It's my day off now, so I can bore everyone by wittering on at more length.
This game got me back into football. I'd been falling out of love with it. It had been a few years since I'd been to a Southend game. I'd pretty much stopped watching games on the telly. I'd occasionally watch the repeat of Match of the Day on Sunday morning if it was on and I was having a Sunday morning cuppa. But I'd stopped seeking football out to watch.
Despite that, I still kept an eye on Southend's results and how they were doing. They're still my team. It was more or less on a whim that I bought a ticket. It's be a good day out and there aren't many chances to see Southend play at Wembley.
The journey to and from the game was fun. I live in London. Something I've always liked about going to football games is how you start off on your own and as you get closer to the game, you start seeing more and more fans. At first just one or two Shrimpers, then a trickle, then a flood. It builds the anticipation and the sense of being part of a community in a really quite lovely way.
We did have one quite surreal moment on the way, when a bunch of Shrimpers were sharing a tube train with people in costumes on their way to a comics convention - so one side of the carriage was all football colours, and one the other were Spider-Man, and Harley Quinn and the Joker.
The game itself? It was everything I'd forgotten I loved about football. Yeah, sitting on your sofa at home and watching with a nice cuppa or a beer is good. But being out in whatever the weather is, having the buzz and the emotion of the crowd all around you, yelling your team where they can actually hear you?
It's brilliant, isn't it? Especially when they get THAT goal and everyone goes wild with relief and ecstasy. Moments like that and Turner's winner against Scunthorpe are what make every dull 0-0, every cancelled train, every minute spent in the cold waiting for a game to start, every penny worth it.
And THAT goal. The eternity it seemed to take for the ball to actually go in. That moment of stunned disbelief when thousands of us can't quite believe it really just happened and that it's not all over. Much hugging, incoherent screaming, the biggest "YES!" I ever heard.
Hell yeah, I cried. Partly because of the relief and joy. Partly because I missed my Dad so much that day. It had been more than 10 years since he died but I'm a Southend fan because he took me to games when I was a kid. He would have been there. And I know him, he would have been grumbling away that we should leave and beat the rush. But he would have been too obstinate to because he paid to see the whole game. I get that habit from him.
The journey home was fantastic. Cloud 9. And like the opposite of going to the game. Every station, every change of train saw a few more people go their own way. Until on the final part of the journey home, there were no more Shrimpers. Just me replaying THAT goal over and over in my head.
There was one Wycombe fan sitting opposite me on that last train all the way to the station where I live, at the end of the line. He must have been cursing inside that he couldn't get away from Southend. We gave each other a "football, eh?" look and I gave him a pat on the shoulder when we were leaving the train. Poor devil, he must have felt as bad as I felt good.
I've been a season ticket holder again for the last three seasons. Like I say, it made me fall in love with football again. I still find I have a little sniffle just before the first game of each season. It gets me right in the heart. Seeing more and more Shrimpers on the way to the game. The walk up from the station. The first sight of Roots Hall. The excitement building that maybe it will be this season. The first outbreak of singing. Catching up with the people who sit next to you. That moment when you catch sight of the team for the first time.
I love it. I fell back in love with it that day, long before THAT goal went in.