The Diary

14 November 2007: New Albion Weather Lore: Second Spot Tonight, Promotion In Sight!

Oh boy ? have I got that wonderful ?four goal feeling?, and really, really badly with it! Well, what a pleasure it was, this morning, waking up with the happy thought we?d completely tatered a side crammed full of delusions, not just of grandeur, but also harbouring serious ambitions of a return to the Prem, come next May. What a shame we put them firmly back in their little mental cubby-hole, last night. At least reality must have finally set in for them, with the coming of the very same dawn I greeted with such jollity, several hours ago.

Thoughts about last night?s win? First to spring to mind is the fact that we so nearly blew it during that fraught first half, despite the lad Mifsud absenting himself from the proceedings in such a destructive way. Had we played our normal attacking game, they wouldn?t have known what hit ?em. Still, after landing up on the receiving end of some very strong words indeed from our gaffer during the break ? an experience for our finest roughly comparable to Mary Poppins bursting into verbal flames with a never-ending stream of four-letter words emanating from her lips, and right in front of her youthful charges too, I shouldn?t wonder ? the Albion Universe As We Know It was quickly restored in the second, with four hitting the back of the Sky Blues net in very short order indeed.

Other thoughts? One supremely positive thing live TV coverage of games does give you is chance to really appreciate, by means of replays etc. just how well (or otherwise!) certain players are performing. Right now, the lad Andrade Filipe Teixiera is proving to be something of a ?secret weapon? for us. For me, he has to be one of the cutest bits of bargaining ever seen in a transfer negotiation.

His sheer class has proven to be one of the most outstanding ? and delightful - features of the current season: quite amazing, that, considering he came to us from Portuguese side Academica de Coimbra for football?s equivalent of ?petty cash?, ?600K. Correct me if I?m wrong, you lot, but I can?t for the life of me recall anyone else bidding for his services at that particular time, either. Wow, what an almighty steal ? and well done, also, the Albion scout that watched him, and had the sheer perception to see untapped genius at work.

The thing that makes him so attractive to watch in action, is the delightful way he can turn a game within a matter of seconds. Playing in the ?hole? behind Ish Miller, his attempt on goal during the first half should have been adequate warning enough for the Sky Blues, but they failed to counter the menace in time. Two second-half goals, and even more supporting spadework later, they must have truly wished for the ground to open up and swallow him, last night. What a crying shame we played like a bag of spanners during that awful first half: had we been more ?up for it? earlier, Coventry might well have been looking somewhat ruefully at an horrendous ?goals against? League tally, this fine following morning.

As for the damage done to ?wounded little soldier? James Morrison, stretchered off last night, now he?s been poked and prodded around a bit by the medical profession, things are looking slightly better than they did when it happened. According to Mogga ? may Allah send countless herds of well-fed camels to descend upon his fertile oasis! ? he reckons it?s medial ligament damage, which is a whole lot less than knackering a cruciate ligament, may I say ? he?ll be out for four to six weeks, which should mean he?ll be back ere the vital Christmas period is upon us. There is, however, a very slight chance it may turn out to be a cruciate after all, in which case, the poor sod could be out for months.

Mogga is also optimistic that Kev Phillips may be back much sooner than the media predicted last weekend. In fact he?s quite miffed about the sort of thing that got around the Sunday tabs, nasty rumours, again, of cruciate ligament damage, which it isn?t. A three-to-four week absence from the goal-face, max, is what our leader forecasts for Our Kev. Let?s hope he?s right.

That?s the big danger you face in a game like football, where so much depends upon high-speed pivotal twisting and turning movements, with full body-weight badly stressing the offending patella (and all ligaments west!) each and every time you do it. Turn badly, or leap and land incorrectly, and you immediately have a big (and exquisitely painful ? ouch!) problem on your plate. In the dead of night, I sometimes wonder just how much damage current professionals unwittingly do to themselves during the course of an average career.

Don?t forget, the pace of the game is infinitely faster, and the knocks harder than they ever were in the sixties and seventies. If Bomber Brown is anything to go by, despite the advent of much more sophisticated diagnostic methods and treatments since his playing days, then the legacy our current favourites will have to face could well be one of painful joint-replacement operations innumerable.

