The Diary

08 May 2009: Wot, still no diary?

Sorry if the sight of a new headline in this corner of the front page got your collective hopes up, because this is only a tiddler. Thanks to all those who've written to us or to Glynis directly to ask if she's ok - or worried that something's gone wrong at their end and the latest articles aren't coming through. The fact is that Glynis, bless her, has been up to her ears with work on completing her Open University degree and helping out with Simon's new book. That, combined with a worsening back problem, has meant that she's become very much a part-time supporter nowadays and as a result feels that she wouldn't have any real perspective to offer on Albion events even if she did find the time to write.

The other thing is that I think we're all feeling a little bit jaded as we draw near to the end of yet another disappointing Premiership campaign. After winning the Championship in style, a summer of spending more than we'd ever done before on bring in a bunch of exciting sounding players and an England keeper, and breaking our transfer record by some distance, our hopes were understandably high. But following the abject display by Rob Styles in the game against Man United, a lot of us probably wondered why we bothered even trying to win promotion to "The best league in the world". Ironically, I'm writing this while watching the playoff game involving Sheffield United, who certainly have plenty of reason to be wary of another Premiership season after the Tevez debacle last time.

But does it bother us? No, not really. 16,000 season ticket holders have renewed already, which is not bad going considering we're not quite sure what division we'll be in next season (well, not absolutely, totally 100% sure, anyway). And it's good to see so much positive response to the idea of everyone wearing Tony Mowbray masks for the last match of the season. I know a few people aren't convinced by the idea, and feel like we're celebrating failure, but that misses the point - it's a show of solidarity, and it's the kind of thing that makes us Albion fans. For those who haven't heard the full details yet, the idea is down to Dean Walton who runs www.mask-arade.com and came up with the idea at the end of last year; it's already attracted a huge amount of interest from the national media and it promises to be quite a sight. The masks will be given out free to all Albion fans at the Blackburn game, and Deano also promises to put up pictures from the day on their web site if they receive them by email.

Well, it's taken nearly an hour and a half to write that lot. I don't know how Glynis managed to find the time! Back soon with some random musings on our season and the state of The Beautiful Game...

 - Finbarr

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