The Diary

01 February 2006: Honours Shared In Valley Bore-Draw.

So it finished even-stevens, then, did it? Tonight?s away game versus Charlton, I mean. Strange, though; you grab snippets from local radio stations that suggest, that Albion should have had a penalty at The Valley tonight, and then you learn the real truth from a much more balanced source ? that, apparently, a hitting of posts by both sets of combatants had ensued, and also mention made of both keepers having to pull off saves truly worthy of their current transfer-market values. I must say I was astonished to hear AJ was playing tonight. With Carter? Ooer. Blimey, we must have been really stuck for fit bodies! That apart, both sides were pretty wide of the mark when it came to scoring, and had the ref not blown his whistle to put a stop to the miserable business they?d both still be there now, probably.

At least that bloodless final score means we picked up a valuable point for our efforts; ?tis true that Midddlesbrough have leapfrogged above us thanks to that emphatic win of theirs over poor doomed Sunderland tonight, but at least we?ve managed to stem the tide, if only until the weekend, when its Blackburn?s turn to take centre-stage at The Shrine. And nick the points? Mind you, from what little I saw of the Boro game via the highlights tonight, I quickly gained the impression that had Lady Luck shown a little more sympathy to The Mackems, they could have quite conceivably ended up with a much more closely-fought affair than proved to be the case in the end.

Not going to The Valley ourselves this evening, but still wanting some sort of replacement therapy, we travelled to Edgar Street instead, for their Conference encounter with Cambridge United, who tumbled somewhat ignominiously into the unspeakable maw of non-league football come the end of last season. Since then, they?ve flirted somewhat dangerously with dissolution, the sum currently owed being in the order of 250K. Not a lot for such a club, you might think, but the moment this first started, they really felt the financial pinch, ownership of their ground being the first casualty. All their half-decent players have long-since flown the coop, and the only prospect left now is of a mid-table Conference finish, which won?t do anyone any good. There is now talk of ground-sharing with the other Cambridge football club. That rankled so much with their support, there?s yet another pressure group doing the rounds, hence the presence of a huge banner in the away end tonight bearing the simple legend: ?BUY IT BACK?.

It soon became clear that the visitors were intending to play it in similarly-turgid pattern to their unlamented former leader, John Beck, the only League manager to progress by boring the rest of the Football League half to death, back in the late eighties/early nineties. A pretty hard nut to crack as a result, and try as they might, one The Bulls couldn?t, but doing so was vital to their interests, as there were other games on that night affecting the play-off picture; a win could see them go a glorious second. Mind you, they could have improved their prospects of doing so immeasurably by ditching the idea of playing with but a single target-man up front, a la Kevin Campbell, and getting at least a smidgen of communication going between engine-room and main armament. The crowd, around 2,500 of them, were getting restless ? then, The Bulls got the break they badly craved (and so did I, as it was bloody cold in that stand!).

With just 25 minutes on the clock, and totally out of the blue, Adam Stansfield finally broke the deadlock for The Bulls. A fine, individual goal, it was, the lad taking possession of the ball some way out in the Cambridge half, ghosting past a couple of defenders as if they weren?t there, then letting fly, pretty much unmarked, from just inside the 18-yard area. In it flew, like a good ?un, and suddenly Hereford had a game on. Deservedly so.

Despite suffering such a vicious body-blow, the visitors were still proving somewhat troublesome. Clearly a much more comfortable ?cushion? was needed, and that?s precisely what Hereford?s Andy Williams ? no, he doesn?t grab a mike and sing ?Moon River? when the game?s a bit sluggish ? managed to achieve just before the interval. The execution of that second strike was exquisite, involving a neat little bit of interplay with a colleague in and around the edge of the box, before unleashing the second thunderbolt of the night. A splendid 45 minutes worth of good honest graft, and the home side well worth their two-goal lead come the break. Just as well they?d settled Cambridge?s hash, really, as the news from Grays, their promotion rivals, was that they were becoming involved in one of those pulsating ?tit-for-tat? ?I-score-you-score? encounters with Burton, and currently getting the worst of it.

The break also gave us an opportunity to talk to Nick Brade, the Hereford lad who found himself unexpectedly introduced to The Noise and his amazing conversational skills the same time last week (see Diary passim).

?He never told me his name, he just opened his mouth, and all these words flowed out!??.? That, in a nutshell, was an ashen-faced and still shell-shocked Nick Brade?s harrowing recollection of the night last week when The Noise decided to take in that Mickey Mouse Cup-tie involving Macclesfield and Hereford. And he had good reason to look so aghast; the moment full recollection of Albion?s answer to Patrick Moore finally hit home; as we told poor Nick tonight, The Noise has quite a CV when it comes to the application of garrulous vocal skills to the job in hand.

I suppose, in retrospect, it was a gross violation of the Geneva Convention to bring those two together that bitterly-cold night. Many, suitably pre-warned, have gone into battle with all vocal chords blazing, but to little avail, the majority finishing up broken and bitter Baggies: an hour or so with the Noise, unprepared for the grim ordeal, really does have that effect on people. So widespread was his notoriety among followers of our own club, and those of other (then) First Division outfits, at one stage, I even had printed business cards that bore the legend: ?YOU HAVE JUST BEEN TALKED AT BY MARTIN LEWIS OF WEST BROMWICH ALBION FANZINE GRORTY DICK!? And what a delight it was to hand these out like candy to kids at various away venues the length and breadth of the country. Doubly so on those rare occasions when one was handily placed to see the ?victim?s? lower jaw sagging the full length of a Peter Crouch Liverpool shirt in the face of that unprecedented verbal onslaught. Oh, well ? with Nick, it?s now a case of ?once bitten, twice shy!? Er ? isn?t it?