So what else have I been up to, today? Fully expecting The Fart to materialise at our place, to pick up my stile card (for that all-essential Palace ticket and coach booking, later) come eleven this morning, before he arrived, and needing to look out for a birthday card for young Carly Lewis, 17 very soon, I nipped out to the shops further along the street. That also meant some timely social discourse with the Bluenose Butcher, who had also witnessed last night?s Baggie-led frivolities on the box.

The autumnal chill present in the air must have really got to him at some stage or another, mind, because there he was, as large as life and twice as bad, actually AGREEING with last night?s early dismissal of our old Maltese chum Mifsud. Remind me to ring the agriculture ministry as a matter of urgency tomorrow, folks: surely all the above is incontrovertible evidence that Our Man With The Meat Cleaver is most certainly in the early stages of Mad Cow Disease, and already showing the classic neurological and psychiatric symptoms?

Now, hang on a mo ? if it?s not the above, does H5N1 avian flu do strange things to the minds of those poor sods unlucky enough to contract it, I wonder? If that?s the case, then would any members of DEFRA reading this please send round a culling team to Bearwood, PDQ, and armed with a stun-gun or three ? there?s grim and bloody work to be done in a butchers? situated quite close to where we live!

Once I?d finished nattering to my Small Heath-loving chum, found a suitably-risque card for young Carly, then nipped into our local supermarket for a newspaper and some basic provisions, the clock was telling me that the Fart would be hitting our doorbell very soon indeed. Once back in our Shangri-La, it was then a simple case of waiting for the old reprobate to show his face, which he did, eventually.

As I?d suspected, our very mature chum did have a tale to tell of last night that Sky completely failed to pick up. It happened at the end of the game: instead of simply going to the away end and waving vague acknowledgments of their supporters? lung-busting vocal efforts, as per usual, our lot went into what amounted to a mutual cuddle-in down there!

Not only that ? and this is the real ?feelgood? angle on last night?s away triumph, Baggie people ? Bostian Cesar then removed both team shirt and vest, and proceeded to ?crown? with the aforesaid garments a couple of disabled Baggies sitting in the designated section for wheelchairs, right in front of the away end. A lovely touch, which Cesar needn?t have done, such was the degree of merriment enjoyed by other team-mates going on around him, so all credit to the bloke for having done so.

Oh ? and, according to our venerable chum again, Sky Blues head honcho Iain Dowie now accepts that the ref?s decision to red card Mifsud was bang to rights. Took a bit of time, Iain, old boy, but I?m glad you finally acceded to what was as plain, to most other people, as that huge conk adorning the middle of your ghastly face! Presumably, that complete change of heart on his part came about as a direct result of having seen the same TV footage you and I did, right after the game ended; well, I mean, to continue to protest a decision like that could have proven very embarrassing for the lad, to say the very least.

Having glanced briefly at the Bournemouth-MK Dons tie earlier tonight ? when we left the game, the Dons were winning 2-0, which is the precise moment I told my other half to change channels: a well-directed male shoe through the screen would have proven prove highly-damaging to our joint finances as well as our TV set, after all said and done! ? His Nibs then decided to check out ?I?m A Celebrity?? And guess what? Instantaneous cue for my hate glands to start secreting full-blast, instead. How come? Baggies of ?a certain age? will have probably twigged, by now, but for the rest of you that haven?t, I can sum up the root cause of my initial choleric reaction in two simple words: ?Rodney? and ?Marsh?. And both prefixed by ?bloody?, I?ll have you know.

Normally, that sort of Z-list celeb ego-fest goes right over my head, then goes ?splat? ? but not this time. I know not of what manner of poisonous flora or fauna exists in New Zealand, if any at all, but of one thing I most certainly do know. While the obnoxious Mister Marsh pollutes that bit of rain forest, I sincerely hope, with every particle of my entire being, that whatever species of myriapod, arachnid, arthropod, insecta, reptile or hymenoptera (that?s social creatures like termites, bees and ants to you, squire) fastens their teeth or fangs into his scrofulous buttocks during the course of that programme, they end up doing serious and lasting damage!

