The Diary

02 May 2006: Surreality Rules OK As The Shrine Bids The Prem Farewell!

So, once more, the final curtain rings down on yet another Hawthorns season, and one that a good many Baggies would much rather forget, given the choice. Any alien species possessing the technology to do it, don?t hesitate to get in touch; a few choice words via my keyboard and I can find you a nice little earner ? well, in the West Bromwich area, at least.

As I joined in the near-silent exodus following the final whistle, something, I know not what, sent my memory spinning into ?rewind? mode, and another last home game with West Ham the opponents, in what now seems a geological age ago. May, 1968, the dateline, and just like tonight, one of the participating sides well and truly headed for the FA Cup Final ? the only variables left in the huge equation that called itself the First Division back then being this outstanding game. 3-1, and all three points to the Baggies, was the outcome, with the King repeating his feat of just 48 hours previously by grabbing yet another Hawthorns hat-trick.

What a contrast was tonight ? an atmosphere so leaden, so gloom-laden, you could have lined church roofs with it without too much difficulty. Precedent? Yep ? there was yet another, our 1985/86 old-style First Division swansong; same club the opponents, even, roughly, the same time of year, but with The Hammers winning the encounter by the odd goal in five that time. Will it take us another 16 years to get out of it next time round, I wonder? With the Baggies, nothing at all would surprise me, right now.

In retrospect, perhaps it might have been far better to have seen the whole thing through the mind of a small child, in this case, young Bethany Lewis, all ten chronological years of her. Said that young lady before the start of tonight?s ritual embarrassment: ?I?ll miss the Premiership so much, I?ll cry on the way home?..? Ah ? the innocence of youth, coupled with what could be the start of a very promising media career indeed for that young lady! According to The Noise, her dad, just before we?d arrived at the Hawthorns pub, two Sky camera crew plus ?roving reporter? grabbed a very large chunk of Bethany?s juvenile thoughts all for themselves, their actions presumably based upon the general principle that getting kids to do vox-pops for you is a very Good Thing Indeed.

Normally, they?d be dead right ? but we are talking a member of the Lewis clan, remember, and in more ways than just the obvious. Nattering to the camera like a seasoned veteran for a good twenty minutes, she was, according to Big Sister, and giving the Murdoch mob a bit of a run for their money while she was at it, too. Obviously, they would have edited the piece considerably by the time it reached the armchair viewer, but even so, I?m willing to bet hands down that The Noise?s junior daughter completely knocked ?em dead in the studios. I?d have really loved to see the end result, mind; one thing the Lewis clan are never lost for is words. Chip off the old block, DNA-wise? Too bloody right, she is.

In some ways, we were viewing tonight?s game as a bit of a break, the main reason being that for a considerable part of that same afternoon, we?d been engaged in the irksome task of denuding all our bedroom furniture of clothes, shoes, undies, and all that jazz, and all because we?re expecting a delivery of completely new stuff, wardrobes, chests of drawers, that sort of thing, this coming Friday. I really felt for ?Im Indoors, as he had to do the lion?s share of the ? erm ? ?humping?, slinging all the old stuff out in preparation for the new. To put it mildly, now the job?s done, the upstairs of our house is in a state of complete and utter mucking fuddle right now; a bit like our first team, if you really want to be uncharitable with it!

Returning to the vexed question of tonight?s performance, then, we knew the omens for this game the moment we hauled our carcases to the door of the Hawthorns pub. As we were about to go in, The Noise, very handily placed outside, warned us that there was some function or other still going on there; the fundamental problem lay in the fact that this event had been booked ages before Sky decided to poke their noses in, and take our game as their customary Monday night ?live? offering. That, and the brutal fact that the people concerned had paid considerably more money than the Supporters Club for the use of the room! As I said earlier, it really was that sort of night.

