The Diary

01 March 2007: Ah, Foil It - Cursed Again!

Oh, dear. It would seem that the very act of compiling these pieces is fast becoming synonymous with The Curse Of The House Of Usher, or something. Well, if there is such a thing hanging like a millstone around my ample neck, then it certainly made its presence known the other night. And not by virtue of creaks, groans, clanking chains, or any of that awful teen-horror stuff either, just a straightforward refusal of labour instead.

So what?s the scoop, then? I?ll tell you. On those rare occasions people are asked about their foremost fears for the future, it?s not at all uncommon for them to express profound reservations about the rapid onward march of IT technology, above all else. It?s easy to see why: who isn?t profoundly concerned that one day, some unfeeling microchipped mentality or other might suddenly step into their workaday shoes, and by doing so, consign them to the humanoid scrap heap for evermore? All in the long-term future, and not strictly applicable to you or I? There may yet be hope in that direction, and it springs directly from what happened to me just the other night.

As you may be aware, we?ve been having an awful lot of trouble setting two PC?s to run in tandem with one another as far as the retrieval of emails is concerned. In fact, after one particularly spectacular ?crash?, ?Im Indoors finally decided enough was enough, consigning the newer of the two machines to our Ipswich supporting IT specialist for a complete rebuild. Unsurprisingly, it took him quite some time to complete the task, and we only got the thing back, allegedly ?cured?, last weekend.

After having to compile this column courtesy a PC over five years out of date for so long ? if I say it?s got a speed commensurate with that of John Hartson, then you?ll readily understand ? that was great news for me, as I could now permanently switch to the newer model of the two, but I should have known it was too good to last. The first inkling I had that all was not right was late last night, when I saw a note near my keyboard from my other half instructing me not to dial up the email facility if I knew what was good for me.

OK ? I could run without access to email, so what? And that?s when I discovered that the problem lay much deeper: instead of firing up the moment I switched the thing on, it got so far, then promptly crashed ? and nothing I did could make it decide otherwise. Hence the current delay in shoving out last night?s offering. And it also means that until the other one is fixed, I?m now down to using His Nibs?s rebuilt number instead. A bloody nuisance, mainly because all the internet sites I use in the compilation of this column are bookmarked there. And all my more recent efforts are there as well. Verily there must surely be a Dingle somewhere with strict instructions to watch over me, and with a view towards extracting the Michael at all times. Still ? the show must go on, as they say in the movies.

Having been completely cured of the habit while studying O-level English Literature at school, I?ve never much gone in for drama of any sort. The ignoble art of chopping, say, ?Macbeth? into microscopically-small pieces, then discussing to death every single nuance of hidden meaning there was to be found within those ghastly literary fragments, was both interesting and mentally challenging the first few times I did it, but after that, the old brain cells simply decided to rebel a tadge. Well, mine did, even if yours didn?t.

Or was it just the fact I found reading good science-fiction far more absorbing and pleasurable than anything Shakespeare could ever come up with, much to my English teacher?s disgust. Whichever your preference, I still regard such tedious learning methods as education?s answer to the sort of aversion therapy occasionally employed, still, to curtail severe drink or drug problems. Another excellent reason why, despite having had an ongoing love affair with the printed word for several decades, I?ve avoided so-called ?classical? works of literature like the plague ever since leaving school, which defeated the object, somewhat.

Not that my old teacher actively encouraged her students to be far more eclectic in their reading tastes: au contraire, in fact. It was her unrequited love for anything pushed out by the Immortal Bard that made her so blind to normal rational thought. In her classes and study groups, anyone who failed to treat Old Will with anything like the proper amount of fawning respect she felt was due the guy was deemed automatically guilty of what Islamic scholars are wont to call ?apostasy?: i.e. plain ordinary blasphemy, but with frilly bits added. And definitely NO pork, thank you very much.

Admittedly, I never once saw her go as far as bringing Islamic sharia law into it by beheading anyone, either during double English, or after it (although there must have been quite a few, myself included, who truly deserved to suffer such an awful fate: perhaps she was chary of spilt blood and brains enraging the school caretaker, another individual with extreme views on certain subjects, and a foul temper to match?) but given her somewhat prejudiced views as to what constituted ?proper? literature, and what didn?t, it must have been a pretty close-run thing, sometimes.

