Our win last Thursday brought an end to a 12-match winless streak, which included 6 successive defeats. But I wasn't surprised, because I've seen this before...
We have played Tonbridge-based opposition 4 times, and have won all 4 matches, mostly by a handsome margin. But we've never won our next match. And three times out of four, we have gone on a winless streak - on one occasion, an unwanted record bad run.
On 24 February 2008, the Accies travelled to Tunbridge Wells to play Dads Army, an 11-a-side team cobbled together from a group of Tonbridge dads who played 5-a-side once a month. My 37th birthday two days earlier and the opportunity to watch the Spurs vs Chelsea League Cup Final after the match were the nominal reasons for the away day. Effra duly thrashed the Dads 9-0, but it wasn't until 11 September 2008 that we next tasted victory. We suffered 8 defeats, then 2 draws, then a club record TEN defeats in a row after that 9-0 win. A club record 20 games without a win in total.
Dads Army effectively became Longmead Tuesday, with the Tonbridge side now an amalgamation of a group of weekly 5-a-side players. Longmead Tuesday have actually won an 11-a-side match at CPNSC - they beat Southside 1-0 in either 2009 or 2010. But their first game against Effra in London resulted in our biggest ever victory margin: 13-1. Naturally, the Accies lost our next game. Albeit on this occasion the curse only lasted one match: we won our next 4 games. So the Tonbridge curse had an off-year by its usual standards.
Last year we beat Longmead Tuesday 3-2 in a thrilling encounter and the curse re-established itself: we lost our next 4 games in a row. And this year, as stated above, the curse once again took a depressing stranglehold. Fortunately we played a blinder against Grafton Strollers last week to banish the curse... Until the next time?
