The Diary

29 October 2006: Jason Koumas 1, My Specs 0!

Oh, dear. A pretty bad day at the office, today, of that there?s no doubt whatsoever. On a day when we should have made up ground on Cardiff City, we allow ourselves to get mugged by Steve Bruce and his merry men. No Robin Hood figure, he, might I say, and certainly not a case of ?rob the rich to give to the poor? ? after one?s forked out serious dish for one of their away enclosure seats, it then becomes pretty blindingly obvious just who the ?poor? really are! ? we?ve simply got to dust ourselves down, and prepare for the visit of QPR next Tuesday evening. Hopefully, we can make full amends then, if only to rid ourselves of the memory of what really was a Grade-A stuff-up for us.

Now for my first question of the night: be patient, you lot, it does have relevance, I promise. Did you all remember to put your clocks back an hour, then? As per the old adage ?Spring forward, fall back?? Aren?t we the smug ones, then? Well, those of you still living in good old Blighty, that is. All the rest of you, feel free to have a bloody good snigger about the awfulness of our winters, mucking around with the clocks, etc. OK? If you are one of those that remembered to adjust your timepieces accordingly, award yourself a house point ? and then think about going one better. Let?s face it, after today?s disappointing result, maybe we should have taken the whole process one vital stage further by reversing the march of Time even more ? to the precise moment we kicked off at St. Andrews today? In other words, totally erased what happened during the 90 minutes that followed from the record. Scrubbed it, ditched it, expunged it, even ? do what the bloody hell you wanted with it, in fact, but not disgracing the bijou cottage that?s my memory, OK?

It wasn?t just today?s result, though, that had me tearing my hair out in great big clumps come the final whistle. It?s been a pretty bad day for this column all round ? but, hey, look on the bright side, I always say. I could quite easily have been tenanting a hospital bed tonight, and it was all down to our finest ? or one player in particular. How come? For starters, and to set the scene, sort of, let me just say one thing: the very next time I go to the ground to book away tickets, if you should happen to see me in the Ticket Office on my errand of mercy, just say to me, in very loud tones, and well before I flash the cash (or plastic): ?DON?T GO FOR SEATS IN THE FRONT ROW AND BEHIND ONE OF THE GOALS, BECAUSE IF YOU DO, YOU?LL BE VERY, VERY SORRY!?

I really should have known better. By the time we got inside the ground, and found the right seats, most of our lot were warming up on the pitch, knocking the ball around and so forth, so alarm-bells should have clamoured loudly there and then: the moment I first realised we were in the front row and seated a little to the right of the goal, in fact ? but they didn?t, so I got on with writing up my notes for tonight?s piece, instead. Big mistake, that: there was I, totally preoccupied with what I was doing, and with ?Im Indoors looking in precisely the opposite direction as well, the first I knew about what hit me was when one of our practice balls whacked against the side of my face ? and it didn?t half hurt, too.

As you?ll readily appreciate, once I?d recovered from the initial shock, my somewhat-choice language would have made even a three-badge stoker run for the hills ? but that wasn?t all. Once I?d finished turning the air an even richer shade of blue, I then realised that something was drastically wrong with my glasses ? and how! Suddenly, I was the not-so proud owner of visual aids with a somewhat surreal-looking side-bit attached, the part that hooks over your ear, in fact. Gee ? thanks a bundle, Jason Koumas, and I love you, too. Yes, I know I was quite vituperative when writing in this self-same piece on your return from the dead ? oops, sorry, Cardiff City! ? but you didn?t need to make it THAT bloody personal, did you?

Seriously, though, as I?ve already said, it could have been much worse: had our Welsh international midfielder chosen to whack the thing an inch or so further rightwards instead, I?d have undoubtedly ended up with the whole thing smack on my mush, an even nastier state of affairs that would have undoubtedly left my lenses ?redecorating? my boat-race in various other interesting ways, all of them involving the spillage of copious amounts of blood, and me not so much watching ?Casualty? tonight, as ending up getting a sample of the real thing at very close quarters indeed.

Look on the bright side, though. Our Jase might have nearly rearranged my facial features for me, gratis, but there was more to come. Not long after my ?close encounter of the football kind?, yet another almighty ?crash? shattered the St. Andrews pre-match peace and quiet ? and this time, the after-effects were truly awesome. Ever seen someone smash a bloody great hole in an advertising hoarding, using just a football to achieve it? Well, I have: there it was, large as life, and about a foot wide, a hole, a bloody big bugger, in fact, punching all the way through the advertising board directly in front of us, just as if it wasn?t there. Not Jason, that time, but his ex-Burnley chum Richard Chaplow. Bloody hell ? just what do they get to eat before games, that?s what I want to know!

