My Little Adventure with Wigan vs Wycombe
So, this Wigan vs Wycombe match was on the cards. Wasn’t exactly a title decider or anything, but I had a specific “practice” in mind for it. My goal for the day was to try something different than just plonking myself on the sofa. I wanted to actually try and predict the flow of the game, minute by minute, based on some old notes and gut feeling. A bit of a personal challenge, you see.
I got my notepad out, drew up a little timeline. Figured I’d jot down when I thought key events would happen – first corner, first card, maybe even the timing of goals if I was feeling bold. The idea was to see how good my intuition was, my own little system. I settled in, game kicked off, and I started scribbling. First ten minutes, pretty quiet, matched my initial thoughts. “Not bad,” I thought to myself.
Then, about fifteen minutes in, my internet just dies. Completely. Router lights blinking like a Christmas tree gone mad. No TV picture, no updates, nothing. My whole “practice” session, trying to track the game live against my predictions, just went up in smoke. Tried rebooting the router, checked the cables, the usual dance. Nothing. Stone dead.
It was so frustrating. You set out to do one simple thing, and technology just pulls the rug out from under you. It really took me back to a job I had a few years ago. We were supposed to be rolling out this new internal tool, something I’d poured months into developing. It was my baby, really. I’d spent ages on it, making sure it was perfect for what the team needed.
- The week of the planned rollout, they brought in this new “consultant.”
- He took one look at my work, didn’t even try to understand it.
- Decided to scrap it and push for some off-the-shelf thing that cost a fortune and did half the job.
My manager, bless him, didn’t have the backbone to fight for it. So, all my “practice,” all those hours of coding and refining, just chucked in the bin. Felt just like my internet dying during the Wigan game – all geared up for something, then totally cut off and left with a useless plan. They went with the consultant’s expensive junk, and last I heard, everyone hated it. No surprise there.
So yeah, the Wigan vs Wycombe game. I never did find out what happened in real-time, or how my predictions would have stacked up. Ended up reading the final score later, felt completely disconnected from it. It’s funny, isn’t it? You try to engage with something, put your own little spin or effort into it, and then some random failure just reminds you of bigger letdowns. I guess the real “practice” sometimes is just dealing with the things you can’t control, whether it’s a dodgy internet connection or a clueless consultant.