Finally, though, we did get to go into the function room, and although time was getting on a little, the relative emptiness of the place served as a strong pointer to the fact that tonight?s game was going to be one of the poorest-attended of the entire season. Not that we needed any not-so-subtle hints in that direction, mind; when taking the walk from our car to the pub, we noticed the entire length of Halfords Lane bearing an increasing resemblance to the closing scenes of ?On The Beach?, the 1957 film of the Neville Shute post-nuclear war novel, the one set in Australia, where the people slowly die from radiation sickness. If you?ve seen the film, you?ll know precisely what I mean.

Once inside, The Noise then tried to explain the increasingly-convoluted nature of Carly?s love life in terms of Robson?s current team selection problems! Well, anyone who can bring Darren Carter?s name into a tale of teenage angst will do alright by me! Thank goodness The Fart walked in at that precise moment, with a tale about the newly-rescued Supporters Club Player Of The Year Night, the following Monday. Apparently, loads of our players have (verbally) pledged the use of their bodies (ooer!) for this one; in retrospect, after tonight?s grim showing, how many will actually show, I wonder? Watch this space.

As you might have expected, Rumour was talking in many tongues tonight; one story I?d heard was that our stewards had been told to confiscate anything that looked even remotely as though it could be transmogrified into a white flag, which would meld nicely into the stuff we?d seen elsewhere on the subject. Was the news, on Sky ? yes, they?d got the preview on in the pub ? that ?something? had fallen from the roof of one of the stands anything to do with this, we wondered, the object in question being one of the proscribed articles? So grim was the mood tonight, nothing would have surprised me.

And, talking of ?surprises? who should roll up but Sauce, away game transport organiser extraordinaire? Not his usual pre-match haunt, this one, but at least I could confirm that our on-pitch woes hadn?t adversely affected his state of mind; the moment he first clapped eyes on me, he turned the air blue with a choice bunch of well-ripened insults, delivered in a manner that only Sauce can achieve. Had his greeting been merely polite, I would have feared for the current state of his mental health far more than I did, believe you me!

News also from our ripe-tongued chum that Gitte, Danish mucker from our recent series of pre-season tours out there, had attended the Arsenal game as planned; not only that, both she and her Danish mate had decided to extend their stay in Blighty by a further week. Whether or not she?d gone to tonight?s thrash I?m not totally sure ? but, hey, it sure as hell looks as though we?ve got a brand new recruit to the faith. All we have to do now is start playing some decent football, and we?ve well and truly cracked Denmark!

Then, those dread words: ?Time to get it all over with, then?..? Hubby?s way of making light of the situation, of course, but only serving to add considerably to the funereal atmosphere already pervading the place. A quick walk down Halfords Lane, an even quicker natter to Steve Carr, The Meanest Man In West Bromwich, and we were flashing the old stile-card at the electronic widget for the very last time this term. As I did so, my mind harked back to the fact that come this time that very next week, I?d be having a minor operation done, a prospect infinitely more preferable to the one I was facing right then, owing to the fact that I?d be under a mega-sized dose of anaesthetic for that one, and therefore rendered entirely insensible to the whole thing!

Once sat in our usual perches, a swift eyeballing around the entire perimeter of the ground revealed our suspicions regarding the size of the gate (attendance later announced as 24,462; a palpable nonsense that completely defied convincing visual evidence to the contrary, but you do have to remember that Albion?s figures go on season-tickets paid-for already) to be completely correct. Live evening game, played in a stadium, post-relegation, and in an atmosphere closely resembling that of a morgue, and on a Bank holiday, too? Yeah, right. Gaps absolutely everywhere, including the away end, where quite a few itinerant Londoners were partying away merrily, their antics presumably a spillover from previous jollifications. Couldn?t blame ?em one little bit, mind; after all, it?s not every day your side gets to go to the FA Cup Final, with definite qualification for Europe irrespective of the final score chucked in for good measure, and all come the conclusion of your first season back in the Prem, now, is it?

