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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









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