Dublin, Dundee, Humberside

So now the dust has settled on the trauma of Saturday afternoon, the worst scenes in east London since the Queen Mother put out Blitz fires with her own mangled bleeding ankles.

It could have been epic but it ended with a whimper, like a guide dog ploughing into a motorway siding. So now Wycombe sit marooned in fifth place, horror sweeping the league tables and leaving everyone sick to their back teeth.

But here is where the magic of The Project will surely kick in, it is too fiendish to simply give in like a soldier, there will be many more jabs in the dark and boot clearings before the season comes to a close. And so what if Wycombe have to use the escape pod marked "Play Offs"? A trip to Wales will be the event of the year for COTN and the rest of us may find some solace in it too.

The Headmaster Ritual

Break out the lambrini, we're going to an east end party. London town: the sharks, the seagulls, the toblerone politics, the umbrellas. What a place for the destiny of 2005-06 to be shaped, amongst the arches and raw spanner echoes of Leyton.

Make no mistake, tomorrow is bigger than the Goodyear Blimp, and Wycombe's fate circles above the capital like a nervous crow. 1500 hours looms large and the entire staff of the Meat Clinic are preparing for an afternoon of highs and lows, justice and horror.

It is a day for the muddled elements of the fabled Drone Army to come together and get behind the low-paid mercenaries in the blue quarters. Last season the team was in tatters yet Rhino led the side to a dramatic comeback in the London stench. Now the team is bursting with talent and there is something so monumentally tantalising to play for.

Charge up your souls and head east towards the rising sun.

Glasgow Mega-Snake

Midweek action normally means petting someone else's aroused dog in an underground kennel with three men from Taiwan stood menacingly round a cage. It's fun but it's just a prelude to the weekend.

But at this time of the football season it all changes, or at least it does if your team is nestled at the top of the table like a jam sandwich. While Determined John's The Project-funded Wycombe play all their games as planned (thanks to undersoil heating, creatine and the Hellfire Caves), many northern clubs have their games postponed for issues such as rent-arrears, snow leopards and scurvy.

As it was, Grimsby played last night and Northampton play tonight.

The scale-lickers were denied late late doors on Tuesday evening thanks to a marvellous goal straight from a corner by Rochdale's Chubby Lambert in the 93rd minute. That, my friends, is called delicious justice.

Now the mantle passes over to the Fenland icons Boston United. They play the Shoe Goons tonight and then the Cumbrian Racists on Saturday. They regularly derail our season so surely now the time is right for them to pay us back in kind.

You shouldn't have to rely on others but Lady Diana made a career out of it and look at the sort of funeral she got. Barndoor Bingo.

Barbarism Begins At Home

The Meat Clinic is rarely wrong, that time with the organic wolf flesh and the subsequent sandwich crisis at Beeks Construction being the only recent occasion that has ended in legal proceedings and prison.

But about the fortunes of Wycombe Wanderers we are always, but always correct. And yesterday the news from the slaughter-lounge was gloomy. The Chairboys have seen promotion campaigns derailed by Devonians before (Plymouth '95) and so it proved today. A one-nil reverse in front of a crowd of new-born babies and care in the community punters was as grim as it sounds and still the east wind howls, melting people's ears into lumps.

Carlisle and Grimsby are drawing away at the top of the table like military steamboats, and Wycombe's plucky little rowing boat is leaking water alarmingly, women and children first, no pushing the trombone player. Eight games to go and seven wins are needed. It's getting brutal.

Jester-hat salesmen in Buckinghamshire are licking their lips at the prospect of a play off bonanza but another season in this vile division is looking more then likely. Accrington Stanley aside, there will be nothing of benefit or attraction in League Two next season, and as the club haemorrhages money like a slapped tramp the storm clouds are gathering, pushed into place by that easterly.

Still, at least Northampton lost.

Pressure On Julian

These are the rock and roll years, the party mixture, the ten-cent bags, the pipes of peace.

Nine games to go and every one a cut-diamond, smothered in the sort of psychological dirt that can't be washed away with any sort of hose, especially since it stopped raining. Last week The Project dug deep and screwed out a twozero against Shropshire. This weekend Devon come into dock with their ways and everything gets ratcheted up another three-stroke.

Let's be frank, Wycombe need seven wins to guarantee promotion, anything less and there'll be some post-season action at Soldier Field, probaby ending in heartache, self-loathing and rifle fire. Torquay are there for the jibber-jabbing but nothing's ever that simple and at 17.00 tomorrow the scene could look bleak. Horrible Bleak.

But Orient will be a masterclass and no-one, not even the detested Drone Army, will give up until we're all on the pitch at Peterborough, chewing the cud like fucked-up Anglian cows.

Just remember: seven wins, they could come anywhere or they could vanish into thin air like a nitrogen bubble. Stay the course, stay the course.