This Group Never Gives Up
Leyton Orient v Rotherham - League One Play Off Final 25.5.14
A quick recap for those not interested in football or not interested in Leyton Orient (ie. most people). Leyton Orient did really well this season. They won the first eight games in a row and were undefeated in nearly three months. For a while, it looked like we were dead certs for automatic promotion. But Orient being Orient, something had to go wrong. A few injuries, a few suspensions, a few silly losses to teams we really should have beaten and suddenly Brentford and Wolves had caught us up and taken those two invaluable automatic promotion spots. We found ourselves staring a third place finish and the indignity of entering the playoffs with Preston, Rotherham and Peterborough to clinch the final promotion spot, a spot that we felt was rightfully ours in the first place.
Two weeks ago we saw off Peterborough with a convincing 3-2 victory over two legs. A lot of people were very happy and there was a massive pitch invasion mainly of pensioners singing "que sera, sera". For two weeks everything has been Wembley, Wembley, Wembley. Orient fans all over Leyton have been sleepless, off their food, chewing their nails and frantically purchasing scarfs, flags and foam fingers like their lives depended on it.
As I set off for Wembley on the morning of 25th May, I felt like a celebrity. Everyone I passed in the street gave me a thumbs up or wished me good luck as if I personally were playing or in some way responsible for the outcome. I met my St John Ambulance friends at Walthamstow Central, we posed for photos, waved flags and discussed how nervous we were. It took just over two hours to get to Wembley, not because of engineering works for once, but because everyone kept stopping to sing, discuss the match with total strangers or wave their flags in the air. When we reached the Metropolitan line platform at Liverpool, it was packed to the rafters with singing Orient supporters, seemingly more than at the average Brisbane Road home game. Songs sung include:
"Que sera sera, whatever will be will be, we're going to Wem-ber-ley, que sera sera"
"We're the famous Leyton Orient and we're going to Wem-ber-ley"
"He's got no hair cut we don't care, Russell, Russell, he's got no hair but we don't care, Russell Russell Slade"
"There's only one David Mooney, one David Mooney, he used to be shite, but now he's alright"
and of course "We've got Tiny Cox, We've got Tiny Cox, We've got Tiny, we've got Tiny, We've got Tiny Cox" with additional words from Brian "But we've got big balls, but we've got big balls"...
The singing went on and on, it lasted all the way to Wembley at which point people got confused because they couldn't sing "We're going to Wemberley" any more because they were already there. The motion to go to the pub was quickly passed and Martin informed us he knew of a pub just a five minute walk away which was exclusively earmarked for Orient fans and not letting any northern riffraff in.
... fifteen minutes later we found ourself in the middle of suburbia surrounded by semi detached houses and precisely zero football fans. Since no one had stopped singing since we left Liverpool Street, we decided to ask for directions football chant style by singing the following at a random passerby: "Excuse me, where's the pub? Excuse me, excuse me, where's the pub?" The random passerby obliged and got a round of "Who the fuck are you?" in response which the rest of us hastily apologised for.
Another fifteen minutes and 50 thousand semi detached houses later, we finally heard the faint rumble of people singing "Orient Orient Orient" in the distance and knew we had finally found the mythical pub. As we walked into the garden, there was a sight for sore eyes, hundreds and hundreds of people in Orient shirts clutching overpriced pints of shit lager. Pensioners in red and white wigs, kids dressed as the Orient mascot and shirts from every season. Several pints were necked and then we sang our way to the stadium, with Brian (who is the same age as my mother) stealing a traffic cone on the way and attempting to sing through it like it was a loudspeaker.
Eventually we reached the stadium where I paid £9.90 for a shit beer and a tiny hotdog. We found our seats amongst the unmitigated chaos of balloons, flags and inflatable flamingos that were being thrown around. As the teams came on to the pitch to some Foreboding Music the air of jollilty evaporated. This was serious shit. Leyton Orient were playing at Wembley. They were playing a massive match. A massive match that they had a good chance of winning. Millions of pounds were at stake. The future of the club was quite possibly at stake. Would this be a day to remember all our lives or a day we would want to forget?
For the first half hour, I couldn't pick a winner. Not surprising, perhaps - Orient and Rotherham finished equal on points in the league with only goal difference separating them. If it had been an ordinary game my money would have been on the draw. But there are no draws in the final.
