The Diary

11 April 2007: Albion Inconsistency, Past, Present, And Future.

Just got back from watching the astonishing concluding episode of The Beeb?s ?Life On Mars?, where a 2007 copper has a car accident, and is transported back in time, somehow, to 1973: the series was about his frantic adjustment to what seemed cataclysmic differences in both policing and social attitudes, back then, and his frantic attempts to get back to the present day. The plot had more convolutions and twists than a whole packet of pretzels, and what a humdinger of an ending ? but, by ?eck, it wasn?t half a good ?un. Then again, I?ve always been a fan of that sort of thing, so I guess my view isn?t necessarily an objective one.

Amazing what quality Auntie Beeb can produce, once she?s been persuaded to push towards the edges of the envelope, be daring and creative for once, let her hair down a little, flaunt her frilly little knickers a lot, and sod what the papers say. Well done also to those that sanctioned the series in the first place, for having the sheer guts to argue the toss with programme commissioners about taking a bit of risk, for once, by getting stuff of this standard on air: it isn?t necessarily everyone?s cup of tea, for obvious reasons.

Would I want to go back to that era, accident or no accident? Well, comparatively speaking, it was such an innocent time. Society operated at a much slower-pace, too, and people?s health, both mental and physical, seemed far better because of it. Such blights upon our future existence as Thatcherism ? Education Minister back then, she had yet to evolve beyond ?Milk Snatcher? status ? plus pernicious influences like Sky TV, and The Premiership, were yet to stalk this sceptred isle. The same with vulpine football agents, greedy club chairmen, and narcissistic players earning telephone-number salaries, not caring a tuppeny-toss about giving something back to both club and followers, while raking in their filthy lucre to a degree distinctly embarrassing to most with the game?s future at heart.

Society also seemed to have a much more caring attitude about it towards those much less favoured in life, with a strong Welfare State and NHS, the necessity for whose existence, in the original ?cradle to grave? Bevin and Attlee concept, was tacitly acknowledged and accepted by political parties of both left and right. No reams of ministerial directives raining down on hospitals etc. and putting rain forests galore in jeopardy: back then, by and large, and providing they didn?t blow their budgets right out of the water, medical staff were simply left to get on with it. True, attitudes and beliefs of both political persuasions were much less polarised than they are today, but any ruling party wanting to muck around with benefits and bed closures, back then, would have brought electoral suicide crashing down on their heads. And they all knew it, so the unwritten status quo prevailed until around 1979.

On the debit side, there was no equal pay or opportunity law for women: it was then quite legal for employers to advertise vacancies as ?men only?. All that, plus very little protection for those discriminated against because of their colour or religious beliefs, ditto unfair dismissal. There was far more industrial unrest about, too, crippling the entire country, three-day week, rota power cuts and all. (I can actually remember travelling to Maine Road for a midweek afternoon game around that time, kick-off 2 pm. and rescheduled because of power cuts, and the government passing emergency legislation forbidding the use of floodlights.)

Although no-one realised at the time, petty irritations caused to the public by large-scale industrial action, were to be the root cause of why the unions withered and almost died, some ten or fifteen years further down the line. By then, assisted by not a little unhelpful spin from the populist press, sympathetic to the Conservatives, and highly restrictive, controversial legislation on industrial action, trades unionism was a dirty word for most people. So was the concept of socialism.

And then there was the constant nuclear threat posed by the Cold War. Even now, it?s sometimes forgotten that the only known occasion where the US went to its second-highest state of strategic readiness was in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur Middle Eastern conflict. But, on the whole, I?d go for life as it was 34 years ago, Albion?s relegation to the Second excepted, of course. Plus, for me, the clincher - no flaming IT to constantly blight my life!

