Away at Shrewsbury

Less than twelve hours after arriving home in Newtoft I was back on the road heading for the last English town before deepest darkest Wales. I had managed to procure a free lift by exchanging free entry to the game for my old boss Paul Stimpson, and that meant I was able to indulge in a few warm Carlings during the journey procured from Tesco in exchange for about four quid. Shrewsbury is just on the edge of Western England, a delightful little town cut into two by the River Severn. The river often spits its dummy out and floods parts of the town, in particular the football ground that sits tight on its banks. There are three or four routes you can take there from Lincoln and I’d tried most of them. One of them takes about four hours and involves no motorway, the other is closer in miles but takes two and a half hours and there’s the ‘all motorway’ journey that takes two hours but involves and extra twenty miles or so! With all the choices it wasn’t a shock that Stimmo knew a different one to me. Almost every route ended with you making the short journey past Telford, a hill called the Wreckin and some curiously named towns before entering Shrewsbury past a large statue of some fellow who climbed mountains and the local college. The rest of the town itself is both quaint and unremarkable, a typical English town with its collection of local shops and the usual high street brand. The only other point of note is that the IRA bombed it’s castle sometime in the nineties although it wasn’t explained to me why an Irish terrorist group would bomb a small castle in an English town populated by Welsh rugby fans. We got to Shrewsbury in good time and sampled the local lager at a pub called the Dun Cow that showed the Chelsea championship game. They were winning two nil and the pub wasn’t exactly full of travelling support so we made our way to a local Weatherspoons to meet up with a few other City fans. Stimmo went for a KFC and I headed for the door only to be stopped by a group of Shropshire Police Forces finest. They subjected me to an intense search as well as making me give them my name and address on video camera ‘just for the record’. Before I was allowed into the bar they also told me I’d be locked in until 2.30, which meant I’d be late for the game. I decided I’d be able to get out one way or another so in I went. Inside the bar looked like a who’s who of Lincoln bad boys and the reason for heavy police presence was clear. It wasn’t intimidating or anything like that as everyone in there wanted the same thing, namely a Lincoln win. I wanted it on the pitch and a fair few of them fancied it in a local street afterwards, but either way we both wanted to represent the club in any way we could. As well as most of the active members of the ‘Lincoln Transit Elite’ there were quite a few genuine City fans in the pub to. I met up with Wayne Casement, who doubles as the match day DJ at Sincil bank on a Saturday. Casey is quite a character who like me does his job for the love of the club. Lincolns iconic fan and general fat kid, Fat Kid was also there. Believe me when I say this guy’s arse is the size of a small car but his love of the club eclipses the size of his rear. I saw Casey put his arm around Fat Kid and simply say ‘Alright Fat Kid’ about thirty seconds before being bundled out of the pub as he’d offended a listening police officer! Casey was soon sent back into the pub and I guessed his warning was more due to the company he kept than the offensiveness of his remark. Like me Casey knows a few rogues and some of the other faces in his party were more familiar to me through the pages of the Lincolnshire Echo crime file! I admit I gave‘Casey a bit of stick to when I explained about my World Cup audition as a couple of games earlier I’d indicated that there might be a ticket for a helper as well. I hadn’t been told there would be but I knew he liked his tall stories so I thought I’d give him one of my own. I told him all had gone well and he slipped an arm around me and told me to ‘remember my mates’. Indeed I would remember those who’d helped me year after year and sadly for Casey I’d only known him for a few months so tickets would be out of the question, then again I wasn’t getting any anyway so it was all elementary. As late morning slipped into early afternoon I began to panic about reaching the ground on time. Periodic police patrols of the pub confirmed that the ‘old bill’ meant business and I didn’t rate my chances of getting out of the pub backed up by what would sound like a whimsical story about being a mascot. Luckily amongst our numbers was Matt Jenkinson who was on the match day security team at City and he confirmed he’d be able to get me out of the pub. I sat back and enjoyed a few more jars before prompting Jenko to seek out the Lincoln representative on the police side, community police officer Andy Pearson. He let me out the pub and I made for the ground slightly worse for wear. Lenny The Lion, also known more commonly as Ron met me at the players entrance and let me and Stimmo into the ground. We showed my guest to his seat and retired into the back room area to get changed, or so I thought. It appeared that Ron was no longer the dedicated crowd pleaser he used to be and he wasn’t interested in taking to the pitch until just before kick off at ten to three! He took me to the player’s bar for yet another beverage, and as I entered I felt I’d made a grave mistake. It was one thing walking into a pub in Boston with my Dad to be faced with a hundred Boston fans, but entering the bastion