The Diary

19 November 2005: Gilmore's Groin, And All Stations West (Brom)!

Oooh, hasn?t it been a long while since I last blasted cyberspace with my latest offering; last Saturday night, was it? Quite a bit of water has flowed under the bridge since then, of course, but football apart, the main change has been in the weather. When I last did my thing on this site, the outdoor clime was more in keeping with that of Italy (or Baghdad, if you like, and that because of the sheer numbers of noisy fireworks going off at the time of writing); in the space of just seven days, the outside temperature has plunged precipitously, down to freezing point, it was, by the time we came back from my stepmother?s place earlier tonight, consequently, it goes without saying that anyone wishing to converse at any great length with me tomorrow afternoon will have to ascertain beforehand that the bit of my body they?re actually talking to is, in fact, the one with a mouth in it. A good poke around the pertinent layers should settle the matter beyond all reasonable doubt.

Thermal vests to the fore, tomorrow, then? Not ?arf; right now, there?s an almost full moon shining in a star-strewn sky more or less unsullied by the presence of cloud, and with car windscreens already seeing their first dusting of small white crystals on them. (No, Kate Moss, it?s FROST I?m talking about, not cocai?..) That, in practical terms, means those having to get up at some unsocial hour or other tomorrow morning will be kept very busy scraping the ice from car windscreens well before they?ve even managed to move one inch. It?s definitely ?Stars In Their Eyes? time for me, folks ? ?Tomorrow, I?m going to be doing ?Nanook Of The North.? ? so sod it if I do end up looking like some old bag-lady hastily turfed out of her prime bit of derelict building, Tesco trolley and all. A fashion statement I most certainly won?t be, ?tis true, but at least I?ll be WARM at tomorrow evening?s game, which is all I care about, really. That, and my favourite football club grabbing all three points, of course.

And that, dear reader, brings me neatly to the raison d?etre of these here opening paragraphs: what real prospect is there of coming away from the Shrine tomorrow evening with a dirty great grin on my frozen little face? The fact The Toffeemen have recently hit a mini-resurgence of form doesn?t exactly inspire, I?m afraid; unless something has fundamentally changed about our way of going about things, our prospects of making a quick killing at their expense look to be very much reduced. A quick poke on their website reveals a packet of Toffees very confident indeed of grabbing the full pot from this one, to the point of arrogance, almost. It?s for that reason alone I?d like to see the smile well and truly wiped from their little Merseyside faces; as to whether we have a realistic chance of doing precisely that or not, is another matter entirely.

Their supporters ascribe their newly-resurgent form to having a reasonably settled line-up once more. There?s only two giving them cause for real concern at the moment, one being Simon Davies, who has a dicky hamstring, apparently, and Duncan Ferguson, just back following a recent gyppy-tummy attack. There?s a bit of doubt also concerning the lad Cahill, who played a big part in Australia?s World Cup play-off victory versus Uruguay, of course. Not a one-off, that, but a two-legged affair, and in South America, too; shame he had to bring a groin strain through Passport Control as well on his return to Blighty earlier today. Tomorrow?s encounter also sees the return to The Shrine of our old mucker Kevin Kilbane, formerly of this parish and Sunderland, now residing very much in the vicinity of Merseyside.

Funny, isn?t it? The very last time I had occasion to speak of him at some length, it was around the same time of year during season 1999-2000, when we played Grimsby, at their place, on a freezing cold December night, and with snow and sleet falling around us in equal measure. ?Festive? it most certainly wasn?t: on arrival in The Land Of Fish, the first news we heard on the grapevine was that of ?Killer?, and his transfer that very same afternoon to Sunderland. As we were to discover much later, it was literally a case of having to let the lad go, or the bank getting really nasty over our existing substantial overdraft. That, plus the fact all four of us quickly found ourselves acting as surrogate Agony Aunts to a sizeable number of tortured Baggie souls travelling by coach, really put the dampener on things that evening ? and the subsequent 1-1 draw didn?t help much either. But such things are relative, of course; back in the Dickmobile, on the outward journey our heating had completely given up the ghost, the long homeward trip assuming something of an ordeal of Arctic proportions as a result. Happy days.