Oh, dear ? I am getting off on a tangent, aren?t I? Sorry. Now where was I? Oh, yeah. Yesterday?s amazing last-minute winning goal, and the frenzied scenes in those away seats that followed. My abiding memory is of turning to The Noise, going almost cyanotic through constantly screaming his bloody head off, while forgetting to inhale at the same time (You all thought breathing was a reflex action, set in motion by a pressing need to boost oxygen intake into the lungs, didn?t you? Well, so did I, but once more, The Noise has gone and truly blown that particular bit of physiological wisdom right out of the water?), flinging my arms heavenwards, then screaming, in a manner some would consider almost orgasmic in nature, at the top of my voice: ?YESSS! YESSS! YERRRSSSSSS!? And, at the end, ?Im Indoors hugging the life out of me, and saying, ?Happy Birthday, Boss?.? Aaaaaaah ? there you go, a nice, soppy ending, for once. Mills And Boon romance publishers, what are you bloody well waiting for? Take me ? I?m yours!

My God, what a truly awesome capacity our favourite football club has to mess with minds, en-masse. Hitler and Goebbels, both of whom wrote the modern script, would have loved it all to death, I?m sure. Yesterday?s three-pointer was surely the saviour of our entire season, a totally unexpected one, as far as I?m concerned. Just 48 hours previously, I was walking back to our car, chin hanging somewhere in the region of my arse, and glumly wondering just how many of our current playing staff would be moving on, once all the boltholes finally closed, and realisation gradually set in that we would be a Championship club again, next time round. Two days later, and I?m on so much of a high, it would probably need the entire resources of Jodrell Bank?s massive radio telescope dish to track my precise orbit, and get me down again.

That surely is West Bromwich Albion, in a nutshell ? always has been, is now, and will be for evermore, I guess. Serial inconsistency certainly comes with the territory; you have only to visit Smethwick Library archive section, and grab a couple of spools of tape with an entire year?s copies of the West Bromwich Chronicle on file, and you?ll quickly learn that no matter what the season, it?s always been the same.

I can almost picture it now: bowler-hatted, pocket-watch toting, fungal-growth moustachioed young bucks, standing cheek by jowl on what is now the Brummie, and richly cursing, say, the then-Kamara-equivalents, Messrs. Shinton and Buck, for missing an absolute sitter ? ?Oh, you rotten cad and bounders, you, I could have netted the jolly old ball myself!? - and later dipping out on something really important because of it. Back in mid-Edwardian times, our players were treading very familiar ground indeed to that of modern-day Baggies: promotion to what was then called the First Division. So you see, underachievement and disappointment have been Albion?s almost constant bedfellows, right down the ages.

Returning to the present once more, what made the whole thing even more remarkable was that our last-minute win was achieved in the face of a nasty little virus going through our entire dressing-room like a dose of salts: that, plus injuries carried by key players, who had little option but to play through the pain, purely and simply because we had no-one else left at the club capable of understudying them. I?ve already said in previous posts what I have to say about that particular attempt to save money, so I?ll linger on it no longer, bar to point out that by adopting such short-sighted cost-cutting measures, you invariably end up paying dearly in the long-term.

You have only to look at current events to make the simple connection between cause and effect. Let?s hope that we?ve finally taken that bit of home-spun common-sense on board, come the start of next season. It?s not rocket-science, after all. Frankly, I doubt it ? but still, there it is in writing. The rest is up to our manager and players.

Once more, we?ve been handed a lifeline, arguably an undeserved one, but that?s for your own judgment to decide, I guess. On the whole, results went for us, yesterday. Sunderland did us a massive favour by sinking the Saints, yesterday evening. Cardiff?s continuing decline was also helpful, as was that of Preston, still breathing down our necks, but unable to come up with the goods over the holiday period. In short, the number of clubs with genuine prospects of curdling the custard for us are gradually thinning out: all the direct result of football?s answer to Darwinian natural selection, those vitally-important Easter fixtures, of course.

The Dingles march on, of course, thanks to yesterday?s win over Hull, and so do bloody Stoke ? but wait one. This coming weekend, Blues host Southampton, and Cardiff do ditto with Stoke - ouch. Our Dingle chums travel to Palace, who look out of it themselves, but no slouches, as we already know to our cost. Of the others, Derby head for Ipswich, while Sunderland travel to QPR. Fast-fading Preston, not very good travellers themselves, head down the M6 to Coventry.

