Norton United 2-1 Cheadle Town

Stood in the Burger King queue at Knutsford Services, a complete stranger - obviously as fed up as me waiting for his order and looking for somebody to talk to - turned to me and asked:
"How far south are you going, mate?" "Errr, Stoke" "M6 southbound closed, mate...round about the Stoke area and all, come to mention it..."
From thereon, yet another abnormal day in the company of Norton United FC was about to unfold.

During our hour spent going through the motoring equivalent of walking through treacle on the M6, Polardin and I weighed up the possibilities: would the team also be turning up late? Would that give Norton's over-officious colonel good reason to have us fined, call the match off and have the three points awarded to them? Would common sense somehow prevail and we'd end up with a 3.30pm kick-off? More to the point, what bloody time would we be getting there?

As the motorway re-opened and with it the chance of making it to the match on-time re-surfaced, I foolishly said "hey, it could be our day now..."

For 86 minutes of this match, I was right. For 86 minutes Cheadle Town seemingly had this match in the palm of their hands and were in control. For 86 minutes we looked like achieving only our second away win all season, a win that would satisfy in more ways than one.

Cheadle were a goal up at half-tim e due to a bit of spectacular improvisation from Johnny Hussain on 20 minutes. From 30 yards out he gathered the ball and sent a well-measured chip soaring over the Norton 'keeper's head and into the net.

What makes this defeat sore is the fact that Cheadle should have wrapped this game up during the second half. An industrious spell on the hour mark saw Mike Myers blaze a header wide from a delicious Arron Riley cross, Brad Fellows narrowly shoot over and various half-decent opportunities to score squandered.

But it was still to be our day, remember, especially after Steve Moores somehow stopped a certain Norton goal from point-blank range and did well to claw away the ball from the feet of two Norton strikers after a goalmouth scramble.

As that 86th minute ticked over Cheadle's day, inexplicably, fell apart. A Norton forward latched onto a through ball, rounded Moores and tucked home for the equaliser. Willing to "take the draw", we willed the referee's whistle to sound. It didn't come quick enough to stop Norton snatching a victory from the jaws of defeat with virtually the last action of the match: a left-wing cross headed home.

You know me by now, I'll always say when we have been beaten by the better side; today we weren't...and even the referee's assessor who was at the match agreed that we were the better side and deserved to win, so if you think I'm taking defeat in a bitter manner, you can sod right off.

Matches like this put you off football. It was a very quiet car on the way home as it was the lowest that Polardin and I have felt in our two years following Cheadle.

We don't like Norton United (and I'm sure the feeling's mutual). Not because they beat us - christ, they're hardly unique where that's concerned - but because every time we play them we have an arse of a time and the matches - both home and away, win or lose - are nothing but unhappy experiences as a whole. But until either of us somehow gets promoted from this division, we're stuck with each other.

More's the pity.

Photos from the day can be seen by clicking here

TEAM: Moores, Clarke, B Roberts, Cotterill, A Roberts, Logan, Riley, Hussain, Myers (Brokenbrow), Fellows, Lindon. Subs: Brokenbrow, Hall.