Honeymoon in Doncaster

New York, London, Paris, Munich, everybody talk about Pop Musik!
Well sort of.
After an American themed wedding and the start of my honeymoon in London and Paris it was naturally off to...Doncaster!
It was coincidence really that meant I was at the Keepmoat Stadium last night as we’d booked four days camping in a forest close to Stamford Bridge – not Chelsea’s ground but the famous battleground just east of York.
That camping trip was all booked before the June fixture list came out and with Norwich playing 40 miles down the road it would have been rude not to inject a little On The Ball City into the honeymoon.
I had tried to take my new wife Lorraine to Paris St Germain on Saturday night, but what with it being our last night in the French capital, I was persuaded to take her for a romantic meal in a cobbled Parisienne street.
The Yorkshire campsite is certainly the most unusual place I’ve been to after a football match – it’s about an hour north of Doncaster in the middle of nowhere, down a long track off the road and then a five minute walk by torchlight through the woods into a permanent tent complete with sofa, kitchen, bathroom and proper bed.
Enough of the luxury and back to the game.
Doncaster’s Keepmoat Stadium is one of those awful modern grounds, lacking in style, substance, atmosphere and character. It reminded me of a smaller version of Southampton’s St Mary’s Stadium.
It’s on an industrial estate, surrounded by car parks, I popped my car in the visitors car park which had the same kind of surface as the moon and paid £5 for the privilege.
For a Tuesday night game there were a good 1,500 Norwich fans in, around one sixth of the measly crowd of around 9,000.
It’s just typical that Norwich come to these grounds in midweek and get turned over. I was trying to explain this to Lorraine in the car and made the prediction that “we will probably get dicked 3-0”.And how accurate that was.
Doncaster took the lead early on through James Coppinger, a player who I have known about for some time, he’s one of the most underrated players in the Championship and unfortunately for The Canaries, we found him on top form last night.
City hardly mustered a shot in the first half and when we went 2-0 down, the game hung in the balance. I say this because Norwich always seem to play better when they’re behind and after dominating for much of the second half got back in the game with a Russell Martin header from about two yards out.
Game on then, and a 2-2 draw looked the most likely outcome, but to be honest, I couldn’t really see City scoring.
The picture on the right I took of City skipper Grant Holt really sums up the whole night.
Coppinger’s third with ten minutes left was the nail in the coffin.
So the first defeat on the road and after a good run of four games, a second loss.
Due to two weddings already this season, one my own, I’ve seen three of Norwich’s six games. They’ve not won any of the three I’ve seen and guess what?
They’ve won all the other three!