21 POMPEY THINGS

1. It rained - all day, all night and in fact "it was raining all over the world"

2. The trip down was smooth and quick and we were in the pub before midday

3. Gazing at beautiful barmaids

4. In fact every single Portsmouth girl was beautiful. It must be all those sailors from all over the world impregnating the local female population.

5. The Wigan girls we saw were not beautiful.

6. In fact the two in front of us moved as they were "not going to sit here listening to this"

7. We didn't see any sailors but we did see the sea and there were loads of blokes and girls jogging and - worse than that - power walking.

8. They decided to carry out roadorks on the one road into the ground with a match on!

9. The beer was good

10. The crusty BLT roll was even better

11. They have put a roof on the away end at Fratton Park for this season

12. And charged us £34 for the privilege

13. The coppers and stewards were okay - two seasons ago they were all for locking us up and throing away the key - it must be cup fever

14. Not that you would know they were going to Wembley next week - no grafters knocking about or anything

15. Then again it was raining - have I mentioned the rain

16. We lost - as usual

17. But we missed a penalty and ended up with five men up front.

18. Only one of whom (Sibierski) looked like he had any chance of scoring

19. David James is still the best keeper in this country and nothing else really happened

20. Apart from Defoe got two, Harry twitched (most probably) and Marcus Bent dreamt of getting home to his Bury Bint Gemma

21. On the way home it was dark, it rained, we shouted at idiots calling up 606 on 5Live and laughed at one of our lot that is probably still hobbling around Pompey as we speak due to wearng inappropriate and brand new footwear

ps Pompey's a really good place - might even go next season. Then again...