As far as our very own sources of stress and bother are concerned, there is Zoltan Gera, of course, who is now diagnosed as suffering from something called ?Gilbert?s Groin?, and nothing whatsoever to do with the former Albion player of that name, either. For a more detailed explanation, see below! Of the remainder, both Kirkland and Campbell are out due to long-term injury thingies, and Paul Robinson is now on the last leg of his ill-timed suspensory triad, which means he should be back and raring to go for the one following tomorrow?s game, when we journey to the land of the Smog Monsters. But not versus The Toffees, sadly; I don?t know about what you lot feel about it, but I reckon we?ve really missed him out there. Those considerations apart, all the rest will be much the same as before.

I also see Albion are going to trial allowing kids to go through the same turnstile as their accompanying adults in the Smethwick tomorrow night. All to smooth out the flow of entrance traffic apparently. That, and allowing stewards to monitor more precisely those who seek entry on a concessionary ticket, of course. If things do turn out pear-shaped for us tomorrow, perhaps it might be better next time to trial allowing people facilities to get OUT more easily instead?

So. Suddenly, we?re made aware of what currently ails the Mighty Zoltan: it?s ?Gilmore?s Groin?, stoopid. Now why didn?t I think of that before? Seriously, though, I can honestly hold hand on heart and swear blind I?ve never heard of the condition in my entire life: since seeing the verdict via our mailing-list, and going ?Doo Wot??, I?ve done a teensy bit of homework (and in the process, brushed up on some aspects of anatomy and physiology I was really rusty on, so that?s all right, then!) and this is the result- and no, it's nothing whatsoever to do with punk rock, and a hit record of a similar title. Sorry.

Gilmore?s Groin? To make the thing as simple as possible, it?s a hernia-like condition, only discovered around 1980, and named after the nice medical chap that found it in the first place, Jerry ? er ? Gilmore, a London practitioner who was/is very big on groins, apparently. Don?t confuse it with that other bane of the professional footballer?s life, an inguinal hernia, because there is a fundamental difference between the two. A ?proper? hernia in the trouser-snake region is caused by a bit of intestine poking through from a hole in a previously-weakened bit of tissue called the ?inguinal canal? hence the monicker. That?s not where bits of intestine should be, of course, and it?s all that naughty bending, stretching, twisting and turning during games that causes it. Incidentally, if the pokey bit twists upon itself while going walkabout next door, that can cut off the blood supply to the bit of gut poking through, which then turns gangrenous, a truly life-threatening condition, if ever there was one; yet another reason why so-called ?ruptures? in that region should be taken seriously.

Gilbert?s Groin, however, is defined as not so much a ?classical? hernia, as described briefly above, more a tearing of the sheath surrounding various tendons in that area, which may occur either singly or affect several, but the results are similar, as far as being fit to play is concerned. Forget it. Symptoms are horrible twinges when twisting and turning (so no Tantric sex for a while, me old beauty!), and the pain can even crop up in places not directly affected by the problem e.g. one?s nuts! Additionally, the sufferer gets stiffness after he?s played a game, and this can be so severe as to make routine things like getting out of bed, or driving a car, even, a problem. Some (masochistic?) people do manage to play through it all, but the symptoms gradually worsen, and they then have no alternative but to seek specialist help.

Treatment? It can be sorted purely by physiotherapy, but it?s a slow business, and despite the best efforts of really skilled practitioners, the problem generally gets worse rather than better over the course of time. As you might expect, having highlighted the problem in the medical press, the lad Gilmore then devised a surgical means of sorting it: from the stuff I?ve read on the subject, it appears that between 1980 and 2000, of 4,500 patients referred to his clinic, 2,700 were treated surgically. Of the professional footballers he treated with the scalpel, Gilmore reported a success rate of 97%. Not bad, that, but then again, he was dealing with some very fit people to start off with.

And after the knife has done its worst, what then? There is a rehabilitation schedule to stick to after surgery, even from the first day after the op. Naturally, twisting and turning movements are verboten, but players are told to stand and get walking right from the word ?go?. Providing everything has gone OK, then Zoltan should get the ?all-clear? for jogging after about 10 days, and the OK for sprinting around three weeks after the op. From then on in, it?s simply a case of regaining match fitness once more, something that could take 6 ? 8 weeks max, according to the literature I?ve seen, so don?t bother pencilling the lad in on the team sheet for a while, just yet. Hope that helps explain what?s happened, and what can be done about it: it was certainly an education for me, not to mention one for Zoltan!

