The Diary

18 October 2006: I've Got That 'Three Point Feeling'!

You have to admit it. The Fart really does have an excellent sense of timing, sometimes. Only he could ring us close to the end of the first 45 in tonight?s game, loudly bemoaning the fact we?d huffed, and we?d puffed, but try as we might for the entire half, couldn?t blow bloody Palace?s house down to save our lives ? then, while he was doing his ?Woe, woe and thrice woe? bit on the other end of the blower, what happens? Yep, Palace 0, Albion 1, Zoltan Gera finally breaking the deadlock right on the break with a trademark strike, then entering ?gymnastic mode? just seconds later. TWO somersaults, Zoltan? Blimey, talk about inflation!

The problem was that our well-ripened chum was so busy talking to us, I don?t think he?d realised we?d taken the lead, listening as he was to BBC WM?s commentary at that particular time. ?Tel, er ? TEL!? interjected this column, voice conveying a profound sense of increasing urgency with every additional syllable uttered. Then: ?TEL ? WE?VE BLOODY SCORED! Listen to your radio!? A short pause to take it in, then, ?Oooh, yeah! But why aren?t you listening to it on WM??

If truth were known, we don?t actually go a bundle on local radio commentaries when we?re stuck at home sweating on an away game, but ?to each their own?, as Confucius might say, were he alive today. Going onto the club website after the final whistle, I was able to get more details; apparently, Jason Koumas (yet again!) was the architect of Palace?s destruction, whacking the ball from the middle to Duke Ellington, lurking out on the right. He didn?t waste any time in whacking the ball for the cross, and that connected nicely with Zoltan, who was coming through the middle like an express train with afterburners on, ball meeting head in perfect union, giving their keeper no chance whatsoever. As I said, an excellent time to score.

Still, our game starting late meant that come the break, we could keep close tabs on what other outfits looking for a coveted top six place were doing at that time. Blues were goalless, and judging from the mournful way in which that son of fun Paul Merson was waffling on and on, actually being there seemed to be about as much fun as sitting through a ?100 Top Funerals? compilation video, specially put out courtesy the local Crematorium.

At Oakwell, Barnsley and Plymouth were sharing the spoils, which could make us second were both results to stay the same come the end of the allotted span. Awful news ? well that?s if you?re a Leeds supporter ? from Elland Road, where they?d gone one behind to Leicester. And, as if that wasn?t enough, Kilgallon got to see red also.?Serious foul play? said the accompanying caption. When you?re well and truly in the smelly stuff, life doesn?t half have a habit of dumping you even further into it. And they?d only had 16,000 through the turnstiles for this one. If ever a club looked to be in ?meltdown? right now, it had to be them. Oh ? and our chums the Dingles were winning theirs by the odd goal; Mick McCarthy seems to be in the business of ?grinding out? results, a la Megson circa 2001-02, these days.

Another incredible half-time score at Portman Road; Preston had pulled back Ipswich?s two goal lead, and were now baying for blood. Going on what happened when we played them last weekend, it seemed to me that the home side were now on the verge of yet another defensive collapse, and the game would then be Preston?s for the taking. And I was proved right, later in the second half, when the visitors grabbed another.

As for our lot, from what I?d heard, both on Sky and from El Tel, it seemed very much as though the side were everything I could possibly hope and dream they could be. None of this unadventurous ?shut up shop, and grab a point? mentality, right from the word go, we?d been taking the game right into Palace?s territory, and not just once, either. Attack was, once more, our watchword. Music to my ears, that ? send it down, Moses! Seven clear chances missed, apparently, and Palace doing well just to stay in the game. Time after time the Sky bloke assigned to our game butted into the programme (well, it meant a welcome change from the Man United reporter making what sounded very much like background ?egg-laying? noises every single time United went close!) to report yet another Albion attack finish narrowly short of taking the lead. My big fear was of us chucking everything bar the kitchen sink into Palace?s box, getting caught on the break, then paying the penalty. Fortunately, Zoltan Gera?s timely intervention prevented anything of the sort from happening, and scoring right on the break as he did, must have meant Palace going in with their tails stuck very much between their little London legs.

A check with the club website reveals that no less than 1,123 Albionites made the excruciatingly-long journey round the M25 aka ?The Road To Hell? and into Croydon tonight, which is one helluva turnout when you consider it?s plumb-spang in the middle of the week, and most Baggies of working age would have needed to take the afternoon off at least (and possibly the following day, too ? depends upon their arrival time back in West Bromwich, I suppose) to go there. And, coming right on the heels of our amazing Ipswich jaunt last Saturday, the sheer cost would have been a prime consideration in most people?s minds as well, I daresay. Mind you, that didn?t stop me from getting a bad attack of ?Little Green Eyes Syndrome?, aka plain ornery jealousy! Yeah ? I know, I could have gone, but to do so would have meant a guilt-trip of massive dimensions, and for reasons I explained yesterday.

