Pride? Restored? Shrewsbury at Home.

Still smarting from the thrashing we had up at Bradford I am driving home on Tuesday evening. Unlike the previous week when I was hungry and frustrated by traffic and – let’s face it – just plain late and generally behind a tight schedule …

Where was I?

Oh yes, unlike last week, this time I am foddered, not dehydrated – as I worked out how the damned coffee machine worked – and very early. Just setting out ten minutes earlier and the traffic is slim. All the way home. Along the A5. The road works. The Roman road. The one that leads from London to Holyhead. The traditional route, before the upstart M54 interrupted, from my house to Shrewsbury – or, as you will, Shrewsbury to Walsall (give or take a mile or two).

Shrewsbury, tonight’s visitors. Shrewsbury: the next banana skin? Shrewsbury, still struggling against relegation – and likely to be fired up and scrapping for every morsel on that pitch tonight!

And looming on the horizon, like a plague of Old testament proportion there is, most definitely a storm. In my poet’s mind it is coming from Shrewsbury: a storm that will test our mettle and go a long way to sorting stuff out. For example; do we have the necessary cojones to get over the Bradford fiasco? Will we still be in with any chance of automatic promotion when the dust settles?

But it won’t be actual dust. It will be hail!

I eat, saddle up mentally and drive beneath glowering skies – no precipitation yet – to my usual parking nest. My parking is clumsy – I am, let’s face it, more famous for abandoning cars than parking them. One wheel is on the kerb, three not. But I am not blocking anyone’s access – and I should be in good shape to make a speedy get away.

From here it is a fifteen minute walk to the entrance of the savoy Lounge (if that). I am just three minutes into that walk when the very heavens open. Lightning crackles and thunder rolls long and hard across the skies. There is a plane on final approach to Birmingham International. Bet they got a good view of that one!

But most of the downfall is not simple rain. It is hail – coming down in bullets! That over-tall privet hedge provides some shelter, but I skip and cringe across the car park – a good few visitors from Shrewsbury, all sheltering in the lee of the stadium (what there is of it), some smoking.

All of us nervous. A lot to play for this evening!

I catch up with the day’s news on the big screen in the Lounge. Read that the Hillsborough Inquiry jury has come up with a landslide number of verdicts around the main one of “unlawful killing.” Damning!

 

Then I notice Cully, Andy and Jack. I am still thinking of the Hillsborough disaster, the stories in the media at the time, the wonderful long, long, proud fight put up by the families against massive institutions (press, police and general public perceptions in the days when to be a football fan was to some degree to be an enemy of society).

We do discuss the findings; in no doubt that there were mistakes made, but unsure where this will lead. That ordinary coppers were as sickened as we were, then and now and tried to help but were held back obeying orders. Mostly we are disgusted that this didn’t all come out in the police investigations carried by our very own West Midlands Police Force. That this was, almost certainly covered up*.

But talk soon turns, as it must to this game; to the Bank Holiday Monday mid day kick off, by which time Burton Albion will have played against Gillingham – and we’ll have a better idea of what we need to get done. And our final scheduled game of the season at Port Vale (I have my ticket already!) This is also a mid-day ish kick off.

Then we creep out to take our seats. There is still hail on the pitch, filling up little depressions in the playing surface – and cold!

Kick off and we escape a couple of times; poor back passes. And we go on the attack. This is a side of attacking players, but still we spend an awful lot of time in our own half. Sawyers is back on form. He is out on the left wing, picks out Kieron Morris running through the middle, a couple of strides and he pulls the trigger on a shot across the keeper. Goal!

Relief!

We need a few more, so set about it, but Shrewsbury manager makes a tactical substitution that closes up the defence.

But not enough to stop a long run from Rico Henry going on and on and on. Past defender after defender. Eventually he tries a shot which is deflected off one defender, then comes back off another and beats the Swiss goalie who flaps at it.

Second half kicks off and Shrewsbury with absolutely nothing to lose but face step up and drive us back. Just one point would keep them in this league; they just need to get one goal back to be in it again.

Inevitably (this is Bescot after all and we are definitely not Bradford!) they get the goal.

But final result is a two one win. Enough to get the points. To prove the point that we are psychologically strong enough. Our problem is not of spirit, but simply the inability to make the most of our fluid play. In short, dammit we cannot score gaols. Yet we are in a great position and there is till a chance!

Bring on the Cod Army!

 

• What follows is a reasonable summary taken from Wikipedia. Needless to say there are so many, many more harrowing details; including attempted demonization of loyal football supporters and the anguish of loved ones. My respect goes to all of the people involved, not all of them seeking justice survived to see today’s momentous rulings.

