The Diary

29 April 2006: Baggies On The Brink.

Greetings once more. Right now, I?m trying to ascertain what?s worse: New Labour?s awful series of mirth-making ?own goals? this week (Have regular nookie with John Prescott? Yeuk!) or those emanating from our very own football club. No ? hang on a minute: all it wants is for someone from the club to do a Patricia Hewitt impersonation, and announce that 2006 was ?a very good year indeed for West Bromwich Albion? and I guarantee you?ll hear the relentless grinding of Baggie teeth as far distant as Walsall!

You really couldn?t make up some of the stuff I?ve seen this week, honest. Example? Had I known otherwise, I would have taken the latest message from our football club to appear in my inbox to be a complete and utter joke ? and one in particularly bad taste, too ? most likely perpetrated by a Dingle blessed with a remarkably sick sense of humour, even for them. As an ?own goal?, it?s on a par with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain?s late spring 1940 announcement in Parliament that ?Hitler has missed the bus?, a statement presented almost simultaneously with incontrovertible evidence from the military that the moustachioed one?s army was at that very same moment well and truly stomping all over Norway and the Low Countries.

So what?s the scoop, then? It?s actually a puff-piece from the West Bromwich Building Society advertising their (almost) brand-new Albion Premier Saver Account: I say ?almost? because up until fairly recently, I had savings invested as per the terms and conditions of the older version which, coincidentally, weren?t all that much different to the Mark Two incarnation. But it was the title of the piece that really had me choking on my breakfast. Of all the headlines in all the bloody world, and they had to use this one?.. ?Sing When You?re Winning? wasn?t exactly the most splendid example of tact and diplomacy at its best to aim at beleaguered Baggies, now, was it, chaps?

Mind you, what?s promised for our final home game next Monday night, when we take up arms against a sea of troubles by mixing it with West Ham, could well prove a tad embarrassing ? and should it come off, then I?m certain the club?s dictatorial attitude won?t have helped one little bit. The problem? If you?ve been vacationing on the Planet Tharg for the last few weeks, you won?t know, but basically, there?s been word on some Albion message-boards these past few days that there?s going to be a protest that night, in the form of lots of people producing white flags of whatever provenance in time for the kick-off, these being symbolic of our woeful showing in the league this term. A harmless gesture that wouldn?t have hurt anything, save the club?s pride, of course ? but with a degree of overreaction so swift it was frightening, and with distinct echoes of fifties and sixties-style tinpot Communist dictators chucked in for good measure, the club almost immediately announced that they would totally proscribe the carrying of flags or banners of whatever description into the ground that night.

Crazy, isn?t it? In one fell swoop, they?ve managed to elevate what would have been a very low-key protest into something truly worthy of martyr status for the individuals involved. Genius, chaps, sheer genius. And there?s another thing. Had Albion simply rolled with the punches, however uncomfortable for the football club, and allowed people to get their anger well and truly out of their systems in that wonderfully-cathartic manner, there wouldn?t have been a problem. Not any more, there won?t. Faced with the probability of such items being confiscated at the turnstiles, you can bet anything you care to name that some younger hotheads will have already devised protests of their own making instead, and those involved not wishing to let on precise details of what they?re going to do, any such plans disappearing underground with all the rapidity of a rampant rabbit.

And while we?re on the subject of embarrassing Albion stuff appearing in public, the saga of the Player (or should that read ?Payer? instead, I wonder?) Of The Year Night fiasco takes one hell of a lot of beating. Up until just a few years ago, this traditional end-of-season bash was very much the Supporters? Club?s baby, with the parent football club taking only a minimal role in the annual function, if that. Players (plus wives, partners, etc) would come to this thrash quite happily, mingle with those who worshipped from afar each and very Saturday, and some would even get presented with awards voted for by those self-same people, or by differing SC branches. That was how it worked, then; not my personal cup of tea, mind, but it was universally regarded as a night when players, management and supporters could let their hair collectively down, with minimal repercussions afterwards, with everyone generally going away feeling very uplifted indeed on the night ? and, as far as those attending were concerned, all that for the expenditure of what was, genuinely, a nominal amount of dosh.

