What is it with the English and legal dope? Drugs are hardly difficult to come by in Blighty these days and the risk of being done for doing soft drugs is damn near nil. But send Brits to Amsterdam and they just can’t wait to get into the cafes and get doped up to the eyeballs. And so it was that we saw fellow SAFC supporters staggering up to us with eyes like black saucers. “Hello, how long have you been here?” “A MINUTE, MAN” “Err, have you seen the canals yet?” “I AM A CANAL”. And so off they would meander, convinced they could fly, to throw themselves off the tallest building they could find. Fortunately, as this was the Netherlands the tallest building was the park bench.
We had in fact stayed in Alkmaar while the naughty boys had gone off to Amsterdam to do naughty things. We met up many of them as we sat drinking in the pleasant square in Alkmaar where we had just visited the Cheese Museum. I have had a number (well one is a number) of requests to give a detailed report on the Cheese Museum but space doesn’t permit ….
Despite Alkmaar being the nice civilised place that one associates with the Dutch the ground is a throwback to the dark ages. You get a letter in advance telling you not to bring in all manner of things (including coins of less than €1); get a full body search on the way in (body cavities excluded – just); get served a cold hot dog from behind a metal grill a heavily armoured vehicle couldn’t ram raid; are stuck behind a fence consisting of four (yes, four!) sheets of metal grill (with no breaks for emergency access to the pitch) with barbed wire on top separated from the home fans by thick sheets of Perspex. Anyone who can even consider giving a safety certificate to this sort of set-up should be made to watch the video of the Hillsborough disaster over and over again until they see sense. Alkmaar are moving to a new ground, which we drove past and looks good. I hope they also leave behind their unpleasant, and frankly very un-Dutch, attitude to away supporters.
I’m not sure how the ticketing worked. We were supposed to get 400 tickets for the corner section but when we got there two sections were open to us, both looking as if they held 400. I’d guess that the number of SAFC supporters there was a bit over 400 but because we had the two sections it meant most people could get a spot where they weren’t watching through the grills. Whether it was the excitement of the Premiership, the long afternoon drinking in the square or the substances consumed in the café it was a cracking atmosphere amongst the SAFC supporters – particularly in the first half when Alkmaar were on top and we were needed most.
First half we were kicking away from us (and the sun was in ours – and Kelvin Davis’s – eyes). We almost scored straight away but after that Alkmaar came at us and our defence had a couple of wobbles. We started off playing a 4-4-2 –however the middle was Robinson in the central holding role, Whitehead to the right, Miller to the left and La Tellec playing a freeer role in front of Robinson. I think in text books they call this a “diamond” formation. It didn’t last long as Alkmaar were pouring through. Almost as soon as I’d worked out what was going on, Elliott (who had been up front with Stead) dropped back to left midfield while La Tellec went over to right midfield, Miller and Whitehead tucking in a little. I think we are going to have to get used to this fluidity of formation – Mick has been using it quite a lot in pre-season. I also think we are going to have to get used to a 5 man midfield as Mick uses that tactic when up against stronger midfields (which let’s be honest is going to be a lot of the time). This worked but still Alkmaar got in shots. Fortunately Davis is a quite superb keeper and pulled off some excellent saves including one that was quite out of this world – a cross came over from their right to a player who was left unmarked (should have been Breen covering? Certainly if we were defending zonally it was Breen’s area) inside the six yard box. The attacker did exactly the right things – powering it across Davis and into the far side. Davis’s reactions were just so quick I could hardly watch at the speed he moved to tip it over the bar.
At half-time we thought we’d acquitted ourselves well against a side that the previous season had got to the semis of the UEFA cup and had come third in the Dutch league (just being pipped by Ajax towards the end of the season). We probably couldn’t have complained if we were losing to a one goal margin (or maybe even two) but I suspect there are going to be a lot of Premiership games where we are going to be grateful to Davis. The more I’ve seen of him this summer the more impressed I’ve become – and not a little surprised that one of the more established Premiership teams didn’t pip us to him.
Second half and Stubbs came on for Breen. Is this the shape of things to come as they are both right footers? So of course is Caldwell but he has adapted to the left centre back spot well and so might be the one who is most assured of his place. Second half we really looked in charge and I was very impresses with our performance. Davis, who had been a hero in the first half didn’t have a save to make in the second. All that fitness training, the passing, the adapting to different formations that we had seen in earlier pre-season friendlies seemed to be clicking into shape. We were still playing 4-5-1 and Stead was looking unhappy – I can’t imagine many strikers relish the “lone striker” role. Fortunately Miller, Whitehead, Elliott and La Tallec were all looking to push up in support. In La Tallec we have someone who seems to have some pace, which our team was not known for last season. Early on we got the goal and a beauty it was – Mick and Taff Evans must have loved seeing work done in training pay such dividends. Miller started it off and Stead held it up while Whitehead made a darting diagonal run left into the box. Stead fed it down the inside left channel and Whithead took it down to the by-line and then sent it across to Miller who had continued on to take up a real goal poacher’s position in the centre of the six yard box. Tap and it was in. The players and us somewhat over-celebrated.
Lawrence and Welsh (again impressing – he’s probably had the best pre-season) came on for Stead and La Tellec, taking up the positions we know them for. Elliott moved up from the left wing to be the lone striker. Stead must have been frustrated because we actually played more sensible balls through to Elliott of the type Stead would have preferred. The urge when one sees a tall striker to think “hoof” must be hard wired into the genetic make-up of footballers because none seem able to resist it. We now looked a bit more of a familiar shape as the two wingers played the role in a more orthodox fashion despite having three midfielders between them. It continued to work as we were still the better team and looked more like extending our lead than letting them draw level. Brown came on for Elliott. Nosworthy came on for Arca and again impressed me as a full back. He could be this season’s “you’d have never thought it given where we got him from but that lad looks canny”. For those of you like me on Piper watch he did some excellent warming up without even looking like he was about to break a major bone – a quite exceptional performance.
And so we won. The players were please but not as sillily ecstatic as for the goal. We supporters were quite unreasonably jubilant. Well if you didn’t lack any sense of proportion you couldn’t be an SAFC supporter.
As we got back to the campsite a lad saw us in our shirts and started chatting. He thought we were canny but was disappointed in his team. He didn’t think one of them had put in a performance up to half of what he’d expect from them. As this view didn’t correspond to my rosy view of the world I immediately was able to dismiss it from my mind.
Forget the result (which was nice) this was a good performance – clearly the culmination of a lot of things we’ve been getting together over the summer. Having Stubbs experience and La Tellec’s pace are definite pluses to what we had before. Now it all starts getting real. Remember we all can make a difference, no matter how small that might be as individuals; collectively it amounts to a lot. Let’s get behind the lads as we know we can.