Claire was off today, so we had a breakfast up at Ruxley which was very enjoyable and then drove to Bluewater to see the film IF.
I have to say it was a very enjoyable film (which I wasn’t expecting it to be) and shows the talent of John Krasinski, because as well as staring in this film he was the director too.
Some very clever scenes and acting. Fully recommended.
Whilst we were watching, we were also keeping an eye on the sky, as the clouds were getting darker.
We started to move towards our car and just as we reached the car, the rain fell down. We waited a few minutes and saw see the dark clouds still in the distance and decided to leave.
Claire’s curse struck again at Beckenham and there was no more play, with Western Storm 38 for 3 from 6 overs.
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The curse struck again!! Why do we fail at the last hurdle?
Southampton 1 – Leeds United 0 – HT 1-0
A. Armstrong, (24′)
Assist
W. Smallbone (24′)
Saints’ 11-year spell in the top flight came to an end after a wretched campaign last time out but, despite finishing one place and three points behind Leeds in fourth, it is they who join Leicester and Ipswich in going up.
Adam Armstrong scored the decisive goal with a clinical finish after being put clear by Will Smallbone.
Leeds substitute Dan James clattered a bouncing ball against the crossbar late on as they pushed for an equaliser but Russell Martin’s men saw out almost 12 minutes of time added on.
Defeat for Leeds consigned them to another season in the Championship and meant they have now lost their past three finals at Wembley without scoring and been unsuccessful in all six of their play-off campaigns. What is it with finals and Leeds? We won all 4 matches against the two sides who went up, but had a bad record against Southampton. The defeat against QPR in the run in was a major blow.
Saints’ promotion means that all three play-off finals this year were won by the team who had finished lower in the league table, with the team who had finished higher failing to score in all three.
German Farke said after the play-off win over his former side Norwich he would not have returned to England to take over any other Championship club than Leeds, having twice won the division with the Canaries.
He, like the thousands of Leeds fans at Wembley, will be left with recriminations from a day where his side didn’t get going until it was basically too late.
The Whites became the first second-tier side to accumulate 90 points and not go up automatically since Sunderland in 1997-98, with the Black Cats also beaten in that season’s play-off final.
Questions will now linger over the futures of Championship player of the season Summerville, teenage star Archie Gray and French forward Georginio Rutter.
With the backing of the 49ers Enterprises investment group, they should be well positioned to challenge again in 2024-25 but the nature of this defeat will sting.
This is my concern, we need to keep hold of the players mentioned above, and otherwise we will struggle to get back. We need a forward who can score 20 goals a season and a couple of other players to push for the automatic promotion spots.
Marching On Together.
This afternoon with the weather being so dreadful, we were indoors and I manged to get a comment on the cricinfo commentary of England v Pakistan women’s international.
We visited Claire’s dad today and the weather for a change was decent.
Claire posted on Facebook that we were there and she got a message from Carol, saying they were on the sea front.
We met there for a short while and they asked if they could visit later on.
We tried to get into Dover, big mistake, with being a Bank holiday weekend and issues at the port.
Once we got through the traffic and back to Claire’s dad, Carol and Wayne visited, can’t remember the last time I had seen Wayne. Had a lovely afternoon chatting in the garden.
This afternoon we had our security check of the house alarm and CCTV.
Thankfully everything was OK.
Though the engineer kindly cleaned the front CCTV, but when I checked in the night time and the night vision, the camera was worse it had ever been.
So there I was hanging out of the window cleaning it to have a clear picture.
They really feel at home these days during the day light.
Final pictures from the visit to the Kia Oval, on what was the warmest day of the year so far, but that’s not saying much for this year.
As mentioned before in a blog posting, this was some recovery by Surrey, from 15-4 in the first innings.
Surrey 213 in 54.1 overs (Ollie Pope 63, Dan Lawrence 84) & 427 in 103.3 overs (Rory Burns 70, Jamie Smith 72, Dan Lawrence 87, Jordan Clark 98, Yadvinder Singh 19.3-1-103-4) beat Worcestershire 128 in 42 overs (Daniel Worrall 12-6-22-6) & 231 in 57.3 overs (Nathan Smith 60, Ben Gibbon 75, Daniel Worrall 16-4-35-4) by 281 runs.
Very enjoyable relaxing day had. Impressive to see so many international players playing in the county championship, especially with all the T20 competitions on around the world.
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