Richard Bland reflects on the FONCY trip to the Youth Cup match against Everton. With the threat of bad weather across the UK, calls were made to Ricky Martin at theYouth team’s hotel in Liverpool, as well as surfing the net to catch up with the latest forecasts, which would determine what route to take that afternoon. Chairman John Landamore, avid supporter Darren (Dill) Gilbert and myself left FONCY HQ at 12.30pm, deciding to take the A11/A14/M6 route, which whilst it was longer in distance, promised a trouble free journey. We had gone no more than half a mile before the cry from John of “Are we stopping for a bacon?” For those not familiar with this statement, the Woodside Services at Barton Mills is a favourite stopping off point for a bacon roll and a mug of tea. This was met with a “No, let’s see how the journey goes”. Good progress was made until we came to a sudden halt on the A14 near Kettering. Traffic was extremely slow moving in our direction. John sought advice from a taxi driver who was adjacent to us and he was none the wiser as to what the hold up was. At this point, whilst he wouldn’t admit it, John was very worried that he wouldn’t be able to see his beloved boys play. He phoned Kath for some solace, but quite what she was going to be able to do from the warmth of Norwich I am not quite sure. Unlike Norfolk, which was relatively snow free, this part of the country had had heavy snow falls and a debate soon arose as to whether to stick with the slow moving traffic or take a cross country route. At this time we had probably already been held up for approximately an hour, hardly moving forward, so we decided to take a cross country route with the hope of picking up the M6 later. Postscript – we later found out that the tailback was caused by a 20 mile queue. Obviously the trapped drivers were looking to keep warm as on the way back we were amazed to see four or five large snowmen built on the central reserve. Whilst the roads were hazardous and busy, we did manage to re-join the M6 around 4pm. It was then a case of hitting the gas, which drew the attention of the motorway police who, whilst they flashed us, allowed us to proceed without stopping for what probably would have been no more than a stern word and a fix penalty fine. To assist the journey, John stumped up the £4.70 so we could take the shorter and more efficient toll route. Widnes was found without a problem, but as soon as we got into town we thought we had taken a wrong turn, so John asked the advice of a local and it turned out we were within striking distance of the stadium. The journey had been without refreshment, so we stopped off at a local convenience store where John bought sweets for the journey home. Having parked up we met up with Colin Watts and we also secured some press passes so that John could provide a report for Archant. After tickets, the next priority was to obtain team sheets or programmes for the many people who had asked us to get them. This was done with relative ease. We then had a quick cup of tea and settled down to watch the game. The report on the game itself is well documented elsewhere. Much discussion on our journey on the way up was as to what time we would get home and the hope that the game would not go into extra time and penalties, but there you go, you sometimes have to suffer in order to gain and we were duly rewarded for our efforts with a fine win after a penalty shoot out. Back to the car and it seemed it was a case of John going through everybody he knew in his phone memory and ringing them up and we were subject to many repeats of how the game was won. Then by torchlight John wrote his match report and contacted Archant to give his report. However the report was truncated due to John missing the copy deadline, and he was very disappointed that FONCY had lost the fee that would have been received for a full report. I put it to John that if he hadn’t spent so long on the phone, the report could have been filed. No answer to this question was received. And then guess what? John’s back on the phone with congratulatory messages to Ricky and all on board the team bus. The time is now approaching 11pm and he gets some other poor soul out of bed to tell them how Declan Rudd got down for the third penalty save. Finally the pair of them dropped off to sleep and I was allowed to complete the journey peacefully, dropping them off at FONCY HQ at around 1.45am with a cry of “What time are we leaving for Man City?” A thoroughly enjoyable trip in good company. The moral of the story is don’t stop for a bacon as you might miss the game.                     Richard