The Diary

14 January 2006: West Bromwich Injured - An Update.

Back again, and quite miffed, actually, having seen the last ten minutes of the Wulves-Luton encounter on the box. Watching the Kenilworth Road mob in action after a very long absence (no, in this particular case, it doesn?t make the heart grow fonder!) it brought forth, from some dusty recess of my mind, memories of their former chairman, David Evans. No longer associated with the club these days, thank goodness, back in the eighties he was a well-known Conservative MP, and well and truly up the grovel path with the fragrant Leaderene, The Blessed Margaret Of Thatcher, and in the late eighties, one of the loudest Tory voices baying for the introduction of ID cards. He also sold the land on which their ground stands off to the council, which means they now have to pay rent on it. The chap who brought in a blanket ban on away supporters at their ground also, and, in what was to be his finest hour, ever-so-tactfully pointing out to the press on the day of the Hillsborough disaster that had the victims carried ID cards ? nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more! - subsequent identification would have been made that much easier for the authorities. Nasty little man.

But that recollection only serves as a temporary diversion from what I was about to say in the first place ? about the Dingles, I mean, who ended up winning 2-1 tonight, courtesy an absolute gift of a goal about 3 minutes from the end. Yes, Marlon Beresford, it was all down to YOU, wasn?t it? This being the first time I?d actually sat down to watch them in action this term, I managed to get a longer glimpse of their current shirt than I had previously ? and once seen, that was me, gone, convulsed with helpless laughter. How come? Easy ? the next time they?re on the box, have a look for yourselves; never before in my life have I seen such a dead ringer for the type of uniform warn on screen by the crew members of the Starship Enterprise, even to the funny sort of black yoke around the collar. Kirk, Scotty, Mister Spock, McCoy, Chekov, Lieutenant Uhura, bless her bum-freezer skirt, the whole works. Mind you, having the logo ?Chaucer? proudly emblazoned on the back was taking irony just a little too far for my liking, dontcha think?. To doltishly go where no Dingle has ever gone before? Beam me up, Scotty. But not to the Premiership.

Didn?t you just know it? Yes, it?s all-too easy to buy into the theory that ?these things are sent to try us?, sometimes, but on the face of this one, we?ve already been found guilty, and collectively banged up for a very long time indeed. Kanu will now miss Sunday's trip to Wigan after X-rays the other day revealed he?d got a depressed fracture to the side of his head. ?Depressed fracture?? Never mind the bloody fracture being ?depressed?, if I were Robbo, I?d have been talking to the Samaritans ages ago; as the official website intimated apropos the subject, to get one such case in the club is a relatively rare occurrence, but two at the same time, and within just a few days of each other? Oh, dear, someone own up ? who?s upset The King, then?

Spooky or otherwise, I?ll bet the Nigerian FA are spitting red-hot rivets right now over what?s happened. Having tried their utmost to help Robbo out in his hour of need, versus Reading ? and they didn?t have to, mind; had they decided to play hard-ball over this one instead of allowing us to retain Kanu?s services a week longer, there?s not a lot we could have done about it ? they?re now completely stuffed, too. Or potentially, should the injury prove troublesome in the healing process. This setback means the lad now faces a race against time to be fit for the African Nations Cup. Albion had also hoped to keep him back for Sunday?s clash as well, but even that is now a non-starter. Although still expected to link up with his international team-mates next week, because of the problem, our main man will be sidelined for around two to three weeks. As Nigeria don?t kick off their ANC campaign against Ghana until around 13 days' time, to say this is cutting things fine constitutes a breathtaking mastery of understatement.

Kanu?s plight, although quite sad, is all-too symptomatic of what?s ailing our club right now. People currently ?on the box?, to use local parlance. (Anyone out there know how that peculiarly-Black Country expression for being ?on the sick? first arose, by the way? Everywhere else in the British Isles, it?s termed ?being on the panel?, as per the ?insurance panel? that authorised payouts for treatment etc. in the years just prior to the advent of the NHS. Just curious!)

And it?s not an issue specific to Kanu, either; at the time of writing, come the Wigan game, for various other reasons, we?ll also be short of Gera, Gaardsoe, Clem and Joe Kamara. But, of the lot of them, it?s The Mighty Zoltan?s predicament that worries me the most, because on the face of it, it?s quite possible we should have seen it coming a mile off.

