Skip to main content

Away Days 23/24: Blackburn Rovers - How The Mighty Have Fallen

 


Cambridge United continued their FA Cup campaign with a third round tie away to Blackburn Rovers. It had been thirty plus years (to the day) since these sides had last met. In that time Blackburn had won The Premier League and Cambridge had won The FA Trophy. Cup games have a magic quality of removing status and form from the equation, so I can guess we can ignore the fact that this game was second bottom of The Championship form table verses striker-less Cambridge United. 

I’d managed to tempt some friends into a Liverpool beer weekend (blog coming soon), plus a trip to Blackburn to watch the match. We set off from Liverpool on the train, aiming to meet Rach in Blackburn at 11 am. Most football fans are on their third generic lager by 10am, we are sometimes more civilised than that. 
We had more visits to Greggs than we had days in Liverpool.


Thanks…


We arrived in plenty of time to get lost in a housing estate and then a forest. John has such a way with directions. We later learned that simply following the main road would have been better. Arriving in plenty of time meant we could check out the away pub. We had a choice of two; a Hungry House or a Thwaites Pub. We chose the latter. 


Thwaites TBC was served in good condition, but was severely lacking in the taste department. We didn’t stay in the pub long and decided to head to the ground. We followed signs towards the ‘Away Fan Zone’, which was non existent. 
Ready to host 1600 U’s fans

The stewards gave us a warm welcome and one even mentioned the last meeting between the two clubs! Once inside, it was pie time!
The pint was Cruzcampo, the latest in an ever growing line of European beers which are brewed in bleak UK towns near you. 1/5 for beer. Football grounds do give me the opportunity to tick off macro lagers, so I don’t feel too basic. The pie was decent but suffered the usual football pie issue, the crust was too dry. Pies can never have too much gravy. 


Ewood Park is a decent stadium. The facilities are good, there’s enough toilets and enough leg room. The screen was weird though, maybe it needs turning off and on again. 


The teams walked out to a 1600 strong chorus of chanting, yellow pages, flags and an inflatable alligator. I’d done my bit for the atmosphere the evening before:

Despite leading twice in the game, higher level Blackburn proved too strong for the U’s. Sadly an ex Pish player scored a hat trick and celebrated like he’d won the World Cup. He stated on Twitter/X post match that he had done it for Pish. He’d never played for Pish against Cambridge, further proof that those up the A1 are obsessed with us. 

The home support was abysmal. Maybe they couldn’t get excited about this game. The only noise I heard was from a small group of shady looking characters. The type who spend all of the game trying to wind up away fans, using an arsenal of hand gestures and generic insults. The appeal of playing Cambridge was also not enough to sell many tickets. Only 3/4 stands were open.

At least we got the ground tick (26/92 for me) and got back to Liverpool in time for some beers. 

Cambridge game number: 513









Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 In Review & The Beer Moose Awards!

  “Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time” sang Pink Floyd in 1973. They’re sort of right, each year feels shorter than the last. In fact, it does not feel like a year since I was last writing a blog like this one. Contary to what Pink Floyd said, I found time to do quite a lot in 2024! I rode a new personal best 211 rollercoasters! 2024 will remembered as a bit of a rollercoaster (sorry). Great heights and moments balanced by a devastating loss and a rather poor Cambridge United team. This blog is aiming to be a review of my year, with some awards thrown in! Let’s get into it!  January:  January started with an FA Cup tie, away to Blackburn. I decided that Blackburn was sort of near Liverpool, so like all good away days we made it into a pub weekend.  It was an absolute goal fest! Sadly, like most goal fests The U’s are involved with, it ended with United on the losing side. 5-2 Blackburn.  Golden bird I liked Liverpool, it’s a smart and nic...
Post a Comment
Read more

Smile Like You Mean It: The Story of My Friendship With Rach, Mental Health and Our Latest Adventure.

 I’m very fortunate to have great friends in my life, I don’t think you can put a value on good people. People who have your back, make you laugh, pick you up if you need it, advise you, complement you and at times challenge you. I’m not a great lover of texting or messaging, because it just isn’t the same as being together in real life. To me, a sign of a great friend is someone you can spend weeks or months away from, but when you do meet again, it’s like you were never apart. People come and go, the best people stay.  In 2011, whilst at secondary school, I was elected to Sports Council. At this time I was failing to accept that my rugby playing days were nearly over. I have a lifelong problem with my back, it was getting worse. I was seeing two physios a week, hours of laying on my front having my back looked at, coupled with loading up on whatever pain relief the Dr would prescribe me. That was all to try and get through the rugby matches. Eventually, my consultant, Dr Jen...
2 comments
Read more

Away Days 24/25: Is It Over? Wigan

  Welcome to the first instalment of a three blog series from the Northwest! I had a great weekend, football aside, visiting Manchester, Wigan and Stockport. This should really be the second part of this series, where’s the fun in doing things in the correct order?  We made the short train journey from Manchester to Wigan. Rach had found us a bakery to grab a pie or Wigan Kebab but I was distracted by a sign saying taproom. We had time so called in for a beer! Except  what we actually did was walk into a pub, rather than the planned taproom!  Wigan Central was great! A pint and lime soda cost £4!  The US Session was crisp, fresh and super tasty! A 10/10 pint. As we enjoyed our drinks I had a renewed sense of optimism that Cambridge were going to win today. We started making our to the ground and stopped at the bakery Rach found for lunch. Rolling Pin Bakery. This was easily one of the best pies I’ve ever had!  Marvin was also after a pie! My renewed optimis...
Post a Comment
Read more