The Diary

14 February 2007: A Reet Good League Result - With A Saturday Date With Boro Thrown In For Good Measure.

Cor, what a nerve-shredding night it?s been for we two ?stayaways?, and not just because of the obvious, either. ?Parts One And Two? would be a fitting description of what happened earlier on, both at Layer Road, and at Boro. At least we finally know our immediate Cup fate, at long last: it?s to Middlesbrough we go gallivanting this Saturday, and tomorrow morning, I?ll be linking up with The Fart to get all our ticketing needs sorted out. Hell, even The Noise wants to come to this one, so I reckon that?s my eardrums well and truly out of it for the next 14 days or so after this coming Saturday. Just as well we?ll be letting Dave Holloway?s excellent travel service take the strain, really.

Full credit to Bristol City for scaring Boro half to death by taking them all the way to extra time and penalties, though: when we come to face those Smog Monsters across the centre circle come three o?clock this weekend, with any luck, they?ll still be feeling the after-effects of tonight?s game. On the other hand, should your cup be half-empty, and your mood suitably miserable to match, you just know they?ll simply draft in yet more talented kids from that astonishingly productive flesh-factory of theirs, and crack the problem that way.

But back to that Colchester game, once more. To be brutally honest with all you lot out there, I hadn?t expected us to get anything, so didn?t really bother either listening via local radio, or keeping tabs on things via the internet. Instead, I opted to watch the Boro-Bristol City game on Sky, and belatedly clue up about the other game during breaks in the play, or similar.

Turned out to be a wrong ?un, that particular judgment call: not long after City took the lead at Boro ? that terse communiqu? I?d instantaneously bellowed up the stairs to my beloved, who was listening to our game via Radio WM ? hubby came crashing downstairs like a space rocket on re-entry, but sadly lacking both nose-cone and parachute, to tell me that we were very much in the ascendancy at Chez Colchester, and holding our own quite nicely. Coo, much better than I?d thought: Layer Road having the formidable reputation it ?enjoys? this season ? yesterday, I?d outlined just how many half-decent Championship clubs had crashed and burned there thus far this term, remember? ? I?d assumed the lead wouldn?t last, gone ?yeah, yeah?, like a bored teenager told by Mum to do the washing up for about the umpteenth time, but far more interested in what was on their iPod instead, and turned my attention straight back to the miscellaneous adventures of Boro-Bristol City.

But that wasn?t to last very long. First off, the phone rang. That was Tel, informing me we?d taken the lead. I?d only enough time to nearly choke on my glass of Coke and say ?Blimey!?, when an almighty din erupted in our upstairs office, now gushing forth rumbles highly suggestive of a herd of randy bull elephants simultaneously spotting a cow in the next field, sporting that notorious ?come on, darlin? ? fancy a bit of the old slap and tickle, then??? look in her pachyderm eyes. I wasn?t going to respond, at first, but then curiosity quickly got the better of me ? and wasn?t it a shock, dear children?

Within a scant minute of having smashed our first, courtesy a McShane header, we?d actually gone out and grabbed ourselves another, Joe Kamara being the perpetrator of the damage that time. The second strike I hadn?t even known about: Joe must have done his thing while I was trying to negotiate our notoriously twisty stairs: it?s not good, having just two speeds for such eventualities, ?dead slow? and ?stop?, believe you me.

With my cynicism glands going just about full-blast by the time I?d got up there, I fully expected that scoreline to alter a dozen time more within a mere matter of minutes ? but it didn?t. That?s when I elected to join His Lordship for the remainder of the game, my (probably flawed) logic being based upon the supposition that when the inevitable finally happened, at least I?d not be left disappointed sitting alone.

And that?s when it all became very sweaty: ?Im Indoors on the old machine, cussing like a trooper, willing the lads to win, and muggins here sitting in close proximity, and shedding fingernails left, right and centre. And when Colchester scored, just three minutes after Joe had made it two for us, the dynamic duo on the radio chose that moment to declare the strike their equaliser! Doo wot? Had I missed something else while nattering inconsequentially to ?Im Indoors, then? Either that, or whatever it was they?d all been drinking in that Layer Road commentary box of theirs, if they could cock up in what was a truly spectacular way after ingesting, it was certainly good stuff by anyone?s lights!

That magnificently massive win put us clear second, just four points shy of Premiership-bound Derby County. It was also the breaking of McShane?s scoring duck for us, and Joe Kamara?s 19th of the current season. And our fourth such win on the bounce, away from the loving arms of The Hawthorns. Astonishing to think that prior to tonight, Colchester had managed to remain unbeaten for 14 home games consecutively, something that only serves to highlight even more the sheer importance of what was achieved.

The other thing that surprised me, possibly most of all, was the very fact we achieved that wonderful result in the first place. Oh ye of little faith! Me, that is. And against a full Colchester line-up, including thorough nuisance Chris Owelumo, who seems to grab goals like you or I grab taxis. And without two of our more important battlers for the cause, Jason Koumas and Kev Phillips, benched, both of ?em, their stand-ins being John Hartson and Darren Carter.

