Saturday, 9^th May 2026.

Matchday: Stevenage v Stockport County, League 1 playoff semi-final, first leg.

Up at the crack of dawn to do my duty by the dog and grab a spot of breakfast before setting off for the Fingerpost Flyer. The coach was on time for an eight thirty departure and I grabbed a window seat half way along. With phone bracket, headphones, travel pillow and supply of crisps all complete, I was set for the journey.

We called at Rugby Services, notable for having its facilities about 9,000 miles from the coach park. Some of our number got suspiciously excited at the sight of Man City Women’s coach that was parked up nearby but most of us averted our gaze.  Suitably refreshed, we carried on our journey and rolled into Stevenage with plenty of time to spare before kick-off.

DC had picked an unchanged team from the Wigan game, which netted me 11/11 for my prediction:

I wasn’t confident of the result before kick-off, I’ve seen Stevenage often enough to know that they may not be exciting but they’re very efficient at what they do. I heard during the days preceding the match that our hosts were as badly off for men as us, that Piergianni would be playing at fullback and Kemp was out injured, &c. but this turned out to be nonsense.

The first half took a predictable course; we started well without reward but Stevenage soon got into their stride, looking to make the most of their height and physicality at set pieces. Our best opportunity was a fast break down the right by Adama Sidibeh, but he overhit his pass to Louie Barry and the defence manged to catch up to snuff out the chance. The Boro came closest to a lead just before half time, when Corey Addai tipped a shot from Roberts over the bar and Piergianni headed inexplicably wide from the resulting corner.

0-0 at half time was a good outcome against a team with an impressive home record, but they’d had the better of things overall and I still wasn’t confident of the final result. Dave Challinor’s half time talk must have been a cracker because County were much improved in the second period. We still weren’t able to get Louie Barry into the game enough but with Stevenage deploying two men to stop him, other County players were able to enjoy a little more freedom. We had a fright just after the hour mark when Tayo Edun mis-controlled a ball and Kemp pounced. The Boro forward headed for goal but Edun made a tremendous recovery run and pressurised Kemp into losing his footing in the box. Hearts were in mouths while we awaited the referee’s decision but he waved play on and the moment passed. County often looked to be playing a game of “The Box Is Lava” as they did anything rather than put the ball into the danger zone. Our best chance seemed to be from a succession of free kicks and corners but good though some of them were, the score remained 0-0.

DC introduced Jack Diamond and Tanto Olaofe on seventy-five minutes to give Adama Sidibeh and Louie Barry a rest. County were on top now but there was still danger from the home team, the pest Piergianni coming close with another header on eighty minutes. As we moved into time added, DC brought Beno Andrésson on for the excellent Josh Stokes. I wondered if there was any point to this change with so few minutes to go, but what do I know? Two minutes later, with a draw looking the likely outcome, The Iceman dispossessed Piergianni and hared towards the goal. Just as he was about to shoot he fell over but, while on the deck he got a slight touch which rebounded off a watching defender.  Ben Osborn, as lively as the defenders were dozy, nipped in and toe poked the ball into the net. Cue Limbs AOTS in the County end and absolute bafflement in the rest of the ground. There was no time for anything else of any import and we had a good advantage to take to EP on Wednesday night.

The Flyer was at the back of the row of coaches outside the ground and there was a bunch of Stevenage Ultras skulking around behind it, doing their best to look menacing. The Police were wise to them though, and sent them packing before they could cause any bother.

Here for the County, you’re only here for the County….

We rattled on nicely towards the north-west and after a quick stop at Norton Canes Services, we arrived back at Lowndes Lane at ten past nine.

A good day all round.

Today’s tune is the Jolly Boys’ version of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”:

Sunday, 10^th May 2026.

Our usual driver on the Flyer has written a book about his life. Cathartic stuff by the sound of it and it must have taken a huge amount of bravery to set it all down so candidly.

TSBW’s live Match Reaction pod went live tonight to explore Saturday’s win at Stevenage. Jimmy Harmer chaired the panel of Dan Culverwell, Steve Bardsley and Dave Whitehouse.