of Shrewsbury Town in my Lincoln shirt was quite another. There were a few murmurs from the girlfriends of players but generally I was surprisingly well received. True to my fears Ron stayed put until twenty to three before we were off to get changed. Changing rooms for mascots vary widely and Shrewsbury managed to provide a large space for changing under the main stand. The smell of damp and general ambience of a garden shed paled in insignificance when compared to the size of the room. It had to be a good thing we had so much space to utilise as I soon found out that Lenny The Lions wife, Mrs Lenny was to change with us. Most female characters are portrayed by a bloke but in this case Mrs really was Mrs. I can’t recall the girls name as I was sidetracked by the fact I was sharing a changing area with her, but obviously she was used to changing with Ron and didn’t exactly try to hide what she was doing! I know it wasn’t explicit but I couldn’t imagine changing in an enclosed space like my room at Sincil Bank with a young girl without some sort of cheap thrill involved. I changed in haste and rushed out onto the turf as quickly as possible. The reception I received has to rate amongst the best I’d received in all my years of mascotting. I expect it was the importance of the game coupled with the heavy police presence outside the ground. As I ran across the pitch towards the faithful who were now chanting my name I became aware of a pair of socks that had fallen from somewhere around my head and were now lodged tight under my chin. I’d somehow missed them when I put my head on and I must have left them there after my audition the day before! They were both soaking wet and had a faint odour about them that was manifesting into a taste on my bottom lip. I turned to head back to the changing rooms when a pair of worn boxer shorts made the same journey landing on top of the socks and nestling snugly between my top lip and nose. The current suit had a large mouth which was my main source of vision and that was now obscured by my own underwear still soaked in yesterdays sweat! I must have looked a real sight wandering aimlessly and erratically towards the tunnel before some poor steward had to handle my smalls to put them back in my changing room. I didn’t tell him they were worn. Back out on the pitch I allowed my excessive drinking before the game to go to my head. For fifteen minutes I ran around the Gay Meadow pitch like a man possessed by the ghost of Billy Whizz switching from adulation of the travelling fans to derision of the gathered natives. The usual chants of ‘What the flipping heck is that’ (or something similar I can’t make out the fourth and fifth word properly) were met with my usual response of mimicking blowing a kiss before planting my hand firmly on the tail end of the suit. It was paint by numbers mascotting but it always raised a smile if only on my face and that of a few interested City fans. I ended by heading over to our fans, jumping on the eight-foot fence that separates the away support from the pitch and shouting City songs at the top of my voice. I nearly fell off the wall twice and had to hang onto the fence for support and these actions secured the attention of a steward who made his way over to ask me to get down. Egged on by the inflatable woman from the Boston game I carefully chose words to the effect of ‘No’ and carried on my spirited rousing. Sadly the steward alerted his superior who came over and hauled me off the fence to a chorus of boo’s. He told me in no uncertain terms that if I went back up I’d be ejected from the ground. I glanced at our fans and back at the steward. ‘I’d like to see you try fella’ was my response followed by a cheeky clip round his ear. Pushing it maybe but its hard to be fair or objective when so many passionate people are egging you on to misbehave. Sadly my time on the pitch was over far too quickly. When at home I admit that I try to cut down the time I spend performing but having made a near three hundred mile round trip I would have enjoyed more than quarter of an hour lapping up the atmosphere. It’s the home mascots prerogative to dictate how long we go out though and my short appearance wouldn’t detract from my view of Ron. As always he was a true gent and allowed me to go wherever I wanted. He also bought the beer in the bar so he’s okay by me! The game itself was a non-event. We won one nil and coupled with both Peterborough and Bristol Rovers defeats it meant we were all but in the play offs. Gareth McAuley headed the winner as he had in both semi finals against Macclesfield the year before and the game was as dire as those clashes. Afterwards we were kept in the car park for fifteen minutes as the local constabulary continued to practise the more intense scheme of policing. As I sat back in that car park somewhere in Shropshire with a luke warm can of Carling for company I became very aware of the fact it looked like we were heading for a fourth successive play off appearance, and possibly a third outing at the magnificent Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. I swear the thought of that fantastic stadium and the possibility of promotion to League One made that awful warm beer taste as good as a freshly chilled chardonnay. My weekend was over and I’d covered nearly five hundred miles in thirteen hours for just thirty minutes of performing, and I received nothing of monetary value (other than two free tickets and a beer) to show for it. Strangely though I felt it was a job well done, after all its what being Poacher The Imp is all about.