To be honest, the inclusion of the first of those two in our line-up had surprised me: all the signs prior to this game seemed to suggest our slick-domed front man would be going to another club for his extended hols, not messing about trying to prevent the U?s from ruining our evening. All part of Mogga?s master?plan regarding trying to rest our main men as much as possible: anyone doubting the necessity for this to happen should take a long, lingering butchers at what we?ve got coming up in the way of fixtures/Cup ties over the course of the next few weeks. After that little lot, it?ll be a restful Caribbean cruise they?ll all be needing, not serial grief at the hands of our fellow Championship travellers. Blues still have that enormous advantage of their three games in hand upon us, of course, but as I pointed out to ?Im Indoors not long after tonight?s game ended, they?ve got to win ?em all first, haven?t they?

With those three points of ours safely in the bag, it was then time for the pair of us to repair to our living-room to see what Bristol City and Boro were up to. And, hell, that one was shaping up into a right old ding-dong, too. As I?d said earlier, I?d seen City take the lead, their strike coming right on the back of some pretty impressive passing on their part. No ?hoof and hope for the best? merchants, they: they?d constructed that lead by the simple expedient of knocking the ball around the park cleverly and comfortably. And, now I?d resumed watching the game, they were still looking good with around halfway of the second half gone. Mind you, Boro did get their revenge, eventually, thus setting in motion the arrangements for extra time. And they could have forced the issue much sooner than that: rampant, now, baying for blood, they hit the woodwork twice. But then City somehow contrived to give away a penalty. No argument about whether it was or not, they were bang to rights, really. Oh, dear ? game set and match, I thought. But not a bit of it: by utilising a huge chunk of ?gamesmanship? that would have had England?s greatest exponent of the art, Don Revie, casting plaudits innumerable in their direction, they managed to spin out the time for it to be taken massively: strictly speaking, the City keeper should have been yellow-carded for it. Body language told me what was going to happen next, and so I was proven right.

Funny, though, when Boro went to take it, I had in my mind a vague memory of a former work colleague, Ken Cook, whose dad had played in goal for City during the late fifties/early sixties ? and, to the best of my knowledge, still retains the League record for the number of penalties saved during the course of a season. Eight, was it? Nine? Perhaps the power of thought is far stronger than we can ever imagine: Yakubu was the Smog Monster tasked with the job of sorting City?s hash for them: trouble was, when he went to take it, at long last, the shot went straight down the middle, thereby giving the custodial Robin as easy a task as he would ever have to perform between the sticks to save it.

Boro then contrived to take the lead in extra time, and that appeared to be that ? until City lad Jamie McCombe somehow snatched a strike clean out of thin air with about four minutes to go, that is. So, penalties it was, then ? and City got off to a bad start, their inaugural attempt being saved comfortably by the Smog Monster with the gloves. And it looked very much as though Boro had sneaked it again ? until Boro?s Yakubu stepped up to take his own. Oh, whoops.

Of one thing I?m sure: were I that lad tonight, I?d have immediately carted myself off to that huge bit of waste ground at the back of the stadium, then chucked myself over the edge of the quay, right into the dock ? splash, tinkle, splash. Verily I say unto you, tonight was an unmitigated disaster for the lad. Not that it mattered in the long run, mind. As a result of that unexpected miss, City suddenly found themselves in the driving seat ? but they just couldn?t cope with the heavy burden of what was riding on the result, so missed their one chance for glory. The whip-hand then reverted back to Boro, and, much relieved, no doubt, they finally finished the job off properly.

So there you go, then. It?s Boro for the fifth round, which means me sorting out those pesky tickets at around half-ten, in collaboration with The Fart. At least we know tickets won?t be a problem: as I said last night, we should have nigh-on 5,000 up for grabs, and because of uncertainty about who the opposition would eventually be, it wouldn?t surprise me at all if lots of Baggies, unable to arrange time off from work at such short notice, decide to give this one a miss.

And if you?ve never set foot inside their boundaries before, just remember one thing. Because of extensive links with the chemical industry ? ICI have had a plant there ever since the year ?dot?, by my reckoning ? it?s the sort of place where a child becomes horribly familiar with the laws governing basic chemistry years ahead of its peers. Where even six year olds comfortably handle concepts like benzene rings, long hydrocarbon chains, polymers, and catalysis with consummate ease.

Stay in the city for any great length of time, and I?ll guarantee your body tissues will be getting on equally familiar terms with these complex substances in no time flat ? erm, like a house on fire, in fact? It?s also the sort of place where parents routinely buy chemistry sets for their kids. Not for the betterment of their childrens? scientific education, as some might think, more as a protective mechanism: i.e. If the plant down the road churns out trichloroethylene by the bucket-load and its rotting my liver, what can I brew to give it back to them in spades, Dad? Now leave me alone while I go somewhere to relive 1968 all over again.

 - Glynis Wright

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