The Diary

15 March 2004: Dingles' Fate Sealed By Villa?

No doubt about it, married life can be very peculiar, sometimes. In most relationships, one partner demonstrates their appreciation and pleasure for a lifetime of blissful and loving companionship by the simple expedient of showering gifts upon the other. These can be of a kind to pleasure the palate, of course ? show me a box of Thornton?s Dark Chocolate Selection and I?m anybody?s ? or, for those with enough dosh, plus a partner with expensive tastes, a sparkly chunk of carbon in crystalline form can go down a real treat. Me? What do I get from an adoring marital partner? A stinking cold, that?s what. There?s ?romantic? for you. What?s next on the gift-list, I wonder? A brisk spell of diarrhoea, by candle-light?

I should have guessed, really, because earlier in the week, my ?significant other? started sniffing and coughing fit to bust, and for a time, I genuinely thought I?d escaped the attentions of the sodding virus causing all the trouble, but it was not to be. The sore throat and headache began late on Friday, but with that vital match at Crewe looming, there was absolutely no way I was going to miss it. And, as Saturday wore on, I could feel the sense of overall ?yuk? intensifying by the minute, but so wrapped was I in the euphoria surrounding our victory, and the need to tell everyone in creation about it last night, I heroically pushed all snot-ridden thoughts to the back of my mind. And then I awoke today. Ugh.

Still, hubby?s misplaced generosity with cold bugs apart, Sunday?s been pretty much a great day all round. A chance to catch up on what the media have been saying about yesterday?s game, and a good old-fashioned belly laugh at The Dingles? sad Molineux predicament versus Villa as well. Normally, any news the claret and spew persuasion have emerged triumphant from any Premiership encounter is a cast-iron guarantee to get my hate glands secreting with an intensity some physiologists would find astounding, but when I heard the glad tidings from ?Im Indoors ? 4-0, oh whoops! ? snigger I did, and in quantity. And, just to give it a double-cream topping, metaphorically speaking, later still, I actually got to see all those goals on Sky. Their defence? Er ? what defence? It had more holes than my dad?s old string vest, and that?s saying something. What with that, and Leicester?s unexpected St. Andrews win yesterday, despite that recent revival of theirs, it?s becoming more and more apparent the inbreds could well be heading for the Premiership rock-pile. As I commented to my other half at the time, wouldn?t it be satisfying for us Baggies to be waving ?em bye-bye on our travels in the other direction come the end of 2003-04? Not to mention the relieved feeling I?d get from the certainty we wouldn?t have to meet them and their obnoxious followers next season.

Moving rapidly on from the relegation troubles that currently beset our local rivals, it does look as though I may have to greatly revise those pessimistic thoughts hastily penned following our Deepdale defeat around four weeks ago. What with that, plus our indifferent spell over the winter period, I genuinely thought we might have some trouble finishing in the top two, so it?s nice to report I now seem to have got it badly wrong. One thing?s for sure ? having stuffed up both the Norwich and Crewe predictions, I?ve had to chuck that list of where I?d thought we?d get the points (or not!) right out of the window. Not that I?m complaining, mind. At the moment, our points-to-games-played ratio stands at 1.86, slightly below our ideal figure of 2, but, as I see it, get another six wins from the ten games remaining, and that will give us 84 points, which, given the current tendency of other sides in the hunt to drop points like a red-hot rivet, should see us well OK.

This Tuesday will see us play one of our fellow-participants in football?s version of the Wacky Races, and that?s Wigan, of course. It really has surprised me they?ve managed to stay the promotion course; I genuinely thought that like Reading, they?d fall back into the play-off chasing pack as the current season drew nearer to its close. When we played them at their place around last autumn, we tried to go for safety, one up front, and packing the defence, and it rebounded upon us disastrously. 1-0 to them was the final score; had we gone at them from the start instead of defending deep and trying to catch them on the hop, perhaps the outcome might have been more positive. I doubt whether we?d make the same mistake this time round, though. This time, it?s on our heap, and on our terms, and that 9-point ?cushion? of ours will be of considerable help, psychologically speaking. Interesting, though to remember that the bloke who did for us at the JJB was none other than The Horse ? who will be wearing the sacred stripes this time round of course. Grab all the loot come Tuesday, and that gap will become 12 points, a yawning chasm, and unless we try to emulate the Dingles, that would leave an absolutely stonking amount for anyone to make up over what remains of the current season.

Still, dropping a couple of points on Tuesday night wouldn?t be too disastrous, in my opinion. I reckon the real test of our promotion credentials will come next Saturday when we head off to the Potteries. Sure, I know it sounds daft worrying over a mid-table side, but the point I?m making is that historically, we never, ever do well against The Potters. Go on, have a guess - when was the last time we won there in the League? Don?t know? Right, I?ll tell you, purely and simply because I took the trouble of looking it up before penning this. Yep, I?d forgotten as well! The last time we did it, a Conservative government was in office, we?d just fought a nasty little war against Argentina, and Saddam was very much on our side, fighting those mad mullahs who ruled the country next door, and being given oodles of dosh from both us and the USA to do it as well. Yep, 1982 was the year, and we won 3-0. As Maggie said then, but in a completely different context: ?Rejoice! Rejoice!? 22 years is an awfully long time to wait for a result there, but you do have to admit, it?s well overdue. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than knowing we?d finally broken that awful Potteries hoodoo next weekend. So there.

One thing does worry me right now, though. Not so much for the guy as for his long-tem health. Who am I on about? Why, Russell Hoult. Plus his bad back, of course. It wasn?t covered in our printed copy of today?s People, which is why we didn?t catch up with it until comparatively late in the day, but we did find the article on the internet version, and reading about Russell?s troubles again just makes me increasingly worried about what damage he?s doing to his back by insisting upon playing on. As I?ve said before, I?d understand it if we were strapped for decent goalkeeping cover, but in Joe Murphy, we have the ideal understudy, so why our keeper?s eagerness to see the whole thing through right to the end? Reading between the lines, it?s patently clear the lad?s under no pressure whatsoever from the club to carry on ? it?s just that being a back sufferer myself, I really do feel for him every time I see him kick the ball upfield, or twist crazily to make a save. Sure, it?s no fun to be stuck on the sidelines should we finally achieve our Premiership aim, but neither is being in chronic pain. Trust me, I know.

Back tomorrow night with more pre-Wigan thoughts. Actually, this is going to be quite a busy week for me, jottings-wise, as I?ll be posting nightly from Monday through Friday. And Saturday, of course. Not only do we have a game midweek, three or four of our finest are the star attractions at The Throstle Club come Thursday night as well, so a few words on what happened at that one might be in order, for the benefit of our further-flung supporters, of course. More details on who will be attending nearer the time; no good saying right now, as these things can change with astonishing rapidity.

And finally?.. It?s not that often our treasurer gets all excited over something ? unless it concerns the acquisition (or saving) of loadsamoney, of course! ? but a phone call from him earlier on certainly revealed he?d reversed the habits of a lifetime, for once. The reason? That win of Villa?s at Molineux, of course! From what The Meanest Man In West Bromwich told me this afternoon, upon seeing the result on Teletext, both Steve and son and heir instantaneously started dancing around their living-room, which must have been a sight for sore eyes. That?s the reason he rang me ? he was so excited about it, he simply had to get it off his chest to someone! Oh, and that?s another ?first? for Steve ? as he hates Villa with a passion exceeding by miles that of his antipathy towards The Dingles, that little jig of his represents the first time in living memory he?s ever been known to celebrate one of their wins!

 - Glynis Wright

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