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Vic Morgan: FA Cup Round Two, Swindon's Shopping Weekend
Life-long Robin Vic Morgan writes for Total Sport every Tuesday. This week Morgan recaps the highs of Chesterfield, and looks to how the Town faithful can spend their weekend off, as round two of the FA Cup approaches.
Take two Saturdays and compare and contrast. Sometimes in life you get completely different emotions.
That's certainly the case over the past couple of weekends.
This time last week I was writing about the shambles of Fleetwood, the only way to describe the events on the Fylde Coast.
This week? Well, the win at Chesterfield was excellent. It was reminiscent of our trip to the same ground last season. Totally dominant and full of slick football played in an attacking style. It was great to watch.
Defensively Swindon were superb. Stand in skipper Adam El-Abd was solid as a rock and players like Bradley Barry came in to their own. Allied to that another superb display from Louis Thompson and it felt like Swindon were up and running again.
Let's face it that's been a while since that happened and maybe the Fleetwood result was needed to provide the proverbial kick in the padded area. Of course the result at Chesterfield cost Spireites manager Dean Saunders his job.
Four defeats on the bounce and a pretty awful display against the Town saw the former Liverpool and Villa man leave his post. It was certainly obvious from the reaction of the home crowd that they weren't happy. From a Swindon perspective though it was marvellous.
Three hundred Town fans in good voice and good humour. Sometimes days like that remind you why you love this game. After a torrid few weeks a great win takes the gloom away and you can't wait for the next game. Of course we have to wait nearly a fortnight.
The annual Swindon Town fans Christmas shopping day, otherwise known as the second round of the FA Cup, takes place this weekend. It's a bit of a tradition now, isn't it? The day you can almost certainly put in your diary as a natural break in the season.
What to do with a free Saturday in December? Well there is the obvious trip to the shops to get ahead of the festive frenzy. Or do what most football fans do and settle down in front of the telly and watch something like 'Soccer Saturday'.
A rare chance to watch a programme that hooks you from the start. Long gone are the days of the old telly printer on 'Grandstand'. You remember the sound as the score lines came through on dark winter evenings?
The odd occasion when the word SEVEN would appear next to the number just to underline a teams humiliation. A far cry from these days of instant information. You had to wait till about 4:45 to see how your favourites had done.
Then there was the hope that when the classifieds were read out any defeat would be put right. They would admit that a mistake had been made and you'd actually won.
Sadly that never seemed to happen. A week of relaxation then. Happy shopping.
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