Shrewsbury 0 v Everton 3                                      Friendly. Sat, 20th July 2002. Kick-off: 3.00pm.

Att: 4,152

0 - 1 Radzinski 41 mins
0 - 2 Super Kev 52 mins
0 - 3 Super Kev 63 mins

Everton :Gerrard, Weir, Stubbs, Unsworth, Hibbert, Pistone, Pembridge, Tal, Rodrigo, Radzinski, Ferguson.

Subs: Loumboutis for Hibbert 46 mins, McLeod for Tal 46 mins, Southern for Unsworth 46 mins, Campbell for Ferguson 46 mins, Rooney for The Rad 67 mins

It was bloody costly to watch the boys in a friendly, we were all wearing short pants when we heard it was £14 adults & £9 kids!

Big Dunc had made it off the treatment table and we also had a chance to see the Brazilian with the rich Dad, oh yes and we were later to find out that Super Kev has been reading our message board and was to send a message out to some of our Kipperites!

This was very much one way traffic, Unsey missed an early chance and Idan Tal showed us why we don't see more of him, Big Dunc eased himself in and the Brazilian looked class. We took the lead just before half time when The Rad headed in a Tony Hibbert cross, by this time we should have been three up.

Four changes at half time, we were Rooney starved until 20 mins to go but Super, who replaced Big Dunc bagged two in the second half, the first a lob and the second a chip, their goalie didn't like stating on his line.

Great to see the boys again in what turned out to be a sunny stroll, even if we were robbed of our after match ale money! £14!!!!!

Quotes

Moyesy on the Trialists: “I thought they’ve all contributed as they have done throughout pre-season," he told evertonfc.tv. "This time of the year you do get one or two people in and this year we’ve got two or three. But we’ll take our time, we’ll make decisions when we’re ready to do so and when we are, we’ll let the supporters know right away. There’s no real time scale when we have to make a decision. We’ve got them now, obviously we’ll discuss it with the rest of the coaching staff and we’ll see where we think is best to go.”

Kipper says: "juliano's got a cute left foot"

MOJO'S ALIVE AND WELL AND WORKING IN SHREWSBURY.
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

Isn't Chester an odd place for a night out?

I only ask this because I was there the night before the Shrewsbury friendly. A friend had phoned and made the invitation. So I went by train from Lime Street. It only takes forty minutes. It might as well be forty light years.

Of course in the back of my mind was the recent comment by the Duke of Westminster that his daughters feel a lot safer in our city on Saturday nights than they do in, erm, famously middle-class Chester. This comes as no surprise at all to anybody who pays attention to the world around them…………………but of course that automatically excludes suburban right wing lower middle class loonies or tribalist provincials. Needless to say the Duke is way above such nonsense because he "owns" large city centre tracts of Blighty which he rents off at exorbitant rates. This, you understand, makes him entirely objective in everything.

Anyway, as we wondered from place to place it was as obvious as ever that Chester contains not only more well-heeled individuals but also an equally disproportionate number of glassy-eyed maniacs connected to a trembler switch. As always the problem is not at either clearly identified end of the spectrum. With them, it is easy enough to note the erratic appearance and the body language and steer your group in the opposite direction. No, it is at the interface of the two where you can get caught out. Instant mood swings abounded among the trembler switches and could be devastating if tripped, sometimes literally. And they sometimes came from the most unexpected quarters. It's an odd place, alright. Discourage your kids from going there except during the day to see the "Tudor" architecture designed and built as a tourist trap in the Victorian era.

Whilst travelling there, the train timetable is fine but the rolling stock is as decrepit as everything else the English establishment have privatised. On the journey home I encountered a pinky of long and friendly acquaintance so I mercilessly extracted the urine and then reinjected it because I was in a casual frame of mind. Nothing too savage, just enough to have him looking angry and disoriented after two minutes. They're so easy to wind up it's almost criminal. By the time we disembarked at Lime Street said pinky was foaming slowly at the mouth in the most satisfying way. Like all Saturday night drunks we vowed eternal friendship and undying affection before going our separate ways.