• The team: Unchanged from Barnsley, understandably.
• The formation: As fluid as ever, difficult to tell if it was 4-2-2-2 or 4-3-3. Our shape was partly dictated by the home team’s determination to press and disrupt our preferred approach of playing out from the back.
• Individual performances:
  • Kyle Wootton: A fantastic display to limit the effectiveness of Carl Piergianni in particular.
  • Josh Stokes: Held the ball up superbly well, displaying great strength against bigger opponents. Showed his football intelligence by filling in at the back when Josh Dacres-Cogley ventured forward.
  • Louie Barry: Starved of possession for the most part, he had two markers on him as soon as he got a whiff of the ball.
  • Ben Osborn: Apart from his general play, he spotted his opportunity for the goal and took it brilliantly.
  • Beno Andrésson: He’s making a habit of short but telling cameos.
  • Ethan Pye: Another Rolls Royce of a performance.
• The opposition:
  • Saxon Earley: A walking yellow card who was hooked before he got sent off. Although it looked like he’d been cautioned even before he committed another foul and kicked the ball away, the card was actually intended for Roberts.
  • Carl Piergianni: Sky made him Man Of The Match just before he was robbed of the ball by Beno Andrésson to create the goal.
  • Alex Revell: The Stevenage manager raised echoes of Paul Lambert’s “the goal changes nothing” comment when he downplayed the significance of the goal and said they were always going to have to win at Edgeley Park.
  • How will they approach the second leg?: They aren’t going to become 1970s Brazil overnight, so they will probably try to keep us out for the first hour then try to get a goal on the break.
• Ref watch: Mr. Breakspear got the major decisions right and deserves great credit for waving play on when Kemp tried to win a penalty in the second half. He was poor when it came to enforcing where throw-ins and free kicks were taken from. He might as well have cautioned himself for delaying the restart every time there was a corner, he kept holding proceedings up to lecture players about the usual pushing and shoving that always goes on in such circumstances.
• A song for Europe Ethan Pye: It’s definitely time he had one, but what should it be? Jimmy thinks there’s an old Michael Raynes song to the A Team theme that would do the job but nobody else remembers it. Toby Culverwell has suggested some excellent words to “Rhythm Is A Dancer” but I’m afraid they may too elaborate for the Cheadle End choir.

Another cracking show, watch the recorded version here:

Today’s tune is “This Is Your Time” by The Pies:

Monday, 11^th May 2026.

This piece is interesting, it seems that the electronic advertising boards around Edgeley Park are producing a 25% increase in revenue for the club:

https://www.prolificnorth.co.uk/news/promotion-chasing-stockport-county-fc-report-25-revenue-jump-since-edgeley-park-digitisation-project

The highlights of Saturday’s match, with commentary by Jon Keighren, are here:

How’s this for a British supergroup? Today’s tune is Wilko Johnson, Roger Daltry, Norman Watt Roy, Dylan Howe, Mick Talbot and Steve Weston with one of Wilko’s own songs, “I Keep It To Myself”:

Tuesday, 12^th May 2026.

Big news from County Women today, they’ve announced the management team to take the team into the new era. From left to right below, we have Luke Beardsmore, Tash Tezgel and Steve Appleton. Tash, the new Head Coach, built herself an impressive reputation over the last two seasons at Leafield Athletic in the FAWNL Division One Midlands and the Women’s FA Cup. Luke was her assistant at Leafield, so they have plenty of experience of working together. Steve Appleton was previously manager of local rivals Cheadle Town Stingers and joins County as Head of Football. He will assist Tash in her job as Head Coach as well as overseeing recruitment and managing player development from grassroots level to the first team. His wide experience includes time as a football coach in the prison service in this country and overseas.

My team selection for tomorrow’s second leg of the playoff semi-final is the same as the last two games, I don’t see any point in changing it:

According to Sam Byrne, the ne plus ultra for County intel, it appears Simon Wilson is to become Sporting Director under the new ownership at Sheffield Wednesday. Sam is at pains to point out that the job wasn’t arranged before Wilson announced his departure.

Today’s tune might have been written with tomorrow’s match in mind; The Oysterband and June Tabor’s rendition of John Tam’s “Pain Or Paradise”:

Wednesday, 13^th May 2026.

Matchday: County v Stevenage, League 1 Playoff Semi-final Second Leg.

I approached the biggest match of the season so far with my usual trepidation; yes, we were a goal up after the first leg but Stevenage are an awkward side and their manager Alex Revell had given us the 2026 version of Paul Lambert’s “the goal changes nothing” speech. Bollocks to him, anyway.

Desperate not to get involved in the fan march, we parked up and set off for the ground even earlier than ever. If the local residents manage to get their matchday parking plan introduced for next season, this might be the last time we drive, it could be taxis from now on. It looks like the march was a great success, though:

I wasn’t keen on the pre-match music; part of the build up to any match is talking to friends in the ground, which is impossible if you can’t hear yourself think. Bringing individual players’ songs in and out for the fans to sing along worked well but on the whole, it’s a “No” from me.

Chally picked an unchanged team again, and why wouldn’t he, so it was an easy 11/11 for me on FanHub:

The Tifo was a cracking effort:

An early goal was vital if we were going to stamp our authority on things, so getting one on fourteen minutes was ideal. The referee played a vital part in the build-up by playing the advantage when Tayo Edun was clattered on the left, a neat interchange by Louie Barry and Ben Osborn left Barry running in from the left, which rarely ends well for our opponents.

