Super Tuesday? Really? Whisper It At Bescot Please!

Super Tuesday – At Bescot? : Scunthorpe at Home

I’m feeling rather optimistic (if you’ve read any other entries in this blog you may spot the somewhat-inevitable, optimistic- football fan pattern) .But why not? My team made the League One leaders look less than ordinary on Saturday – at their ground. OK, OK we failed to win, but looked far superior (yes, we failed to win, don’t bring that up again … please).

And this no-win streak can only go on for so long can’t it? The runes have got to be for us at some point: surely?

So why not the home game on Tuesday against Scunthorpe?

Yes optimistic indeed.

I hear on the radio that medical researchers are up in arms and trying to get “the tackle” banned from school rugby. Citing it as an unnecessary element of a game that is, by its nature, contact and confrontation. I have no opinion one way or the other. I went to a grammar school too late to be sucked in to the sport but on the other hand have had some seriously riotous nights out with rugby players.

My game is with the properly shaped ball; I have little to say about either of the two forms of the Rugby code.

Meanwhile Adam Johnson ( sacked by Sunderland) is found guilty of sexual offences involving a child. He had shown real talent as a footballer, but got carried away by the fame and, almost doubtless, the money. Footballers nowadays are akin perhaps to the rock and roll celebrities of the 1970s: young, rich and pandered to. Just without the drugs and alcohol.

Brighter news is that eh World Track Cycling Championships starts this week; Sir Bradley Wiggins and Laura Trott amongst others will be doing their respective things round and round the London Velodrome.

 

And, across the Pond people in the good old U. S. of A are in the excitement and hoo-ha of democracy: seeking to choose candidates for each party who will represent their parties (Democrats and Republicans) in the nation’s presidential elections.

Donald Trump, successful yet abrasive businessman seems to be winning for the ; while Hilary Clinton (wife of former U.S. president Bill Clinton and a career politician seems to be getting the votes for her side.

 

It is kind of interesting to see a different type of political system in action> In the U.K we vote locally for party candidates who have already chosen their party leaders. First past the post polling means the party that gets the highest number of Members of Parliament wins control in the House of Commons. We do not vote for a Prime Minister in the way the Americans vote for a president. Which system is better? Both are equally good, perhaps and at the same time equally flawed.

So Tuesday evening comes around. I’m still optimistic. Reasons as detailed above – oh and a good week at work helping out too. And the fact that Saddlers Widow was good enough to drag herself to Bescot Ticket office on the first morning of season ticket sales to nab my season ticket for next year.  I would have had one anyway I think, so why not take advantage of the Early Bird discount –and get a free Walsall at Wembley: History in the Making book at the same time. The joke at work is that the first thousand to buy season tickets get one free copy of this souvenir book (souvenir of a day that was brilliant until the first whistle, then went swiftly downhill) – and that anyone else who buys a season ticket after that gets two free books. Cannot beat that football-fan irony can you?

My bro has to join the queue for his ticket but I breeze through the savoy Lounge entrance, a bit of banter with the two always-friendly front of house attendants who laugh that, after all, there are only another six homes games left aren’t there?

Do they know something I don’t.

We are fourth as I walk past them. Play off places. That will mean at least one more home game.

Or we finish first (yes please!) or second and get through automatically … or seventh and don’t need to be at Bescot again until the friendlies see us off to another League One season.

I meet Cully in the Lounge. He’s a bit rueful: mentions he has already got his season ticket and Savoy Lounge Pass (this is being offered only to existing pass holders and on a first come first served basis. I smile and tell him I also have my season ticket, but not my Lounge Pass yet.

We sink a beer, then head out to join my brother. Same team as Saturday: keeping faith. And we look good for all of ten minutes, then are pushed, bullied and lacking in authority as Scunthorpe with s few loyal fans (credit to them!) turn the screw. Neither team doing much seriously to threaten the other’s goal, but neither team looking very fluent either.

It is frustrating. I start getting annoyed with the tiniest, least relevant of things. Sublimating, I suppose yelling negative comments at my own team, whose performance is so much below the standard I was expecting. Bad day at the office syndrome maybe, but this is yet another bad day: we need to clock up some wins. At half time results were going for us: Burton drawing, Wigan not winning, Gillingham the same. We could be picking up points and places. But we look jaded. Tom Bradshaw is manful as always, people running, Downing looking positively Brazilian as he runs the ball out of defence and plays us in to a chance. But overall we are just running on the spot.

There is a round of applause to celebrate the life of a Walsall fan who was murdered while on holiday in Tunisia. So, it was a terrorist attack, but the guy was murdered; let’s just get it straight eh? Two other members of his family were also tragically murdered in the cowardly attack.

Full time drags itself around and we have a second consecutive clean sheet: yippee for that then!

But, somehow have crept up the table to third place.

Desperate after the ordeal we have suffered we decide we need a beer (well, that’s what we tell ourselves) but are caught in traffic and the first pub we try has stopped serving.

But the good old Royal Oak (Norton Lane) is in Tuesday night quiz mode and we down a couple in there.

