Well, as every parent will say “nearly, now just be quiet”. Unfortunately this is usually followed by vomiting (by the child, not the parent) creating an unpleasant stench that stays with you for a long time. Such has been the 2006/07 season for SAFC supporters.
At least it was sunny and we were on an open terrace. So the pastey skins, from a life-time of existence in the North-East under influence from the North Sea and “protected” from the benign influence of the Gulf Steam, were all turned a rather fetching pink. As we left the ground it made our supporters looked as though we were all a little embarrassed. Seems about right.
In the pub beforehand we’d been watching Arsenal v Tottenham. You couldn’t help but think “that should be us”. I’d well and truly accept the mags having several Prem championships and doubles under their belt it we could be where Tottenham are. Is it really too much to ask? Yes, has been the answer. But the good ship Quinny is sailing up the Wear as we speak about to offload marauding Irish Euros to storm the Murray gates and melt down the gold taps to buy world class players. So we hope. Frankly if we didn’t have these Quinny stories I think we’d all be close to topping ourselves at present.
I didn’t really expect much from this match. What I most hoped for was one more match less before the end of the season. On that basis it was a stunning success. Hopefully one less time I’ll have to watch Kelvin the Komical Klown play in goal for us. This time he didn’t do his famous komedy juggling act. In fact he had a kanny game. But then he often does that – you just know a huge klanger is never too far away. They are not always as disastrous as his juggling the ball while waiting for Chopra to run half the length of the pitch – but they are going to come along, that you can be certain of. He is canny shot stopper but crap at everything else a goaly is meant to do. Bring in Alnwick and let some else suffer the kalamity.
Lawrence wasn’t playing. Is he still injured? Apparently “several” Prem clubs are interested. Can I just say “ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha”. If anyone is prepared to offer a bag of midget gems and a bottle of hair dye, let them having the falling down ponce. Falling down is a prerequisite for being a Prem player. If it is the only talent needed then Prem clubs should come and have a look at me after a night on the Guiness. Leadbitter also wasn’t playing. Hope we keep him as he might actually do something. We had Brown and Kyle up front. God help us. If that looks bad on paper you have no idea how awful it looked in reality. Stead was back to playing out wide where Mick put him in his madder moments (when he didn’t have Elliott to waste by sticking him out there). OK Stead’s goalscoring extravaganza seems to have come to an end but at least he is a footballer. I am not sure what Brown is.
As for the game itself, we we lost. What else did you expect? The first half was even – Portsmouth’s nerves being matched by our incompetence. Second half we were kicking towards us and saw we saw our attacking “threat” close up. God we are so toothless. Stead had gone off so Nosworthy came on, pushing Hoyte up to right wing. Whitehead worked away but still looks nothing like last season’s player. I hope he is OK again next season in the CCC – it would be a crying shame if a promising career is destroyed by this season. Miller really is amazing – his ability to be on the pitch but not get noticed is becoming a phenomena. This game I was actually trying to watch him as we’d been talking about his famous invisibility in the pub beforehand. Honestly, you just can’t see him. Where does he go to?
Portsmouth’s nerves told half way through the second half. We broke through down the middle. An invisible force seemed to be guiding the ball and then it was passed to Arca who crossed back to Miller for him to score. Well, all well and good and you might well have seen it on the telly – but at almost every moment of the move we seemed scared – like we were going to lose the ball at every moment. Maybe it is just me.
We could have killed off the game. Kyle came bursting through in much the same position as Miller but without a single Portsmouth player anywhere enar him. He managed to go 20 odd yards and not once touch the ball in a way that moved it in a position that was beneficial to an attack. Our best hope was that the Portsmouth goalkeeper was bemused by what on earth Kyle was doing. Eventually he got bored and came out to get it – don’t know why he bothered to be honest, Kyle was well on his way to running it out for a goal kick by that stage.
The inevitable then happened. We gave one of their players on the left side of the box a load of room and he shot. Who the hell would expect him to do that? For god’s sake, we are 1-0 up away from home with fifteen minutes to go. Is it really too much to expect us to be closing attackers down when we are playing a team that might well be in the CCC with us next season?
Late on we then gave a penalty away. Apparently it was Kyle handball. I couldn’t see. The penalty was great. The Komedy Klown seemed to dive to his left before the penalty taker even started his run up. I don’t know what the penalty taker’s plan had been – but guess which way he placed it after that?
Just one more away game and then this is all over. Help us Quinny, please help us.