Playing on Friday night, at least we?ll be in the favourable position of knowing precisely where we stand, then, depending upon the outcome versus The Owls, either smugly grin, or sweat buckets as other results pour in, come five pm. Both ?Im Indoors and myself now concur that just two wins from the remaining four will see us home and dry. Assuming that to be the case, we still have a little leeway to take a couple of hits: let?s hope we won?t need it.

Working on the basis of going mob-handed to Carrow Road eventually achieving the desired result, Albion have now decided to make Friday?s night?s effort a ?Kids For A Quid? affair. The club are looking to fill the place, presumably, but the fact that the ticket office will be flogging the things right up to the start of the game strongly suggests that lack of interest may have been something of an influence regarding that earlier decision. Certainly, there was no inkling of this in Saturday?s programme versus Stoke. But, whatever the rationale behind this, we do genuinely need some resilient vocal chords packing that ground on the day, if only because Wednesday are still on a bit of a roll and need taking down a peg or three.

Any football supporter with half a brain knows very well indeed what an influence crowd psychology can exert upon events, be it for good, ill, or just plain ornery indifference. So do politicians. And there?s also a parallel with the last time we tried to get ourselves out of a lower division, by playing football at its purest: the Ardiles era, of course. Back then, we wanted to pack ?em to the rafters for that Swansea play-off second leg. I still remain firmly convinced that it was the crowd that won it for our lads, that night.

Sure, theirs was the skill and motivation to make it actually happen, but when your adrenalin levels are blown sky-high by some 25,000 boinging Baggie people, all of them lustily roaring on most everything you do, then you can conquer the entire world, never mind a bunch of crazed Taffs, and their equally-lunatic supporters. Win that one, and it?s Turf Moor next: they too have declined badly, of late, something that might auger very well indeed for our chances of making absolutely sure, but with sufficient cloth still spare to effect last-minute alterations, if necessary.

This year?s promotion race surely has to be the tightest I can remember in a long while: usually, in this division, at least, it?s a case of one club showing early, then proceeding to show those left in their wake a clean pair of heels, the real scraps being reserved, later on, for tenancy of that final ?automatic? place, and, even later still, those for the right to go up, courtesy victory at either Cardiff or Wembley.

Even at this late stage of the game, and despite the fact much winnowing out of prospective candidates has taken place over the course of recent weeks, it would still need a particularly bold sort of betting person to enter into the game of firm predictions for the end of 06-07. So I?m not going to: after all, isn?t image supposed to be the thing, these days? Let?s just say that I?ve finally excavated the smelling-salts from parts of our bathroom cabinet best not discussed, at long last, but have not, as yet, chosen to include them in the contents of the bum-bag I tote during games. But, like everything else, their time might come again.

Once more, I?ll be taking a break until Thursday night, when matters Sheffield Wednesday loom large, and my bum becomes even squeakier still, the direct result of all that adrenaline doing alarming things to motor nerves controlling bowel movements. Bike-clips all round, chaps?

And Finally?. Poor ?Im Indoors. Yesterday, he became a fully paid-up member of the Bad Back Club, overenthusiastic celebrations of our last-gasp winner being the causative agent, sadly, and not a new-found predilection for sexual activities requiring Olympic-standard gymnastic techniques for guaranteed success. Luckily, once the problem settled down, there was little in the way of further intimation that the problem would last, so I guess he?s got away with it. Just like our football club.

As for his Percy Thrower impersonations, we now have oodles of capsicums and cucumbers showing their little heads above ground, all now safely nestled within the cosy warmth of our greenhouse, where neither cat nor slug can penetrate. Our blooms have been a little hit and miss, grown from seed etc. but it?s something easily rectified with a visit to a half decent market stall or garden centre. With any luck, come the summer, our garden will be an absolute riot of colour. And a fair number of salads, prepared using ingredients of genuine organic origin. Now, if only we could do the same with promising players!

 - Glynis Wright

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