Swansea City vs. Chelsea : 28 April 2018.
Going in to the game at Swansea City’s Liberty Stadium, it honestly felt that everything had been decided. Manchester City were worthy champions, and – sadly – would be joined in next season’s Champions League campaign by Manchester United, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur. It seemed that we were destined to finish fifth. It seemed inevitable that Arsenal would finish sixth. At the other end of the table, West Bromwich Albion had been seemingly assured of a last place finish at the end of a miserable campaign. And as the league season entered the final three or four games, it has looked increasingly likely that Stoke City and Southampton would be relegated too.
All cut and dried, then? It certainly felt like it.
The end of the season has crept up on all of us, and the game in South Wales represented the last away game that I would be driving to this season. We are flying up to Newcastle – “Fly me to The Toon” – for the final match, so this trip represented the last Chuckle Brothers Road Trip of 2017/2018. With an early-evening kick-off at 5.30pm, it meant that we could stretch out and relax a little. We had left our little part of England at 9am under grey and threatening skies, and had packed coats and jackets to insulate us from expected wet and windy weather in Wales. There was a breakfast at McMelksham en route, and the journey went well, apart from the final few miles when the traffic heading in to Swansea itself almost came to a standstill. It is no Cardiff, but Swansea is a reasonable city. The area down by the marina continues to be marked with new building developments, and there is always The Mumbles, just a few miles to the east of the city centre. The skies overhead were brightening. At last, I slotted the Chuckle Bus in a car park overlooking the rocky headland of The Mumbles, with the vast expanse of Swansea Bay stretching out before us. We spotted a nearby pub, The White Rose, and were settled around a table in the dark and old-fashioned boozer at around 12.30pm. There was an homage to Dylan Thomas – Swansea born and bred – stenciled onto one of the pub windows alongside the holy trinity of Welsh insignia; a red dragon, a daffodil and a leek.
“Though they go mad they shall be sane.
Read the rest of Chris' report here
