Clone Club

Back to Boreham Wood for the first time in over a decade last Saturday, with the memory of a Barry Rake strike on my last visit against then tenants Enfield still vivid in my mind.  On paper it had the makings of a good day out.  An easy journey to the edge of zone 6 by train, then a gentle stroll down the high street to the functional ground.  Maybe events on the pitch have coloured my view but this felt like a trip to mediocre Britain.  The high street was as good a representation of a clone town as you could imagine, with the glimpse of the Eastenders set in a side street hardly lifting the mood with its gloomy aura of faux misery.  A biting north wind made the view of the final destination a welcome sight, and on the face of it the club itself had much to offer with a bar handily placed next to the tea bar.  The fact that it was deserted save for the odd travelling Magpie started to peel back the veneer of functionality to reveal a desperate empty vessel.  Moving into the board room, again this was impressively arranged, with neat modernist furniture set off by some imitation Pollock prints, with the toilets alone bigger than the facilities at York Road and yet I felt like I was about to attend a funeral.

As for the game a video would I guess have seemed quite entertaining with six goals and plenty of near misses, a mini Magpie comeback from 2-0 down before Ian Allinson got to work in the dressing room to inspire his much changed Boreham Wood side to a barnstorming second half which left no doubt where the points were heading. But this was all witnessed by a sparse crowd strung out around the smart stadium, whilst presumably the thousands of inhabitants of the dwellings surrounding it got on with their lives.  Sad to see a club which is so evidently well run missing the human ingredient that makes a football club - passionate supporters.