All Things Stockport County

County kept up the good work with a narrow but really quite comfortable win against Darlington today at Blackwell Meadows.   The score line of 1-0 hints at a muck and nettles encounter in which nerves were shredded, but it was not so. Apart from the last 5 minutes when Darlo threw everything at James Gannon`s men in a vain attempt to salvage the match County held sway throughout- defence superbly marshalled by captain Palmer, and forwards constantly fuelled from an almost ceaseless supply line from Darren Stephenson who was a contender for M.O.M. Stephenson - a threat ! Another contender being Sam Walker who was on top of almost everything   all afternoon, whilst wide men Sam Minihan and Scott Duxbury along with   the goal hungry Nyal Bell gave the home side no rest at all. Bell- he`ll score in a minute !  Having run through a fare old list of M.O.M contenders I now dib out and opt instead to say the team deserve maximum cred

I Like An Early Start Met Stafford, my travelling companion for this trip, at the Station, Thursday 10:15. Having Stafford along can be very useful on a number of counts, not least as this necessitates a more leisurely pace, particularly on the drinking front. The train is packed, but no worries, as we have seats booked. But………. the door we need to get through is inaccessible due to a plethora of large cases, so we head towards the next door. As we do so, the Train Manager calls out for us to wait. He arranges seats for us in First Class. Told you Stafford would come in handy. So we settle into our over-wide seats and enjoy free coffee and pastries. We’re on our way. We arrive at Doncaster to discover that our train to Newcastle has been cancelled, which means an extra 9 minutes boozing in the Draughtsman Alehouse on Platform 3B (literally). The journey to Doncaster takes just over an hour, so we’re enjoying our first pre-match beer, the rather