And it wasn?t just that brace of incidents that lent an almost surreal tone to the show today. From the moment I first got up, there was an indefinable ?something? about today I just couldn?t put my finger on, try as I might. Perhaps it was the weather: whatever plans it may have made for today, autumn seemed to be the very last thing on its mind. Instead of the blustery, showery, shivery sort of clime we come to expect at this time of year, what we had instead was cloud, lots of it, and the dirty sort of greyness one tends to associate with hankies that haven?t been washed properly, or white sheets with someone else?s black socks inadvertently added to the load. Not only that, the clime was humid, unseasonally so, in fact, and sod-all in the way of wind to contend with. Unless you count the vile stuff normally found emanating from Steve Brookes?s noisome anal sphincter, of course.

The other thing that set this game apart from those that went before it was the fact we were travelling to Small Heath without either The Fart or The Noise for company. Say what you will, but after around fifteen years of going to away games with either one in tow ? or both, usually, and one talking ten to the dozen, as per usual ? it just didn?t feel right. A bit like how a newly-widowed wife might feel, I suppose, half-expecting her partner to walk through the door any second - then being completely overwhelmed by the distressing realisation that nothing of the sort would happen. Can one truly grieve for former away game traveling companions, I wonder?

Although we?d feared our start time of half-ten might mean that all the choice parking-places might have gone by the time we got there, we did manage to make pretty good progress, and, as it turned out, we needn?t have worried. Loads of space, assuming one was prepared to walk the extra few hundred yards or so to the ground, of course. And, as we made our way towards the away turnstiles, slushing softly through that sunset-hued carpet of discarded leaves, yet another thought struck me: just how rapidly the area surrounding St. Andrews had changed over the course of the past few years. For the better, I mean: no longer did a map of the area depicting low-level crime assume all the features of an infra-red camera trained upon a red-hot poker in certain notorious places, for starters.

I?m sure you must have clocked it also: where there were once run-down terraces, each one replete with its own cargo of snotty-nosed, ragged-arsed kids, all of them assuming that strange ?scrunched-up? freckled look that seems to come so naturally to children born of predominantly Irish stock, things had changed in recent years, and dramatically so. One also encountered lots whose origins emanated from places much further afield than Erin?s Isle, of course: for fiddle, flute and maudlin folk-songs, read sitars, saris and Bollywood, imams and mosques, shalwar kameez and that newly-contentious Islamic garment, the niqab. All gone, now, and in their place, spanking-new houses, each of which now holds the statistically-significant ?standard-issue? Mum, Dad and 2.4 kids. Same mixture of races, colours and creeds, of course, but with one significant difference. Gentrified? Not half: in just the space of a few years, the demographics of the area have completely altered, as have the aspirations of those now living there, I?ll wager.

By the time I?d finished letting that little lot trickle through my brain, we were nearly at the entrance to the compound that housed the away coaches: clearly, they?d arrived well before we did. Time to go in and bat the breeze a bit with other ?regulars? then. A few cheery words to pass the time here and there, then ? I suppose it was inevitable, really ? a more lengthy word or three with two of what used to be Albion?s famous ?Drinking Family?.

Of The Fart, there was nary a whisper: in fact, we weren?t to see him the entire afternoon. Just as well, really: in his blind fury, after we?d lost, he might well have ended up cleaning us! And remember what I?d said about the unseasonable humidity? For some reason or other, condensation had gathered on the floor?s concrete surface in a manner truly wondrous to behold, making the surface very greasy indeed. I sure as hell would have liked to run across it, that?s for sure ? to have done so would have courted disaster.

Having completed our ?social whirl? obligations to mutual satisfaction, it was time to find our seats. The first thing that struck me, though, once stood in the gangway, was a paucity of bodies truly wondrous to behold. With less than 25 minutes remaining before the start, the number of gaps still remaining in those ?home? bits was astonishing, to say the least. Let?s face it ? they couldn?t all be sinking their last few pints down there, could they? In fact, much later on, Blues? PA gave the attendance at about 21,000, disastrously down on what you might expect for a local derby such as this one. And it really showed: the Hawthorns atmosphere for last Sunday?s Dingles game had been genuinely electric: sadly, this one had all the tension and excitement of a pensioners? tea-dance about it. Why all those ?no-shows?? I can only assume that the awful prices Blues charge for these games put not a few punters off going, which is perfectly understandable.

