. There was a fair amount of pushing and shoving, too. My dad calls it ‘handbags’. The second half was a bruising affair with Ruabon pushing to claw back the score. On one occasion, the man dressed all in black with a whistle, had an argument with the Ruabon man who was standing outside of his tent on the halfway line. One of the players was shown a piece of yellow paper by the man in black. I think that it might have been an early Christmas card. The footballer didn’t seem to want it, and he said something rude to the man in black. Ruabon did score eventually, making it 3-2. Then, just as the man with the whistle was going to blow it, Ruabon scored again. Some people went nuts. You humans are a strange species! So, it was 3-3, and the game ended. This is where I discovered that my dad is a prize numpty!

We headed home thinking that 3-3 was a fair result, and maybe Ruabon still had a chance to beat the away team in a replay at their ground. We were soon home, and my human made himself a hot cup of tea to warm his bones up. I was given a treat for being such a good boy. Within seconds, I was curled up on the couch and snoring. I think that I was deeaming about running around the Rec chasing a football. I think it was a dream. I’m sure that my dad would have been screaming at me if it was reality. My dad sat next to me and turned the TV on to see how the afternoon’s big team football matches were going. Soon, he started to use his smartphone to check on Facebook and all the other nonsense that he looks at. He went to the Ruabon Rovers Facebook page to see if anything had been posted. Sure enough, there had. Apparently, Ruabon had lost to the away team 8-7 on penalties. The dope had left the Rec before the match had finished. Un-be-leavable! Instead of the tie going to a replay, it had been decided on penalties. Don’t ask me what all that means, but I do know that the big feller was ‘gutted’ that Ruabon were out of the cup. He is an absolute numpty!