In At The Deep End

Ah, your first day in a new job. My favourite was the summer job where my first task was to build my own desk. Yes, they didn't have a desk for me so had purchased a flat pack job from MFI, and my first responsibility was to assemble it. No doubt it wobbles to this day. This was a summer job - I never went back.

When QPR's youth team goalkeeper Jake Cole was sent to Conference club Farnborough on "work experience", he must have been looking forward to a taste of real action. OK his first game was away to free-scoring league leaders and all-round geezers Barnet, but hey, you want to be busy on your first day after all. I think all the reports on this game must have come from the same source because none of them explained what really happened. It's quite complicated, so I'm just going to go through it in chronological order.

6 mins : Farnborough take a shock (and spawny) lead with a deflected free kick. The small coterie of Farnborough squad players and hangers-on near me break into that "Wa-hey-hey" kind of cheer which is about 30% cheer / 70% laughter, such is their disbelief. Clearly they had a good idea what was to follow, if not quite the scale of it.

14 mins : Cole, untroubled up to this point, rolls the ball in front of him to kick upfield without realising that arch-sniffer Giuliano Grazioli is "behind you" in pantomime terms. Do you remember that goal Dion Dublin scored against Newcastle ? I thought Kenny Dalglish was going to cry. Just like that, 1-1.

21 mins : Grazioli latches onto a through-ball and lobs the helpless Cole, 2-1

34 mins : Ben "Benny" Strevens cuts in through the inside right channel and slots home, 3-1

40 mins : Grazioli, given the freedom of the 6-yard area, bangs home gleefully for 4-1. Farnborough squad player next to me shakes his head and announces that their kit man said "he wasn't dangerous". That would explain why he's only a kit man.

45 mins : Farnborough spit into the wind by making a Jose Mourinho style triple substitution at half time.

50 mins : Barnet substitiute Grazioli in a touching humanitarian gesture

61 mins : Farnborough defender decides he has had enough for one day and gets himself sent off

67 mins : Cole, who is becoming more and more over-worked, injures himself in a challenge and is stretchered off to sympathetic applause. Farnborough have used all their subs so an outfielder has to go in goal, and they now have 9 players on the pitch.

75 mins : Journeyman reserve right back Damien "Batman" Batt comes on as a substitute and scores his first goal for the club within 60 seconds.

82 mins : Striker Lee Roache shows no pity and almost apologetically nods in number 6

88 mins : Barnet launch yet another attack, which is halted by a body-check on the edge of the area. So, 6-1 down, already down to 9 men, an outfielder in goal, does the referee show any mercy ? Nope, red card.

Injury time : Dean Sinclair makes it seven and it clearly fails to occur to any of the visitors that one more sending off or injury and the game would technically have to be abandoned. Neil Warnock would have made sure it happened.

So all in all an eventful day for the young keeper, who could at least take some consolation from conceding one less than his coach Tony Roberts did for Dagenham and Redbridge at Underhill earlier in the season. It's not the greatest standard the Conference, but Barnet have scored a ton of goals this season and they've been a pleasure to watch. It beats the hell out of watching the likes of Blackburn I can tell you that for nothing.