You always knew that the jail bird was going to influence the match on Merseyside. Of course I mean Everton’s and not ours! Big Dunc has pretty much been a fringe player for the whole of his career, mainly due to a catalogue of injuries. In fact he’s been on the physio table that often it’s a surprise he hasn’t got MRSA. As soon as he enters the game you know what is coming. Sixty yard hail mary balls hoofed in the air for his big Jock forehead to scatter around the penalty area.
Dunc is like John Terry in some ways, or is it the other way round. A set piece around the box instantly becomes dangerous because of their aerial power and any decent cross is more than likely to be a goal. It is hard to mark a big lumbering locomotive staring at the ball ignoring everything in its path which kind of makes the fact that he scored with a shot in the last few minutes a tad more disappointing to deal with.
Enough of the dark side though. Apparently some people regarded last week’s article as a touch on the depressing side. I can’t help the way the players perform and quite frankly there have been too many downright incompetent showings. I don’t expect us to win every game, if I did I would have long gone and supported someone else. The great thing about following the Blues is that for years we have been quite frankly rubbish. It was for that reason, many years ago, that I chose to follow the American Football team, the Houston Oilers. When everyone else was picking the 49’ers, the Redskins etc I looked at the tables and picked the team that was bottom and hadn’t won a game because I knew how they felt. I empathised.
My only request is that at the end of the ninety minutes I walk out of the ground knowing that my heroes tried their damned hardest and win lose or draw they earned my money and deserved my support. I guess success brings its own problems though. The mindset of the players recruited at the mid level is that they have won a contract and are secure for a few years and the future is financially safe regardless of performance. The expectation of the fans has also changed.
No longer is it a case of ‘we few, we happy few, we band of brothers: for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother’. We want survival in the Premiership, we want to finish in the top half, we want to qualify for Europe, we want to be in the Champions League, we want to win the Premiership.
Unfortunately it’s the unachievable win at all costs dream of an egotistical Bond Villain who wants to rule the world and all in his first year of being slightly evil. We can stamp our feet like a pubescent teenager denied a sip of Hofmeister but it doesn’t get us anywhere.
Heskey’s clinical early strike was a beauty. Pennant delivered quality balls throughout the match and it can only be a question of time before our forwards convert a greater percentage of the chances on offer. Isn’t it? Heskey’s first touch was world class and the speed with which he struck the shot surprised the Everton defenders. And the goalkeeper. And the Evertonians. And the Blue noses to be honest.
It is a touch unfair to say that we then tried to hold on for the remaining eighty five minutes but an away win always seemed unlikely. They had a ton of luck for Big Dunc’s equaliser but a draw was about right and I’m sure we would have accepted it before the game kicked off.
Picture the scene. Your beloved club battles its way through to the semi final of the famous FA Cup. They are drawn against the mighty Arsenal who are full of some of the finest players in world football and the match is to be played at a national stadium to accommodate the hordes wishing to see the contest (forget the corporate prostitution!). You know your team are the underdogs and defeat is likely but the next day you want to be able to hold your head up high and say ‘if it be a sin to covet honour I am the most offending soul alive’.
Twenty four hours later you pick up the Sunday papers and they describe your losing performance as follows:
“Why would you even cross the road to watch this mixture of the moronic and the musclebound masquerading as football..? …Rarely can there have been a more unlikeable bunch of miscreants to darken the FA Cup’s door… and not once in the whole game did one of their players produce a piece of skill that brought a smile to the face.” Sunday People.
“The club is the only one of the four semi-finalists not to sell its allocation … - who would want to watch this every week?” News of the World
“Only 18,000 supporters made the trip – less than the number Southend brought to the LDV Final” Sunday Mirror
Welcome to Blackburn Rovers! No honestly, you’re welcome to them.
Nobody knows as well as we do that to survive in the toughest league in the world you have to fight and battle for every point. But not literally! The semi final was embarrassing to watch at times with the constant petulant fouling. The worst scenes for me though were the transgressors standing above the victims they had just knobbled with an illegal challenge and berating them for either not getting up or for play acting. Rarely will any football fan support the plethora of simulators from the capital, that’s the London ponces that dive to you and me, but the replays clearly showed aggressive contact and the tirade of abuse over an injured fellow professional was distasteful. Shameful.
I hope you noticed though that the thugs clattered Fabregas and van Persie and then later Palace’s Routledge. All are teenagers without a reputation for violence or aggression. As Ian Dowie said recently the Blackburn hard men never seem to want to pick on the players that can look after themselves. That doesn’t make them hard, it makes them bullies.
Good luck to Mark Hughes in his quest to assemble the Welsh national squad at Ewood Park. The Premiership will certainly be quaking at facing a team that currently stand behind Qatar, Oman and Libya in the world rankings. Perhaps to acclimatise them to the crowds at Ewood, Hughes will take them to a car boot sale. He might get a few pounds for some of them. But then again he might not.
This match gives us the chance to exorcise some ghosts that seem to have left a foul and repulsive smell when they left. There are points still to play for and at around £½ million a position at stake there is a great need to finish as high as possible.
Keep Right On and remember, “when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger … Cry God for Brucie, England and Saint George”.