The previously-described damage to both face and glasses aside, the other thing that caught my eye pretty quickly was the fact that once more, Zoobie was pencilled-in to take up matchday residence between the sticks. Bloody hell ? was Mowbray a secret masochist, or something? I?d genuinely thought he?d had a gutful last Sunday, and subsequently marked Zoobie?s card accordingly. As it turned out, the Swiss lad didn?t put a foot wrong; he might well have been responsible for a good many things over the course of his lifetime, Our Zoobie, but you sure as hell couldn?t pin the blame for today?s stuff-up on him.

As for today?s line-up, that was unchanged from the lot that saw off the Dingles in such fine style last Sunday, with both Carter and Phillips hors de combat, still. Additionally, the pre-match preparations of both sides were graced ? or lumbered, it all depends upon your point of view, I suppose ? by the presence of a steel band, and a jolly good one, too, as far as I was concerned. Their style of music certainly put a whole new slant on some well-known favourites culled from the world of pop music, that?s for sure. Personally, I associate that sort of thing with tropical blue skies and millpond-calm seas, not the sludgy sort of greyness that seems to taint the city at this particular time of year. All associated with that worthiest of causes, the ?Kick Racism Out Of Football? campaign, apparently.

So far, so good, dear readers ? and then the game started! And we could have landed well and truly in the smelly stuff before the game was five minutes old: with most of our rearguard caught flat-footed, and Zoobie floundering, it was just as well Martin Albrechtsen was there to come to our rescue, belting the ball away for a corner, what I tend to call the ?John Wile school of defending?. Never mind the fancy stuff, just stop the other side from grabbing an eyeful. Crude? Sure, but bloody effective, all the same.

We now come to consider what I like to term our ?nearly-scored? efforts, as per my mother-in-law?s equivalent, the ?Nearly-Bought?. When applied to His Lordship?s mum, it means an excursion all around the local shops to look at some small luxury or other, with a view towards purchase, then, being very much of traditional bent, talking herself right out of buying what would undoubtedly be a major labour-saving item of household electrical goods: drives me right up the wall, it does. Bang on about the time she ?nearly-bought? an automatic washing machine, after I?d spent the greater part of an hour talking her into it ? yep, even as recently as five years ago, the dear lady was still struggling with an old-fashioned twin-tub-cum-mangle affair ? and I?m very liable to lose it, then grab you firmly by the throat!

With our favourite football club, though, there?s a close equivalent, one equally-irritating, in fact: for the not-now purchased desired household item, substitute our strikers, Joe Kamara especially, in this particular case. God knows how many good chances he missed today, and very early on in the game, we were to witness the first of a good many: with less than 15 minutes showing, he waltzed past half their cast-list, then let fly. To be absolutely fair, though, it took all their keeper?s lightning reactions just to keep that one from going into the back of the net. Had it gone in, would we have been looking at a different scoreline come the end of the allotted span? I?d like to think so.

Initial probing all-square, just about, it was time for both sets of supporters to make their collective presences felt: Heaven alone knows that game really needed it! It all began when the home crowd started to sing: ?Ref-all, you?ve never won ref-all?? the lyrics aimed well and truly in our direction, of course. Big mistake, that, especially given our illustrious history, of course. Time for ?Im Indoors to sniff, somewhat disdainfully: ?Oh dear, chaps, you don?t know much about our history, do you??

By that time, the game must have entered one of those torpid sort of periods where one could cheerfully embark upon a session of forty winks, and still not miss too much of the action! Cue for both sides to ?strike up? once more! First of all the Bluenoses claimed, somewhat dubiously, one suspects: ?We hate Villa more than you?.? On hearing that, an indignant sort of ripple went through the packed Baggie ranks: time to go into ?default mode?, chaps! ?We only hate Wolverhampton, hate Wolverhampton?.? Said ?Im Indoors, as full of prophecy as he ever would be: ?You watch, the next one will be ?We beat the S**t 3-0?.? Yep ? and it was!

One other thing that bothered us both: somehow or other, we?d managed to end up sitting in close proximity to a member of that very much endangered football species, the Chain-Smoker. The depressing part about it was, the lad only seemed to be about fifteen or so, and already sucking on the dreaded weed as if his very life depended upon it. Perhaps it did ? or was it just yet another downside to being a Baggie, I wonder? Whatever the reason, it certainly had me coughing like a good ?un in very short order. But back to the game!

