A trip to Middlesbrough is always something of an adventure. As a regular tripper up the A19, I know that road like the back of my hand. But as you cross the Tees flyover and keep to the left to head into Middlesbrough, the warm sense of familiarity gives way to a mild sense of foreboding. They don’t like us down there; they don’t talk like us; I am not even sure that there is a greater genetic commonality than we have with, say, the fruit fly.
And so to the first conundrum: where to drink? There was too large a group of us (and we had some young ‘uns) to drink in town in cognito. We stopped off at the Dalton Lodge (that pub on the left that you’ll all have passed a million times without noticing). The Guinness was off! So it was one quick one and then off again. We ended up just a bit further along the A19 at the Bishop Auckland services. I never even realised there was a pub there. Strangely it wasn’t too bad at all – except for a couple of smogs in the car park. I am not sure what they were doing. They seemed to be struggling with the clean air of County Durham. I can only assume they were in the car park so they could put their mouths over car exhaust pipes in order to breath.
So into Middlesbrough and parked up round the back of the train station for the long walk through the wasteland to the Riverside. The number of people with no colours and familiar accents made one feel we weren’t alone.
Having broke his tinkering habit against Reading, would Roy stick with the same team again? No. Nuggsy was out – not even on the bench. Presumably he was injured – although inevitably it didn’t take long for the “ooh, I hear he was in a nightclub until 2 and Roy found out” stories to start. Is there someone who starts this bollocks – or does it just pop up spontaneously? In his place came Halford (mild sense of trepidation) with mad McShane moving into the centre.
Well, the start was very, very good. So I might linger on that. The ground was nearer full than usual for the Riverside (about 30k). For some reason, it has become fashionable amongst some SAFC supporters to knock Boro’s crowds. God only knows why. Football supporters are football supporters. Boro have a tiny catchment area. It is basically only the town of Middlesbrough. I dare say that as a great a proportion of Middlesbrough go to the Riverside as Sunderland go to the SoL or Newcastle go to SJP. Unless and until Boro capture support from north of the Tees or North Yorkshire becomes densely populated, the size of crowd they get is going to be smaller than us or the mags but is nothing to sneer at.
In fact the 30k who were in there made a canny atmosphere. And at the start we contributed fully (like our team we faded badly in the second half I thought). Thankfully we steered clear of suggestions that Mido was a terrorist. Much as I dislike defending mags I actually don’t think they were trying to be racist or Islamaphobic or any ist or ic other than Midoist. However, the media having had a field day about the mags, who generally are their darlings, they would have gone to town with us if we had followed the mags’ lead.
Having swapped plain t-shirt for replica top, cunningly hidden in our lass’s bag, and taken my seat in row 8 (just where Miller was to leap onto the hoardings in a couple of hours time) I was set for a good sing song. When suddenly Leadbitter dispossessed Arca in the middle of the park (god only knows what he was doing there – he was supposed to be out right) and surged forward. He played the ball to Chops who took a solid enough shot – but Leadbitter had continued his run and it hit him. If you want to be generous (and possibly accurate – I don’t know) you could say that Leadbitter controlled it well. I have to be honest and say he seemed to get lucky initially – although he then reacted to his luck very quickly. As this was down the other end, my first thought was “offside”. However a nano-second flick over to the linesman revealed no erect flag. Leadbitter was now in space to the left of goal and sent the ball firm and accurate across Schwarzer to send us crazy.
As I said, that was very, very good. Unfortunately the next really positive moment for us was quite some way away and was quite a shock when it came. We just went untidy after that. We yet again conceded central midfield dominance. Over on the right things were worse. Downing was having a very good game and I am afraid Halford was yet again looking very poor. I am seriously worried that this lad is slipping into Kilbane syndrome: a canny player who just can’t seem to do it for us and is forgiven nothing by the supporters which affects his confidence in a vicious circle of non-performance.
Worryingly I though Gordon also looked nervous throughout. Fortunately both McShane and Higginbottom were on solid form and this probably contributed more than anything (well, not more than the goals obviously) to us getting a point.
