Well that was an interesting weekend of football! So much to talk about so please do bear with me, I'll break this down into sections.

My Own Saturday

Thankfully this Saturday I was spared that gut-wrenching feeling of waking up to the news that the game was off, because Weymouth's trip to second placed Hemel Hempstead Town had been postponed on Friday morning with the pitch a good few feet under snow! For once the Southern League saw sense in allowing the game to be called off early. For some reason they dont usually allow clubs to call matches off until the day of the game, which causes everyone disruption when its clear for all to see that the match wont be on.

So for me and my mate it was down to the ground still to watch the ever improving Weymouth Reserves play Wareham Rangers in the Dorset Premier League. The team line-up was interesting, with an outside goalkeeper coming in as an emergency replacment as the other two keepers who were both suspended, and three first team players lining up with defenders Ben Doidge and Ashley Wells (for me, our standout player this season), while seasoned striker Matt Groves reverted to a midfield role. Old Groover seemed more interested in shouting at the poor youngsters though than having an impact on proceedings himself.

Wareham took the lead roughly ten minutes before the break via a freak goal. A corner came in and there was a scramble which resulted in the keeper having his hands on the ball. Play seemed to stop for a minute, and the keeper let go of the ball. So a Wareham striker tapped the ball into the net and everyone got set for the restart. Took us spectators a few moments to work out weather the goal had been given or not, quite what was happening with our keeper I dont understand.

Second half our lads came out and played with a lot more intensity which had been missing through the first half, although that might be understandable given that this was their first game in over a month! Highly rated among us fans, Sean Zima took on and beat a couple of defenders before prodding the ball home to make it 1-1 around the hour mark. Then within 5 minutes the turnaround was complete when Ashley Wells (what he was doing so far forwards god only knows!) stole the ball from the Wareham left back, ran at the keeper and at the second attempt - slotted home to give the Weymouth Reserves the lead.

The rest of the game was a scrappy affair with the refferee and his two officials taking centre stage. One linesman had absolutely no understanding whatsoever of the offiside rule. How can our man be offside if he's had to beat the defender who had a head start of a few yards to reach the ball??

Then the ref suddenly discovered a mysterious yellow card in his pocket! He loved it so much he decided to show it to 5 players in as many minutes. Still, I suppose there's a reason these lot are refereeing at this level..

Full Time: Weymouth Reserves 2-1 Wareham Rangers. 3 points lift the Ressies up to 9th in the DPL, although for us the table isn't important. What's important is helping these players develop and feed them into the first-team. And it must be said there's some great young talant in the reserves side which bodes well for the future of our club. All good news after years of turmoil, but maybe I'll tell you that long story another day.

Notts County

With the Reserves game having been a 2pm kick off, on my way home I checked our score which was 0-0. Was very sad to hear of Bialkowski's injury though. I think I speak for all Notts County fans when I say that he's proved a lot of people wrong so far this season. When his signing was announced in the summer, a large section of supporters dismissed Bart as "****" on one youtube clip from his now infamous appearance for Southampton against Blackpool last season in which he had an absolute stinker.

But everyone has bad days and I was all for giving the guy a chance.

He's since proved himself to be argubly one of the best keepers we've had at Meadow Lane in many years, producing a string of fine performances that have earned us plenty of points so far this season. His heroic stand against Swindon Town at Meadow Lane in November was probably the easist Man of The Match award to be given at Meadow Lane for years!

Fabien Speiss came on to replace Bart and quickly set about showing us just why he's been watched by some of the top premiership clubs.

A string of fine saves, and some very good kicking lead to him being unanimously named as Notts' MOTM for the afternoon. He's got a bright future ahead of him, what a great young prospect he is. It proves that Bart certainly has some competition - can 'Polands number one' keep his place?

With regards to the result, it was bitterly dissapointing to lose, but the incredible away run off 22 games without defeat under Keith Curle had to end sooner or later. We'll just have to start a new one now!

What dissapointed me more than the result though was the reaction of some of our fans. If your reading this, you may have read my rant on one of the forum threads on Saturday evening, so I wont go into it all again, but the point I'd like to make is that yes - it's always dissapointing to lose a game, but I really do think some of our fans expect too much. It's as if the fact we're not loaded like we thought we were hasn't sunk in with some and they expect us to carry on sacking managers whenever we hit a bad patch of form and sign 30 goal-a-season strikers. We cant do that. How people can be calling for Curle's head is beyond me. I'll be the first to admit I was completely mystified at his appointment but he's certainly proved me wrong and I for one am fully supportive of the guy.

At the end of the day, we dont have a divine right to win anything. What do we do if we sack Curle? Who could be realistically afford to bring in? Who in their right mind would want the hottest seat in football?

And if we found someone who we could afford and was mad enough to take the job on what would happen? We'd enjoy the honeymoon period, then sack him once we hit some bad form and start the cycle all over again.

We're not a rich club. We need stability. Jimmy Sirrel didnt achieve success constantly during his time at Meadow Lane, but we stuck by him and look what he did for our club.

Brian Clough took over at Derby, and actually took them to a finish of one place lower in his first full season, but they stood by their man and the rest is history. It's a shame there's no patience in football anymore, with everyone demanding instant success.

FA Cup

A rather sore subject still after our exit to Rotherham, but I still want to mention this weekends Cup action. Anyone who feels that the FA Cup has lost its magic need look no further than this weekend's action. Millwall, Leeds United and Oldham Athletic all beat Premiership opposition as did Luton Town. The Hatters have had a well documented tirbulant few years, and they deserve more coverage for their win at Norwich than they got. It was the first time EVER that a Premiership club had been knocked out by a non-league side. The last top division side to fall to non-league opposition was Coventry City at Sutton in 1989.

Their reward - a home tie with Millall. That could be carnage!

Also, Brentford managed to hold the European Champions Chelsea to a 2-2 draw at Grifiin Park, and they get another crack at Stamford Bridge. The winner of that tie goes to middlesbrough in round 5.

Next Game

Well the Magpies next game should be away to Portsmouth tommorow night, but I'd be surprised if its on with the forecast being for torrential rain in Portsmouth all day tommorow. I pray they have an inspection and call it off nice an early (it seems likely to be the case). If I have to get there to find its been called off again someone somewhere at the Football League or FA or whoever it is that sorts match officials out will be recieving a strongly worded letter!

IF, however the game goes ahead, its simply a must win game for Notts. The next two away games are Portsmouth then Hartlepool, so anything less than 6 points would be pretty bad. I kind of feel sorry for the players in that they're basically in a no win situation this week. They're expected to win both games, but if we dont, "the usual suspects will be out to complain" in the words of Captain Neal Bishop. He's not wrong, always the same people.

As ever I'm confident we can get the win and get our play-off push back on track. Fingers crossed tommorow night's game at Fratton Park is on, but I'm not feeling too optomistic about that.

If you've somehow managed to keep yourself awake to read through this whole blog i salute you!

COYP