The second after twenty-eight minutes was the killer. Even a confirmed pessimist like me could see that Stevenage were never going to score four unanswered goals in the remaining hour of play, so that was pretty much it. Superb work from a corner by Ollie Norwood and Odin Bailey led to a cross to Kyle Wootton, whose shot rattled into the net via Carl Piergianni’s head. It looked like the shot was heading wide before the rebound, but the goal has since been officially credited to Kyle.

The post-match celebrations were marred by the usual tiny minority who don’t know how to behave. One, who I believe has been caught, launched a two-footed tackle on the Stevenage ‘keeper and others threw smoke canisters into the Stevenage fans. Absolutely unforgiveable behaviour. Others, less seriously, nicked some of the Sky Sports branded pitch edging but I’ve heard they were relieved of it at Stockport Station later.

So, Wembley again. I’ve done every trip there apart from the one time we won, so today’s tune is “To Win Just Once” by the Saw Doctors:

Thursday, 14^th May 2026.

I was hoping the game to decide our opponents at Wembley would be worth watching, but it ended up as a couple of hours of my life wasted. It only livened up twenty minutes before the end, when Bradford realised they had to get a goal to avoid defeat on aggregate. They couldn’t manage it, and in fact Bolton got a second to put the tie out of reach. At least we won’t have to play against Sarce, Ibby Touray and Nick Powell at Wembley, which is a blessing.

It would have been a much better use of my time, as ever, to watch TSBW’s Main Show which moved from its usual Wednesday spot. It was just the three musketeers tonight, Russ, Waggie and Andy. The chat was mainly concerned with the Wednesday’s defeat of Stevenage, and it went like this:

• A new Barry song: Andy did me a favour by singing the Barry, Barry, Barry…. song, I hadn’t been able to discern the words in the ground.
• First goal wins it: The late goal on Saturday gave us a massive advantage and meant Stevenage had to be proactive, which isn’t their game. Getting another early on put the tin hat on it and County were in control throughout. We won the second balls, we had all the energy and it was arguably the best ninety-minute performance of the season. The fact that it was the first time this season we’ve played the same team in three consecutive games will have helped.
• Pre-match:
  • The fan march: It was well attended and passionate, plus it had the happy side effect of holding the Stevenage team coach up at the Greek Street roundabout.
  • The DJ: Perhaps should have finished a little earlier to allow the atmosphere to grow organically.
  • The Tifo: Worked well, a nice look back to the Go Go Go County! days of the 1960s.
• The atmosphere: The vocal support was magnificent from start to finish.
• Individual performances:
  • Louie Barry: His goal was a corker, when he cuts in from the left like that, his extra pace and accuracy make him almost impossible to stop.
  • Kyle Wootton: No less an authority than Troy Deeney has recognised the self-sacrifice Kyle has made in switching to centre half at the back end of the season. He still managed to score a belting goal, though.
  • Adama Sidibeh: He absolutely plagued their defenders, he’s like a particularly determined wasp at a picnic.
  • Corey Addai: Although Stevenage rarely broke through our defences, on the rare occasions when the got close, Corey was there to thwart them.
• Pitch invasion: It was always going to happen but it’s a shame a small minority have to make twats of themselves. Two-footing the Stevenage ‘keeper and throwing stuff at the fans in the Railway End is just beyond the pale and those responsible need dealing with properly.
• Wembley pricing: Tickets are somewhat inflated compared with those for the Vertu Trophy and the cost will be eye-watering for those with families. Perhaps those who went against Luton should get a discount for the Bolton game.
• Random Shit Of The Week: An enjoyable series of player anagrams, concocted by Waggie. I managed to get a couple right, including the one which cunningly didn’t include all the letters.

An enjoyable romp through the County week, get it here:

Today’s song is the Pogues at their rollicking best with “If I Should Fall From Grace With God”:

Friday 15^th May 2026.

Tickets went on sale for the playoff final today and fair play to the club, they had introduced a queueing system to avoid the poor old thing getting overwhelmed like it did for the Vertu Trophy final. I still maintain that any system worth its salt would allow us to choose individual seats but it’s been made clear that we aren’t getting that as a feature, so I had to adopt the strategy of selecting loads of seats and deleting the ones that didn’t suit me.

This is my view according to https://www.wembleystadium.com/

My article on the new management team at County Women and a potted history of Women’s Football in England has been published on the Co-op’s website:

https://www.countysupporterscoop.co.uk/tashtezgel

We learn from Sam Byrne that County will have new financial regulations to deal with, whichever league they’re in next season:

Quite how that will affect things I haven’t the faintest idea, but one hopes the club will have someone on top of the situation.

The club’s highlights from Wednesday are here:

Today’s tune is one for County’s accountants as they try to get their heads round the new rules: “If I Had A Million Dollars” by Barenaked Ladies:

Animo et fide.