Last season, however, things changed, and radically so. The club suddenly decided, at the very last minute, as I recall, to take over the whole thing lock, stock and player. As the supporters? body needed permission from the parent football club for the players to attend in the first place, they were effectively stuffed, and their event had to be cancelled, at very short notice indeed, and at great expense to the organisers. Room hire, especially concerning those blessed with sufficient space to allow for the entry of hundreds of people, doesn?t come cheap, and the Supporters Club?s finances aren?t exactly on a par with those of Richard Branson. The club took the whole shebang over, then, but with one fundamental difference. Knowing a potential cash cow when they saw one, they decided to charge people an awful lot more to attend what was, essentially, the same event. Last season, it was somewhere in the region of ?60; this year the proposed entrance fee was a stonking ?85 quid.

Note my use of the word ?proposed? dear readers, because what happened this year was ? erm ? that the bash simply didn?t happen! We didn?t find out until the other evening (see below), but I couldn?t half help sniggering when I learned that the club themselves had to cancel. Why? The ?party line? is that both club and manager wanted nothing to distract the players in their avowed aim of taking six whole points from our last two games ? yes, I know it makes for hugely-hilarious reading given the march of recent events, but I didn?t come up with this piece of absolute twaddle; blame those who did! ? but we assume the real truth of the matter lies in the fact that the club haven?t exactly been trampled to death in the headlong rush to buy tickets!

And there?s a small twist to the tale. The ?official? thrash may have well and truly gone down the gurgle, but the ?unofficial? one certainly hasn?t. This one will be going ahead as planned, but for approximately a third of what the ?pukka? one would have cost eager punters, this time a much more user-friendly ?25. I?m not sure about details regarding precisely which players will be attending, or exact cost, but I?m sure a series of well-aimed phone calls in the direction of those nice Supporters Club officials will put you right in short order.

Not hard to see why the official thrash got the Captain Boycott treatment from most supporters, mind; even a serial-smoker of skunk cannabis would glance at the current Premiership table right now, then look askance with a haste truly embarrassing to behold. The problem, of course, lies in the fact that should Pompey win, or Blues draw this weekend, we?re deader than the dodo. It?s a situation that brings into play a whole series of contradictions. Cast your minds back to August of last year. Individually, I?d genuinely thought what we have now to be superior, overall, to what we had at the end of 2005/06. The Richardson factor represented quite a difference also, but once it was made clear he wouldn't be joining us permanently, I still thought we had a very good chance of staying up with what we had at the start of the current bash.

Just look at some of the results we pulled off at home earlier in the present campaign: Albion 4 Everton 0 was a particular highlight, as was the three points gained at the Gunners' expense. The games versus Man City and Spurs also resulted in creditable wins. We could - and should - have done much better than we did in other games, also. What really did for us, though, was our almost pathological inability to take points from those around us, coupled with a somewhat frustrating lack of results away from home. As I've said on many previous occasions in my pieces, we've also got the tactics horrendously wrong more times than I care to remember, both on our own turf and elsewhere.

What does sadden me about this whole rotten mess is the stark fact of what genuinely looked a side consisting of a promising set of lads back in August having to be broken up once we go down. Already, the vultures are circling ? Paul Robinson and Curtis Davies both look as though they?ll be playing for new clubs come the start of next season - and so great will the collateral damage be from such a mass-exodus, I honestly think that getting back will prove a much tougher proposition than it did the last time we took the drop. Expect to see Coca-Cola football for the foreseeable future, then.

Last Wednesday night, though, Albion?s current woes took a back seat for once, as the Supporters Club wheeled out yet another group of former players for our massed delectation, in this case Ray Wilson, Ray Fairfax, Graham Williams, Tony Brown (second half sub) Stan Jones, and Bob Taylor. All players who were very much of my era; just one coming to the end of his Hawthorns career as I commenced my own supporting one, the rest very much of my ilk, bar for Bob, who was still very much a twinkle in his mum?s Geordie eye when some of these guys were kicking a ball in earnest, but all very much a reminder of what was then a much more innocent age, when love of the club was the prime consideration, and the love of money very much a secondary one.