Mind you, I do have some pretty mixed memories of away trips to Selhurst Park. Getting stuck on the rush-hour gridlocked M25 was pretty much par for the course for us. On one particular occasion that happened, I remember arriving at the ground with less than 30 minutes to spare, and nowhere in sight to park ? all the plum spots had gone, unsurprisingly. Time for Plan B, then. The Noise, The Fart and myself to shift our carcasses in the general direction of Selhurst Park, about a mile away, while my beloved went in search of a safe anchorage.

By that stage, I thought he?d be certain to miss the kick-off ? but, nope. Getting in with about five minutes to spare, he then told us he?d managed to find a ?sort-of-legal? hidey hole not long after he?d told us to abandon ship, and that?s where he?d left our poor Dickmobile. I say ?poor? because when we got back to it ? Albion had won 1-0, if I remember rightly, Bob Taylor (who else?) doing the damage ? we found that our radio aerial had been bent back beyond repair, and the likely suspects, some local snotty-nosed kids, sniggering fit to bust nearby. Yet another excellent reason for us not to go to Palace: that, plus the almighty thumping we got at their place last term!

A change of formation for the Selhurst mob, though, when they emerged for the second helping. 4-3-3 was their new ?signature dish?, bringing on Mark Hudson at Dougie Freedman?s expense ? and the somewhat drastic tactical move seemed to have given Palace a bitsy resurgence of hope ? but they hadn?t reckoned with Joe Kamara, had they? Three minutes into the second 45, and we?d done it again. Cue for shouts of ?YERSS! YERSS! From both this column and hubby, also for rapid disappearance of felines dozing by the fire. Once more, Koumas had weaved his magic ? what a player, now he?s finally gone and grown up! ? skilfully threading the ball through to Our Joe, by all accounts. That pass was truly a ?killer?: all our lad had to do after that was get past their keeper, which he then did in fine style. Blimey, five goals in three outings, whatever next, Joe?

After that, the Sky focus then concentrated upon the Ipswich-Preston game. As I?d suspected would happen, Preston had taken the lead. Assuming that score stayed the same, then, no second spot for us. Cut camera to Paul Merson, the Blues game pundit. Said Sky?s anchor-man, hopefully: ?If Birmingham can get a goal and win against Norwich, they can get up really close to the leaders! Any sign, Paul?

Cut camera once more to Paul Merson, face steeped in gloom, complete and utter: ?Er ? No!? came the mournful response. Cue for raucous laughter back in the studio, then: ?GOAL!? One brief flicker of interest from the former Walsall gaffer, then, quickly rearranging his facial features into ?funereal mode? once more: ?- For Norwich??

Back to our own game, which sounded by this stage as though it was turning into a real thriller. ?Wish you?d changed your mind and gone?? asked my other half, somewhat mischievously. Curses! So the noble art of mind-reading wasn?t dead after all! Publicly, I was feigning indifference by then, but privately, I was as sick as a chip! Not that I was going to admit it, mind.

Just six minutes from the end of their game, news came in that Cardiff had managed to score. Additionally, confirmation came in that the Dingles had also hit the jackpot, winning their game by the solitary goal. As for our lot, it seemed that Palace had suddenly found their second wind ? their tactical change shortly before the start of the second half had made a considerable difference, and now the pendulum was definitely swinging the other way - and because of that, there was many a sweaty moment in our box during those fraught closing minutes. Having said all that, it?s equally valid to opine that we could have increased our lead quite easily also. Gradually, the clock ran down ? and Sky took an advert break. Back again after a few minutes, but they seemed to be concentrating upon just about everyone?s game except our own. Surely it was full-time at Selhurst Park by now? And then, there it was ? confirmation we?d gone and done it. Whoo-wee!

That result now puts us in third place, and on 22 points, alongside the Dingles, who have a much inferior goal difference, of course. (A much inferior ?everything?, I?d say, personally, but that?s my long-standing antipathy towards Dingles for you!) That will very much put the pressure on Sunday?s game, when both clubs come face to face, of course. As I said yesterday, that?s one hell of a debut game for our manager to cope with. Solving the current nuclear weapons face-off between North Korea and The USA might prove a marginally easier task for our lad, I reckon. Should prove lively, if nothing else. Oh ? and another thought. Strange to think that our last three games have been conducted under the auspices of three different managers ? and each of ?em won!