I can't say I hadn't been warned long ago about Chester. The two Phils, Sheepshaggers Extraordinaire, voluble Taff chatters both, have told me horrendous stories of Saturday night mayhem therein. Previously I thought they exaggerated slightly, the way we all do when yarning. But I can now confirm that Chester ought to be carefully excavated, transported, and set down in Romford or somewhere similar. And good luck to them. The Duke was right too.

It was a useful visit because it got me in tune with the border counties, the same kind of proximity geography as our next day encounter in Salop. It was a contest I knew absolutely nothing about until Kipper telephoned me during the week and asked if I was going to Shrewsbury. Like you, my first response was, "What the fuck do I wanna go to fuckn Shrewsbury for?"

"Because," said Kipper impatiently, "we've gorra friendly there on Satdee. You goin' or wha?"

See, we speak SO much better in our beloved city.

Naturally I went to Shrewsbury. We collected Mogsy on the way and tried to mosey on down the A49. For those who don't know, it's a wonderful rural drive. Well, it is if you're sitting in the back seat, completely relaxed, long legs extended and someone like Kipper's driving. I use the term "driving" very loosely. Almost immediately we got stuck behind a precarious looking refrigerator van and stayed there for, oh, I dunno, maybe twenty kilometres. Twice Kipper swerved out to try and overtake and then swerved back in when threatened by an awful head-on death from somebody who had the temerity to think he could drive on the correct side of a two-lane road. Like incoming mortar fire, an experience all cultivated young men should avoid. Twice my head banged against the side window to unbridled guffaws from the front seat. The air was replete with anglo-saxon.

I was reduced to reading Mogsy's Daily Mirror in a vain attempt to understand the world. The Mirror made its usual contribution to collective intellectuality with the headline, "BOWYER SUED." An inside article by a pinky named Brian Reade sought to explain that the pinkies' proposed signing of a near-murderous neo-nazi had virtually nothing to do with individual conscience but everything to do with the state of the game. According to Reade, individual conscience just doesn't figure. So, so far as Reade is concerned, the lessons of Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons" are a waste of time. Bolt will be rolling in his much lamented grave. Oh well. Nice try Robert. But you should know: Houllier and Parry etc. are only following orders. I've heard the phrase before. Nuremberg late 1940s, I think.

Shrewsbury rolled into view. Moby calls were exchanged with Paul and co., who turned out to be ten minutes behind us and stuck in the same traffic queue. We ended up in a pub called The Dun Cow five minutes walk from, erm, Gay Meadow, home of redoubtable and mighty Shrewsbury Town. Inside, our city's reputation was gaining enormously from a group of five acne-ridden adolescents wrapped in People's Club flags and banners. One of them was saying, "So I told the fuckn bailiff…." in a voice you could cut someone's throat with. We went and sat away from them. Eventually the adolescents did one and we were joined by Paul and the boys. Drivers were drinking orange or coke while the rest of us quaffed the usual muck.

It transpires that Paul and co. invaded Italy recently and stayed only at the best hotels while wearing their EFC sherts, like. Roma and Milano will never be the same. At the San Siro they bunked in after being refused entry to tour the ground. And then exited on the tail of a guided tour to grin maddeningly at the fascisti control-freak who denied them in the first place. I commend this daring, entrepreneurial, swashbuckling attempt to spread our market brand. The departed Andy Oldknow could have learned an awful lot from these lads. Alas for Andy, he didn't listen and therefore didn't learn. The departure wasn't unexpected, not after he asked some directors what was the point of celebrating the first hundred seasons by any club in the first division. I don't acknowledge the word "premiership." Afterwards, the directors didn't acknowledge Andy and he's now spreading alarm and despondency elsewhere.