Graham Williams in particular regaled us with numerous tales, all warmly-recounted, of the time when he was an Albion apprentice, back in the 50?s. If you had a bad game, you ended up cleaning the various toilets around the ground that following week, but if you?d played well, then you got what was regarded as the ?plum job? back then, that of sweeping the stands. How come? Easy - when performing that chore, you got to pick up all those carelessly-discarded coins left underneath the seats, a situation constituting a considerable boost to the meagre finances of many a fifteen year-old hopeful!

Ray Fairfax also recalled the same deal when he was an apprentice ? but with one fundamental difference. For most games, the above applied ? unless either Liverpool or Everton had been the visitors. If that had been the case, then life took on a most curious twist for those juniors doing the sweeping in the vicinity of the away end. For reasons best known to themselves, back then, Merseysiders were in the habit of leaving behind the most odd things: savings books, bank books, driving licences, the works; all of that, and more, came under the puzzled gaze of 15 or 16 year-olds at various times during the season!

I daresay that were it possible for a present-day Baggie to be transported back in time to that era, they?d find lots of things vastly different, unrecognisably so, in a good many instances. The medical provisions, for example; as one of the ?veterans? pointed out that night, far from the cast of thousands that immediately get involved on the touchline the minute a present-day player sustains the slightest of knocks or twinges, back then, the sum-total of treatment for such things came courtesy a water-filled galvanised iron bucket and an ice-cold sponge. As Bomber Brown quite rightly pointed out, almost as an afterthought, that?s the prime reason why so many former players of his generation are keeping the NHS so busy supplying hip and knee replacements these days. In fact , he told us that when at Newcastle last week, he?d spent quite some time in earnest discussion with former Toon favourite Malcolm McDonald, the main topic of conversation revolving around joint-replacement surgery, who?d had what, when, and with what complications!

The macho ethos then very much in vogue regarded those players having to come off, but leaving the field under their own steam, with contempt, almost. Even those with head injures weren?t immune, as per the night Graham Williams had to deputise for Ossie, after the latter had sustained bad concussion during the first half of a FA Cup Fourth round replay versus Southampton, at The Dell. Even then, our ornithological-inclined keeper stayed the first-half course between the sticks, with trainer Stuart Williams telling poor, dazed Ossie where the ball was, and lining the poor sod up in almost ?Golden Shot? fashion ? ?Left a bit, stop; right a bit, stop?.?! Concussion is now rightly recognised as a very serious condition, and no club doctor these days would even dare entertain the possibility of someone in that state staying on the park. Not if there was the strong likelihood of an appearance before the GMC (and/or a coroner?) should things turn out pear-shaped.

Treatment was rudimentary back then, to say the least. And that coming with the near certainty that the person wielding such dubious medical aids was about as qualified in the treatment of such injuries as I am in the production of precision tools in quantity. It?s the likes of Tony who are now paying the price for such short-sighted club policies, hence the continuing need for such bodies as Albion?s Former Players? Association. One of their foremost aims is to provide assistance to those former crowd favourites badly in need of treatment for problems sustained largely as a result of wearing the sacred blue and white stripes for years on end, hence Graham Williams?s genuine gratitude regarding the Supporters? Club?s presentation of a cheque for ?1,000 at the very end.

All in all, a very good night indeed, and one conducted more in the manner of an intimate fireside chat between old friends than a formal function. As my other half pointedly remarked afterwards, the atmosphere during that meeting was very much the sort all of us long-termers fondly remembered when socialising with players back then. How very apposite, then, was Graham?s closing remark after the presentation of the cheque: ?You?re not just supporters, you?re friends?..?.