As I said before, all those ghastly two-hourly wrestling bouts with Shakespearean text did have the additional effect of colouring my own views on the subject somewhat, and not for the better, which is why my existence ever since has very much been a drama-free zone ? and why, when faced with a situation that positively reeked of drama at The Hawthorns the other night, my gut feelings went into total reverse. Familiarity breeds contempt, sure, but with a marked absence for several years of anything even remotely deserving of the name at our favourite football club, I savoured the entire thing for what it truly was: a welcome astringent for a pretty jaded football palate. But most certainly not something to be repeated on a regular basis: how much angst can a girl be expected to cope with during the course of one lousy night?

Now our unceremonious exit from the FA Cup is very much water under the bridge, and all that ghastly nerve-twanging nonsense finished with for yet another year, can we just get on with the ?proper? football, please? A shame we couldn?t have taken things a little bit further, perhaps ? and with a cool quarter of a million up for grabs come the sixth round of the competition, our board might well have concurred with remarkably good grace - but by losing the sudden-death-football battle, we may yet end up winning the promotion war. Protracted participation in knock-out tournaments might get you noticed by our predominantly southern-and big-club biased media, if only by way of patronising comment ? ?Aw, plucky ickle Albion, didn?t they do well for a Championship side, and what lovely loyal supporters they have, too! Tell me, now, do they take sugar?? ? but it doesn?t go even a fraction of the way towards wining you the bread-and-butter stuff, does it? At least, now it?s all over, we can stuff the press, and just get on with it. Both them and us.

One particular nuance of the phrase ?just get on with it? most certainly covers the matchday behaviour of The Bloke In Front Of Me. Believe you me, it?s quite unnerving to hear a guy you?ve known for well over twenty years suddenly come up with words and phrases that would have been considered total anathema just a few short weeks ago. When he commences congratulating our finest on a wonderfully gutsy display, from the fastness of his bijou Hawthorns redoubt, my instinctive reaction is to send for the First Aid people, on the basis of a gut feeling he must truly be sickening for something.

Which is precisely what happened the other night, dear reader: during the whole of that angst-wracked 120 minutes, I reckon I only heard him utter that immortal phrase ?Rubbish! Gerrimoff, NOW!? on one miserable occasion. So much of that game did Old Sourpuss spend discussing our first team regulars in profound but genuinely compassionate tones, I speculated briefly as to whether or not any concerned relatives had quietly arranged for him a protracted spell of voluntary work with charitable bodies going large on that particular aspect of mental health. He might even have been stringing me along by letting rip with his real thoughts sotto voce, of course, but if that were indeed the case, I never once caught body language that suggested anything but a genuine change of viewpoint.

Come Saturday, and our own lover?s tryst with The Black Cats ? nothing whatsoever to do with my own three moggies of similar hue, just the feline nickname The Mackems proudly give their local sporting pride and joy ? we?ll be seeking to get our own promotion bid back in gear once more, and preferably at their expense. That?s our real priority, right now: given what damage past journeys to the Promised Land did to both pricing structure and demographics of our support-base, I don?t care all that much for the Premiership, personally, but if our club is to continue evolving in the direction we all want and not regress, that?s the place we have to be, sadly. There?s a time to be passionate, and a time to be pragmatic: right now, my gut feelings are most certainly with the second of the two options, so that?s the way we should now go.

At least there?s a silver lining to our present storm-tossed existence; we might have been deprived of the striking services of Duke Ellington for three games, but on the bookings front, we no longer have to suffer the considerable angst of waiting for the much-yellow-carded Zoltan Gera, Kevin Phillips and Curtis Davies to incur the wrath of match officials sufficiently seriously to provoke them into waving the one remaining card that causes an automatic ban to kick in.

They?d all been on four yellows apiece, but as of today, they all saw the beginning of a yellow card amnesty, so we?ll at least be spared all that for quite some time. Just as well, really, given the fact that over the course of this season, we?ve been attracting bookings like a bar magnet does iron filings. Not so Darren Carter and Paul Robinson, unfortunately: their amnesty doesn?t kick in until April the 8th, and given the fact both currently dangle over the bottomless pit of retribution courtesy an incredible NINE yellow cards to their names, plus that of a somewhat robust attitude towards their various duties, I suspect we?ll be losing the full use of their services for a week or three anyway.

