The dodgy penalty in injury time against Fleetwood in round one earned us a second round tie at Swansea, probably one of the furthest stadiums from Rotherham you can get. Because they are doing so well we expected nothing from the game, especially as Steve Evans had made a host of changes in order to rest some of the players. The fans favourites Ben Pringle and Alex Revell were both in the starting lineup however. Due to the distance and work there was no way we would be travelling, so once again we watched the Sky rolling results service. On evenings when the games don't matter much Geoff is given the night off and the anchor is a young man called Julian Warren. The expert summarisers are also the reserves, with not as much personality as the usual four. Despite Swansea being in second place in the premier league our game still did not rate a summariser of our own, just a person to let us know when a goal is scored or anything else exciting happened, who happened to be Kevin Watson, an ex player of ours.
The first exciting thing that Kevin had to tell us was that the match was delayed for 'Box Office reasons'. 'What does that mean, Kevin?' Asked young Julian. 'So many people have unexpectedly turned up without tickets that they ran out, and the queue stretched around the block while they waited for more.' Kevin told us. That's the pulling power of Rotherham United.
A few minutes later and Julian asked 'Kevin, have the Swansea fans got the goal they wanted?' 'Yes they have' said Kevin. Bafetimbi Gomeis had scored for Swansea after a sustained period of pressure.
Over an hour and no goals later Julian crossed once more to the Liberty stadium. 'Are Rotherham pressing Kevin?'. 'No.' Was Kevin's succinct reply.
90 seconds after that the final score scrolled across the screen. Swansea 1 Rotherham 0.
So our great cup adventure that had taken in Fleetwood and Swansea was at an end. No chance now of a glamour tie against Manchester United in the next round, not least because they had been beaten 4-0 by MK Dons! Thank god we didn't manage to make the long trip to Swansea.
Man of the match - Kevin Watson. It was him or Julian and Julian is lacking in personality.
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