We were hungry by this time. The Dun Cow sold no food except the ubiquitous Lineker crisps. Kipper sounded desperate for something so he led a charge further down the street into a delightful little tree lined square. Which he regretted because we ended up in a suitably minimalist bar, the kind which makes some people uncomfortable but which doesn't bother me at all, and they sold no food either. And Kipper got the big hit of £5.50 for two pints of lager and a glass of coke. I guffawed from my ash veneered plywood post-formed seat on a stainless steel frame. But I was starving too. So we moved on and you-know-who led us into a cute little hole-in-the-wall named Mojo's Café. And here, I shit you not, we had the best bacon butties you could wish for. All Englishmen know this dish to be one of our great contributions to world gastronomy, like properly-done bacon and eggs, the sort nobody else can do, particularly the Yanks and the French.

We walked round the corner and there was Gay Meadow, about the size of your back garden. A nearby metal road container had a sign reading Club Shop. Another sign said something about the New Meadow. The word Gay was nowhere to be seen. At the turnstiles we were told it was £14 for adults and £9 for senior citizens and children. As I squeezed through and paid the loony upper figure, behind me a man of about thirty-five said in an inimitable accent, "£9 please la," and the attendant took it. I nearly collapsed with laughter on the other side of the gate.

Inside, the ground takes you back to the nineteen thirties. Someone hits a reasonably hard shot which just clears the bar and the ball is likely to startle a passing pensioner or end up in the River Severn. Sometimes the river overflows into the ground if it reaches flood levels. Of course it is gloriously if uselessly sentimental. Three narrow sides of standing terraces, two of them half covered, and one open end. A Victorian building protrudes into one corner. Ageing adverts plaster the ground. One of them reads, "Wood's Shropshire Lad Bitter," but the sign is so old you wondered if the beer is still brewed, if the ad fees have been paid or if anyone gives a shit one way or the other. These are the very roots of The Beautiful Game and none of us should ever forget it.

We were in the covered main stand near the half way line. Half the crowd seemed to comprise Blue Bellies, maybe two thousand or so. Opposite the main stand a group of about twenty Salop fans quietly sang something about "poor little scousers" without a trace of conscious irony. I wondered mischievously how many of them visited Rome and Milan recently.

As we all know, we don't have climate in England. We have weather. And if you don't like it, all you have to do is wait a minute. This day was typical. First it was warm and sunny, then it rained, then it was overcast, then it was sunny again. No wonder our women rush out at the first sign of the sun and bare their breasts to stare red-eyed at Old Sol. Around us, people wore the most awful gear, for which I blame the Californians and their crummy beachcomber kulture. One fat man wore a black baseball cap, black shower jacket, huge baggy khaki shorts, hairy legs, black socks and grubby trainers. Another fatty varied this only with what looked like a pair of pyjama bottoms and black shoes. Either that or his ma had cut up a bed cover and made him a pair of attention-screaming kecks. Don't these people even LOOK in a mirror before they leave home?

Since this was a friendly it was difficult to bother with genuine enthusiasm. But we had some new and unknown faces on view so it had some lazy interest. For instance, there was a Drum Banger named Rodrigo. According to Kipper (who had read a 'Banger web-site in "Brazilian," haha) he was player of the year in their first division. Oh aye yeh. Tony Hibbert was at right back, Idan Tal at outside-right. Moysey is obviously giving them all a chance.

There were only a couple of things worth getting excited about in the first half. Shrewsbury had this local hero at outside right, a Bernie Wright lookalike named Sammy. He played like Bernie did too. You know, head down and just run even if there's a brick wall in the way. The first couple of times he did this it took left back Sandro completely by surprise and Sammy brushed by him with the help of a couple of shirt-pulls. This excited the locals and unwisely disturbed Sandro's digestion of lunch time pasta and his Latin sense of outraged macho. At first he took it out on the linesman with exaggerated melodramatic mime of a disrobed female in the throes of rape and pillage. Then he got mad, which is always a good sign because Sandro's one of those interesting personalities who gets mad AND gets even. In short order Sammy got carted legally over the touchline and into the ads and then got humiliated by a couple of dribbles out of defence and then by some neat wall passing with Stubbsy. Thereafter, Sammy was nowhere to be seen.