That following morning, the pair of us headed straight back to the ground ? well, the Study Centre in the Tom Silk Building, actually ? to talk turkey with the chaps who collared us in the Supporters Club premises on the evening of the Bolton game. As you may recall, the idea is to produce a book all about Albion supporters. Steve (sorry, mate, can?t remember your second name), and a lad called Dave Lane, editor of the Brentford fanzine ?Beesotted? are the co-authors, and they?re currently taking time out to interview supporters with a view towards inclusion in this weighty tome. Apparently, it?ll be hitting the shops some time next season, so keep a beady eye out for it.

As we?d been running the fanzine since the year dot, we were ?grabbed? pretty quickly; originally, we?d been ?booked in? for an hour, but it quickly became apparent that such was the rich vein of stories they?d opened up, recounting most of ?em would take as long again as the time originally earmarked for the task. The end result was that eventually, we agreed to supply material for their use ? one such piece being a pen-picture of the late William ?Popeye? Martin.

(Note for the benefit of those who don?t already know: Popeye was a long-standing supporter adopted as a sort of general factotum by some Albion manager or other, back in the far-distant mists of time, then ?inherited? by various successors, be they good, bad or indifferent. One of the fittest 75 year-olds I?ve ever encountered, not only could he take a penalty better than a good many professional players half his age, when acting as ?ball boy? for reserve games, he could still chase after stray footballs to the rear of either Brummie or Smethwick terraces far quicker than any snotty-nosed kid ever could!)

Yes, I do still have photos of Bill dating from the time when we interviewed him for the Dick, about a year before his untimely death, which came about after being knocked off his bike in Smethwick by a passing lorry, and just months before we beat Port Vale in that Wembley Play Off Final. It said a lot for his popularity that just about every member of our then first-team squad, plus manager, coaching staff and some directors, even, shoehorned themselves into a packed West Bromwich Crematorium for the funeral. Even the reserve side, en-route for an away game somewhere up north, pulled up in their coach, then all piled in nicely in time for the service. If ever the club needed a practical demonstration of what a wonderful rapport existed between both players and supporters back then, that was most certainly it. God alone knows what the poor old sod would have thought of current developments at the club, now, mind!

Back with yet more thoughts come Sunday night. By then, we?ll most likely be down, and I?ll have had some time by then to suss out the prevalent mood in cyberspace. As residential Oriental player Inamoto might say, until then: ?Sayonara!?.?

And Finally?? One. John Homer, Supporters Club MC, at the start of Wednesday?s meeting, and doing the ?introductory? piece: ?--There?s memorabilia at the bar for you to look at?..?

Interjecting Voice In The Crowd (pointing in the direction of a vaguely familiar tall, dark figure lurking there): ?What? Bob Taylor??

Two?. John Homer, yet again, poor lad. While formally closing the meeting, his mobile phone, currently sitting quietly on the table in front of him, began to ring. That wouldn?t have mattered one little bit; under normal circumstances, John would have simply carried on and dealt with the call later, but not this time. As quick as a flash, Bob Taylor, seated next to John, grabbed the phone, pressed the button answering the call, and before you could let even one line of the song ?Super Bobby Taylor? leave your mouth, proceeded to ? erm ? ?reply? on John?s behalf. Turned out that it was John?s missus, a Baggies nut herself, on the other end, but I bet even she had one hell of a shock suddenly finding herself talking to SuperBob, and not her beloved!

Three? Returned home from the Supporters Club shindig late last Wednesday night to discover that my charming tabby tom cat had left no less then THREE dead mice for me to admire. I couldn?t avoid seeing them, really, because all the corpses were neatly laid out on our living-room carpet, all in a row, as if for inspection. That, mind, in addition to the one I?d been presented with earlier that day. I don?t know what it is that?s suddenly prompted my tomcat to wage war on the rodent population in such deadly fashion, but I wish I could find out; had we fed it to our first team right from the very start of the current season, then it?s a nigh-on cert we wouldn?t be staring relegation in the face, now, would we?

 - Glynis Wright

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