Is that a fat lady I hear?


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Middlesbrough                      Wednesday   

Well, I’ve used up all me lucky routines this season, when we’ve needed em, I’ve done em and for the main part, they’ve been an absolute waste of time and effort...but it doesn’t stop me going through with them over and over again.

Today was no exception.

We had Pete stopping over at ours, and Bells and Salop on their way so we could all travel up together so I got the pre-match rituals out of the way, 3 lucky Sh’s, all me lucky clothes…smellies…lucky music…leave nothing out…I nip down and make us a few bacon sarnies, pick the young un up and we’re on our way…even I can’t get lost going to the Riverside Stadium and the real beauty is, it’s only an hour away…lovely stuff.

An hour later and we’re pulling into the industrial heartland of Teeside and I love it…it’s similar to what I love about Sheffield and any city with heavy industry and having a ground right smack in the middle of the toil, well, it doesn’t get any better for me. I know a lot of folk don’t like it, and don’t like Middlesbrough as a place but I do…it’s a real honest working class, muck and bullets, belt and braces place with proper folk.

Mindst you, when we pull up towards the ground and it’s looking all lovely and that…apart from the need of the odd lick of paint here and there…and there’s the transport bridge in front of us, a big boat to the right, the wonderful art gallery to the left…and smack bang in front of us…some kind of anal thing made of netting…Don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of art I do, but it looks wrong…and it DOES look like some kind of anal passage of some kind woven from netting or sailors pubic hair more likely…having said that…it’s quite hypnotic…it draws you in….you can’t take your eyes off it…a bit like Jonnys ginger beard over the last few weeks….and just like that gingeriness it was drawing us in…
           

           
We approach the car park attendant and have a bit of craic about the game and how we’ve come for 3 points, they tell us if we take em, they’re legally entitled to remove our wheels. Fur enough, I’ll go for that and seems a fair swap TBH.

We’re guided towards the car park properly now and when we get there I have to tell ya we’re given some of the most professional car park signalling I’ve ever witnessed. None of your bog standard pointing going here, no Chuckle Brothers stuff ‘To me, to you’… this was night school diploma standard stuff…there was the left arm at a perfect 90 degree bend at the elbow indicating the PRECISE direction for you to go and the right arm was doing some world class twirling, not namby-pamby twirling, WORLD CLASS twirling and it left you in no doubt as to not only where to go, but at what speed, when to turn, how far away from the cars in front and sides to park…and every attendant was of the same exacting high standard. One day, ALL car parks will be like this.

We sort all the tickets out for everyone and get in for a quick drink and a pie…I have to say, the car park may be Olympic standard but the pies aren’t even jumble sale standard, truly dreadful and there seemed to be quite a few half eaten and left laying around.

When we get into the ground and get to our seats and see we’re right at the side of the corporate lot, all drunken suits and schmoozin…mindst you, Hollie points and says…’Int that Owling over there?’ It was as well…in his best schmoozin gear and all corporated up.,,I did notice him quietly singing Wednesday songs late in the game though.

Whilst we had a decent enough view, I don’t think I like the separating the away fans so much top and bottom, it holds back the atmosphere a little but I did love the place on the whole. We were in, in plenty of time to see the RAF and Army lads as they walked around the pitch at the end of their sponsored march and amongst them were our mates Stan and Danny…and I can’t tell you how proud I was to be able to think that and say that. Kudos to them all. The applause and appreciation for all of them was fabulous from all corners of the ground. When they got round to us we went down to the front to natter briefly and say well done… They had a penalty shoot out to come at half time and Danny was limping already so that didn’t look good.

           

           
The teams came out, went through the handshakes and we were ready…what a fookin wonderful day for watching football…forget all the mytherin for a minute…it’s a smashin’ stadium inside…the sun is shining and you’re in good company….oh aye…enjoy it..a vital game for us so what’s not to like about this? Bring the fooker on.

There was a decent atmosphere before the game with the chairman mingling amongst us and the flag out over the Wednesday fans and we were making a decent bit of noise and what’s more, that continued through a lot of the game.
           

           

THE MATCH
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We get off to really bright start and JJ looks ready for business…As Hollie keeps saying, when did he get so good? When did we start to rely on him so heavily?