Many thanks to a reader of this column, Tim Joyner, who sent in the following stuff about the average ages of supporters, as culled from 4-4-2 Magazine, more specifically, those who watch the beautiful game Premiership flavoured; apparently, ours is now a whopping 39 years of age! According to Tim and the article, with a number of clubs having very high numbers of season ticket holders, ourselves included, there does seem to be a real danger of us getting saddled with an ageing fan base. Should this trend continue for any great length of time, a few years further down the line, the Brummie Road could well end up bearing a distinct resemblance to a SAGA Pensioners convention and Baggies Travel having to employ stewards to assist the numerous doddery old gits down the steps of the coach. Not to mention their Zimmer frames and colostomy bags. Barring a quite high scale ?meltdown? of attendances, Tim reckons the average age is only likely to increase, at least in the Premiership. Hardly a surprise when you come to consider the cost to kids of actually buying a ticket, then being able to sit with their friends.

Sure, the demographics of the problem are fairly well-known, but Tim brings to the discussion another relevant consideration. All those who were around at the time, remember the vibrant youth culture to be found at The Hawthorns in the 1970?s and 1980?s? Yes, as Tim will readily admit, sometimes this had darker undertones in terms of a small hooligan element, but there were some positives to be found. For starters, it made for a wonderfully evocative football atmosphere, there being plenty of places for the ?old uns? to stand or sit away from the ?youth?, and for those who simply liked the quiet life, it was easy enough to steer clear if you were sensible.

Tim says he has no intention of giving Albion home matches a miss, but he?s increasingly beginning to understand why some are becoming a little cynical about the Premiership ?brand? as Premiership Chairman and Chief Executives like to call it. And the point he touched upon raises yet another pertinent issue for supporters; the relative lack of true ?crowd pleasers? at the club these days, players whose silky ball-skills positively commanded our followers to get off their backsides and through the turnstiles week after week. Such folk, the likes of The King, Bomber, Ossie, Willie Johnson, Bob Taylor And Co: not only were they past-masters at their craft, they also had about them wonderfully-vibrant and totally-unforgettable personalities, and it was primarily because of that their names still live on in supporter folklore.

Just a single evening in the company of any of the aforementioned lot would make that point abundantly clear to even the greatest of cynics. Just one teensy problem though; for various reasons, some reasonable, some completely and utterly daft, very few of our current favourites actually get to meet their fans in the flesh these days, so given that, how the hell are we supposed to gauge the true worth of the human being that lies beneath the protective covering of the team strip these days?

When not in ?uniform?, any one of our present lot might well be the greatest boost to humanity since the days of Mother Theresa, but the relative lack of contact between both parties these days completely precludes such knowledge. Big Dave, for example ? we know he does valuable charity work for his church off-duty, but not much more than that, sadly. His enormous presence at Supporters Club functions ? for many, the sole point of contact with our finest - is relatively rare. A shame, that, and if our players were to actually sit down and analyse the issue as a group, they?d quickly realise it?s something that can work both ways for players.

Sure, there?s the perennial possibility of the ?idiot tendency? giving someone a hard time at meetings ? and to be absolutely fair to the supporters club, I can?t remember one single occasion where things have ever got even a tad out of hand ? but there?s the other side of the coin as well. Players are all human beings, fundamentally, and just like us, love to seek approval and praise for what they do, not to mention a little bit of sympathy when it?s not going so well for them out there. Constantly cut off from their ?audience? by a welter of suits and PR smoothies, living miles away from the ground in ?gated? properties, and enjoying a lifestyle that?s light-years apart from that of their followers, the avenues for true mutual rapport these days are poor, at best.

Just think what a great difference a little bit more ?quality time? might make in those instances; as I?ve said before, it?s bloody difficult to seriously barrack a bloke you know is having problems sleeping because his young baby?s kicking up a racket in the wee small hours. And, as those who remember The King will readily admit, those players possessing a wealth of riches in the humour department also tend to get fairer treatment from supporters. And, chaps, you never know ? and it?s people like Ronnie Wallwork I?m thinking of right now ? a little earnest groundwork conducted along the general lines of what I?ve just discussed might just go a considerable way towards removing that other bane of a player?s life, being roundly booed the minute the team-sheet?s read out to an expectant pre-match Hawthorns crowd.

Going back to the earlier part of the week once more, how many of you watched the The Battle Of The Somme on Channel Four, also the moving BBC1 two-parter about the last remaining WW1 veterans? I most certainly did, but then again, I did have a vested interest in the subject, my granddad having served on the Western Front, and all that. But it wasn?t either programme that truly brought home the horror of what happened between 1914 and 1918: what really did it for me was actually visiting the Somme battlefield around five or six years ago. True, when I made the journey, it was in the dead of winter, and as bleak as hell with it, but there was something else there, an indefinable air of sadness about the place I couldn?t quite put my finger on.