As far as I?m concerned, as fitting an end for someone whose 1967Wembley trademark was kicking a Certain Someone?s head in as they were trying to grab the ball and prevent a goal, in the last five minutes or so of a League Cup Final, as you?d ever want to witness. Had the same thing happened in this day and age, there?s no question about it. Marsh would have had the goal disallowed, and a free-kick immediately awarded to the Baggies, with the distinct possibility of a yellow carding (or worse) for Rod-nee also.

Additionally (and this is my own personal opinion, no-one else?s, mind), I do wonder sometimes whether or not Rick Sheppard suffered some sort of mild brain damage as a result of what happened that day. Certainly, his Albion career came to an end not too long after that, and he moved to Bristol Rovers, only for precisely the same thing to happen down there ? a goalmouth melee and head injury too many, that finally brought the football career of a very brave keeper to an abrupt and premature end.

I don?t know whether the two were connected or not, but Sheppard sadly died not too long after that - way, way, before his time, of course. But, that?s me: all the younger Baggie generation remember Rod-nee for is being an ex-London team player, and having way too much mouth for his own good, especially just after we went up for the very first time. ?Pigs in lipstick? was his patronising TV descriptor for our finest. Maybe he looked in a mirror just before saying it, perchance?

Back then, his star was very much in the ascendant, media work, after-dinner speaking commanding a respectable fee for the night?s work, the whole lot: I can only assume that the reason he?s now chosen to sup with the Devil, in the minuscule Novocastrian form of Ant and Dec, right now, is because his media career has gone as flat as the Anglian fens, and he now needs a bit of a publicity-boost.

And that?s yer lot for a while. Next weekend will be given over to the internationals, of course, with the vexed question of probable England failure to qualify for the Nations Cup looming very large indeed, of course. Reminds me of the situation that existed prior to the one and only live full England game I?ve ever attended in my entire life, versus San Marino, back in November 1993.

Some may remember it taking place in Bologna (the state of San Marino itself is only around the size of Wednesbury town centre at best, making the choice of home venue there somewhat limited, shall we say!) around the time we were in Italy for the Anglo-Italian tournament game versus Fiorentina, who?d unaccountably descended to Serie B the season before.

The crux of the matter was the fact that a dreadfully-underachieving England needed to score (I think) around nine to qualify for the forthcoming World Cup. But the best bit of the entire game, for me, was the start: no sooner had I gone to sit down, when bloody San Marino only went and did the impossible ? and put one right in the back of the England net!

Blimey, talk about chucking boiling water right on top of an ants nest. Within a matter of seconds, all the knuckle-dragging brain-deads our green and pleasant land could muster were on their simian feet, and getting ready to drum on their chests, or something. Had I been the England gaffer at the time, I would have fled in complete panic! As you might expect, the language was pretty ripe. Our national side did go on to grab eight, eventually, but it wasn?t quite enough, and that initial setback didn?t help either. And neither did the fact I couldn?t help laughing like a bloody drain the moment that San Marino strike went in!

Unless something really big breaks, I?ll probably only ?produce? for a bit of a ?catch-up? around this time next week, then, later on in the week, set the scene nicely for our very next game, which sees us matched against that awful scabby lot from up the road. It?s on a Sunday, too, so no swearing ? and that includes you too, Vicar!

And Finally?.. Could it be that our old chum Neil Warnock is angling to take Our Chappy away from all he knows and loves, here in the Black Country, to serve in durance vile at Crystal Palace instead? Well, that?s the scoop according to today?s online Guardian. Now hang on a mo: poor Chappy suffers from severe alopecia, which, as you may or may not know, can be stress-related. Whatever the root cause (supporters of his previous club, Burnley, can make for a pretty stressful existence also!), the condition?s left the poor sod completely sans not only hair, but nice bushy eyebrows, too.

So what happens if and when this hypothetical move to Palace finally happens? After all, Warnock isn?t the most genial, or easiest of guys to work for, is he? Having lost most of his hair ?up top?, what else could be sacrificed, should the problem spread even further? Oh, dear ? look out for future news items about The Startling Case Of The Man Who Doesn?t Have To Have His Family Jewels Shaved Prior To Operations!

 - Glynis Wright

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