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Thursday 3 February 2011

Luton By Night

After the postponement last Saturday, the thought of seeing a game was quite exciting even if it did mean an evening trip to Luton.

I was offered a lift by Howard - he being retired now and having time on his hands - and so I left work early so he could pick me up at Bromley-by-Bow tube.

I always find travelling by car much more frustrating than the train as it just seems so slow and seems to eat into drinking time but I was grateful for the lift. But just getting to the M1 turn-off on the M25 was bad enough.

And then trying to find somewhere to park was frustrating as it seems that every street around the ground requires a residents permit.

(left) Liam Hatch battles

After driving around for what seemed like ages but was probably only ten minutes we found ourselves in the vicinity of the railway station and decided to use their car park. It cost £4 but it had the distinct advantage of being just a few hundred yards from the Bricklayers Arms.

We've been coming here as long as we've been visiting Kenilworth Road as it is still the best pub in town with only the nearby English Rose offering any real competition.

John Wilson was at the bar awaiting our arrival as we walked through the door - we DAFTS are obviously finely-tuned to each other - and we had a decent choice of beers: Crystal Rock Harvest Pale and Black Gold, Oakham Tera plus one from Hadrian and Border.

The pub is a meeting point for many Luton fans but it didn't get too busy tonight - certainly not as busy the last time I was here - but we didn't see any other Darlo fans that we knew.

We set off for the ground in good time as I needed to pick up my photographers pass. Due to the limited room round the edge of the pitch I was given the choice of sitting in front of the main stand and the mass ranks of Hatters fans or stand in part of the away end that wasn't being used by the Darlo faithful.

I opted for the away end as I didn't want to have the Luton fans behind me - plus this meant I would be closer to the toilets with fewer people queuing.

In the first-half Luton were kicking towards the away fans and it didn't take that long before they started to put our defence under serious pressure. They had a succession of corners and they went close with a lot of headers but luckily for Darlo their finishing was woeful.

One header came whizzing past me - I calmly watched it sail past and then got thumped on the back of the head as it came back off the first row of seats. Sad to say this only brought a small cheer.

Darlo didn't offer much at the other end and it was hard going for the 77 paying Darlo fans - like me, I'm sure they were all pleased to see us get to half-time without conceding. Hopefully Mark Cooper would get them sorted during the break.

(right) Debutant John Campbell with Luton keeper Tyler

And so it seemed as the second half started brightly for the Quakers with more joined-up play and some penetration into the Luton box with Hatch battling hard.

Debutant striker John Campbell made a positive debut, always looking to make space for himself and get on the ball but he was just off the pace.

Luton started to gain the upper-hand again and with twenty minutes to go, they took the lead when Gnakpa shot past Sam Russell from just inside the box after getting away from Quinn far too easily.

This spurred Luton on and they wasted a couple of good chances before Owusu found plenty of space to fire past Russell. The same striker scored his second a few minutes later with a header.

The misery was complete when Luton scored a fourth in added time and the game just couldn't finish soon enough.

This was a poor performance all round with the debut of Campbell the one and only encouragement that we could take from the game.

We trudged back to the railway station where John managed to catch a fast train to Luton with seconds to spare whilst Howard was kind enough to drive me back home.

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