And Finally??. One. I have to say I was dead pleased to hear that it now looks very much as though Chelsea aren?t going to pursue the formal complaint they were threatening to make against Reading midfielder Stephen Hunt after what happened to keeper Petr Cech just minutes after the start of their Premiership Saturday evening tryst. Sure, it was a nasty collision and injury ? a depressed fracture of the skull is no laughing matter, and could quite easily have resulted in a life-threatening situation for Cech had the medics not rushed him to hospital so promptly ? but having seen the video rerun of the accident several times, now, I?m firmly of the opinion that both players committed themselves to going for a fifty-fifty ball, went in like express trains, and the unfortunate Cech accidentally ended up in the wars as a result. And that was it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Football, remember, is a contact sport, always has been, always will be ? unless the game?s future leaders lose their nerve and completely outlaw that sort of physical contact. Mind you, far from calling for keepers to have increased protection these days, in my opinion, over the course of the last forty years or so, the pendulum has firmly swung in the direction of the goalkeeper, and not the attacker. See a keeper end up on the deck after, say, a close challenge from an attacker following a corner-kick, and you can rest assured the ref will blow in favour of the keeper every single time, irrespective of whether or not the challenge was actually illegal, or not. Possibly because refs are, as a species, quite nervous of having a keeper badly hurt on their watch. When I first started supporting, charging the keeper as he went up for a high ball was considered perfectly legitimate: in fact, I?ll bet you any money that The Fart, who goes much further back than me, could provide many instances in which goalkeepers have ended up injured as a result of bruising ?close encounters of the third kind? with attackers ? and nothing whatsoever given by the ref, either.

A perfect example I can personally recall (and, about the last of its kind I can remember) was the 1967 League Cup Final, when Rodney Marsh scored the winning goal against us. As a result of his bulldozing tactics when putting the ball away, Albion keeper Rick Sheppard?s skull hit Marsh?s predatory boot, and was actually knocked unconscious, needing lengthy treatment, too ? but the goal still stood! Then, long before my supporting time, there was Bert Trautman, of Man City, who actually ended up breaking his neck when in goal for them in the Cup fInal ? but still carried on! Just read local newspaper accounts of Albion games back in the twenties and thirties, and it won?t take you long to realise that keepers certainly had to keep their wits about them if they wanted to complete the game on their own two feet, and not in the local hospital.

By all means penalise people when they have done wrong ? anyone who quite clearly sets out to deliberately disable a keeper totally deserves everything they have coming to them, the real ?maim and pain? merchants usually being pretty easy to spot - but when it clearly comes down to two professionals trying to do the best thing by their side in both going for a ?winnable? ball, then one of them ending up clobbered as a result of both players? eagerness to get to the ball first, a smidgen of common sense is called for. So there.

Two. Nothing whatsoever to do with football, this one, but when I read it in one of the Sunday papers, I thought it so ribticklin? funny, I had no option but to share it with you lot. And it?s all about Swansea University, their student field-trips, and a newly-appointed ?jobsworth? administrator, somewhat over-keen to make his mark on the place.

Although being comparatively new, as universities go, most faculties enjoyed a pretty good reputation, and it was for that reason tutors were more or less left to organise things like field trips for themselves, the admin-wallahs quite content to leave them to get on with it ? until around a year ago, that was. In came one of those new-broom admin whiz-kids ? yep, we all know the danger signs ? still wet behind the ears, and full of the many rules governing the conduct of such institutions, and pretty determined to ensure the place complied with them, too. That?s the reason why one of the first things the guy did on taking office was to undertake a full risk-assessment regarding all the aforementioned field trips. As for the poor teaching staff involved, they just rolled their eyes upwards and round for a bit, and pretended the whole thing hadn?t happened.

Result? After the guy?s extensive nose-poking exercise, one of the first things lecturers had to take on board was the unexpected diktat from the newcomer that in future, whenever they went on field trips outside the campus, irrespective of final destination, students had to wear a hard hat, the sort you see on building sites the length and breadth of the country. (?Health and safety, mate, more than my job?s worth not to check it out, know what I mean??) Dead miffed, our tame academics were, quite reasonably pointing out that in all the years they?d been taking their charges out on these jaunts, nary a one had been unfortunate enough to have an accident of any description, but you might as well have talked to the wall as talked to Chummy. Hard hats it was, then, and positively no exceptions.

Not very long after that, one of the faculty members found himself due to take the next lot of students out on walkabouts, so, after loading up his charges into the university minibus, he then checked whether the wretched helmets were actually there, as per instructions. Yep, and nicely stowed in the overhead luggage-rack inside the vehicle, too, so off they jolly well went.

A shame, then, that when the minibus took the very first traffic island it came to a tadge too fast, off should come the blasted helmets, from their rack ? and guess what, dear reader? Three students ended up with badly-lacerated skulls as a result of heavy safety helmets dropping upon them from a height of some five feet or so: subsequent diligent researches by staff (all of them trying to keep a straight face, no doubt!) have now shown this to be the first ever known accident to occur on a field trip since the place was first opened, back in the early 20th century!

 - Glynis Wright

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