What’s the name of his other leg?
Ah, the wit of Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins (or was it Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?). For many of us, not only was his name and the names of the films he appeared in the opportunity for puerile jokes, but he defined the cockney accent. I was to recall his most famous joke during the course of the first half.
Birmingham is not a nice place. Our lass comes from Solihull (just south of Brum for those of you without geography O levels) so I do try hard to like it. I also would admit it’s improved enormously over the last couple of decades. But still, as we parked up in a side street, worrying whether we’d come back to a full complement of windows, one was not tempted to go for an early evening stroll along the canal. Birmingham tourist board likes to boast that it has more miles of canal than Venice. That might well be true. However, in Venice you are unlikely to bump into a group of Brummie charvers. So, we decided instead to stroll into the city centre to the pre-arranged pub. None of the pubs anywhere near St Andrew’s is even vaguely welcoming to away supporters.
We were drinking with lazy sods so the arrangement to get back to the ground was, by a majority vote, taxi. Call me old fashioned but I still regard a taxi as a luxury item. Not a means of transport a proper football supporter should be taking.
There was a terrific turnout of around 2,500 SAFC supporters – and every one seemed to come in the mindset of giving maximum vocal support to the lads. For some reason everyone also stood throughout the game. I don’t know how we decide which are “sitty” games and which are “standy” games. But this was definitely a “standy” one. Personally I much prefer standing. I actually physically prefer standing to sitting – but more importantly it tends to be associated with a better atmosphere. The problem is of course with pre-assigned seats it means that those who don’t want to stand or, more importantly, can’t stand (e.g. old ‘uns) can end up seeing nowt of the match. The authorities are so bloody insistent that no-one should stand that they couldn’t possibly allow something sensible like asking on your application for a seat near the front (on the basis that those are the easiest to insist on people sitting down).
Anyhow, our mood was a mixture of optimism from our recent performances and apprehension as this was the stiffest test we’d faced this year – the first team that in principle was more likely to be promoted than us. The game started at 90mph and seemed to stick at that speed for most of the first half. As the early minutes passed we realised we were not just better than them – but miles better than them. It was sort of end to end stuff – except they got nowhere near our end. So it was more end to 25 yards out stuff. We were attacking the other end so it wasn’t always possible to tell how close some of our efforts were – but we seemed to be doing just about everything but score. Worries about dominance not being turned into goals were just starting to creep in when somewhere about the half hour mark Edwards got the ball and drifted in from the right towards the penalty box. We had exactly the same view down towards goal as he had. I remember thinking “he can’t get a decent right foot connection in that position” when he suddenly launched a cracking shot that we followed all the way into the top corner. In the celebrations I turned to my nephew and said “my god, was that his left foot?” and he replied “no, it was Edwards”. Either he was being very sharp – or very dim. It’s 50/50 which.
I have to give a special first half mention to the Nuggs. As you’d expect he was a colossus in defence. But in the first half he suddenly found himself in the right hand channel in their half. You might wonder what our centre half is doing there – but then you remember he’s the Nuggs. He was surrounded by three Brum players but he suddenly did some amazing lift and twirl that meant he left them for dead as he charged towards goal. It is generally accepted amongst SAFC supporters that Nuggsy is better than John Terry. However, while I don’t want to exaggerate, on this evidence he may also be better than Ronaldhino. His cult status amongst our supporters seems to be growing exponentially every game.
Second half and we again had loads of opportunities to kill the game off – but the last knock into the net just wouldn’t come for us. I see Mr Potato Head reckons that he was pleased that Brum came more into it in the second half. Well, I suppose if you call getting totally and utterly outplayed is coming more into it than getting totally and utterly and completely outplayed – then yes they did.
What you could say was that as the match got to its later stages we started to tire. Stokes had done a great job out left in the first half and temporarily moved to the front when John went off. However, Stokes was probably the most tired of all and soon went off. The fresh legs of Leadbitter and Miler helped to a certain extent – but the relentless high octane football we’d been playing on a boggy pitch was taking its toll (I’m pleased this was a Tuesday, rather than Wednesday match to give us time to recover for Saturday).
I must admit I am not won over by Fulop yet. Maybe it is the instinctive distrust anyone 5’8” has for people that much over 6’. However, he never seems to be entirely confident in his positioning. I am not saying he was to blame for the goal (to be honest it was such a scramble I’d struggle to say if anyone was to blame) but I don’t have the feeling I had with Ward there.
As the fourth official was picking up his electronic thingy to tell us how long was left, a ball came in from the left. In the melee one of their players (bloody D J Campbell – on as a sub -I found out later) got a poke to it and bang went two points.
The Brummy supporters at the end celebrated their mini feat of giant killing. It just shows how far things have come that a team that is still favourites for automatic promotion should be so pleased to manage to get a draw with us on their own ground. On this display no-one could doubt who was better equipped to go up to the Prem.
Like Keano I’m sticking to looking at the positives from this rather than get depressed about that late goal. An away point at a promotion rival is a bloody good point. Even more than that the performance really cements what we’ve been doing since the turn of the year and shows we can massively outperform the teams at the top as well as the teams below. The rest of the results went well for us, if you’re mainly concentrating on getting a play-off place, or badly for us if you’re focused on the automatics. Personally I think the automatics are beyond our reach – but with the attitude Keano has instilled in the players I don’t think any of us need fear the play-offs.
John aka Herts