Every time he gets the ball we look decent, we look like things can happen, we look at least capable of creating things...He gets a few early chances, one that he should have done better with from a lovely ball, Tudgay I think it was but Jones stopped him and another, an overhead kick that he had no right to get as close as he did from…

The game was quite open early on as both sides had reasonable chances but maybe the best one falling to Boro when the ball went right across the 6 yard box and only required the slightest of touches from the onrushing Leroy Lita and it was 1-0 to the home side…he couldn’t connect with it and the chance went begging…

It was like that for most of the half though the actual goal scoring chances were fewer and further between…they had an effort stopped well by Granty and there was a comedy shot from JJ as he scooped it embarrassingly wide from a very good position when we had players in the box…. I have to be fair to Boro, some of there passing between our defence and over them was superb and so were the runs made to get onto those passes. The sort of stuff we’ve been longing for from our players for a long time now but for all those silky moves they still had the same problem as we did, they were shit when it came to converting the chances into actual back of the net stuff and as we approached half time it looked like that was gonna be the order of the day.. Until MacDonald wellied a shot from 25 yards or so that seemed bread and butter stuff for Granty and even when the shot took a wicked deflection, from where we were it looked as though it was gonna go wide and Granty knew that…when the ball nestled in the back of the net it was a hammer blow. Granty had obviously been wrong footed and beaten all ends up but it was shite…absolute shite and we hadn’t deserved that at all.

We needed to make sure we didn’t do the same as at Reading and just lay down and get trampled on and to be fair to the players they didn’t, they kept on at it…

The ref, who was pretty poor overall created a bit of a situation with JJ just before the half time whistle…JJ gets the ball, cuts across field and tackle comes in that was a definite foul, he gets a tug to go with it and the ref should have stopped it there but he allows it to go on, and he gets yet another foul on him does JJ, it eventually gets a bit shirty and they bring JJ down who is not happy at all and starts pushing the Boro player…Oh fook…that’s all we need…the players stepped in to calm him down and he DID calm down eventually but had the referee acted promptly the situation wouldn’t have happened.

As bad as the ref was though he wasn’t helped by one of the most comical and shittest linesmen I’ve ever seen. The ref overruled him twice in the game and I’m sure he whinged to the ref over the mic that we were picking on him when we chanted ‘Ya don’t know what ya doing’. He was poor for both sides but some of the mistakes he was making were just so blatantly obvious and it’s so infuriating for everyone…I was convinced he was from Comedy Officials.com and that he was some sort of Comedy-Linesmanagram…or sommat. We got to half time just the one goal down and I always thought there was something in the game for us if I’m honest…we’d shown enough about ourselves and Boro hadn’t shown anywhere near enough to frighten us, all we needed was to finish off any chances that came our way….easier said than done.

           

           
At half time the RAF and Army lads lined up in front of the goals for what was due to be a tense and close penalty shoot out….but what actually turned into a romp for the Army fellas. It was a rout and Danny skied his shot way over the bar…though he did point out he had a blister as big as the sun on his foot and that blister had a blister on it too so I suppose we can let him off…a bit…to Stan’s credit, he was in goal and he DID manage to stop one.
Fair play to them though it can’t have been easy after the march and good luck in their fund raising
           

           
Second half, Stan and Danny join us in the stand and the team set about getting back into the game…we get a corner early on, where Purse heads just over…They attack and Beevers gets a wonderful tackle in, right in the heart of the 6 yard box, he needs treatment and is down for a while but eventually gets up…Good lad….walk it off youth, we need you now.

As I said…I like this place, the area and the folk but fook me the place was quite….they were 1-0 up and there wasn’t a peep from em…when we sang ‘ONE NIL AND YA STILL DON’T SING..’ the only reply they had was from a couple of pissed up blokes in the corporate end shouting ‘ ‘Going down’ going down’….unlike at our end where the noise was now fookin incredible as the Wednesday fans raise their voices again…this was proper fur up stuff. JJ responded by getting a shot in that Brad Jones managed to stop…it was starting to be end to end stuff again. Grant pulls off a superb save, we go up the other end and get a corner that looks like Jones tipped over, JJ does another run but follows it up with another of his comedy shots…well wide…

Then it went all went a bit flat…almost like we’d given it everything and suddenly realised we couldn’t win..we were never gonna score….that’s not what the Wednesday fans wanted to see…

Fookin hell this is getting edgy now…and you can feel it amongst the fans…we lift our voices again…’WEDNESDAY TIL I DIE….’ And it sounds wonderful…but it starts to get mingled in with murmering and whinging and you can understand it really…it looks as though we’ll never actually score…We look good at the back and when they DO get through Granty is easily a match for them…we look OK going forward with Varney and JJ who have worked their nadds off, but when we get into that final third it just goes shit shaped….for some reason we don’t know how to finish off a move and it just isn’t happening.
           

           
In the stands WE ALL knew how to finish the moves and every single one of us was on that pitch in heart and spirit, we were all as one kicking, twisting, heading and tackling…TRYING desperately to finish it off…to do what the players looked as though they’d never do….

When the comedy linesman made his daft decisions we just laughed at him now…apart from Soares who actually told him to his face, ‘You’re shit you are’

As we entered the four minutes of injury time the Wednesday hearts were desperate…we were hurting and it wasn’t nice…we needed the excellent Lee Grant to pull of a couple more outstanding saves late on but it was all for nothing as those same drunken corporate voices from the Boro fans to our left shouted ‘That’s why you’re going down…’

They may be right….