The last of those nine will be a particular bone of contention for Darren, I reckon. That one came during the very same evening The Duke crossed swords with Riley, and was given because the whistler ruled that the former Birmingham City lad had dived when challenged by Boro player Arca in the box. As I commented the night of our game, it very much looked to me that, if anything, the decision should have gone the other way. Baggies in the Brummie, plus those in the Halfords nearest the incident, certainly let their feelings be made known to the referee. If it was indeed ?simulation?, then Darren didn?t make a very good job of it.

Thus far this season, I?ve seen many others put on penalty box performances with far less thespian talent at their disposal, yet still get spot kicks awarded them. With that in mind, perhaps we should hire the likes of Didier Drogba, or Le Sulk Anelka, to demonstrate how the job should really be done? Even former Man City favourite Franny Lee, whose abilities in a similar line of work are still spoken of in revered tones to this very day, could show our lads a trick or two.

The Carter and Robinson issue aside, great news that ? but hang on a cotton-pickin? minute. Is it me, or have we really been playing with malice aforethought this season? Are we really a side with a preponderance of GBH-merchants and habitual ?simulators? occupying its ranks? Not since we?ve been playing the Mogga way, I would contend, and neither were we to any particular extent before he came, either. Hell, you have to have a certain amount of discipline within a side to hone cynical gamesmanship to the degree necessary for such unsavoury tactics to work at our level, so that one?s got to be out straight away.

Think back to all the yellow-cardings we?ve seen over the course of the current season: how many occasions can you recall where we?ve actually deserved such rotten treatment from match officials? And, if we really are that prone to incurring the wrath of the whistling persuasion, what does that say about the disciplinary records of this division?s genuinely nasty pieces of work? Or the ability of the FA?s movers and shakers to come up with a table of sanctions that actually do what they are supposed to say on the tin?

Given the fact we do happen to play some pretty enchanting stuff, these days, and the provision of same having the somewhat desirable knock-on effect of getting all those lapsed believers back in droves, have the FA now got things completely out of proportion in this contentious area of disciplinary sanctions? It?s clubs like ours, those espousing a sincere belief in spending the regulation 90 minutes delighting their followers, that seem to suffer the most from such policies, and that can?t be right, surely?

As for Ellington?s dismissal last night, now I?ve seen footage of the incident in question, it only serves to further reinforce my gut instincts of the time: the tackle that caused our chum to take a premature stroll in the general direction of our dressing-room may well have been crude in the extreme, ill-advised, even, but did it really warrant a red card? It most certainly wasn?t a two-footed jobbie which, I presume, was the original premise upon which our card-wielding chum in the black operated. So why could Riley not have stayed his smiting hand, on this particular occasion? Keep such things for those that truly deserve them, I say.

I?m inclined to take the same view as our leader in this matter: Nathan Ellington may be a good many things, sure, but he isn?t in the slightest bit malicious, and couldn?t be, even if you tried to goad him with pre-match pictures of kittens being tortured by marauding gangs of rampaging whistlers. As our manager later commented, the challenge that did the damage was that of a typical forward, and not one worthy of a much more cynical practitioner?s interpretation of such dark arts.

Back again tomorrow night, PC willing, with a look towards Saturday?s crunch game with the Mackems. Get that one right, and we?re almost there, I reckon. Get it wrong, and we?ve got problems. Fancy our chances should we reach the play-offs only? No, and I don?t think so either!

And Finally?.. Back to that penalty shoot-out, the other night. While the ref was sorting out the batting order with both managers, John Homer and I happened to notice the presence of a very large plastic bag on the pitch, semi-inflated, and gusting about whichever way the wind decided to carry it. I can only assume we both had the same mirthful memory in tandem: back in the days when Brian Little was gaffer, so boring were our first-team performances then, John and I used to drum up all the necessary amount of excitement needed from watching the progress of similarly-propelled receptacles, and, when in the mood, supplying a spoof ?commentary?. Bearing that in mind in retrospect, perhaps it might have been far better for Mogga to employ not Shergar as our final spot-kick hope, but that ruddy plastic bag instead?

 - Glynis Wright

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