SkyDaz Banter: Pre-Blackburn

Arsenal? Top of the Premier League? Record unbeaten run? Henry. Pires, Bergkamp et al? In hindsight I am amazed we even thought we had a chance. In a perverse way the banter Sunday morning from fans of our nearest rivals was in fact an immense compliment. The fact they believed we might get a positive result from the Arsenal game showed just how highly people are starting to rate of us. Agreed the margin of victory was the same as last season but they were two totally contrasting performances. The 4-1 defeat last season was a lesson in football, Arsenal were incredible and their passing and movement a joy to watch. The recent fixture was just as enjoyable as we matched the Gunners for most of the match, the difference between the teams was some clinical finishing of the highest order. For the Arsenal second goal I was pleased when I saw it was Old Man Bergkamp running clean through from the halfway line rather than Billy Whizz Henry and waited for the inevitable tackle from one of the following pack. No chance, no one got near him, and he is supposed to be at the end of his career. And didn’t he finish with a touch of class as well!

Today’s match is a repeat of my debut on Sky Sport’s Fanzone. We lost that night 2-0 and the Blackburn fan, Phil Heywood, a fat disc jockey from the Upstairs Downstairs pub, Morecambe, never let me get a word in edgeways. The pub is actually run by Blues fans so hopefully today we can win and shut him up for once. The match was moved to a midweek fixture after being postponed on the weekend because of snow. Do you remember the hot air blowers that scorched the pitch? I suppose we could thank those blowers for our Worthington Cup Final appearance against Liverpool. They ruined the pitch so badly that in one of the most memorable games I have ever seen at St Andrews v Ipswich in the semi final the dreaded surface helped us considerably. Towards the end of the game the ball went back to Richard Wright and his air shot was as entertaining as Enckelman’s ball control. Rather to everyone’s amusement as the ball went towards the Ipswich goalkeeper I shouted out ‘bobble’! Even now my friends often ask me to use the ‘bobble’ curse when the ball travels at speed to the opposition keeper. I try not to wear it out through overuse but normally utter it once a game. Perhaps we could try it en masse at a given time during the game. Maybe the first back pass of the second half we could all shout ‘bobble’ at the top of our voices. It might work, it might not. But if it ever did, wouldn’t it be funny?

Article reproduced with kind permission of the BCFC official matchday programme.