With a third of the half gone, we seemed to hit a bit of a purple patch, at long last, a positive plethora of Albion corners, suddenly, and faint signs that Blues might buckle and crack, just like the Dingles had but six days previously. First of all Ellington had a go, their keeper saving well from that one, and things seemed to be slotting into place, finally. Then, with about 20 minutes or so showing on the clock, disaster well and truly struck. The agent of our undoing proved to be an indirect free-kick given just outside our box, given against Perry for some crime or another. Say what you will, though, Bluenose McSheffrey didn?t half strike it well; went in as sweet as a nut, it did, and with Zoobie left groping for thin air, sadly. As I said, not his fault at all.

The real stomach-churning thing, though, was their supporters? reaction once the ball had hit the back of the net. Come the restart, it was then a case of: ?Brucie, Brucie, give us a wave?..? No wonder our finest responded with a choral rendition of ?Two-faced W*****s!? And they were absolutely spot-on: not a few days previously, the local airwaves had positively hummed with the sound of those Bluenose hordes all taking it in turns to denounce their former saviour, in similar style to that of Stalin?s Soviet Russia, circa 1935! Or, for those of a more religious bent, that of Salome, Brucie?s head well and truly on a platter, John The Baptist-style! With the deliciously-lovely Karen Brady playing the title role, methinks?

Mind you, taking a somewhat malicious sort of tack, I could have quite easily mounted a pretty good case for my other half?s presence being the root cause of our various ills! Consider the evidence, members of the jury: at Ipswich, myself and The Fart, but no ?other half? ? he?d buggered off to Hereford United instead! Result? A stonking 5-1 whopping for the East Anglian side, and my beloved as sick as a chip at having missed all the fun: from what I could subsequently gather, the fare laid on at Edgar Street had been absolutely dire to behold!

Hearing of our newly-adventurous ways when pressing home our attacks, my other half then decides to go to Blues after all, and give the Bulls a miss. What happened? Well, you saw the end-result today. Oh ? and, believe ot or not, Hereford actually won their game! Perhaps we should now emulate the Bible story of Jonah and the whale, and do the next-best thing to casting my other half into the briny, given West Bromwich?s normal landlocked state ? chucking him into the boating lake at Dartmouth Park instead? Mind you, to re-enact the story successfully, we need to find a fully-grown whale from somewhere. I wonder if John Hartson would care to deputise? (Ooooh ? scratch yer eyes out, yer bitch!)

Still, what you have to try and do in these sort of situations is try and bounce right back, again ? and that?s precisely what we set out to do. Within a minute or so of the restart, Joe Kamara, all full of the need to redeem himself, tore through their rearguard, but was unsuccessful, yet again. Talk about a ?bad hair day?! And it wasn?t just our forwards at fault, either. On more occasions than I care to remember, our defence seemed to approach the game as if they?d recently come to a group decision to take suicide-pills like they were so many sweeties. The result? Fraught, to put it mildly; with every additional kick of the ball, we suddenly seemed to disintegrate as an entity all striving to achieve the same thing. What a dog?s dinner of a defensive disaster. No wonder their supporters were mentally licking their lips.

And so the game continued until the referee?s whistle brought the half to a close, zig-zagging murderously from one end of the field to the other. You just didn?t dare take your eyes away, just in case you missed something! Everyone stuffed up: Joe Kamara, Ellington, our club cat, more likely than not. Some reckon we should have had a penalty, as clear cut a shout as ever one would be, but I?m not so sure. Watching reruns might prove interesting.

The ref didn?t want to know: in fact, he actually booked our lad for diving, to Joe?s complete and utter disgust. It?s certainly true what they say: when you?re dipped well and truly in the smelly stuff, so is your flaming luck! Mind you, one of our followers, sitting right behind, totally exasperated with what was going on, put it pretty succinctly: ?Ref off, Bruce, you potato-headed c**t?.? Now that was an unusual line in insults for you: a c**t Brucie may well be, but a ?potato-headed? one? Discuss.

Another dose of steel band music once more, and it was into the second portion we went, then. As far as I was concerned, mind, it was very much pessimism to the fore: try as I might, and even taking into account the massive amount of possession we?d had, I just couldn?t see us extricating this one from the flames. With just a couple of minutes gone, Greening had the ball, to our left, taking it to the desired area in fine style. There was The Duke, on the far post, and all ready to get on the end of whatever our hirsute midfielder chucked into the box. Over went the ball, and up went The Duke, towards it. Result? He went and hit the post; just about typified our luck that.