Then we finally got one just before half time after Idan finally did something right to go with his undoubted enthusiasm and helped in a right wing move and cross which had The Rad's head on the end of it. We deserved it, just, in so far as these games mean anything at all.

Rodrigo (by this time Kipper was on first name terms and insisted on "Juli" for "Juliano") showed good close control and had the occasional hard shot into the Severn. Idan distinguished himself with five corners, none of which got into the centre, a failing for which he needs the corner flag as an enema.

Otherwise it was a soporific event disturbed only by a dazzling Davey Weir dribble out of defence which had us out of our seats if only to stop the arteries hardening. Pembo seemed to be the only one in our all white kit taking it dead serious, as he did all match. Nice to see him doing so well though. Nice too, to see the kit wasn't spoiled by a sponsor's name.

The second half was a slightly different matter. We had subs on: SuperKev, McLeod, Southern, Daley, Lamboutis and The Dook.

I tell you that boy Rooney is a selfish bastard. He was only on two minutes and got the ball with his back to goal, central, about twenty five metres out. He had plenty of passing options. Instead, he swivelled and hit a shot with absolute self-confidence. Pity he half caught the ground and it bounced through to their keeper. At which he stared at the resulting divot as though it had personally insulted him. Oh he's DIFFERENT alright, people. Thing is, he's got such dazzling self-belief and mature technique it's really difficult to keep telling yourself he's only a kid. You have to of course, just as he has to. Otherwise his head could inflate, maybe even go as terminally pear-shaped as Jeffers' and Ball's.

Kev's first action was to race past their left back and smack one across the penalty area. All through the half he did well, scored after five minutes and then again ten minutes later. Both of them were similar.…………through pass, appalling marking by their centre backs and a little dink over the stranded 'keeper. But he still had to get them home, something he wouldn't have managed last season while he was getting barracked by empty headed whining cunts. He had a good game. Fingers crossed for the season. I doubt if he'll avoid the "lazy" shite from minority howling dickheads though.

The other Kev, McLeod of that ilk, did well wide left. Lamboutis and Southern left me with no impression but Daley was involved the whole time. Kipper described him as "nimble." I can't better that without lapsing into my usual comedy turn.

And talking of comedy turns, The Rad pulled off a remarkable double when he did his usual shit-off-a-shovel act and left the entire Shrews defence skinned, went around the 'keeper……………and then mishit it so badly a defender got back on the line and hacked it away. The Ghost Of Bolton Past reared its head. If he does it again I reckon he's worth a trophy or two. At the British Comedy Awards. Start making book NOW.

Of course you can't really divine anything from these games except maybe where individuals are on trial. If that was the case, then Juli is well worth a go, forget Lamboutis and persevere a little longer with Daley.

Oh I forgot. Paul was in goal. Make of it what you will. Then again we weren't playing Blackburn at home. (22/07/02)

Team News

Duncan Ferguson looks set to start his 1st friendly game, after a little niggle kept him out of the Austrian games. Also out are Gemmill, Watson, & Chadwick with slight injuries. Nace is rested, as he played for the reserves last night. We are all hoping to see Brazilian, Rodrigo, who should be clear to play.

Saint Nic, Toby, The Gravedigger, Lee Carsley and Pepsi Max are all back from their well earned rest after the World Cup. Play a few games, & have a an extra couple of weeks off. It's a hard life being a footballer. They were joined by new signing, Joey Yobo. They will not be involved. Blues coach Andy Holden will be putting them through their paces to get them up to scratch.

Moyesy says: “Duncan has been suffering a little bit in the past few days but he has recovered now and is ready to play games.” (19/07/02)

Directions to Shrewsbury. Plus a look at the local Ale 'ouses on Shrews on Tour

Kipper
reports from
Gay Meadow