Grass Roots and Glory: Wycombe and the Mystery of Jobi McAnuff

Our quest has begun!

I’d like to introduce you all to two football fanatics who love watching live football, but are absolutely fed up of paying in excess of £50 to go and watch their respective teams play.

Game 1 - Wycombe Wanderers 0-2 Leyton Orient – 23/01/2016

I’m Tom and I’m a West Ham fan, my friend Brian is an Everton fan.

We have decided to put affordable football on the map by attending as many Football League and Conference grounds as we can with the only rule being we can only go if we can obtain a ticket for under £20. At every game, each attendee must don a bucket hat!

We will be documenting the highlights of our day out, including how much everything cost!

Our first planned visit was to Wycombe Wanderers v Leyton Orient at Adams Park.

I met Brian in the Monks Retreat pub in Friar Street, Reading before we planned to get the bus to High Wycombe. To get ourselves in the mood (with ales in hand) we attempted to name all of the name endings from Football

League teams; City, United, Town etc….. It took a while.

As you can see, we did it! But the Scottish version is still to be completed.

We’d opted to get the bus ahead of the train for the trip to High Wycombe as it would be saving us some serious cash! What would have been around £28 each on the train became £14.00 for 4 people for both legs of the journey. A bargain! Make a note of it, the 800 to High Wycombe!

One of our party was holding us up though, and we had to ask a bus full of old aged pensioners to wait for the three blokes dressed as 1980’s football hooligans. Great start!

James finally appeared, running straight down the middle of Friar Street with his arms a loft, complete with bucket hat.

We’d popped into Sainsburys to get some cans for the journey (which only enhanced our image) and proceeded to consume them with ease on the scenic bus route, passing through some wonderful dwellings such as Henley and Marlow.

As we got off the bus at High Wycombe, the driver advised us we could get a free bus to Adams Park with our ticket! Winner!

We joined a mixture of Choirboys and Orient fans on the journey, the highlight of which was when a half-cut Brian asked two Orient fans ‘Who do you prefer? Leyton Orient….. or Leighton Baines?’ This was met with chuckles all over the bus.

After a short walk from the stop we had arrived! As you walk up the road, you are waiting to see something that represents a football ground. Even the sign saying ‘Adams Park’ (the name of the stadium no less) looked very industrial. Maybe this is my Premier League upbringing tainting my viewpoint.

After posing for a couple of photos with the Adams Park sign, we walked closer to the ground. There was a huge marquee to our left, or the away pub, as it seems to be at Adams Park, we all agreed that the likelihood the marquee would accept debit cards was low, so instead we went to the home supporter’s bar ‘Scores’.

What a friendly set of supporters Wycombe have got, each of us wandered off and had our own conversations with various supporters…. I wish I could tell you what we talked about.

A lot of people I spoke with were very complimentary about our project, and made it clear we were very welcome, with some happy that we’d chosen Wycombe first.

The bar is very reasonably priced, but I must have had the very last decent Heineken as when James’ was poured, it tasted like ‘metally egg water’ in his words. The pipes were cleaned, and Jim had to make do with a Carling. It’s good, but it’s not quite Heineken!

We wondered into the ground at about five to three so we could see the conclusion of Liverpool v Norwich. What a game that was! What it did show though was that a lot of Wycombe’s fans have Premier League sides too! But as years have gone by, where I once would have been disgusted at such a thing, I’m not. Who can blame any self-respecting football fan from finding a place to watch the beautiful game where he doesn’t have to re-mortgage his home for a ticket!

Suspicion is not a feeling that is unknown amongst fans of lower league football. It lurks in every ground along with the smell of stale chips and the chants that conjure up dubious connotations. So, when Wycombe Wanderers played host to Leyton Orient at Adams Park, it can hardly have been utterly unexpected that upon arrival, three complete strangers with varying accents and all wearing bucket hats were greeted with a wary suspicion.

We positioned ourselves in the ‘Beechdean Stand’ with the vein hope that we’d feature on The Football League highlights show, unlikely at this stage with the distinct lack of action.

On the fence separating us from the terraced stand there was a sign which read ‘No Transfers’. We discussed whether this might mean Wycombe were under some sort of embargo! Brian was temporarily removed from the stadium for smoking. I asked if I was allowed to vape in the ground. I swiftly joined Brian.

If anyone could spend an afternoon at Adams Park, then they would be amazed that a group of people who aren’t

astronomers could spend so much time gazing up towards the heavens.

In fairness. it was one particular ball hoofed skyward which led to the highlight of the first half. As our eyes followed the ascending football, we spotted a kite flying in a circular motion it scoured the earth for pray from on high. One of our number took a photograph of it. That genuinely was the highlight of the first half.

Adams Park is fortunately situated in some woodland at the western end of the valley Wycombe lies in. For any visitor to the place, the woodland setting is fortunate indeed, for it means any fan who wanders in hopefully expecting to watch a game of football can at least console themselves with watching the local wildlife. That is what we were reduced to in the first half. Then came an encounter that was undeniably of some interest.

Now, there are always eccentrics almost everywhere and in every walk of life and even as I write this, I am incredibly aware of the possibility that this man may have been a lunatic. If indeed he was a lunatic, it would raise the rather perplexing question of why he was choosing to pretend to work for Cardiff City, but lunatics by their very nature are enigmatic and the profound inner workings of the mind of a lunatic are not the subject of this article.

In any case, our minds were moistened by alcohol, so we were prepared to believe what the chap had to say. We asked him if he was scouting any players for Cardiff, to which his replay was a fairly firm refusal to give us any information. Perhaps he thought we were scouts for a rival club; a club so confident in our abilities that they were prepared to send us to scout players while under the influence of alcohol. Such was the abject standard of football we were watching, this imaginary club probably would have been best just sending us to the pub.

Unperturbed by the cagey nature of this alleged Cardiff employee, we decided to ask if Cardiff were looking to bring back former Reading winger Jobi McAnuff, who was playing for Orient. The answer to this fairly innocuous enquiry was such a vehement, unequivocal ‘no’ that it seriously alarmed us. Our tight lipped informant was never going to tell us, but the question of why Jobi McAnuff had so comprehensively burnt all of his bridges with Cardiff City became to main subject of speculative conversation, possible reasons ranging from chatting up Lennie Lawrence’s wife to defecating on a Welsh flag.

The range of possible misdemeanours performed by Jobi McAnuff whilst at Cardiff City was

a pleasant enough conversation to distract us from what was happening on the pitch. The second half just continued in the same turgid fashion as the first until Orient scored an opener with a neat finish from Jay Simpson. From then on, even though Wycombe’s sense of urgency increased, they never really looked like getting back into the game and when they were sliced open for Calaum Johraldo-Martin to wrap up the points, it was probably no more than Orient deserved.

The final whistle remains a blurred and tear stained memory of calling out for Kevin Nolan, or ‘the chicken man!’ as Mark shouted, and not receiving any response. If he is unable to take the time to give a couple of die hard fans who’d travelled all the way to Wycombe an autograph, then heaven knows what he will be like when he is England manager.

All in all a very pleasant trip to Wycombe Wanderers, the supporters were very welcoming and there was just a friendly atmosphere everywhere. The tickets were £20 each, the top of our budget, but despite the poor first half, we all agreed we may return at the end of the project.

Wycombe next play at Adams Park against Luton Town on Saturday 6th February, if you’re looking for a friendly setting to attend your first game, this wouldn’t be a bad start. Plus, if you stand where we did, you might get on the telly…… like we did.