It was then Curtis Davies?s turn to try and get on the scoresheet, but nothing doing: in fact, we did very well indeed to survive a Blues attack on our goalmouth that left us sitting ducks. Just as well for us that the Blues player concerned couldn?t hit a barn-door at ten paces ? another time, another situation, and we?d have been toast. Well carbonised, too.

Yet another chance for Joe Kamara went begging, with the half now entering a crucial phase, while at the other end, trying frantically to chase the game, and getting caught on the break, and badly, we were extremely fortunate to survive yet another onslaught on our goal. Mind you, St Andrews still basked in what was the most peculiar atmosphere I?ve ever encountered at a game: talk about ?The Silence Of The Fans?. Had you really wanted to, you could have transplanted an entire public library?s Reading Room clientele into our penalty area, and its normal inhabitants wouldn?t have noticed a blind thing!

Somehow, our luck still held, but we were really showing the strain by then. Time for Plan B, then. With a fairish amount of time still to run, Mowbray tried taking Nigel Quashie off, and chucking John Hartson on instead. Looked like scraping the very bottom of the barrel to me: try as I might, I couldn?t think of a single good reason for introducing the former Celtic man to the field of play, only numerous bad ones. Save for some useful knock-downs, of course, I don?t think there was much else that he added to our game.

The clock relentlessly running down all the while, we were almost completely run out of road, as far as fresh ideas were concerned. Of the two sides, it was Blues that looked far more likely to find the back of the net once more. Amazingly, following one particularly-fraught incident, guess who kept us in the game as a going concern? Yep ? Zoobie, no less, and with a stop that was positively top-notch, too. See ? he could do it when he really wanted to!

It just about summed up our entire afternoon that with just five or so minutes remaining, Paul Robinson managed to get on the wrong side of the ref, and saw red as a result. Bugger. Talk about the ?cherry on top of the icing?, a wonderful end to the afternoon?s proceedings, that. Not! One more suspension coming up, and right at the time we don?t need ?em, too. And, just to pile even more misery upon the luckless heads of our finest, deep in injury time, we finally paid the penalty for pushing way too far up to try and retrieve at least something from the wreckage. The end-result, when it came, was entirely predictable, McSheffrey finally compounding Albion?s misery by grabbing the second of his brace. Two and definitely out for us, methinks!

So, what happens now, then? At least we still grimly hold onto that third slot, so not much damage done. First things first, though ? we?ve got to get the show well and truly back on the road again by whopping QPR next Tuesday night. A bit like the old adage about falling off bicycles, and getting straight back on, once more, methinks. Not an easy call, that one. Will we have the lad Philips back by then, wonder? With only 50% of our ?main armament? performing to full spec right now, the sooner really is the better in this particular case.

And Finally?. I don?t know how many of you saw the FA Cup First Round draw that took place live on Sky later that afternoon, but it?s when you see serial ineptitude practiced upon such a grand scale by those Murdoch-inspired idiots, you begin to pine nostalgically for the likes of BBC?s Ken Wolstenholme et. al. Names of sides coming out of the hat not being read our properly, or, in the case of those involved in a replay, not at all. And not only that ? did I hear it right, or was one name actually pulled out of the hat TWICE?

In the end, the entire thing seemed to descend into complete and utter farce, and no-one, least of all the Sky people themselves, having the foggiest idea what the hell was going on! I?m willing to bet any amount you care to name that while this was gracing our screens ? or not, if you want to split hairs over it! ? the Beeb, watching from the fastness of their own studios, were laughing themselves absolutely senseless at what a complete and utter mullock their commercial counterparts were making of the whole thing!

It all gets me wondering, now, as to whether or not some club or other, involved in that draw, and ending up very confused by it all, will approach the FA with a view towards getting the entire thing drawn again? If it does happen, there won?t half be some red faces at Sky!

Two? After much long and arduous searching, ?Im Indoors has finally got his mucky mitts upon a copy of our gaffer?s book, ?Touched By An Angel? which covers the time he was at Celtic, including the tragic loss of his wife. Believe you me, it wasn?t half hard to track the damn thing down: even a detailed search of Hay-On Wye?s entire second-hand book database couldn?t locate it! He finally grabbed hold of a copy up for sale on eBay, mind, so once he?s finished with it, I?ll do a bit of speed-reading, and relate some of the contents here. From what little my other half has told me, it?s quite informative in places, and well worth a dabble.

 - Glynis Wright

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