Southampton Take A Look At Leyton Orient

Tuesday 25th April saw the Saints playing at Brisbane Road in an exceedingly important end of season game.

Southampton were fighting to be promoted to the old First Division for the very first time in their history, and needed a point to guarentee promotion.

The O’s on the other hand were in need of a point to confirm their status as a diviion two club for another year. Neither set of fans was confident of obtaining the desired result though the large saints crowd was more so.

The game kicked off and everytime we saw leyton attack we sweated on whether they would score and help stop our dream coming true.

The ice was broken when we took the lead in the first half. Saints fans celebrated with glee as Leyto fans subsided and all looked rosy.

When Leyton scored shortly after I watched as the Leyton fans that surrounded me celebrated. Having gone into the home end with a couple of leyton fans I was not surprised by the baiting that I then received.

By half-time the game had seemingly settled down to a more evenly contested sparring session. When half-time was reached I chatted with a few of the home crowd and we all seemed to be happy with the score as it was.

When the players came out all you could here was the chant, goingup, staying up. The play dragged for a while as the two teams seemed again to be sparring. The chanting grew and soon the ground was seemingly rocking to the joyous celebrations of two sets of happy celebrating fans.

The final score was 1-1 and both sets of fans stayed behind in large numbers to celebrate. As we left the ground we were led to a local O’s pub and the party really began to rock. Drink flowed and I woke up on a strange bed surrounded by several others from the nights celebrations.

So Brisbane Road has some great memories for me and several others of my age. Since then when the two clubs have played each other the games have usually been close run things.

So how will our games go with Leyton this season?

Last season they struggled for long periods and ended up in 17th place at the end of the season, one point and a better goal difference
above the relegation zone.

Southampton having been bought out of administration just before the season began, started very poorly. With a minus 10 points start, allied to the fact that we basically began with the remnants of the previous seasons poor side, we needed a lot of games to get going.

Take away the first ten games and we would have had promotion form for the rest of the season. This with a lack of a right back was pretty good in my eyes.

This season we have the side that we finished with plus a couple of new additions to help strengthen the squad. This for me means we should win at home against the O’s and have a good chance of having a good game at Brisbane Road.

I think we will garner a minimum of 4 points from the O’s this time around with a good shout of gaining all 6.