Went the day grottily
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

Time was, you played a game on Christmas Day and the return game on Boxing Day. At that time of the year and with that fixtures method you were bound to get some, er, skittish results. There’s the immortal occasion Blackburn won 8-2 at West Ham – and then lost the return 3-1. A couple of seasons prior to that we played at Burnley (then a great team) and won 3-1, then lost the return at Goodison 3-0 in front of 76,000 people. There are plenty of other similar results. Fortunately the method got abandoned in favour of common sense. It’s still worth keeping your eye out for strange results at this time of year, though – after all, players are only human even in these days of much superior playing fitness and relatively better playing standards. It is a pity too many players attitudes don’t match the latter but you can’t have everything. Holiday “relaxation” can and does get to everyone. Time and life go on, human nature remains undisturbed.

Some things don’t change. You still have to get up exceedingly early if you want to go to an away match in Lahndan. At this time of year holiday relaxation can cause havoc with your time clock and your will. I remember a distant comic parallel to this, a religious doctrine teacher (yes, the lesson WAS called “Religious Doctrine,” or “RD”) who used to tell us if you moaned about getting up early on Sunday but still got up and went to church, then that was “loving god.” We all thought he was mad, still do in fact, including a couple of lads who went on to be professors of philosophy. Time passed. Now you wonder what he would make of thousands of footy fans (many more than churchgoers) rubbing sleep from their eyes all over the country to set off on a groggy journey based on fathomless, absurd faith. As we all know, sometimes footy-as-hobby involves you in some strange areas of the human psyche. Few of us are exempt. So, like everyone else, I was up at five thirty a.m., making ready for the away match at Charlton. Crazy isn’t the word. But it got crazier anyway.

We were on The Bus but ten minutes when someone asked Texyla to turn on the interior lights for a moment. Instantly the circuit fused including the headlights. And guess what? no means of re-fusing and only the battery still flickering. We set off with hazard lights flashing to get a substitute bus. Finally we were back on the road at eight thirty wondering if we’d make the kick off. Fortunately the roads weren’t icy even though it was cold enough to feel through your gloves. Heads nodded, zees buzzed the air and newspapers crackled to the muted accompaniment of loathing of various tabloid infoclerks. Beats me why people buy that right-wing Murdoch-type muck, but it is still a relatively free country to throw your money away anyway you want.

The driver made good time and we arrived within about an hour and a bit of the kick off. I went straight to the ground, unwilling to get bogged down in an English pub scrum at the bar with that strange native mixture of after-shave, body odour and sweating windows. It is okay if you get there early and congregate in a relaxed, seated circle. It is binge-drinking, foul-breathed loons crushed against each other I find repellent. Accordingly I gratefully imbibed the fresh if freezing air on the walk up to the ground and when I got inside. A word here about the bizzies for this match. They were first rate, humorous, and helpful, even when I faced a row of them before the turnstiles and said, “Christ, this is like trying to break out of Stalag 17.” Most of them smiled. I didn’t even get searched, either then or on the other side of the gates. North east nazi police please note and learn therefrom.

Charlton’s stadium has been developed well and in seeming proportion to their current status. There’s plenty of room left for tier additions, though, and properly considered the site could hold well over fifty thousand, set as it is in a natural valley, hence the name. For the present they have only the away stand left to rebuild, and if well done would get them up to about thirty-thirty five thousand capacity. The “home” stand is now complete but whoever designed the asymmetric roof should be made to take his year-out again. But I carp. As we all know, Charlton are a sports miracle example for which we should all be grateful. Down and out, they rescued themselves through determined organisation and devotion to the cause, not a branch of the Melledrew Tendency in sight. I admire them beyond extravagance. You can only wish them good fortune, especially when one of their stewards walked the length of the front of the away stand throwing sweets into the crowd, a small gesture but genuine enough.

My seat was at the front, row A1, seat 59, which is within ten metres of the centre and right of the goal, an excellent view of the game, and which turned out to be conclusive in some of the following comments. Within a few minutes Nigel Martyn and Richard Wright were on the pitch warming up at the goal in our end. Later-ironical in a way I would never have suspected, I noted for the umpteenth time how much more like true athletes players look these days, particularly in the calves. Most of them are tuned in beautifully to their apparent metabolism, temperament notwithstanding. The training drills are methodical, varied, interesting and taken as seriously as they should be. At one point a shot got buried beyond Nige and he turned the air purple with annoyance. There seemed to be a good rapport between he and Wrighty too. Which, given the cut throat nature of professional sport, was gratifying.