And, talking of those celebratory Hammers, the team news panned out just as I?d suspected last night; resting just about everyone they decently could without unduly raising the ire of either FA or Premiership. No less than SEVEN, would you believe, one of them a very-last-minute jobbie? Apparently, their lad Etherington did unspeakable things to himself during the pre-match warm-up, which meant wholesale swaps for Kyle Reid, given the emergency managerial nod in his place, with ace in the hole Harewood sitting this one out on the bench. One small Albion-related link, though ? the inclusion of former Baggie junior Danny Gabbidon in their side, yet another promising young talent slipped through our fingers.

Our lot? Three changes from the Newcastle farce, Kanu, Ellington and the now definitely-unsuspended Ronnie Wallwork back in from the cold, with the Kamara, Campbell and Clement trio making way for them. Protests? Yes, there were some, despite the vigilance of the stewards in trying to prevent the sanctity of The Shrine being dented by the flaunting of nasty white protest banners, but a very low-key thing, comparatively speaking. One other thought, though ? why the mad scramble of photographers around the home dug-out when the teams emerged? Something we didn?t know?

Some banners lacked the stipulated pristine whiteness, mind, mostly those telling our manager precisely where he could profitably spend his next summer holidays ? clue: very hot indeed, and run by a funny bearded bloke with a couple of horns on his head, and a very strange taste in toasting-forks. That sort of thing?s not our forte, really ? but gallows humour, almost impossible to crack down on, most certainly is. More of that later, but first, pre-kick off, a universally-observed minute?s silence for former Baggie Jimmy Dudley, who passed away recently: once Graham Poll?s whistle blew for the prescribed minute?s pause to all normal matchday activities, you could have heard a pin drop.

Back to the matter in hand once more, then. As the evening gloom rapidly deepened, both literally and metaphorically, The Thing From Tring?s busy whistle finally set the evening?s ?entertainment? ? I do use that word advisedly, note ? in motion. As far as events on the pitch were concerned, it probably won?t trouble you unduly to learn that most of these took place in an atmosphere already heavily suffused with end-of-season torpor, coupled with a not-so-subtle hint of ?can?t be arsed?. What I did find interesting, though, were our own supporters; normally, end-of-season affairs such as this one are pretty surreal things anyway, but because of the highly-emotive background to tonight?s encounter, this one was to prove particularly interesting, from a psychological point of view, if nothing else.

It all started with just a couple of minutes of the game on the clock. First the Smethwick, then the Brummie, both struck up with a rousing chorus of: ?Stand up if you love West Brom?, an activity eagerly taken up by all participants concerned, and the East Stand joining in for good measure. That was followed by a straightforward rendition of: ?Albion, Albion, Albion?..?, and a lusty chorus of the naughty ditty that speaks of Albion going down, rising, phoenix-like, from the ashes that very next campaign, winning the Cup, then well and truly putting the claret-and-spew persuasion to the physical sword while they?re at it. Was all this prearranged, I wonder? It wouldn?t surprise me; what I heard tonight seemed very much an attempt on the part of our followers to grab the moral high ground for themselves.

Meanwhile, on the pitch?. With just a few minutes gone, Kanu well and truly set his stall out for the remainder of the game by way of one almighty miss over the bar from just inside the box. ?Kanu?s missed another sitter?.? was to become a very familiar phrase on the lips of our followers tonight, believe you me. Then, just 60 seconds later, having seen Greening do all the hard work supplying the ?killer ball? from the right, it was Ellington?s turn to add to what was rapidly shaping up to be a Hawthorns classical comedy of errors.

So far, so good for our lot, but not long after that, West Ham awoke from their previously-somnolent state with a free-kick directed uncomfortably close to our crossbar. Clearly, charity would be taking the passenger seat tonight. And, as our lot tried to mount another assault on the Hammers goal, a sudden thought struck me: just how many of that lot out there would be here to greet the dawn of season 2006-07? Appropriately enough, our forthcoming Championship season will get underway on the 12th of August this year. Why so apt? Easy ? that?s the day the grouse-shooting season starts!

