The Diary

10 April 2006: Albion Make Their Seal Park Point.

So how was it for you, then? After witnessing today?s bloodless draw at Seal Park, one thought in particular remains foremost in my mind tonight, that today?s fixture was truly a meeting of shockingly-bad proportions. Over the course of the entire 90 minutes, was there ever a single moment when I?d thought the standard of the fayre put in front of me genuinely worthy of Premiership status? Come on, all you Baggie folks out there, be honest with yourselves: when you come to think about it, only one conclusion remains possible - neither side truly deserved to remain in the top flight.

Villa, having squirreled away their own precious stash of Premiership points much earlier in the campaign, will be highly delighted with that final score, no doubt. Despite local media hype of almost apocalyptic proportions stressing the Witton Road persuasion?s vulnerability to a last-minute upturn in form on the part of one or more of the other bit players, I don?t think for one moment any supporter of either persuasion blessed with a reasonable amount of intelligence ever considered the claret-and-spew crew to be credible relegation fodder.

Obnoxious critters they may be, of course, but that point of theirs today more or less sorted (sealed?) it for them. Whoever does take the plunge in but a few weeks time, it most certainly won?t be them, that?s for sure. O?Leary?s managerial prospects there? Yerssss?? An entirely separate issue, of course, but with Deadly Doug lurking behind the arras, dagger at the ready, let?s just say that if I were him, I wouldn?t be making any detailed plans involving signings completed with a view towards securing their short-to-medium-term top-flight future right now.

As for ourselves, I guess the game?s well and truly up, in more than one sense of the phrase. The bottom line today was that in order to maintain genuinely serious hopes of staying put in the top flight, we needed those three points about as desperately as Tony Blair does an issue to deflect serious attention away from some of the more pernicious bits of legislation he?s got simmering away on the parliamentary back-burner right now. Need ?em we did, and get ?em we didn?t. End of story, game over, we?re down ? or as good as. Time, now, to start taking a serious look at rebuilding plans for our next Fizzy Pop League campaign, and to hell with this division.

But let?s not let such gloomy considerations detract unduly from what positives there were to be found on display this lunchtime. It would have been unduly churlish of me, not to mention disingenuous, to paint the picture otherwise. For me, what shone through above most other considerations in this derby game was our seeming willingness to scrap for just about everything going, up to and including first helpings of the hot meat pies on sale during the break. So rumour has it.

Just like most other Black Country people when faced with the dismal prospect of a game such as this one, my main concern was that we?d simply wave a metaphorical white flag, then quietly give up the ghost. Remember what I said last night apropos the Spartans - ?Return with your shield, or upon it!? - and discreditable conduct of any flavour, either imagined or actual, not being a serious option for our bunch under any circumstances? Not in the Baggies Staffordshire Bull Terrier tradition at all. To the best of my knowledge and belief, we never once tried to head down that road at all today, and for that much at least, I?m indebted to those eleven players out there. They never once disgraced the stripes they wore, and on my birthday, too, which counts for an awful lot in my book. Honest.

And, talking about birthdays, didn?t I just get the surprise of my life when I shifted from out of my pit this morning? No, not The Noise turning up at our door at some ridiculously-early time of day (it has been known: just check out the daft time he doorstepped us on the day of our 1993 Wembley Play-Off Final, roughly, a good two hours before his prompt presence became a really vital issue for us! Turned out he couldn?t sleep either, in the end, just said ?Sod it?, then headed off down the M6!), more what I?d found after unwrapping the pressie my other half got for me. In a mysteriously-long (and vaguely-cylindrical!) cardboard thingie, it was, with ?FRAGILE? stickers adorning it like supermarket price tickets on some major loss-leader or other. And, once I?d shifted the outer packaging, encountering reams and reams of that plastic bubble-wrap stuff retailers simply adore.

Curiouser and curiouser! Having said that, once I?d got the bubble-wrap out of the way, everything became remarkably clear; what I had in front of me was an astronomical telescope, a reflector, to be more precise. But not just any old optical instrument, my leetle Baggie chums. This one is well and truly the 21st Century biz, boasting a motordrive linked to a computer. The concept?s not dissimilar to that of a car Satnav system. Just plug in the astronomical coordinates of the celestial object you want to examine more closely, and the electronics will do it all for you. And keep pace with the earth?s rotation, so no losing the damn object after finding it either.

No more ruining of night vision trying to suss out the location of astronomical bodies via an old-fashioned combination of tatty old star atlas, and bright torch. I?ve still to put everything together properly ? our pressing date at Seal Park meant such practical considerations having to be temporarily postponed, of course ? but I will assemble everything tomorrow, probably, then take the finished article into our garden for a nocturnal ?test drive? sometime this week. Light pollution being what it is around here, bar the moon and brighter stars, I?ll see sod-all, but my sexy little bit of kit will truly come into its own when we head on out to our holiday home, in but a fortnight?s time.

