I am thinking of going to see the Wings at Barnet's new ground tomorrow night as my first visit to the Hive as long as my virus has completely cleared.
This is a fixture which has many happy memories for me and for different periods of my life I have had an affinity with both clubs so tomorrow I genuinely will not know who to support.
My interest in Barnet began as a kid when I saw Jimmy Greaves play for them .I also had an anoracky interest in the Wars Of The Roses and Underhill is near the site of a crucial battle in which Warwick the Kingmaker died, so I loved the club badge. Other famous faces I saw play for them were Bob McNab ,Steve Whitworth and former Addick Marvin Hinton. The fact that one of my favourite Charlton players Colin Powell had played for them cemented them as a club I had a soft spot for although later my non league interest turned to Dartford and then Welling.
My dalliance with the Wings will be more familiar to many of the Addickted as I watched the fairytale of the Hobbins brothers take their side from the Sunday league to one step away from the Football League and hosting Cup games against the likes of Blackburn Rovers.I got to know the late Graham Hobbins who I liked a lot and I have never met anyone before or since who had as much passion for their football club.I watched the career of the likes of Steve Finnan and Andy Townsend with pride as I had seen some of their early development.
The first time I visited Underhill with Welling for a match was a classic 5-3 win for the wings on a Good Friday in the late 80's, I attended partly because Barnet had signed Mark Lawrenson the previous week and when we got there we discovered that Lawro had a mare a couple of days earlier at Runcorn and decided to retire for a second time.Despite this disappointment it was a great game of football and in those days I was very much rooting for the Wings.
In recent years I have moved north of the River and I started to go to Underhill again around 4 or 5 times a season,the Hive is too far away for a regular attendance but tomorrow I am very tempted I just don't know who to support.
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Also might be of interest - there's a bar in the away end.
That's Riscardo sorted then.
Barnet missing one of their better players Marsh-Brown so Welling may feel reasonably confident.
The club was treated abysmally by Barnet Council which granted Saracens a home in the borough despite their traditional home being in the Borough of Enfield.