20 minutes gone, and for West Ham, a sudden change of personnel; Ashton off, to be replaced by Teddy Sheringham. I could only assume that the lovely Mister Pardew had decided it really wasn?t worth the risk keeping him in there and pitching so industriously, and effected the change on that basis. Meanwhile, back in the Brummie, just like the cuckoo?s plaintive call signifying the first faint intimations of the coming spring, so it was we were now able to discern, albeit feebly, the first choral cries of ?We Want Robson Out!? Nicely in time to see West Ham?s Reed upset our lot mightily with a very late tackle perpetrated upon a certain Mister Albrechtsen.

With the last 15 of the first half rapidly approaching, and most of our incursions coming to nothing, save a creditable Greening effort that actually forced the Hammers custodian into only his first serious stop of the night thus far, you could feel the prevailing mood of the crowd change almost imperceptibly. Frustration writ increasingly large upon those Baggie faces, and that in complete contrast to the demeanour of the Upton Park persuasion, who could increasingly scent three points there for the taking, should they want to avail themselves of the chance over the course of the next few minutes.

As a result, their efforts greatly increased in volume as the whole sorry business took its natural course, the only discernable ?blip? in their defence department resulting from a Kanu solo effort that came to be directly after that Nigerian gentleman chose to take on just about the whole of the Hammers? rearguard virtually on his tod. From around 15 yards out, I?d say, and dead unlucky not to score, too. Mind you, over the course of a half that saw our finest playing very much as though they were attempting a Channel swim conducted entirely through seas of treacle, the only discernable jewel to be found in the Baggies? now-tarnished crown was that of the former Gunners? striker. And that purely and simply because those of his team-mates, quite frankly, left an enormous amount to be desired.

Ten minutes to the break, then ? and a most puzzling occurrence. Can someone please enlighten me as to why all the enthusiastic vocal support for substitute Martinez-Williams, as he proceeded about his lawful touchline business at around that time? Buggered if I could work it out ? and, just 60 seconds later, I was to become even more mystified by West Ham?s failure to score from a corner, the effort looping lazily over the crossbar when it should have plopped right into the back of the rigging instead. That little let-off prompted an instant burst of: ?Super, SuperBob?? from the amateur glee-club massed in the Smethwick. I briefly wondered if they were aware that the gentleman in question was happily sitting in the VIP area, just a few rows behind our own? Not that it mattered; with a speed totally unmatched by that of our forward line, they?d switched to choral paeans of praise for a certain ?Willie Johnston On The Wing?.?

See? I told you it was one of those sort of nights. Mind you, my profound sense of total mystification was to be completely and utterly replaced by one of abject gloom instead, and within about five minutes to go to the break, too. What happened? Well, first off came the warning, in the form of a Hammers free-kick that nearly fooled everyone wearing a stripey shirt, the Pole In Goal included, closely followed by the strike that killed everything off completely. It was Bobby Zamora that did the real damage, with some sterling groundwork along the right that completely bamboozled our piddle-poor defenders, closely followed by a cross ? totally unchallenged, largely because of the fact that not one single Albion player was within eyeballing distance, even.

You could have easily driven a 79 bus in between the space that now sundered defending Baggie from predatory Hammer, and still not made any meaningful physical contact; cue Nigel Reo-Coker, all three of him, and a nasty little effort that had our Slav custodian instantaneously groping for fresh air. And most certainly not preventing the entry of ball into goal-net, either: 1-0 to the Hammers, an instantaneous outbreak of ?Robson For England? chants. Sarcasm layered on, and with a bloody great trowel, too; as I intimated previously, we do that sort of thing enormously well these days. Oh, whoops.

Mercifully, the half-time whistle was to provide something of a respite for our sorely-troubled eleven; just as well, really. Mind you, as they trooped dejectedly off the pitch, I wondered long and hard as to precisely what you could say to motivate a side whose collective morale had quite clearly taken the fire-exit escape route early, in order not to get too trampled in the rush. Tender loving care was at a premium, and I couldn?t see either the Brummie or the Smethwick being suitably disposed to provide it over the course of the next 45. Albion, Robson, Peace, and all who sailed in them, had clearly crossed the Rubicon, and just like Hannibal and his wretched elephants, all they could do was come out for the second half, and hope like hell, Micawber-like, that ?something would turn up?.