Then to my huge and very pleasant surprise (having greeted John from California in the Sitteh match), who turns up sitting on either side of me only cockney toffee and The Squire. That Texyla and his ticket contortions, what a card. But we barely had time for a few pleasantries before the match was under way, Joey in in place of Stevie Watson, the ineffable Riley as referee. The Squire took one look at the latter gawky figure and wished we had my namesake as referee, “Despite the fact that he’s a shortarsed, stunted little get,” or words to that affect. There’s no pleasing some people. Me, I was looking forward to the contest between Hibbo and their latest discovery Jason Thomas.

The first half had 0-0 written all over it until Marcus did his usual ultra-determined chase of a loose ball through the middle, left to right away from us, and got off a sort of lunging shot low to their ‘keeper’s left which he saved well. If anything, we were slightly the better side at this stage but there wasn’t much in it and they had a couple of headed efforts of their own. It was never worrying, though. Their long punts up front were never accurate enough to disturb the defence despite the odd break wide right and left. Early on Thomas tried a couple of weaving dribbles that looked promising but he was soon sussed and eventually snuffed by Hibbo in his still-magnificent form. The Squire sniffed, “Told yer.” Gallingly for arguments sake, he was right. Solely for tribalist reasons I was delighted.

Nevertheless, we didn’t create much ourselves despite some neat combination play and Marcus’s persistent refusal to abandon a lost cause. When we did well, it was down our right. Our defence was as solid as usual but midfield looked a little out of synch to me, probably because of Joey’s different playing style. Lee Carsley did his near perfect mopping-up operation for most of the time, though The Gravedigger was in fitful form, while Tim and Killa kept trying to stretch them wide. Sadly, injuries seem to have affected our midfield more than anything else, thus demonstrating how fragile team chemistry can be. You can’t just slot people in and out and think everything will work like clockwork, not even if you have Russian oil money.

With a minute of the half left Nige did something to one of his aforesaid calves – oh irony! – and limped off to let on Wrighty. Initially I thought it was a hamstring the way he pulled up.

The second half continued in much the same scatty, niggling fashion – there’s a discernible pattern in the way the opposition play us now, five across the middle like us and close everyone down – but there wasn’t much goalmouth action until twenty minutes in. Before that, whenever Tim got into their box and stood on their goal line, El Karkouri pulled his shirt or stood on his feet without Riley taking any action despite having at least the same clear sight line I had. Then from a corner Marcus forced the ball into the very centre of the goal area and a mass of wriggling, desperate bodies. Form where shot a Charlton arm to clearly push the ball away with his forearm. It was so blatant it was difficult to believe even Riley wouldn’t give a penalty. But he didn’t. In fact he was never going to “give” us anything. He’s that sort of referee, the worst type of homer and roundly disliked because of it. Anyway, the ball got hacked away with the away stand in uproar.

This seemed to spark the game and Charlton began to play with more spirit and had three reasonable efforts all well saved by Wrighty. By this time our midfield had almost melted away and weren’t contesting up to this season’s standard. Maybe too much holiday “relaxation.” Even Lee Carsley made a near-comical miskick to let them in for one of their efforts. With just under twenty minutes left Marcus was replaced by The Big Yin, ten minutes later Joey by Jamie Mac. If anybody had earned a rest it was Marcus.

If there was one unlikeable playing personality in the Charlton team it was El Karkouri, a nasty character not unlike Savage, Mills and Bellamy. So you could wager he would score and that’s what happened with about eight minutes left. A corner from their left managed to elude our entire defence (a la Sitteh) and it got butted in from the centre edge of the goal area without a muscular challenge. A couple of minutes later The Yin had their centre back climbing all over his back and elbowed him straight in the mush for a properly uncontested red card. You would think, wouldn’t you, that he might have taken some encouragement from Marcus who has to deal with that sort of thing – and worse – every second minute of every game he plays, and worse, and he still just gets on with it. Now we have lost one of our few match-affecting substitutes to suspension at precisely the wrong time of the season.

Two minutes later Stubbsy swung wildly not once but twice at a harmless long ball down our left and conceded a corner. Which led to a cross from their left, another bad defensive failure to clear, this time with Wrighty flapping uselessly too, and it went loose to the fellow who had handled the ball for the penalty-that-Riley-never-gave and he swung a haphazard left foot at it and it went past Hibbo’s outstretched boot at our left post. Fate can be unforgiving when it turns against you.

So our good run came to an end in a game we could just as easily have won. At one point early in the second half I am convinced the game was there for the taking. Still, what it has done has emphasised the pattern of play the opposition now adapt against our team formation. They copy it, and there can be few greater compliments than that. The first team I saw do that was Tottenham, when we lost 1-0 to them at home. And that’s our next intriguing game. Now we’ve got our first injuries and suspension, it will be a matter of inner strength and determination, as we always knew it would be.

Happy New Year and good fortune to you and yours.