Recognise this? ???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, not just yet??? That, in case you haven?t gathered already, was part of my diary piece for the 19th of November, explaining in precise terms what ailed our lad, and for roughly how long we could expect him to be out of action. Please note, however, I am quite aware that different people can recover from the same op at vastly different rates; some will make you wonder what the hell all the fuss was all about after just a few days, while others will labour mightily in the convalescence period, then take half the year to get back to full working order again..

That?s the beauty of medicine; unlike most other scientific subjects, it?s all about individuals, and their bodies, what can go wrong, and how they react to illness; a pretty good reason for not letting bean-counters anywhere near the treatment process, in my book ? but I digress slightly. The thing is, Zoltan had the op just before I wrote the above piece, then tried to make a comeback at Old Trafford on Boxing Day, some six weeks ? a generous estimate on my part ? later. That?s inclusive of everything, mind, not just as per the time he was given the OK to train again. And, as we now know, some two months further down the line, almost, he?s still experiencing lingering post-operative problems troublesome enough to warrant not selecting him for this Sunday?s excrete-or-bust caper at sunny Wigan.

I?m not privy to all the clinical details, of course, so of necessity, much of this has to be a tidge of speculation crossed with a pretty heavy dollop of intelligent guesswork. Which could well be completely wrong anyway, I?ve absolutely no way of knowing for sure. The simple explanation is there might have been hitherto-unsuspected but troublesome further complications for Zoltan; it?s also not unknown, shall we say, for professionals over-eager to get back into the swing of things ? well, anyone anxious to return to full employment after long, debilitating illness, really - making light of any residual aches and pains they?ve noticed over the duration of the recovery period, and not reporting them to the person overseeing recovery. As good as our fitness coaches and medical teams are, they?re not psychic. Well, not to the best of my knowledge, they aren?t.

Ever watched one of those ?giveaway? quiz shows, ?Bullseye?, for example, and listened to, say, Jim Bowen tell the traumatised losers: ?This is what you would have won?..?, then dangle before their very own eyes in tantalising fashion the top-of-the-range sports car (or fitted kitchen, that dream holiday in Hawaii, whatever) that was up for grabs that particular week? Well, after hearing of our 4th Round fate should we get past Reading last Monday lunchtime, I suddenly began to develop a considerable degree of empathy with those poor sods all those years ago. Let me put it this way, should we ultimately triumph at the Madjeski in around five days time, I think I?ll need urgent treatment for clinical shock, but that?s not going to happen, is it? More chance of Arsene Wenger actually admitting for once he witnessed one of his players going in with a dodgy tackle, I reckon.

But on to last Monday evening. There?s nothing like a bit of good old-fashioned sci-fi to get the old brain-box working like the clappers, and so it was that night I spent time watching that new BBC cops?n?robbers drama with a bit of an unexpected twist in it, ?Life On Mars?. The plot-line was quite intriguing, actually; a copper investigating a present-day murder gets accidentally run over by a car, ends up in a coma, but mentally, somehow gets transported back to 1973. Same police force, same job, same investigation, a full generation beforehand, and probably the same killer responsible for the murder, but with the confused copper suddenly discovering he owns a clapped-out Allegro for wheels, and sporting what has to be the most awful bad-taste line in sartorial non-elegance I?ve seen in many a long year. Bar what?s to be seen lurking deep within the innermost corners of ?Im Indoors?s wardrobe, of course.

The basic idea?s about as old as science-fiction itself, of course; even a cursory trawl of the genre will demonstrate this to anyone?s complete satisfaction. As I pointed out just a few weeks ago, the idea was very well done by the late Isaac Asimov back in his 1950?s novel ?The End Of Eternity?, in which he considerably expanded upon the previously-hackneyed plot device of going back in time and changing history. In his novel, an organisation existed ? similar to a police force, I suppose ? where its staff continually interfered in the past, and by doing so, prevented, say, a nasty war a couple of hundred years further down the line, or chronic drug addiction involving the population some fifty years hence. Makes Tony Blair and his most recent attempts to introduce various State-nanny bits of legislation sound pretty tame by comparison, I reckon.

The thing that made this novel so striking was Asimov?s superb intellectual grasp of the various issues involved; there were times when he really had me mentally reeling trying to make proper sense of what the blasted plot was doing at that particular time, and what might be happening several pages hence. Think the ?killing your own grandfather to prevent something nasty occurring in the present day? paradox writ large, then chuck in as well the widely-known ?yes, but what happens to me if I do go back and kill the old misery-guts?? conundrum, and you?ve got it, just about.

