No Six Please, We’re Boston

Welling United 6, Boston United 0
Wednesday 29 November 1989

Given that some of the worst moments of our lives have been spent at Welling’s Park Avenue ‘Ground’, our arrival there was not accompanied by unflinching optimism or exactly festooned in expectant hope. But even so, we were not expecting to see six goals rifled into our huge goal.

Indeed, had Welling been able to finish with anything approaching clinical precision, then the Arbroath/Bon Accord record would have been in danger.

The first crack in the dam appeared when Hardy, with all the time he needed to back pass to McKenna’s waiting hands available, opted to hoof the ball into the garage forecourt across the road; needless to say, Welling scored from the resulting corner, quickly followed by the Wings’ second of the evening.

At half-time Boston smoked their final cigarette before going out to be publicly executed by Welling. Numbers three and four were literally scored within the first 80 seconds of the re-start; the crack in the dam had now become a gushing flood. And with the score standing at 0-4. Kerr then substituted both forwards for the introduction of two midfielders, branding yet another match we’d made the effort to attend with his usual hallmark of unsurpassable stupidity.

Once again congratulations are in order for Welling consistently producing the worst programme in the Conference; if you think Chorley’s and Macclesfield’s are bad (and you’d be right), then you should see this one – a syndicated ghost-written Jimmy Greaves piece rejoicing in the title of ‘It’s a Funny Old Game’, a list of results and a passing reference to the visitors, all a snip at 60p. Additionally the Wings also produced their own club newspaper, creatively entitled “Wings News”. Both of these publications contain the literary merit of a shopping list; the only time that they come in useful is at Guy Fawkes.

How they can find four pictures of Pilgrims attacks from this game, when I clearly remember Boston only having two shots in the entire game (one shot if you don’t count Gallagher’s effort in the warm-up), is simply beyond me

Incredibly Welling only had one turnstile for admission. However, even this fact was eclipsed by last season’s flagrant act of turnstile stupidity – remember how all Boston’s huge travelling support at last season’s Trophy contest were meticulously escorted to the “Away Fans Only” turnstile in the pouring rain, only to gain entrance into the ground to realise that there was absolutely no segregation in operation at all.

One vital qualification of being English is that you must have at least one, or preferably two, types of weather which you thoroughly despise, thus enabling you to talk constantly in any conversation about the form of weather which you find particularly irritating. This was amply provided at Welling by the sheer coldness, and Welling’s adoption of a much more positive frame of mind on the visibly freezing pitch accounting a great deal towards their sii goal margin of victory.

Amazingly, Boston’s programme for the visit of Stafford over a month later contained four photos dedicated to the Welling game, and all four were captioned with lines such as “Stoutt races through the Welling defence” and “Buckley shoots just past the Welling goal in an attack”.

Forget Orwell’s 1984 fabrication of the truth – how they can find four pictures of Pilgrims attacks from this game, when I clearly remember Boston only having two shots in the entire game (one shot if you don’t count Gallagher’s effort in the warm-up), is simply beyond me.

Should you look at page 30 of the programme and see the aforementioned “Stoutt races through the Welling defence” caption, you will note that the players tunnel located in the background (which is positioned in front of the half-way line at Welling) clearly indicates that Steve Stoutt is well inside his own half.

On the coach journey home from the 6-0 drubbing, the players started an impromptu singing session – an odd reaction indeed to such an avoidable slaughter.


See the 1989/1990 season in full at Ken Fox’s BUFC site HERE

© Richard O Smith 1989 | This article originally appeared in From Behind Your Fences, issue 7. Reproduced with permission.

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