Bath City 1-1 Mansfield Town
Conference National
Saturday 26th November 2011 – 15:00 

When Bath City announced that the match against Mansfield Town would be “Kids Day”, I was worried that the club’s mascot, Bladud the Pig, had flown (get it? pig… flown..) off to Swineford with the playing budget; therefore leaving Bath City with no option but to field a youth team (a la Weymouth/Rushden).

Thankfully, this was not the case. The Bath City Kids Day simply meant that children would gain free entry to the ground. I am strongly against age discrimination. I will therefore be charging any child under the age of 12 for reading my blog. The cost will be £4.00 – the amount they would have saved getting in free yesterday. I will accept payments in installments.

Upon arrival at Twerton Park, the children were presented with a ‘Pig Bug’ * . Mothers of children at the game were also given a bouquet of flowers, although I think the mum-to-flower-ratio was not correctly envisaged, as embarrassed players were seen handing out excess bouquets to anyone they believed to be of the opposite sex and not necessarily of child-bearing age.

* no novelty gifts will be awarded to those reading my blog

I was excited to hear that goalkeeper Jason Matthews was in the starting lineup. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against our regular shotstopper, Glyn Garner, but ‘Jase’ is a non-league legend and I strongly believed that he deserved a chance to prove himself at Twerton Park. After failing to find a place in the first team (apart from one appearance in the Somerset Cup), Jason almost left for Salisbury City last week, but the deal collapsed and the legend remains at Bath City.

Mansfield brought an impressive number of away supporters; almost 150 Stags made the journey from Nottinghamshire. Much credit and respect goes their way. There is no credit however to the away fan with the drum; although I do suspect he simply found the instrument in the away end, left behind by a careless Dagenham fan on Wednesday. The drum is now in the Bath City FC Lost Property Bin, along with various pairs of referee spectacles, underpants (used by players who forget their kit) and Luke Prince –who arrived on loan from Salisbury City in 2008 and went missing in the Bath City midfield.

The game started well and was certainly no boar (back with the pig puns). Bath City soon took the lead, but in typical fashion of a team bottom of the table, conceded shortly after. Mansfield’s goal was somewhat bizarre, a misplaced cross finding its way into the net. The wind will claim the goal, with the dubious goals panel deciding who to award it to on Monday. Of course, non-league legend Jason Matthews had no chance of saving the strike from Mother Nature and was not to blame.

Set piece

We had “that woman” back reffin’ the game -the same one who took charge of the match against Stockport last month. Cue witty and very original shouts of “get back in the kitchen” from a Bernard Manning tribute act. Amy Fearn was not as bad as some of the officials we have had in recent times, but did make some cost-worthy decisions in Mansfield’s favour – including disallowing a late Bath City goal, which I believe should have stood. I think Mrs (or Ms) Fearn was just upset that she wasn’t presented with a bouquet of flowers before the game and had a vendetta against Bath City from kick  off.

The second half was one of the most one-sided games of football I have seen in a long time. Bath City battered Mansfield’s goal, but were sadly unable to score. Well, they did score, but the referee disallowed it.

At fulltime, I congratulated Jason Matthews on his ‘world class’ performance (if Alan Shearer can use that term on Match of the Day every week, so can I). We had a chat about the game, his future at the club and the season ahead – great bloke on and off the pitch.

Jason then joined his team mates for the usual post match meal, served in school dinner trays at the corner of the club house. This week’s offering appeared to be curry and chips, lovingly cooked by the female referee

Bath City FC - where curry is served on tap