On 34 minutes, Moses Odubajo thumped a free kick from Tiny Cox goalwards with such energy that the goalkeeper barely had time to react before it was in the back of the net. We were ahead! The crowd roared, the balloons went in the air, the singing returned. And five minutes later, it got even better when Moses repaid the favour, feeding the ball back to Tiny for goal number 2. Finally, we started to believe. We were forty-five minutes away from the Championship. Surely Rotherham wouldn't overturn a two goal lead? Surely it was ours now? But yet, I couldn't quite relax. I felt sick to the stomach. This is Orient, this is the team that likes to lose due to an own goal from their star player in the 90th minute. Nothing could be that easy.
As Martin said exactly twelve times during the second half, Orient were "still in the dressing room for the first ten minutes". I guess like me, their heads were in the sky, dreaming of the promotion and the trophy and the money and a trip to Millwall next season. Rotherham didn't let them get away with it. By the time fifteen minutes had elapsed, Alex Revell had stormed in with two goals, leaving us equal. The second goal was an absolute screamer, looped in from a ludicrous distance right over poor Jamie Jones' head. I should add that Alex Revell used to play for Leyton Orient. If seeing one of your favourite Orient footballers playing for another team is like watching your ex boyfriend kiss another woman, seeing one of your favourite Orient footballers score a goal like that to equalise in the play off final at Wembley is like seeing your ex boyfriend shag your best friend, in your bed, if your best friend happens to look like Cheryl Cole. It hurts.
There then followed a very painful half hour of regular time chased by an even more painful half hour of extra time. The players looked exhausted. The Wembley pitch is bigger than those they are used to playing on, and league one footballers very rarely end up having to play extra time, so they train to give it their all for ninety minutes. They had nothing left. They were limping, asking for water, mopping their brows. Cox, Lisbie and Mooney, three of our best players, all had to be substituted, despite the looming prospect of penalties.
Penalties. I knew it was going to end in penalties from about the 70th minute. It just didn't seem that either team had the energy left to score from regular play. What is it with penalties, though? Every time I've watched a shootout, the team I have been supporting has lost. It seems like any supporter of any team will dread the shootout and tell you that their team are terrible at penalties and always lose. They can't ALL lose, can they? It just seems that way. I certainly wasn't pleased at the prospect of them, the only positive I could take was that this excruciating game would soon be over, one way or another, and that I would be able to get my heart out of my throat and stop shaking like a leaf.
The penalty shoot out went like this:
Thump! Cheer from Rotherham end.
Thump! Cheer from Orient end.
Massive cheer from Orient end. Jamie Jones has saved one. You beauty! We're ahead!
Thump! Cheer from Orient end.
Thump! Cheer from Rotherham end.
Thump! Cheer from Orient end.
Thump! Cheer from Rotherham end.
FUCK! Cheer from Rotherham end. Mathieu Baudry's penalty has been saved. It is all equal.
Thump! Cheer from Rotherham end. It's the last penalty. Chris Dagnall has to score his penalty, or it's all over.
Chris Dagnall's penalty is saved.
I put my head in my hands and burst into noisy sobs.
Somewhere in the distance the Rotherham fans are roaring, like a oncoming train about to flatten me. Their players are ecstatic, leaping on to each other like a great pile of footballing joy. The Orient players almost become invisible. Chris Dagnall hides his red face in his red shirt. Batt and Vincelot fall to the ground as if mortally wounded. Tiny Cox rejoins his teammates on the pitch, tears streaming down his little face. In the stands, no one has said a word, but I can see I am not the only one looking a bit tearful. We trudge out of the stadium shaking our heads. You can hear a pin drop. It's a long, long walk back to the tube station.
Then, as we go under the bridge, a single, breaking voice calls out "Ori, ori, ori", and slowly everyone joins in until we're nearly as loud as we were at Liverpool Street five hours ago with our hearts full of hope. "There's always next season", says someone, and then there's a discussion about statistical likelihood of the play off losers coming back to gain automatic promotion in the following season. We all agree to put this behind us and reconvene at Brisbane Road on August 6th.