The Hillsborough disaster was a human crush that caused the deaths of 96 people and injured 766 others at a football match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, England, on 15 April 1989. The match was the 1988–89 FA Cup semi-final, with Hillsborough, home ground of Sheffield Wednesday, selected as a neutral venue. The crush occurred in pens in the Leppings Lane stand, allocated to Liverpool fans. Steel fencing between the spectators and the playing field prevented victims from escaping the overcrowded western stand. At the time, such fencing was commonly used in English football stadiums to prevent friendly and hostile pitch invasions. The interim report in the 1989–90 official inquiry into the disaster by Lord Taylor concluded that “the main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control.”^[1] In 2016, a new inquiry returned a verdict that the victims were unlawfully killed as a result of an inadequate response by emergency services.^[2]

Entry to the Leppings Lane stand was possible only via one of seven turnstiles, a restriction that led to dangerous overcrowding outside the ground before kick-off. In an attempt to ease pressure outside the ground, Police Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, the senior police officer responsible for policing the match, ordered an exit gate to be opened. The opened exit gate led to a tunnel marked “Standing”, which led directly to the two already overcrowded enclosures. In previous years the tunnel had been closed off by police when the two central pens were full; however, on this occasion the tunnel was unmanned. The findings of the final report resulted in the elimination of standing terraces at all major football stadiums in England, Wales and Scotland. It remains the worst stadium-related disaster in the history of English sport, and one of the world’s worst football disasters.

Port Vale: Away

Written on 6th April, 2014

I drove to Bescot to get the tickets for the Vale game. Burslem is not one of my favourite places in League One, though I have been there many times: it’s not so far to travel and there is usually fierce, not-quite-derby tension that brings excitement and skill out in both teams.

Driven in by my brother – cheers mate – and picking up Cully and Drew en route. Back lanes drive was a new way to get there for me, passing none of the landmarks and roundabouts I would normally be looking out for … and that’s not so easy from the back of an Alfa Romeo. Great parking spot and, hey there really was an oat-cakes shop (though it was closed) near the ground.

Brisk stroll; the ground looks so small and bodged together, with a patchwork ethos and stands that do not match. The roof of the stand we were in is apparently from Chester Football Club and so low it holds the sound in. The small-ish Walsall choir were buoyant, deafening (great support!) and, frankly discordant.

Grabbed a bite to eat at the café*: two coffees, two ciders a pie (only meat and potato) and a Mars bar. The cider was sticky and overly sweet.

That passion I was expecting (way back in the first paragraph)? No signs of it in the first half. Vale looking dangerous. Walsall looking a little lost and Ngoo in to replace suspended Westcarr didn’t quite work. The kid is talented, confident but doesn’t somehow fit in. Long legs like a young giraffe, very willing. Maybe just not enough match practice yet? Brandy looked tired and short of pace. James Chambers, unusually, was both out-paced and out-thought by the Vale winger, but we were hanging in there when the half time whistle went.

Playing towards us in the second half we seemed to have a better grip. Play was undoubtedly rougher – scuttlebutt going round the ground was that the teams above us (that we needed to lose to keep our remote play-off chances alive) were actually losing. Both teams here could capitalise on that – if they could win.

Some dubious refereeing decisions given both ways. Some harsh tackles: both ways, some diving: both sides … but when our centre half Paul Downing and a Vale player, Tom Pope, got tangled up in the penalty box – penalty.

Scored!

Cue substitutions: Brandy off for Lalkovic, Ngoo off for Bakayoko and Baxendale (largely ineffective) off for Hewitt.

Cue the traditional weekly last throw-down frantic paced everything and the kitchen sink and his wife and gundog melee as we hammer the Vale defence to get an equaliser and – in our eyes a shred of justice. Equaliser? Hell no; lets win the game!

I can never quite understand why we need to go one down before we start to play properly. Indeed there is a suggestion in the car as we drive back that we should hypnotise the team before the game, trancing ‘em into thinking we are one – nil down. Light the blue touch paper, stand back and watch the fireworks.

It’s history now, we don’t manage it. But there was a spirited first performance from Bakyoko, young but not afraid to get in with the big boys and their flying boots.

Elsewhere, the long-running saga of the Hillsborough Disaster continues. During my life there have been a number of football disasters, this being the worst of them. I cannot begin to imagine the torment the families of the ninety six people who died at what should have been a marvellous occasion have been put through. I salute their grit and determination to have genuine justice. It cannot have been easy.

Brighter news is that Birmingham City Ladies will be playing in the UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-final after beating Arsenal. Women’s football is booming at the moment, credit to everyone who has made it happen. Can we get a team at Walsall please?

And more international matches will be played at Bescot. My guess is that it is due to having the national training centre (St George’s Park) at Rangemore, because the games will be shared with Burton Albion. They are part of the UEFA European Under-19 Championship Elite Qualifying matches and will be played in May.

A horse from just down the road in Worcestershire won the Grand National while we were struggling to overcome the Vale and today Oxford hammered Cambridge in the Universities Boat Race.

*Oh yeah, the name of the café?

Would you Adam and Eve it ?