Start as you mean to go on, though; of the two sides, it was ours that looked the more likely to shatter the Hawthorns? doom-laden torpor. Within but five minutes of the restart, Paul Robinson sent the elegant, lovely and talented Duke Ellington off on a left-sided flight of fancy, and not a Hammer within miles ? unless you count the Albion maintenance bloke?s little cupboard, of course. Once in the box, the net yawned most invitingly for our former Wigan lad, and with at least two other muckers in close proximity, too, but instead of screwing the ball back across the face of goal for a colleague to finish the job, he decided to have a poke himself, with predictable results. Ellington?s stock, not exactly of the best among Albion supporters, even before tonight?s game kicked off, plummeted both precipitously and instantaneously. Somehow, I got the gut feeling that the man formerly known as The Duke would be distinctly short on the Christmas card front come the eventual advent of this year?s festive season.

It was at this precise point I turned my attention to Bryan Robson, stood, as per usual, in the technical area situated directly in front of our dug-out. What I saw didn?t bode well for our prospects ? well, not to this column. Those Baggies who were around when Brian Little was in the managerial hot-seat, cast your minds back to the 3-0 Blues home defeat that finally did for him. What did you notice? Yep, the same totally-immobile stance, the same almost-disinterested bodily demeanour: a virtual ?dead man walking?, in short. With Little, it was all down to the constant stress and strain associated with the job; was the current incumbent now feeling a similar amount of neurological heat?

12 minutes gone, and yet another ?Kanu only just missed? moment come and gone. As far as the Brummie and Smethwick were concerned, they tried a slightly different vocal tack, this time going in for a rousing chorus of that old Baggies standby, ?Oh, When The Stripes Go Marching In?..? Another Kanu ?nearly? effort later, and the tack had changed yet again, the noise increasing in both volume and moral tone, the idea presumably being to shame our finest into doing something a little more positive to retrieve the situation. At least our gaffer had the decency to acknowledge their collective efforts, with very pointed above-head claps aimed in the direction of both Brummie and Smethwick. Within a matter of a couple of minutes or so, this then morphed into ?The Lord?s My Shepherd?, one that reverberated right around the ground, closely followed by a reprieve for the naughty-worded anti-Villa song I mentioned earlier. Even the East Stand were getting in on the act by then.

24 minutes gone, then ? time for events to take an even more surreal course. God knows how it started, or who thought up the idea in the first place, even, but within the space of but a moment, we were looking at what had to be the first ever Mexican wave conducted in celebration of a relegation! I crap you not, all you lovely folkies out there; it all kicked off in the Smethwick, with boos, predictably, for the Hammers lot not sharing our warped sense of humour. Not to worry, though ? the East Stand cottoned onto the general principle in a flash, and before you could say ?Jeff Astle?, even, off it went once more, those undulations gripping first the Brummie, then the Brummie side of the Halfords, to return to its place of origin once more. And not once, but several times on the bounce, too.

What all those poor TV viewers must have thought about the overall state of our mental health right then, I dread to think. It would surprise me not in the slightest to find one of those nice Care In The Community chappies camped on our front doorstep by the time I finally rise from my slumbers, their presence there courtesy of Sky TV. Game? What game? Oh, yeah ? two Hammers subbings, and I nearly missed ?em, so fascinated was I by what was going down in the stands.

30 minutes gone, two thirds of the allotted span, and still the sheer surreality of it all predominated, despite the fact both sets of combatants were presented with chances, at the very least, fairly capable of subsequent conversion. Now, the Smethwick were doing an impromptu rendition of ?The Liquidator?, complete with both ?instrumental backing? and those naughty, naughty lyrics! Those Dingles? ears must have burned mightily as a direct result of our vocal efforts ? but not half as badly as those of Kanu, who somehow contrived to miss from a distance of about five yards while all of the above was merrily going on apace! Result? A massed explosion of ?Earnie, Earnie?..? Sarcasm so raw, it must have really hurt.