That's the thing with football, you see. It tears your heart out, but it doesn't leave you. It just keeps carrying on.
A quick recap for those not interested in football or not interested in Leyton Orient (ie. most people). Leyton Orient did really well this season. They won the first eight games in a row and were undefeated in nearly three months. For a while, it looked like we were dead certs for automatic promotion. But Orient being Orient, something had to go wrong. A few injuries, a few suspensions, a few silly losses to teams we really should have beaten and suddenly Brentford and Wolves had caught us up and taken those two invaluable automatic promotion spots. We found ourselves staring a third place finish and the indignity of entering the playoffs with Preston, Rotherham and Peterborough to clinch the final promotion spot, a spot that we felt was rightfully ours in the first place.
Two weeks ago we saw off Peterborough with a convincing 3-2 victory over two legs. A lot of people were very happy and there was a massive pitch invasion mainly of pensioners singing "que sera, sera". For two weeks everything has been Wembley, Wembley, Wembley. Orient fans all over Leyton have been sleepless, off their food, chewing their nails and frantically purchasing scarfs, flags and foam fingers like their lives depended on it.
As I set off for Wembley on the morning of 25th May, I felt like a celebrity. Everyone I passed in the street gave me a thumbs up or wished me good luck as if I personally were playing or in some way responsible for the outcome. I met my St John Ambulance friends at Walthamstow Central, we posed for photos, waved flags and discussed how nervous we were. It took just over two hours to get to Wembley, not because of engineering works for once, but because everyone kept stopping to sing, discuss the match with total strangers or wave their flags in the air. When we reached the Metropolitan line platform at Liverpool, it was packed to the rafters with singing Orient supporters, seemingly more than at the average Brisbane Road home game. Songs sung include:
"Que sera sera, whatever will be will be, we're going to Wem-ber-ley, que sera sera"
"We're the famous Leyton Orient and we're going to Wem-ber-ley"
"He's got no hair cut we don't care, Russell, Russell, he's got no hair but we don't care, Russell Russell Slade"
"There's only one David Mooney, one David Mooney, he used to be shite, but now he's alright"
and of course "We've got Tiny Cox, We've got Tiny Cox, We've got Tiny, we've got Tiny, We've got Tiny Cox" with additional words from Brian "But we've got big balls, but we've got big balls"...
The singing went on and on, it lasted all the way to Wembley at which point people got confused because they couldn't sing "We're going to Wemberley" any more because they were already there. The motion to go to the pub was quickly passed and Martin informed us he knew of a pub just a five minute walk away which was exclusively earmarked for Orient fans and not letting any northern riffraff in.
... fifteen minutes later we found ourself in the middle of suburbia surrounded by semi detached houses and precisely zero football fans. Since no one had stopped singing since we left Liverpool Street, we decided to ask for directions football chant style by singing the following at a random passerby: "Excuse me, where's the pub? Excuse me, excuse me, where's the pub?" The random passerby obliged and got a round of "Who the fuck are you?" in response which the rest of us hastily apologised for.
Another fifteen minutes and 50 thousand semi detached houses later, we finally heard the faint rumble of people singing "Orient Orient Orient" in the distance and knew we had finally found the mythical pub. As we walked into the garden, there was a sight for sore eyes, hundreds and hundreds of people in Orient shirts clutching overpriced pints of shit lager. Pensioners in red and white wigs, kids dressed as the Orient mascot and shirts from every season. Several pints were necked and then we sang our way to the stadium, with Brian (who is the same age as my mother) stealing a traffic cone on the way and attempting to sing through it like it was a loudspeaker.
Eventually we reached the stadium where I paid £9.90 for a shit beer and a tiny hotdog. We found our seats amongst the unmitigated chaos of balloons, flags and inflatable flamingos that were being thrown around. As the teams came on to the pitch to some Foreboding Music the air of jollilty evaporated. This was serious shit. Leyton Orient were playing at Wembley. They were playing a massive match. A massive match that they had a good chance of winning. Millions of pounds were at stake. The future of the club was quite possibly at stake. Would this be a day to remember all our lives or a day we would want to forget?
For the first half hour, I couldn't pick a winner. Not surprising, perhaps - Orient and Rotherham finished equal on points in the league with only goal difference separating them. If it had been an ordinary game my money would have been on the draw. But there are no draws in the final.