Barnsley at home on Saturday. Got to get a win then surely?

Getting a striker is an entirely different matter.

The Shirt and The Iron (Scunthorpe Away)

Last Wednesday of the month: poetry group at Great Wyrley Library. Last month we chose “sport” as the topic for this meeting. Do you know how difficult it is to find a reasonable poem about sport? (Seriously folks any suggestions welcome in the response box below. Would love to you’re your ideas.)

Someone else came up with “the Shirt” by Carole Ann Duffy  (current English poet laureate). I have heard this independent lady reading her poetry and, while it was being shared in the rather small confines of our library I could imagine bot her voice and face as she read it out. Bit of a cliché, but went to this Walsall supporter’s heart right away; the themes of high salary and some self-pitying celebrity player trying to make excuses for poor performances. The “anybody but me” syndrome” again.

We are playing Scunthorpe United today. Away. I’m going. Bright sunshine, high skies after some rainclouds earlier.

Cully’s driving. Navigating part-by-sat-nav part by experience. The sat nav (Tom-Tom I believe) sits in pride of place in the centre of the dashboard. The arrow stays still, the graphics move underneath it. “A bit like flying, instead of driving; don’t like it, “ he says.

Satisfyingly the machine gets it wrong from the off and I take out an unnecessary dog leg, smiling smugly (well inside anyway).

The journey is comfortable, enjoyable and full of conversation on initially  familiar roads and then motorways (with some almost inevitable summer roadworks limiting us to 50 m.p.h..

We see the high single legged floodlight pylons of Glanford Park while we are still on the approach. The ground is now at the back of an out-of-town shopping park with all the usual suspects including a McDonalds, a Ben and Jerry’s (playing music from the 1950s) and a franchise gastro-pub. It’s friendly in there. We order a meal and drinks, sit and continue the conversations. Then well fed, stroll to the ground.

Going through the turnstiles we are not given a ticket which I find interesting. It takes out the costs of printing and is eminently sensible in that respect of course … but is it legal?

 

The ground feels homely. It’s compact, built to the same spec all round and looks as if it was built to a plan that was stuck-to. No out-of-character additions. There’s a purpose built gallery in the roof of the left hand stand for cameras and media, there are flags flying from poles at the opposite end of the ground. That stand (we are behind a goal line) is standing-only. That’s also interesting, given the discussions going on to return parts of grounds to standing areas again (they were changed to all seater stadia by law following recommendations in the Taylor report after the Hillsborough disaster) .

We look dazed from the kick-off. The Iron playing fast, zippy football, passes accurate, either in front of the runner or into space which is soon taken up by an attacking player. We are not able to keep up, it seems. Our new look team. Without Kinsella who has been impressive, but fair enough, may need a break; without Grimes and Sawyers and James Chambers back into the middle of defence. Forde is on and Manset gets a debut. (seems he was playing the “long game” after his trial game against Leicester, going to some Turkish club and after a better deal (no blame attached there: football is a cruel kind of life and players need to make money as and when …). No deal was offered, so he came back to Walsall. James Chambers lasts all of ten minutes and Dean Holden comes on to replace him. It doesn’t get better. Scunthorpe (why are they nicknamed The Iron?) are like a tide washing towards our goal, wave after wave. Fortunately they don’t look like scoring. They too are on a winless run and may just be a little over anxious.

The half time entertainment is amusing: fans spin around to make themselves dizzy and are then to take a penalty against the home mascot (“Scunny Bunny”). Except they all fall over before they have finished spinning. The announcer on the pitch is enjoying himself anyway.

Of course I recognise some of the travelling fans now; we are some kind of pilgrims after all, trying to keep a kind of faith. Against all odds sometimes!

Second half is little different, except Scunthorpe are better motivated, more switched on. they haven’t won yet and sense things might be about to change. A first half dribble raid by Adelakum which ended in a scuffed shot is repeated. But this time the ball is in the net. A few moments later we concede a free kick. MacSheffrey’s long distance shot beats O’Donnell and they are two nil up.

Cue the charge. We establish some kind of order. Press forwards, more in hope at this stage but things begin to come together. Then, Tom Bradshaw, who must be difficult to play against, is through after willing running. It seems to be in stop-motion. I see him check the position of the keeper (Olejnic) and the ball dinks off his head and curls – towards – the net – over – the – line.

Goal! Well-deserved because the man has been chasing everything since kick off, big hearted and energetic. Good eye for the goal. Manset has shown touches of skill, but been a little off the pace. But he is big. He is strong and the defenders knew he was there. I would like to see him in the team again on Saturday (home against Colchester), just a little more bedded in.

It’s not enough. Baxendale making a big, bold challenge to keep the ball in provokes a bit of passion from Scunthorpe’s Bishop, who has niggled all game (but at least has some fire and passion about the game). The referee who has been poor all game, not stamping his authority, gives a goal kick when, in fact, the ball didn’t go out at all.

So, Scunthorpe’s winless run ends. Does ours continue or did it just get worse than that?