The entire plot hinged upon the supposition that by deliberately changing just one small facet of the past ? meddling with the brakes on a general?s car, say, causing him to crash, which then meant him having to resign his post through injury, and because of that, preventing the subsequent outbreak of nuclear conflict over some hitherto-obscure political issue or other some years further down the line ? you also ended up altering irrevocably the lives of totally-innocent people. Children born who wouldn?t have been otherwise, growing up and placed in positions of authority themselves, and taking decisions that wouldn?t have been made had they not been born in the first place ? you get my drift? It was the job of this ?police force? to iron out such snags as well, which is precisely why the book is such a mind-boggler in the first place!

But back to last Monday. And the bloke?s basic problem in that fascinating opener ? accepting he was now in a completely different time, and having to adjust to the arcane (sometimes slightly-dodgy, very macho, and never, ever politically-correct!) ways of the force back then ? set me on a trail of thought all of its own. Were the same thing ever to apply to me, inadvertently going back to the same period of time, I mean, what would I do? Knowing about Albion?s subsequent relegation to the Second Division that year, would I be tempted to travel hot-foot to the Hawthorns the first chance I got, and on arrival there, contrive to do Don Howe some sort of mischief, just enough to keep him off sick for a considerable period of time, thus forcing Albion into a hasty rethink of their choice of manager? 1973 was also the time Sunderland conquered the mighty Leeds in the FA Cup Final: quite a nice bit of bookie-killing to be made there as well, n?est ce pas? Mind you, as such activities would most certainly have been at the considerable expense of Honest Joe, Turf Accountants, I wouldn?t exactly be weeping salt tears should my ship then come in as a result.

Such nefariously-naughty temporal activity brings into play yet another potential cause of major conflict. Would the very act of criminally-crocking Don Howe immediately introduce into the equation some other hitherto-suppressed factor that wouldn?t necessarily have been an issue otherwise? Asimov called them ?Changes? (Capital letter deliberate). A player signed, who wouldn?t have been had Howe still been the gaffer, maybe? A key player/director leaving, ditto? Or the club?s choice of managerial replacement taking us along a completely different road to the one subsequently travelled by both Howe, and much later still, Johnny Giles? Could be in the best long-term interests of the Baggies, of course ? on another plane, we might even now be in a similar position to that of Man United a decade or so further back - but on the other hand, had things gone only slightly differently, we could have seen Albion plunge into catastrophic decline instead. Around 1975, we were really strapped for cash, and had we not been promoted the following year, the wolf could well have been howling at the door. And not the lot from up the road, either.

In the book, everything hinged upon what was described as the Minimum Necessary Change, the least the ?bobby? could do to effect the desired result, and yet not bring into play any of the less-desirable ones outlined above, and so complex were the various issues involved, the ideal solution could only be arrived at with the aid of people really well-versed in these multifaceted issues, and, of course, computers, spewing out obscure mathematical formulae like sailors unpleasantly-drunk on their first night in a foreign port. Go on, have a bit of fun playing the game for yourself, let the net of possible options you create spread far and wide ? just use the example I cited recently, the effect of Ossie Ardiles not leaving the club in 1993 - and you?ll quickly see what I mean. That?s one bit of fantasy done with then ? and now for something completely different! No, not Monty Python?s Flying Circus ? mind you, supporting Albion does seem that way, sometimes ? just the Wigan-Arsenal League Cup semi first leg at the JJB last Wednesday evening. As I?d been working upstairs on something else, I didn?t start watching until just after the start of the second half, and the score bloodless, still. They must have been waiting for me to put in an appearance in front of our telly, because no sooner had I sat down, the flaming floodlights went ?poof?. Inky darkness, players of both persuasions suddenly stood stock still, and a bemused crowd ? 12,000, Wigan, is that the best you can do for one of the greatest moments in your club?s history? Shame on you! - laughing their bloody heads off.

Hearing that the black-out wasn?t just confined to the ground, but all over the borough, put the germ of an amazing stroke of luck for our favourite football team straight into my head. Assuming they couldn?t get the lights back on again, and had to abandon it, when could both sides have played the tie without it impinging upon various other impending mutual commitments? The more I thought about it, the more it seemed they?d have to go through the whole sad business yet again the following night, in which case: a) Wigan would be even more knackered come Sunday, and b) The ?Day After The Lord Mayor?s Show? factor would intensify considerably.