Returning to the matter in hand once more, although the visitors brought on their ?trump card?, a lad whose height couldn?t have fallen all that far short of aforementioned Liverpool beanpole Peter Crouch, and whose ?act? solely consisted of trying to out-jump every single opposition player at set-pieces in the box, in the end it mattered diddly-squat. With only minutes of the second half gone, Williams did it again, this time courtesy a defence-splitting Adams cross; all the lad had to do was fire home, and the game was in the bag. Cambridge?s hash finally settled, all there was left to do after that was play out the remainder of the half, and all without having their peace of mind unduly disturbed either.

Late on, Hereford brought forth one of their late transfer-window acquisitions, a lad called Stuart Fleetwood, whose previous history was certainly lively. A capture from Cardiff City, he did have a little bit of a sorry past; not so long back, he was involved in a car accident which put a team-mate in a coma for quite some time. I gather that the purpose of the transfer was to give him the chance of a fresh start with another club, the lad having well and truly blotted his copybook with the Welsh outfit. Probably a wise decision; if nothing else, The Bulls are widely known as an outfit more than willing to give the fallen from grace a second chance to shine ? and it looked tonight as though in Fleetwood, they?d found a gem. Fast, clever, neat with the ball, and unlucky not to get on the score-sheet himself, he looks one highly likely to reap enormous dividends for the cider-slurpers as far as their current promotion push is concerned.

So there you had it ? a workmanlike 3-0 win come the final whistle, and Burton beating Grays meant further progress up the Conference table for the home side. All that remained was to exit the ground and beat it hot-footed to our vehicle, parked around a hundred yards away from the exit. Once inside, a quick butchers via the car radio revealed our score at The Valley to be bloodless, still. And that?s the way it stayed, of course; according to The Beeb, it wasn?t exactly one of the beautiful game?s all-time classics, either. Still, we weren?t exactly complaining about the grabbing of the single point for ourselves, were we?

Regarding the transfer window, which is now firmly shut at the time of writing, Quashie was having a very late-night medical at The Valley ? bet the poor sod of a quack excavated to do that must have loved our favourite football club to bits! ? so that looks a done deal, bar any sundry nasties discovered by said quack ? sorry, medical practitioner! Earnie is now a Norwich player, either permanent or on loan pending a ?proper? deal once the season?s over (not too sure how that one finally panned out). Strange, though. This is the guy who wanted very much to continue playing in the top-flight? Not much of that sort of thing going on at Carrow Road these days ? unless he?s after doing a catering course run by the charming Delia, mind. Oh, well ? he?ll be what he was at Cardiff, then, a big fish in a small pond, a replacement for Huckerby. I can only hope it all works out for him.

Reading through posts from various other Baggies, some of whom went to Charlton, there?s vague whisperings of some sort of a protest come Saturday, the prime reason being our seeming complete failure to sign a forward in the time. Even more puzzling, that, considering Earnie?s now gone and so will The Horse eventually, to Warnock?s little coven, on a loan basis, presumably. The sale of the Brentford lad, Campbell, to Blues today, and for around half a million squid, must have concentrated minds wonderfully also. We all saw what he could do on Match Of The Day, so why the hell weren?t we in for the guy?

And Finally?.. Completely Useless Information Corner. Tonight, Hereford had a lad called Beckwith playing for them and, believe it or not, there lies a link, admittedly as tenuous as hell, with both the cider-slurpers and the US military, circa the late 1960?s. Remember ?Apocalypse Now?, the 1979 ?in yer face? Vietnam War blockbuster starring, among others, Marlon Brando? And ditto the unspeakably-wacko Colonel Kurtz character?

Well, brace yourselves for this one, kiddoes: legend has it that Kurtz was based very much on reality, in this particular instance, a chap called Charlie Beckwith, whose job it was (among other things) to train the US Special Forces for duty in the jungle around the mid-to-late sixties. I believe he took part in some pretty clandestine stuff in that country also. From what I?ve read about the guy, I gather his methods were pretty close to the knuckle, and for various reasons, most of them somewhat unpleasant, word eventually got back to the Pentagon that he was a bit of a loose cannon and not to be trusted anywhere near a serious firefight. Once the war finished both he and his unorthodox methods came into total disfavour, and normally, that would have been that ? until the US hostage trouble in Iran broke at the end of the seventies.

With around 200 Yanks holed up in durance vile in the Embassy buildings in Tehran, it was decided to try to extract them by force, one of those ?gung-ho? things that occur to their presidents from time to time ? and that?s where Colonel Beckwith came in. Placed in charge of the helicopter rescue mission ? Beckwith was someone considered by the hierarchy loopy enough to go for it, possibly get away with it, yet be a convenient ?sacrificial goat? should things go wrong - he set forth, but unfortunately, on the way in, the whole thing fell foul of various forms of technical trouble in the desert. Beckwith was killed when his copter burst into flames after crashing trying to extricate people stuck in another craft. So now you know!

 - Glynis Wright

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