Some time later in the first half, Arca played a ball out right and ran towards the box. The ball was sent diagonally over to the far post where he got a solid head to it and it was 1-!. Should Halford have got in a challenge? Possibly. Should one of the central defenders not been dragged so far across the box? Possibly. Should Gordon have made a better fist of saving it? Possibly. But the fact was it was now 1-1. Arca, as you’d probably expect, didn’t celebrate, which was classy of him – but little consolation to us.
The good news was we managed to nack three of their players. Unfortunately one was Arca, who got a good ovation from the travelling support despite his goal. We seemed to do this without playing particularly dirty. Maybe the contaminated air affects their muscle strength. The bad news was that this meant Boatang came on. He proceeded to kick everything in sight, except the ball. For a ref who otherwise scattered yellow cards around liberally it was amazing that he only managed to see one of Boatang’s challenges as a bookable offence.
So half time came and you could as easily argue that we shaded it, they shaded it or it was about even. Whatever you argued the scoreline was certainly even.
Second half we were expecting to see some action in front of us as Schwarzer took his position. We expected in vain. We were pretty poor the whole second half and until Millertime didn’t make Schwarzer work once. We began to resort to long balls up to Jones, which was never going to work – and didn’t.
Mind you we should have had a penalty. Woodgate was about to lose out round about the penalty spot and so scooped the ball away. How the ref didn’t see it is beyond me. In a karma sense it was fair enough mind as Higginbottom had outrageously handled in the first half and, although, the ref couldn’t see it goodness only knows how the linesman didn’t. MOTD also suggested Collins handled in the first half but he was sliding in for a tackle and the ball was blasted against him.
About half way through the second half a fairly innocuous ball came to the left of our penalty area. For some reason Gordon came out to get it. But then Collins (who otherwise had a canny game) decided he needed to clear it. Crazily he did so by booting it into the centre, when a ball down the wing was called for. In short order the ball came to Downing who, while a long way out, was in a decent shooting position. Gordon had got back to his goal but had not managed to sort his position out and was too far to his right, which cost him dearly as Downing’s shot went to his left.
You really couldn’t see us getting back into the game. Eventually we had Miller, Stokes and O’Donovan on but it didn’t make a huge difference. But then with the fourth official starting to look at the instruction manual for his electronic scoreboard, the ball came down the centre and Jones made his presence felt (he’d actually been looking pretty tired for over a quarter of an hour). The ball came bouncing to Miller in the left channel outside the box. There were an improbably large number of Boro players near him. But he saw the opportunity and seized it striking out sweetly with his left foot. The ball came through every one of the defenders and so there was only Schwarzer to beat. The big lad seemed to be getting right across his goal. But no it was past him. And then it seemed to be over the line. Which line? The goal line or the dead ball line? For the fraction of a second that lasts an hour you just don’t know. The ball is the other side of the back netting from where we sit. But is it the other side of the side netting and a goal kick or this side and a goal? How can we tell? How can we resolve this conundrum? Should we start celebrating? And then as you don’t think you can bear it any longer, the balls journey is stopped by the back of the net which bulges backwards in protest. Now we know we can celebrate! And how we do! Some people are on the pitch. Chopra is hugging one of them. Miller is round the back of the goal and leaping onto the advertising hoardings in front of us. Seeing the replay in the pub later that night it looks like that top corner was just about the only place he could have got it past the defenders and beyond Schwarzer.
Having been fairly muted after a raucous first half we found our voices and ended the match in much better spirits than our loveable friends from North Yorkshire. Mind you we still managed to scare ourselves with a few slips that let them get a couple of decent shots at goal before the final whistle.
I am a little disappointed that we are so far down the table (although there is a large bunch of us all on very similar points) as the results so far have probably exceeded my expectations. I hope that Edwards will be back next week as I think he could make a big difference. It is still going to be nerve wracking but there are signs that perhaps we are coping – and it is lovely to see our habit of scoring at the death is continuing.
John aka Herts