Woking and Solihull Moors Serve Up April Fool's Day Football in Mid-April
Two sides forget to bring their shooting boots to the Laithwaite Community Stadium as Enterprise National League action produces the kind of goalless draw that makes watching paint dry seem thrilling.
If you were looking for early season thrills at the Laithwaite Community Stadium on April 16th, you'd have been better off watching the grass grow. Woking and Solihull Moors treated the faithful to a masterclass in how to spend ninety minutes without troubling either goalkeeper, serving up a goalless draw that had all the excitement of a rainy Tuesday in Slough.
The Enterprise National League fixture between these two sides promised much but delivered about as much entertainment as a broken television. Both teams seemed content to engage in what can charitably be described as 'tactical football' - though cynics might suggest it was more a case of neither side being particularly good at the attacking bit.
Woking, playing on home turf, had every advantage you could ask for: familiar surroundings, home support, and presumably the better of the pre-match catering. Yet they couldn't find a way past a Solihull Moors defence that appeared to have all the time in the world to deal with whatever the Cards could muster.
Solihull Moors, for their part, seemed equally reluctant to trouble the scoreboard operators. Their journey down from the Midlands evidently hadn't filled them with the kind of attacking verve that gets supporters off their seats. Instead, both teams appeared locked in a peculiar dance of mediocrity that would have had neutral observers checking their watches with increasing frequency.
The National League can be a cruel mistress, and fixtures like this remind you why promotion battles and relegation scraps generate so much more interest than mid-table encounters between sides with little to play for. When the stakes are low, apparently so is the quality on display.
Credit where it's due to photographer Phil Fiddes, who managed to capture what must have been a challenging assignment - finding visually interesting moments in a match that appeared designed to cure insomnia. One imagines his camera saw more action than either penalty area.
For Woking supporters who made the effort to turn up on a Thursday evening, this was the kind of result that makes you question your life choices. A point gained or two points dropped? When you've failed to register a single goal, it's hard to argue you deserved anything more than what you got.
Solihull Moors will probably be the happier of the two sides, having traveled away from home and avoided defeat. In the grand scheme of National League campaigns, sometimes that's enough. Sometimes, though, you can't help but feel football owes the paying public a little more entertainment for their investment.