By then, Paul Robinson had decided he?d had enough, quitting the scene of the ?crime? to yet more choruses of ?Super, Super Bob? with a quick follow-up of ?Jason Koumas..? from what must have been a distinctly war-weary Brummie by then. Presciently, ?Im Indoors just happened to remark: ?All we need now is a burst of ?Jeff As-tle?.?, and we?ve got the set? ? and, blow me down dead with a sledgehammer, that?s precisely what we did get from the Brummie! ?Astle Is Our King?.? warbled our Black Country songsters, and very obliging of them to do it, too!

Nine to go to the end, and a sudden Hammers attack left us stitched up like a kipper. Had the proceedings been conducted in earnest (and I?m not talking about the Norwich striker, formerly of these parts, either), we would have been dead meat. Just how silly could this get before Graham Poll put a whistled stop to it all? As if by way of reply, a phalanx of coppers took up position in and around the tunnel area. Said the chap sitting in front of ?Im Indoors: ?Blimey ? we?re going to be made to stay in as punishment!?

Amazingly, with just a couple of minutes remaining, we finally got the ball in the back of the West Ham net. Yes? No? Yes? Don?t be silly, Malcolm, the lino was already frantically flagging for some infringement or other. Oh ? and did I tell you about the conga line in the Brummie? No? Well, we did have one on the go in there, and very jolly it all looked from where I was sitting, too. So did the Kanu ?slice? right in front of the target, embarrassingly so, in fact. Summed everything up with unrivalled precision, that. After that, it was just a case of waiting to see just how much additional misery Graham, Poll was going to lumber us with on top. TWO minutes? Shades of ?cruel and unusual punishment? there, without any shadow of a doubt. Guantanamo Bay, come right to our doorstep; play our cards right, and we could even invoke the Geneva Convention as a necessary safeguard against any further human rights violations inflicted by the club in the future! What a relief when it was all finally over; now, dear Lord, preside over my forthcoming Saturday Merseyside immersion in durance vile without too much attendant trauma incurred, and I might even chuck a quick bedtime one in your direction for good measure!

And Finally?. Sort this lot out, then. The Conference play-offs, I mean. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I?ll begin?.. Because Sky want to televise the whole shebang live, and no-one?s talking to anyone, anywhere, this is what?s happening. Until someone else comes up with an even more confusing scenario, of course!

For the first leg, this might take place on Saturday ? or even Sunday! Kick-off times? Er ? noon, possibly, or, there again, it might just be 3 o?clock. If the director?s a Taurus, mind, one game might even start at half five in the evening! Nope, not one person has the slightest idea as to what?s going on, and Sky, the prime cause of all this, can?t even make their own minds up, yet.

The second leg? These take place a week this coming Wednesday, that?s definite ? but what?s that I hear? Ah, we may just be looking at the day after that instead, with a start time of either a fairly conventional half-seven, or ? and I?m willing to swear on whatever religious book you like, I?m NOT making all this up ? at half-five instead! Tickets have been on sale as of last Saturday, in the case of Hereford, between the hours of twelve and half-four for season-ticket holders, with general sale from half-four to half-seven that very same night!

Now look at all those times again, and think about it all very carefully. There you have a series of play-off games that just might take place on Day A, but if the TV mob so ordain it, they might just go for Day B, and with a possible teatime start time. Just how people are expected to get straight from their places of work and to the game, I really don?t know. Or plan any necessary time off knowing full well it might all get changed again. Mind you, for those working shifts, they?ve really ended up with the short straw, haven?t they? Less than a week before the start, and no-one can give a definitive answer as to either time, date or place? Now I really know the Sky lunatics have well and truly taken over the asylum.

 - Glynis Wright

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