It stunned me this result…
           

           
What can I say about it?
I know that if I say we played well, folk will simply think…’aaah, it’s just Beastie off on one of his optimistic jaunts again’…and if I say we played shit, then the mardy arses wil- hang on…

Bollocks to it…

We played as well as Boro did, easily as well as they did…unfortunately we needed to play BETTER than them. Make no mistake about this, this isn’t the same Boro I was swooning over when they played at ours…sure enough, they did produce some lovely moves, balls through and over the top and good runs from forward players but they are truly dreadful in front of goal and not only do I confidently predict they will do nowt this season, I’ll suggest they’ll go nowhere fast whilst Strachan is at the helm. They’ll become the second Coventry of the Championship, he will do to them what he did to Coventry…make them much of a muchness…the wonderful football will be a thing of the past which is OK by me as I like it here and look forward to seeing them again when we come back into this division in future

At times we played well, again…up to the final third…some of the shots that JJ had…and this isn’t to be too harsh on the lad…but they were laughable…clownlike…he does the hard work and then when the target raises it’s ugly head he goes to pieces. As I said, I don’t want to be harsh on the lad because if we are to get out of this shit, however unlikely that may be, he is absolutely vital to that.

JJ gave us at least a little spark today but Jeffers also perked us up IMHO…He replaced Tudders who should have been off at least 20 minutes earlier, he was ineffective, especially late on…and it was very telling that Irvine finally subbed him…Varney ran his heart out…Purse was excellent again as were all the defence to be fair…

What I don’t get…what I don’t understand…I don’t understand when we changed into a side that daren’t shoot…that daren’t take responsibility for having the ball and sticking it in the net…when did that happen?
There’s only Jeffers and JJ that are prepared to shoot on sight and if that is true then they MUST start next game…

I feel as though we’re relegated already…Even with my optimistic view I feel that…I don’t think there’s the bad vibe about us that was when we went down last time or that was around the club a short while ago but I think maybe that 3rd spot in the drop zone has got our name on it.

Today we’ve played what was one of the brightest teams in the division a few months ago and looking to be promoted and just like when we played Bristol City, we’ve had shots, quite a lot of shots, we’ve created chances, GOOD chances and we’ve had good spells of possession but we simply cannot make it all tell and it just has that air about it all now, like it’s written…all we’re doing is flailing about like idiots trying to deny what’s already been decided…

I hate to feel like this and I know the fat lass hasn’t started singing yet but she IS definitely warming up..
           

           
Sat in the car in the car park waiting for it to empty and Salop and Hollie were determined to be miserable…I’d been given the warning about not being upbeat and chipper…that they like to be mardy arses when we’ve lost and they just want to kill me when I say ‘so…the positives then…’

I couldn’t resist it as I looked at their glum faces…’So….the postivies then…’

If looks could kill I’d have been dead on the spot there…There were positives but maybe I should alolow em both this once a little moment to wallow in their mardyness…

We got out of the car park and I pulled over for a pork sarnie…oooooh it were beautiful and went down a treat….food always cheers me up.

Once I’ve wiped stuffing and apple sauce from me shirt and jeans we set about getting back and following the sat-nav….The sat nav was back to it’s most bastardest.
I’m driving along and it tells me to turn right…I think Hmmm…this doesn’t look right and it takes me into the wilderness…it was desert, huge rocks and tumbleweed…I kid you not, this was the Middlesbrough desert and as we went past the locals outside the Navigation pub all outside drinking and laughing at us thinking…’That fookah will be back’….we get to the absolute middle of no-fookin-where and the sat-nav is telling me to turn right again..

WHERE?

WHERE THE FOOK DO I TURN RIGHT YOU STUPID TWAT-NAV!

THERE’S NO FOOKIN ROAD!

I spin it round and have scenes from films and TV series running through me mind…like Warriors and what have you…where they take the wrong turning, get blocked in and end up tied to a cactus and rodgered senseless…I wish I’d put the lube in the glove box now….

We head back to the pub where they’re all pissing themselves now and been expecting us…I slow down and wind the window down…

‘We knew you’d be back’

‘Oh aye you lot think that’s funny but let me tell you I’m an expert at getting lost and if there’s a dead end to find, I’ll find it.’

I almost run one of their kids over and make our way back to the road…It was this moment that I realised the sat-nav was still set for Riverside stadium….FOOK!

That’s sorted then….easy peasy now….I got back on track it told me to take 1st exit then changed its mind quickly…just as I waved good bye to our proper exit and sailed off down the wrong road….BASTARD!

I should have thrown the fooker out of the window ya know…it takes the piss…it does this stuff on purpose…

We eventually find our way back home, a little but weary from the journey and another crushing defeat….

At least the next game’s not an important one is it?
           

Cheers
Steve:Beastie