On 34 minutes, Moses Odubajo thumped a free kick from Tiny Cox goalwards with such energy that the goalkeeper barely had time to react before it was in the back of the net. We were ahead! The crowd roared, the balloons went in the air, the singing returned. And five minutes later, it got even better when Moses repaid the favour, feeding the ball back to Tiny for goal number 2. Finally, we started to believe. We were forty-five minutes away from the Championship. Surely Rotherham wouldn't overturn a two goal lead? Surely it was ours now? But yet, I couldn't quite relax. I felt sick to the stomach. This is Orient, this is the team that likes to lose due to an own goal from their star player in the 90th minute. Nothing could be that easy.
As Martin said exactly twelve times during the second half, Orient were "still in the dressing room for the first ten minutes". I guess like me, their heads were in the sky, dreaming of the promotion and the trophy and the money and a trip to Millwall next season. Rotherham didn't let them get away with it. By the time fifteen minutes had elapsed, Alex Revell had stormed in with two goals, leaving us equal. The second goal was an absolute screamer, looped in from a ludicrous distance right over poor Jamie Jones' head. I should add that Alex Revell used to play for Leyton Orient. If seeing one of your favourite Orient footballers playing for another team is like watching your ex boyfriend kiss another woman, seeing one of your favourite Orient footballers score a goal like that to equalise in the play off final at Wembley is like seeing your ex boyfriend shag your best friend, in your bed, if your best friend happens to look like Cheryl Cole. It hurts.
There then followed a very painful half hour of regular time chased by an even more painful half hour of extra time. The players looked exhausted. The Wembley pitch is bigger than those they are used to playing on, and league one footballers very rarely end up having to play extra time, so they train to give it their all for ninety minutes. They had nothing left. They were limping, asking for water, mopping their brows. Cox, Lisbie and Mooney, three of our best players, all had to be substituted, despite the looming prospect of penalties.
Penalties. I knew it was going to end in penalties from about the 70th minute. It just didn't seem that either team had the energy left to score from regular play. What is it with penalties, though? Every time I've watched a shootout, the team I have been supporting has lost. It seems like any supporter of any team will dread the shootout and tell you that their team are terrible at penalties and always lose. They can't ALL lose, can they? It just seems that way. I certainly wasn't pleased at the prospect of them, the only positive I could take was that this excruciating game would soon be over, one way or another, and that I would be able to get my heart out of my throat and stop shaking like a leaf.
The penalty shoot out went like this:
Thump! Cheer from Rotherham end.
Thump! Cheer from Orient end.
Massive cheer from Orient end. Jamie Jones has saved one. You beauty! We're ahead!
Thump! Cheer from Orient end.
Thump! Cheer from Rotherham end.
Thump! Cheer from Orient end.
Thump! Cheer from Rotherham end.
FUCK! Cheer from Rotherham end. Mathieu Baudry's penalty has been saved. It is all equal.
Thump! Cheer from Rotherham end. It's the last penalty. Chris Dagnall has to score his penalty, or it's all over.
Chris Dagnall's penalty is saved.
I put my head in my hands and burst into noisy sobs.
Somewhere in the distance the Rotherham fans are roaring, like a oncoming train about to flatten me. Their players are ecstatic, leaping on to each other like a great pile of footballing joy. The Orient players almost become invisible. Chris Dagnall hides his red face in his red shirt. Batt and Vincelot fall to the ground as if mortally wounded. Tiny Cox rejoins his teammates on the pitch, tears streaming down his little face. In the stands, no one has said a word, but I can see I am not the only one looking a bit tearful. We trudge out of the stadium shaking our heads. You can hear a pin drop. It's a long, long walk back to the tube station.
Then, as we go under the bridge, a single, breaking voice calls out "Ori, ori, ori", and slowly everyone joins in until we're nearly as loud as we were at Liverpool Street five hours ago with our hearts full of hope. "There's always next season", says someone, and then there's a discussion about statistical likelihood of the play off losers coming back to gain automatic promotion in the following season. We all agree to put this behind us and reconvene at Brisbane Road on August 6th.
That's the thing with football, you see. It tears your heart out, but it doesn't leave you. It just keeps carrying on.