CONTRASTING FORTUNES...

This is a picture of Southampton Town Quay, where I parked yesterday for my first visit to St. Mary`s Stadium this season. It`s a pleasant place to be with views across the expanse of Southampton Water and all the maritime activity that goes on there. Yesterday was especially busy with the annual Boat Show in full swing, but also there were lots of comings and goings from the passenger terminal and the container port at Millbrook - the cruise liner Oceana left on its way to some exotic location and also the Grimaldi and Hapag Lloyd containers with more mundane destinations in mind. It all makes for a relaxing time after the long journey from home and before the walk to the Stadium.

Our Third Division encounter with the Glovers of Yeovil Town saw Saints get their first win of the season and so, after five draws and two defeats, the win means that we are now `only` minus two points rather than the minus ten we started the season with. Saints won 2-0 yesterday, courtesy of two penalties awarded by a very observant set of officials. The first was a definite, the second for a more debateable hand ball. Some you get, some you don`t, but the three points were well deserved. I sat for the first time in the posh bit - the rarified Block 8 - and was surprised to see a few well known faces not far away. Ex-manager Gordon Strachan and ex-Liverpool and England player Steve MaManaman, along with Saints` new owner, Markus Liebherr. I wondered why the first two named were there at all and then I realised that, possibly like me, they wanted to just enjoy a football match where the expectations were low, the quality undemanding but the atmosphere most convivial. If so, then again like me, they went home satisfied, for all of those ingredients were there in abundance.

And then today, there was the Manchester Derby between mega-rich Manchester City and our old friends Manchester United. As is required by the Laws of the Premiership, after 90 allegedly pulsating minutes and the score 3-3, the announced four minutes of added time were extended to six or seven so that Manchester United could score again and win the game. It defies belief but surprises no-one, such is the farce, the circus, the madhouse that the Premiership has become - at least in Manchester.

Just five short years ago, round about this time, Saints beat Manchester United 1-0 at St. Mary`s with a late header by James Beattie to propell us into fourth place in the Premiership. Now we reside at the bottom of the third tier - about 66 places lower than we were on that glorious day - while the best we can hope for this season is achieving mid-table obscurity. It doesn`t really matter, for one thing my terrible golf has taught me is that, however hard I try and however much I might improve, I`m never going to be Tiger Woods. And the Saints are never going to be Manchester United. So I`ll just continue my visits to Town Quay, enjoy the view, watch the ships come and go and enjoy the undemanding conviviality of being a Saints fan, that the absence of expectation has comfortingly produced.