So knocked out was I by my hubby?s thoughtful gift, I nearly missed the arrival of The Noise at our front door (Seal Park being more or less on his own front doorstep, The Fart made his own way there). While I brewed him a coffee, I could still hear him giving ?Im Indoors tympanic membranes a bit of a bashing ? poor lad, the last time he?d come to ours prior to a game was last season, so I guess his seriously-atrophied vocal chords really needed the exercise!

Having not had the pleasure of his company ?en-voiture? recently, once inside our vehicle and heading vaguely in the direction of Perry Barr, the lad didn?t half make up for lost time! Amongst the things I discovered about him today was the fact that yet again, the prospect of redundancy was rearing its ugly head. Mind you, from what he?s previously told me about Wedgwood?s management practices ? think Gordon Gekko, of ?Wall Street? fame squared and cubed, then crossed with the DNA of Margaret Thatcher, and you?ve just about got it sussed ? I reckon redundancy would do him an enormous favour. From what I?ve heard about Stoke?s Barlaston alternative to Messrs Laurel And Hardy, the words ?pee-up? and ?brewery? instantaneously spring to mind.

Being the proactive sort of guy he is, our voluble chum is now engaged in the serious research of some possible alternative employment options. (Anyone out there running a firm located in or around the Stoke area, and genuinely looking for someone good on the ?people? front to bat for them, get in touch with me: joking about his incredible ear-bending ability apart, he is a bloody hard worker, and loyal with it. Wedgwoods really don?t deserve someone of his undoubted ? and largely unrecognised - talent in their employ, honest!).

Any road up, by the time we?d arrived in the general area of the fish-lovin? fraternity, not only had we tortured that particular subject to death, we?d also found time to move on to closer conversational exploration of American policy in Iraq, not to mention the overall instability of the world in general, with short halts at University tuition fees (a live issue for The Noise once daughter Carly sits her A Levels, of course) and the knife-edge financial existence most young people have to put up with when first starting out on life?s dusty road today. Just goes to show what a lofty plane of conversation you enter when travelling to away games with us, doesn?t it?

The really good thing about away travel has to be sheer number of ?family members? you tend to meet on the way. We?re a pretty broad sort of church, our lot, and provided you lack the more obvious Dingle tendencies, your money is always good. Seal Park was certainly no exception to that particular rule: while waiting for the away turnstiles to open, in pretty rapid succession, we bumped into Fab Traccana, of Denmark pre-season tour fame, Andy, Sutton Branch?s genial ex-newspaper seller, and Howard, local councillor and Boing website mailing-list moderator extraordinaire. One pretty disturbing thread ran through much of the pre-match conversations we had with these people, even The Drinking Family, whose dedication to the cause in happier times had been nothing short of ?total?. Almost without exception, they now say away travel next season will be seriously curtailed.

Why? Just re-reading the bulk of my pieces for this website these past few months will serve to point you in the right direction. Sheer cost of games at this level, daft kick-off times just to suit the likes of Rupert Murdoch?s mob, a rapidly-growing disinclination on the club?s part to give genuinely-serious supporters anything in return for the sacrifices they make, week in, week out, to see games, a rapidly-widening gulf between supporters and players, the almost-cataclysmic transformation of what had hitherto been a remarkably-friendly kind of outfit into an unashamedly-cash-driven corporate concern?. Where do you want me to start? How much spare time have you got?

Then, once inside the ground proper, even more pleasant encounters, not least of which involved Gitte, the Danish lady who did so much to make we travelling Baggies feel totally welcome in Odense, the last time we journeyed there. Now divorced, sadly, but on extremely amicable terms, so I?m led to believe ? both children remain with their mum, still ? she and her female chum decided to combine a stay in Blighty of just over a week with a bit of serious Baggies-watching, taking in today?s game, plus next week?s Highbury encounter. Wow ? at the rate she?s going, we?ll have her signing up for a season-ticket in no time flat!

By the time Gitte had done her thing to further the cause of Anglo-Danish relations, the weather had done its own. Not anywhere near Sunderland class, but still pretty unpleasant, all the same. It was while ?Im Indoors, The Noise and I were trying ? and failing miserably! ? to derive at least some form of shelter from yet another ice-cold deluge from the heavens, we just happened to bump into yet another Baggie person currently featuring prominently in all our lives. SuperBob, no less, and more importantly, spurning offers of an executive box viewpoint, be they blagged or otherwise, and plumping instead for a seat in the away end, just like all the rest of we battle-weary blue and white striped foot-soldiers.

