Well our going down was a hell of a lot better than the 32 matches leading up to it. It is nice to go down with our heads held high.
It was also nice to be end Man U’s season – ho, ho, ho. I actually like Man U (I used to live in Manchester and occasionally went to OT – certainly not Maine Road) but you can’t help feel superior to the sad bunch of losers from Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and the Home Counties. I know there are plenty or genuine Mancs who support Man U (although a decent proportion of those have moved off to support FC United of Manchester) – but the club is defined by the sad losers visiting the Man U “megastore” (here is a hint for them – a sad loser with a Man U carrier bag full of Glazier goodies is not a winner – he/she is a sad loser with a Man U carrier bag full of Glazier goodies). Looking at their glum faces coming out of the ground gave us a chuckle. Here is a game we can all join in: Hands up everybody who is not going to win the Premiership this season. What they don’t show you on Sky is that, to everyone’s surprise, there is not an infinite supply of sad losers. Those new corners they have built (that they are desperately advertising tickets for on those flipping electronic boards round the pitch, that blind your view of the ball) have hundreds of empty seats. Perhaps the Home Counties sad losers have all upped it and switched to Chelsea? After all, if you are going to “choose” your team, you might as well choose winners.
Anyhoo, ….. nee Delap (thought he was expected to be back for this match) – one of our Murphys was out left instead, but otherwise the team was as expected. You’ve all seen it on the telly so what can I say? We fought hard and every player contributed well. The 2,000 travelling supporters had something to shout about. God only knows we’ve had some dross to watch so the opportunity of a good sing song was very welcome.
The man of the match award went to Davis, which was certainly deserved. He made a number of outstanding saves. However, that makes it sound like it was a complete backs to the wall performance – but it wasn’t. The defence held together well. Breen was superb. When he went off injured the away support sang the “Gary Breen” song – who the hell would have thought we’d hear that from SAFC supporters again? Even Danny Collins, who has been awful recently, had a good game. Leadbitter looked remarkably comfortable in midfield and Stead and Brown worked tirelessly up front. We had several chances to win the match ourselves but a point was definitely deserved.
It is amazing given how few points we have that it has taken until Easter for us to be mathematically relegated. Now that we are down, it would be nice to have a few more performances like this. As we sang as we left the ground “bring on the magpies”.