At the point where I visited, there was a distance, roughly, of no more than a quarter of a mile between the British and German front line trenches; in fact, it was perfectly possible to walk right across No-Man?s Land to the German lines in about five or ten minutes. It?s only when you do take that walk, all of it up slightly uphill, you remember that on the first day alone, some 20,000 Tommies, all under strict instructions to walk and not run, and all encumbered anyway by equipment weighing some 60 or 70 pounds, perhished in a variety of horrible ways trying to do similar. Imagine The Hawthorns about two-thirds full, but populated by khaki-clad ghosts instead of blue and white attired aficionados: it?s only then you begin to truly appreciate the magnitude of what happened on that fateful first of July.

Oh, and another strange thing - all the time I was there, I never once heard even a single bird announce its feathery presence. Normally, even in the dead of winter, in the countryside, you?ll hear rooks and crows aplenty loudly squawking their resentment of such intrusive human behaviour ? but not that time, not once. Since then, I?ve heard much the same said about the Auschwitz concentration camp, and I now understand the reason why. Spooked? I certainly was, and it was only when we reached the relative joviality of nearby Poperinghe I felt it safe to breathe out once more.

And Finally?. One. Ever been driven absolutely spare by unwanted (and totally-unrequited) telephone calls from organisations desperately wanting to peddle their latest products, and usually when you?re well into the performance of some essential household task or other that simply can?t be left to its own devices? Well, I certainly have, and increasingly so over the course of the last few months. I just wish the people who first thought up this modern-day variant upon a theme of low-level torture realise that by calling me at some highly-inconvenient moment or other - not to mention maintaining the fiction they?re calling me from just about anywhere in the world bar the Indian subcontinent, a flimsy fa?ade that?s dead easy to blow courtesy a couple of craftily-worded questions - they?ve ruined, completely and utterly, and without any possibility of subsequent redemption, their chances, however vestigial and/or remote, of actually persuading me their wonderful product is the one I simply shouldn?t be without.

Ditto the purveyors of junk-mail: I can?t help but feel that when the time comes for all those responsible for that side of marketing to finally pop their clogs, there will be a veritable forest?s-worth of ghostly trees awaiting their arrival on the Other Side ? and all wanting a few highly-pertinent words with their erstwhile killers! But my real Damascene moment came earlier last week, after three such calls on the bounce, each one being received with a rapidly-escalating level of ice-cold fury from this column, plus a growing realisation my right to privacy was being infringed, yet again. That, and totally losing it with a nice old lady who only wanted to speak with someone called Sarah, an incident that leaves me totally racked with guilt, even now.

But once I?d finally cooled down ? incidentally, cold-callers on my doorstep get equally short shrift from me, especially those of the Jehovah?s Witness persuasion, so don?t even think about it, chaps! ? I had a bit of a ?eureka? moment. A way of putting a stop to such nuisances for once and for all does exist, and given my public advisory background, it?s one I should have thought of much sooner than I did. All it took, dear reader, was a quick shufti at the Telephone Preference Service website on Google; it?s free, on-line, it?s on tap 24/7. Once you?ve registered, what it then does is let cold-calling organisations and call centres everywhere know that their telephonic blandishments are most certainly non-grata within the confines of the Wright household. So I?ve registered with them; hopefully, the calls will now stop, or at least tail away to a much more tolerable level. It takes around a month for the news to finally percolate through every call-centre from Birmingham to Bombay, apparently, so look out for an update around four weeks hence. Will it work? Will my life finally be rid of what has been an incrementally-increasing nuisance for quite some time, now? Watch this space.

Two?. A quick word about the free coach travel to Wigan promised by the club earlier in the week. I've been expecting such an announcement for quite some time, now, but not for this particular game. Far from being the expected 'battle of the strugglers', should The Latics continue with their pleasantly-unexpected rich vein of form - I still have great difficulty coming to terms with the fact they currently lie second to moneybags Chelsea in the table: do you? - and we with the precise opposite, it promises to be a bit of a banana-skin all round for our favourite football club. Having said that, by the time the date of the fixture rolls around, the outcome, whether it be in our favour or otherwise, might well prove academic. Let's just hope I'm wrong about that one, shall we?

 - Glynis Wright

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