Ben Barrett (Page 106)

Did you know that Football’s fixture computers are all Weymouth fans?

Ok, well maybe not, but I’ve had a couple of minutes spare this summer, so have spent a bit of time crunching some numbers around the ‘Big Three’ dates in the football schedule and they don’t look great from a Glovers point of view.

I took the last 24 seasons, from the 1999/20 campaign and worked out if we were Home or Away on the opening day, the final day and on Boxing Day and how those fixtures faired for us.

Let’s start at the start, it seems only logical.

In 1999, the Glovers were away from home on the opening day, and lost 5-0 away at Scarborough… rubbish.

The fixture computer then gave us three home games in a row over the next three seasons, and whilst one of them wasn’t actually at Huish Park, but down the road at Dorchester as we did a little bit of ground sharing, we at least got to show off all our new shiny players to the fans first thing.

Then, just as we reached the promised land of the EFL, things turned sour, we all remember the magical opening away day at Rochdale in 2003, a wonderful scene as Kevin Gall announced to the world the Glovers were playing with the big boys now and weren’t going to be taken lightly,

But that match represented the first of FIVE consecutive opening day away games, and we didn’t win any of those subsequent four.

In fact, the next opening day win wouldn’t come until 2009 with a home win over Tranmere with the likes of Alex McCarthy, Steven Caulker and Ryan Mason in the side.

There’s no getting around it, our opening day form has been pretty naff, of the last 24 seasons, we’ve won six, drawn five and lost 13 games to raise the curtain on a league season.

What’s more, our last win on the opening day was way back in the 2016/17 season, when Otis Khan and Kevin Dawson scored against Notts County in a 2-0 win.

Since then, we’ve earned just one point on the opening day, that silly 2-2 draw vs King’s Lynn on the telly.

Right enough about the opening day, let’s move onto Boxing Day., that’ll be better, right?

Well, not really. Firstly, I only have 22 games to work from here as 2021/22 and 2010/11 saw the traditional Boxing Day game postponed… something about too many pigs in blankets or something.

But again, we’ve been Away far more times that Home the day after Old St Nick comes to town, 13 out of 22 occasions have seen us on the road.

Who can forget our 6-2 drubbing of Torquay in 2019/20? Well, that’s about as good as has got of late. The Gulls repaid the favour a year later (6-1) and rubbed salt into the wounds 12 months further down the line (3-0).

13 Losses from the last 22 Boxing Day games in total, just the five wins in there too.

Let’s fast forward to the final day, this has to be better, right?

Oh, for… sake, 24 games, 14 away! Who keeps scheduling us to make horrible trips to the likes of Nottingham Forest, Colchester… CARLISLE?

Three of the last four have been away from home too, now in fairness, I’ve counted the Dover game in the shortened season in 2019/20 here as a ‘final day away game’… but a quick look at where we were meant to end that season gives us… Notts County. AWAY. Of course.

So out of the last 70 “Key Dates” we’ve been at home on just 29 occasions and away on a whopping 41 occasions.

In fact, on no fewer than four different occasions, we were away on all three ‘Biggies’ 99/00, 06/07, 17/18 and last season where we got the joy of losing to Scunthorpe first, Boreham Wood last and got a point against fellow strugglers Torquay on Boxing Day.

Only once have we been at home on all three big dates, 2008/09 – but we didn’t win any of them either.

So what about this coming season, the fixtures will be out soon and obviously there’s a lot more local derbies, (oh to have the chance of getting Oldham away on the opening day…)  but there’s still the question of who do we get paired with on Boxing Day.

It’s usually been fairly obvious – Torquay have filled that spot. But with Truro coming into the league (playing in Plymouth) you’d think they’d get the back to back games against one another.

Bath and Chippenham are quite close, Weston Super-Mare and Taunton are both North and West of us and seem easy to pair off… which leaves us with… Our Fixture Computer Supporting Friends down on the South Coast.

So when those all important dates hit our diary, don’t expect us to have dates at Huish Park scheduled first, last or on Boxing Day.

Who do you think our three key games will be against?

I’m going for Tonbridge away on the first day, Dover away on the last… and a Christmas trip to the Bobby Lucas!