As I?ve said on many, many previous occasions, although in semi-retirement with non-league Tamworth these days, Supes still remains very much ?one of us?, hence his Sabbath Day presence in ?cattle-class? for the one game from which Baggies supporters demand nothing less than commitment, absolute and unconditional, from their favourites. Trying to find his seat while becoming seriously handicapped by the sheer torrent of handshakes and backslaps raining onto his body wasn?t at all easy for the lad, poor soul. Said the great man to we three, irony glands in full production mode, no doubt: ?I?ve come incognito!?

Finally, not long before the scheduled start, The Fart rolled up. ?Ah, Tel?s here at last ? tell Robbo we can start the game, now!? said I. Not long after that, our lugholes got seriously blitzed by that ?5-4-3-2-1? thing the Seals use to signal the imminent entry of both sides onto the pitch. Funny, though. Isn?t ?Thunderbird? the rocket-fuel-strength vino much favoured by dossers, and similar? ?Nuff said! Then came the team news, after which we could all have done with a large-size bottle of the stuff, if only for anaesthetic purposes.

The good news was that today?s game saw the return, at long last, of Zoltan Gera to the side, following that horribly long injury lay-off of his. One man doesn?t make a side, sure, and I?m not trying to seek any form of mitigating circumstances for our recent disastrous downwards slide, but I still can?t help thinking that had Zoltan been a first-string regular these past few weeks and months, we might ? just! ? have not run into so much serious grief. The other significant changes saw Clem restored to defensive favour, and naughty Nigel Quashie back in and pitching following the expiry of that 5-game ban he so stupidly collected recently, and Albrechtsen beached to make way for Steve Watson. One other major change ? leaving Kevin Campbell up front - I saw in a much more dubious light. True, we did have Joe Kamara doing duty there also, but without wanting to appear too unkind, Our Kev isn?t exactly a light-speed exponent of his net-busting art these days, is he?

So, off we went, finally ? and, my goodness, wasn?t the pace of those opening minutes truly frenetic? I felt exhausted just watching it. Pleasing to note that from those initial exchanges, we seemed to emerge showing the slightly-better form of the two With only ten gone, Joe Kamara got in a cross tantalisingly out of reach ? just ? of poor Kev Campbell?s desperately-straining noddle. Mind you, he was in good company, the Mighty Zoltan also doing similar ? and with equally-depressing results.

Not long after that, Joe was in the thick of the action yet again, but then the play switched in favour of the claret-and-spew tendency. The Pole In Goal suddenly found his job not nice at all, courtesy of a Villa incursion that had the ball zinging in the six-yard area like crazy. First of all the lad collected, then it somehow squirmed right out of his hands, looping onto the crossbar, getting chucked into ?the mixer? once more, fumbled horribly by our tame eastern European custodian again ? the damp conditions weren?t doing us any favours ? bodies, blood, snot, everything, flying in all directions. How the hell that ball stayed out of the net, I?ll never know.

After that, at least two more promising Albion attacks materialised, but just before the break, we so nearly conceded. It took all the energies of The (Very Busy!) Pole In Goal to stop that bladder going in; what was truly frightening, though, was the sheer speed with which our phocine chums clinically dissected our defence from the left, leaving our na?ve vulnerability laid totally bare for all to see. It was also around that time that Wallwork, one of our better performers today, got shown yellow. That?s what happens when you lay on a practical demonstration of gravitational attraction which involved tumbling the victim about from base to apex; more seriously, though, that?s a two-match ban for him, which we need like a spot of brain surgery, performed without benefit of anaesthetic, right now.

Merciful release in the form of the referee?s half-time whistle, at long last. Not one of the game?s classier performances, certainly ? any neutrals watching must have ages before totally given up the will to live, I reckon! ? but we were trying our utmost to carry the day, straining every sinew, even, and for that reason alone, I wasn?t about to get into the game of chucking unrequited brickbats in the direction of our leader.

Oh ? and another thing. The break also brought for me a brief respite from the vocal efforts of what must have been one of the foulest-mouthed females it?s ever been my misfortune to encounter. Mind you, the whole lot of ?em were at it, so no small wonder, really. Yes, I do freely acknowledge my knowledge of basic Anglo-Saxon to be quite extensive at times like these, but it was the sheer variety of those insults aimed in the direction of our opponents that got me listening very hard indeed. Racist, homophobic, sexist ? honestly! ? and just plain blasphemous, my lugholes got the flaming lot. So variable were the nature of these insults, on hearing that little lot, your average three-badge stoker would have quit the Navy instantaneously, and opted for running a nice little tearoom somewhere instead.