It was a nice thought while it lasted, mind; in the short space of time it took for me to sell the deal to ?Im Indoors, and him realising I might have a bloody good point, on came the blasted lights again. Whose side are those electricity board people on anyway? Spoilsports! But all is not lost. Not long before the end, Wigan managed to plop one in the old onion-bag, assisted considerably by some Arsenal far-post ?marking? that would surely have evoked cries of disbelief from an anywhere half-decent Conference side, even. Hopefully, the considerable ?feelgood factor? produced by that strike, and the accompanying but immensely-distracting thought Wigan will be taking a 1-0 lead to Highbury, should linger on like a nasty niff come the Sabbath. Oh, and the pleasant notion (from our point of view, that is) they could be at least a couple of key performers light through injury by then. Mind you, having seen our own injury/international duty absent list for myself recently, best-case scenario for Sunday might well be the efforts of both sides being nullified completely by the aforementioned considerations. But more on that, plus the perplexing business with Earnie, tomorrow.

Poor Ugo. One minute the lad was all set and ready to proceed to our place having duly been registered a Baggie, when just like at a wedding where someone starts shouting from the rear of the church the minute the vicar gets to intone: ?If there be any just reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now, etc?..? he suddenly finds it?s all off. The source of the objection in this case wasn?t some ex with a grudge a mile high, but Ugo?s own manager no less. Boro?s Steve McClaren, on hearing the bad news Gareth Southgate?s injury could be considerably worse than had been originally anticipated ? one possible diagnosis was that of stress fracture - did his Nervous Nellie bit and panicked completely, ordering Ugo to return forthwith. Nothing had actually been signed between the two clubs, mind, even at that late stage in the proceedings, so Boro could quite legitimately claim their own back, although it must have been a pretty close-run thing. As you can well imagine, upon hearing the news for the first time, Ugo was seemingly less-than-impressed by such a dramatic turn of events. If the papers were anything to go by, ?spitting bricks? would have been a pretty fair summary of Ugo?s mood. I got the overall impression that our latest ? the ?marriage? is now due to be solemnised come next Monday, apparently - arrival might have felt McClaren was acting in this manner purely to wind him up.

And Finally?.. Trolling through The Grauniad can have its rewards, sometimes. Take Wednesday evening; there I was reading their pull-out daily supplement, G2, and minding my own business ? and what do I find? A list of some of the most obscure, infrequently-used words ever to grace the pages of any upmarket dictionary. Being the complete sucker that I am for words of murky origin, I read further ? and this is the result. Go on, astound both your mates in the pub and your boss by dropping at least one into the conversation, and watch their faces light up ? with puzzlement, complete and utter! Or, before the next Albion game, do similar in your favourite pre-match drinking haunt. Wonderful stuff, and not wishing to neglect my bounden duty to educate and entertain wherever possible, here?s just a choice few culled from what is rapidly becoming an extensive list, and (mostly) put into an Albion-supporting context.

Got an ?agelast? occupying the seat in front of you during home games? I have ? it means ?a person who never laughs? and judging from his normal Hawthorns demeanour, the one sitting in close proximity to me seems to have used professional-depressive Leonard Cohen as a role-model. The seriously ?capernoited?? Lots of these to be seen prior to games; such people are slightly-intoxicated, or just plain tipsy. Hands up ? how many of you visit a ?chirotonsor? on a regular basis, then? Oodles, I?ll bet; the term is Americanese for a common or garden barber! How many of you can ?exsibilate for the lads? at the drop of a hat, I wonder? Lots, if recent Hawthorns events are anything to go by; such antics are deemed the ?collective hisses of a disapproving audience?. If you?re a Villa supporter, look away now; according to my little list, a ?kamalayka? is nothing more than a shirt made entirely from seal-guts! And just in case you perceive me to be a tad biased, in the interest of complete equality, followers of our other local rivals don?t escape close scrutiny, either. Such people are by definition serial ?theriolaters?. In other words, they worship animals. Yuk.

Just like the late W.C. Fields, this column is most definitely of misopedist leanings. Don?t bother to call in the Vice Squad, though; I?m just someone who doesn?t like children very much ? or, to qualify that startling statement a tidge, my current antipathy more concerns those whose parents seem to have mislaid the care and maintenance instructions when it comes to teaching their offspring how to properly behave when seen out in public. Got a ?quiddler? working at your place? Probably ? such people tend to hang around wasting time by engaging in conversation with others who would much rather get on with what they?re doing, thank you very much! When I was in the prison service, after home games, I used to get them in my office all the time, the vast majority being Baggies, of course. Mick Bryan, that means you! And as ever, The Noise simply has to have the very last word on the subject; he?s now a ?blatteroon?. In other words, a person who just will not stop talking!

 - Glynis Wright

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