We've been remiss so far this month but delighted to welcome back lifelong Chelsea supporter, and honorary Chelsea in America member, Chris Axon for another season of sharing his match x match reports with our CIA members. Aside from the reports, Chris provides an excellent guide to game day pubs home and away. Worth the read!
Norwich City vs. Chelsea : 24 August 2019
The three-day August Bank Holiday had arrived and it would begin with a lunchtime match at Carrow Road in the Norfolk city of Norwich. This would be our most easterly league match of the domestic season, and – for us in the south west of England – it meant that it would entail a five-hour trek through nine counties. I have driven up and back to Norwich on the same day on a couple of occasions, but those days are gone. As soon as the date of the game was confirmed, my hopeful booking of a Saturday night at a hotel a mere ten minutes’ walk from the ground came to fruition. There was no need to cancel and re-book. We were on our way.
And the three of us – LP, PD and little old me – were well happy. Norwich is a cracking city and we have enjoyed some good times there in recent memory.
I had left the office at 5pm on Friday evening with a skip in my step. We had managed to get through a busy two-week period at work, I was looking forward to the weekend ahead, and on a personal note, I had managed to lose a little more weight. I was the lightest for over three years. I have been a little inspired by a couple of good people among my Chelsea friends who have shed – pardon the pun – many pounds over the past year or so. A few weeks of eating sensibly and eating moderately had paid off and it felt great.
I was in a good place.
On Saturday morning, the alarm sounded at four o’clock. It would be a long day. I collected PD at 5am and Parky soon after. This weekend would be a bittersweet moment for Parky, and indeed for all three of us, since he is going in – at long last – on Thursday for his long-awaited hip operation. He will be in hospital in Bath for a few days, and out of action, football-wise, for five or six games.
So we’ll miss the old bugger, that is for sure.
If there was a lot of traffic on England’s roads on Saturday morning, we didn’t see much of it. Leaving so early, we were ahead of the game. The M4, especially, was super-clear. We stopped for a “Harry Ramsden’s” breakfast on the M11, pretty close to Stansted Airport where a few European adventures have started, and we bumped into four lads from our local area who were breakfasting too. And this was where the diet went off the rails for one day only. These football excursions are notorious for junk food. It is difficult to ask for a salad after a heavy away defeat.
Soul food is sometimes the only answer.
Just to the east of Cambridge there were signs for Babraham and then The Wilbrahams. I wondered if I might see a sign for Abraham. I rolled into the hotel car park in Norwich at about 10.15am. Luckily, we were only a five-minute walk from the “Coach & Horses” pub where we spent a good few hours before the “Peter Osgood Ten Year Anniversary” game in 2016. There were familiar faces in the packed beer garden. Although it was only mid-morning, the heat from the sun was relentless.
Talk turned to the game and the mood was of objective pragmatism.
“I’ll be honest; I’ll take a draw now. This won’t be easy. We just must not lose.”
There were doubts about N’Golo Kante’s fitness. That really would be a huge miss. In the beer garden, Parky met up again with the other lads from Wiltshire that we had seen earlier; Sir Les and Stretch from Melksham, plus two lads from Swindon who I first spotted in Baku and then en route to Dublin at Bristol Airport. PD and I sat with Julie and Tim from Bristol. The beers were going down well, but I was keen to head off to Carrow Road and be there in plenty of time. One of the security staff advised us of the route to the stadium and his accent was a thing to behold.
“Take a right down Stracey Road” seemed to have about twenty syllables and parts of it sounded like a whimpering dog. Norwich, like Bristol, is an urban accent that sounds decidedly rural. But we were on our way.
And it was turning out to be a cracking day in Norfolk.
Much much more still to read. Click here to continue on to Chris' full blog report from Norwich.