So, on to the second helping, then. An extremely watery one, too. Not being content with giving us all that icy soaking just minutes before, the Rain God responsible must have decided to diversify a tad over the course of the final 45 as well. Not nice at all, trust me on this. As for events on the pitch ? well, they just continued in the ?wham, bam, thank you Ma?am? vein they had during the course of the first half. As I said earlier, skill of any description was very much on the backburner today. The Seal custodian had his flippers well and truly stung courtesy Joe Kamara fairly early in the half, and Villa made it ?many happy returns? via their free-kick from about 25 yards out. End-to-end stuff was very much king today, but having said that, I don?t suppose the Match Of The Day programme editor was duly untroubled by any pressing need to prioritise the showing of highlights!

So, on marched the course of our game, and as it did so, the wintry weather then deteriorated at lightning speed. Once more, the skies assumed a slate-grey appearance, those first oily drops of ?Corporation pop? hit our clothing ? by that stage, I was richly cursing my culpable neglect in not bringing either scarf or gloves for this one ? but the heavens were to keep their best efforts until the very last. Before that, though, we mounted what had to be one of our better periods of sustained pressure upon our fish-loving opponents; once more, we did everything but score. The sods even managed to kick a particularly worthy Watson effort from right off the line. There were a couple of penalty shouts from us also, but of the first I?d say it was more a case of ?Ball to hand? rather than the other way on. The second? Hmmmm? I guess I?ll reserve judgment until I?ve actually seen the incident in slo-mo for myself. In short, Villa?s defence were living about as dangerously as a Dingle trying to juggle with unstable nitroglycerine; a shame, then that two subbings from our bench had the unintended effect of significantly lessening the momentum of our mob-handed rush towards their goal.

Ten minutes before the end, they were, the hard-working Campbell making way for pensioner-status (almost!) colleague Kanu, and Joe Kamara handing the baton onto young Stuart Nicholson. What a bloody game to make only your second time in the Prem; I?ve heard of chucking people in at the ?deep end? metaphorically speaking, but this had to be affirmation of such a policy writ large. With about 7 to go, Inamoto replaced the clearly-knackered Wallwork, but what characterised those closing minutes even more was the sheer ferocity of the bloody weather. Where once rain had held the ascendancy, now it was hail taking centre-stage. And not tidgy bits of the white stuff, either ? these mothers, some of which had to be around half an inch in diameter, had real attitude, hence the frozen air being rapidly rent by the cries of richly-cursing Back Country people. As those icy spheroids grew ever larger, and their descent significantly more painful, so could their progress be tracked by the sheer number of ?Cowin? ?Ell!? cries resounding from those away-end seats! Not only were the gods having a laugh because we supported a useless Premier League side, it now seemed the totally-unseasonal aspect of that aerial bombardment was providing Mount Olympus with all the laughs it could take over the course of an hour and a half!

In the end, though, I think the final whistle went just to spare everyone from the perils of Eurosize Nine hailstones. A draw, sure, and no-one made visibly upset by the outcome, but as with this, and everything else connected to our survival chances, our efforts, praiseworthy though they may have been, simply weren?t good enough. You reap precisely what you sow at this level ? and in our case, especially just lately, the soil had proven very barren indeed. Time to change the fertiliser, perhaps? Oh ? one other thing. When we?d set out earlier in the day, our in-car thermometer hovered around the 9/10 degree Celsius mark. By the time we returned, the reading had plunged somewhat alarmingly, finally hitting a chilling 4 Celsius. Eek! The final proof lay in my hands, which had rapidly assumed a horrible-blotchy red-blue mottle, exquisitely painful with it, too. Truly proof positive someone up there doesn?t like us!

And Finally?.. This one simply has to come under the category of that wonderful Victor Meldrew-inspired crie de coeur, ?I don?t belieeeeeeve it!? Come half-time, the claret-and spew chose to show a pop video on their big screen. Nothing unusual about that, you might think, and as Albion also do similar when at home, you would normally have been dead right. What drew my eyeballs inexorably towards this particular bit of footage, though, was the sight and sound of The Noise, as he rapidly approached a state of complete hysteria. ?Look what?s on there?. Look! LOOK!?

The sight that greeted my upwardly-cast eyes? That of hundreds of SEALS, the genuine article this time, and all making as if to enter a Tube train during the rush hour! Bearing that in mind, this is where I throw it open to you lot out there. A cleverly-contrived and sophisticated piece of self-irony, that footage, or yet more incontrovertible proof they really are seriously-deficient in the old grey matter department? Not easy, is it?

 - Glynis Wright

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