Another Steel City Derby Day....Same old, Same old?

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Unlike most Wednesday fans…and Blades fans for that matter…I’ve not been able to embroil myself in the run up to the end of season showdown…

I’ve had man-flu of goliath proportions; it’s literally laid me out and though our lass hasn’t noticed…in fact she’s shown the kind of lack of sympathy, cold hearted indifference and complete mis-understanding that would have the RSPCA out mob handed if I was a kitten…and though I’ve soldiered on, as blokes do, it’s had me at deaths door. Speaking of which I’ve been in mourning and preparing myself for a good mates funeral the day after the Steel City Showdown….I miss the daft sod like fook and he’s only been gone 2 weeks…Bob wouldn’t have understood any of this football mythering, it wasn’t for him….though he did like to listen to my tales of what we’ve done on away days…he loved a good story did Bob….

Oh and one more thing that’s stopped me getting caught up in it all…As soon as the fixtures came out I banged the holiday in. They weren’t catching me out….well, obviously ‘THEY’ waited until I’d done that, then ‘THEY’ waited for the Beastie ‘lack of anything resembling a memory or foresight’ to kick in… Thinking I had it all covered it wasn’t until recently that someone mentioned ‘Sunday’s game’…a cold sweat broke out…I ignored it, I was ill…My wife ignored it as part of the man-flu…I checked online…double checked and triple checked everywhere…FOOK! I’d got the wrong day off. I check the Sunday rota…Not enough blokes on for me to have a day off…BOLLOCKS!

The only thing open to me now is for someone to stand in for me for a few hours of the game…

Bloke number one…No…I’m away….Bloke number two…NO! Family over….

Last chance…Noel….Aye go on then…Good old Noel…

So now I’m finally going…no pre match build up, no after match celebration/commiserations…just the match.

But it’s THE match isn’t it?
            

            
After a season of absolute godawful shit…in fact it’s been colossal shit, titanic shit…we’ve been thumped at the Lane, we’ve been whalloped at Pride Park and we’ve been absolutely kaylied at the Madejski…all wrapped around games of wonderful mediocrity.

So why get excited?
Why get excited about ANOTHER whalloping?

We’re not playing particularly bad, in fact at times we’re playing pretty well…we can pass the ball about, we can defend manfully now and we can even at times, move forward with determination…

…but that’s where it ends though isn’t it?

For some fookin shitty reason WE JUST CAN'T FOOKIN SCORE!.

We couldn’t find the net in a stocking factory…We reach that final third and it all goes to shit…More often than not it’s our own fault. We can’t pass, we can’t cross, we WON’T shoot, we prefer to pass, let someone else take responsibility…and when they do…OH LORDY! We couldn’t hit the target with a target seeking ball We’ve had open goals…and missed… We’ve had shots that were heading right into the heart of the net…unstoppable…onloy for them to be stopped…by a last gasp save, a leg, a hand the head of a monkey…we’ve hit the post, we’ve hit the bar, we’ve hit our own players… It’s like the fooballing god has decided ‘WEDNESDAY SHALL NOT SCORE!’  Hirsty wouldn't do that would he?

So why look forward to a 0-0?
Why get all het up and queasy about a dull bore draw?

We all know why?

Because it’s THIS game…it’s the Pigs…it’s on our own patch and IF we’re to be relegated then we want THIS game to be our mark, our line in the sand….we want it to be our Rorkes Drift. We want to hold them at all cost.

There’s been talk for ages now, from both sides of the City…all bravado and front…
We shall not lose!
We’ll arse-ole them!
Lets’ send them down.
Let’s get Blackwell sacked.

But underneath it all, away from the big talk in the pub or on messageboards, every single fan will have the butterflies, the knotted stomach, behind every single confident face that says ‘WE WILL DEFINITELY WIN’ comes an obligatory side order of ‘the feeling of dread’…
            

            
As the day gets closer, as 1pm and kick off draws ever nearer, the feeling of nausea, hot and cold sweats…every single fan in Hillsborough at that moment, red OR blue, just before kick off…one minute to go, EVERYONE will share the symptoms of my man-flu…it will become an epidemic…there’ll be aches and there’ll be pain. There’ll be sweats, hot and cold…laughter and tears…we’ll shout, we’ll cheer, we’ll moan and we’ll whinge, we’ll all suffer soar throats and by the time that final whistle blows…win, lose or draw we’ll ALL feel drained…we’ll ALL have been through the emotional ringer…

Why?

Why put ourselves through all that?

Because it’s what it’s all about isn’t it?

If you can’t get excited about THIS game then you can’t get excited about ANY game.

Let’s be honest here, the two teams are very unlikely to go down in their respective clubs history as ‘all time greats’ in fact most of the players on both sides will be forgotten in a heartbeat and as ‘teams’ both will be happily consigned to the ‘what the fook were we thinking about with this line up’ bin…but every single one of those players has a chance to elevate themselves, however briefly, they have a chance to lift hearts and become fleeting heroes and bring smiles to half a city.

I’d love to see a ‘classic’….I’d love to see us fight back from 1 or 2 goals down…or build up an unassailable lead, to put the Blades to the sword…it’s what dreams are made of….but I’d settle for a scrappy win…a boring win…a lucky win…the flookiest win in the history of flooky wins, that would do….that would definitely do.

I may have had less time than everyone else to get caught up in it all but I can tell you now…I’m making up for it…even my man-flu has man-flu…

Same old, same old?
Oh aye, of course it is. Nothing changes much with these games does it?

I can’t fookin' wait.
            

            
Steve:Beastie
Owls Alive