Well the dust has settled a little now and I’ve heard all the whinging and moaning on the radio and messageboards and I can't take anymore, to listen to some, you’d think it was the end of the world, the season was as good as over.

I don’t feel like that TBH.

I right enjoyed Saturday I did.

Don’t get me wrong, it was nice having the break from footy and getting other stuff done but it was good to be back. It seemed to take ages to get to August, then all of a sudden the first game was upon us….and I was giddy as fook the night before, so the morning of the game the butterflies and excitement was almost at max…..almost…but not quite.

I don’t know how anyone can fail to get excited, not just about it being the opening day fixture, but against the Dingles as well?
Oh aye….As opening days go this was a belter…

As some folk know, this game would decide my new grandsons footballing future…His father being a Dingle was always going to cause problems…I tried the ‘If he’s born with 6 fingers and 3 nipples he can support Barnsley’ approach but that didn’t go down too well....neither did our lass knitting mittens with an extra thumb...
Anyway, we settled on this game being the decider.
Whoever won, that’s Charlies (my grandson) team for life.

They wouldn’t let me down the Wednesday team…THEY BETTER NOT let me down.

When you wake up on footy days and the sun is blistering through the bedroom window and you’ve been tossing and turning with anticipation all night you can’t fail to be in a good mood…up at the crack of dawn, into the bathroom for the 3 Sh’s….foo foo powder on to smell nice and repel all dingles…lucky pants, lucky shirt, everything…nothing was being left to chance today.

My phone was going nuts with all the texts, so I sent a few back…Including one to Adam, Charlies dad…just to get him going…I knew he was nervous and was already regretting agreeing to the…err…agreement, so a text would just make him feel a little edgier.

Get the young un and we’re off…shades on…singing all the way…a great day to be a footy fan this…oh aye…

We park up and over to the shop with the intention of buying a shirt but there’s no shirts in Hollies size and the queue is massive….I eye up a few baby grows and toddlers things for later and make a mental note.

We head up to the Trav’s for a quick drink and as I hug Stan knock his bottle of Stella to the floor…It was worth it, we haven’t seen him in ages…

Everyone was loving this…the place was buzzing…walking down to the ground…there was a really good vibe about the place as everyone was enjoying the sunshine. We’d set off to the ground a little early as we expected there to be all sorts of problems with the new ticketing system but there was no palaver at all, smooth as clockwork….Nice one….well done to the club. It’s been a while since I saw the ground fill up properly…well I usually miss the kick off so I don’t stand a chance usually…but as it DID fill up the atmosphere picked up and the tension mounted…you could really start to feel it as it got closer and closer to 3 O Clock…..

The seats filled and the noise was cranked up and then the music started….the stomach was churning again…
Hollie noticed a photographer after some crowd shots…so being the photogenic media whore that I am, we went into footy fan pose mode…it worked…I think I may have been showing a little of my ample midriff though as Lee Strafford came over and told me to put it away…his face was a picture TBH, we was loving this…he was like a kid in a sweet shop…and who wouldn’t be…what footy fan wouldn’t love to be in his position?

I explained the importance of this game for me…and his smile dropped, momentarily…’Oh…’

I asked him to make sure they didn’t let me down….

The players came out, the noise got louder and he was off…loads of chairmanly things to do no doubt.

The noise was incredible now…I love this…opening day, a couple of minutes before kick off…the last moments that everyone is equal, the teams down, the teams up, the teams clinging on, we’re all the same…as soon as that ball is kicked the season has changed….it’s daft but it makes me shudder a bit that point….the waiting was over.
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Just before kick off there was a minutes applause for the late Sir Bobby Robson...a wonderful ambassador to the game and a true gentleman...We've lost one of the very best now.

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THE MATCH
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Now I know everyone is gutted at how this game panned out but I loved it…it had everything…if ever anyone wanted to experience proper football and all that goes with being a footy fan, then this game had it in spades.
Both sets of fans will have experienced exactly the same thing…an entertaining opening day without defeat.

For the first 45 minutes here it was pretty much all about Wednesday….True enough, Barnsley had their moments, 3 or 4 of them but the ball seemed to just drop to them from tackles, or rebounds, it wasn’t really from good build up play by them, or getting at us, and the ball seemed to uncannily keep dropping to Macken stood unmarked in the box, seemingly every time, but no matter what he did, Granty was equal to it, he couldn’t get past him….and if it wasn’t him it was Woody throwing himself in front of the ball.
The only thing of note that Barnsley did this half was when De Silva tiptoed in and out of 3 of our players and left them for dead before getting a shot in that Grant saved easily.

Other than that, all the passing and decent football was from us…and it started early…with O Connor blasting one goalwards forcing Luke Steele to pull out a cracking save high and to his left…that was just a warning though and when JJ prodded the ball home shortly afterwards we were on our way…

Three sides of blue and white going mental and the dingley red end slumped in their seats…Oh aye…let’s turn it on now then….

Well they did TBF and there really was some lovely football from us, great passing and great movement off the ball…everyone wanted to be involved and everyone wanted the ball. We worked for each other and it was nice to watch…OK, there wasn’t too much by way of end result but we were two goals up and it would come…From back to front we looked calm and assured…

Purse had set his stall out early and barked out at Granty to make himself heard…he was marshalling the defence… Him and Woody seemed to be on the same wavelength and covering well for each other…O Connor seemed to be everywhere and gave no one time on the ball…he was getting headers, he was tackling and he was holding the midfield together… With them getting those chances, however freaky, we needed another goal…we got one…from Michael Gray who looked like he’d knocked himself unconscious in diving to head the ball home and it sort of muted the celebrations as everyone wondered whether it had been disallowed or he was out cold…it wasn’t until the scoreboard sparked into life that we let it go and celebrated properly…oh aye…COME ON! This was no more than we deserved TBH…we really had played well and I thought we deserved to be 2 up.

There was a wonderful example of the entire half late on, just before the whistle when we tackled one of the Barnsley players in our box and quickly, precisely and effectively passed the ball up field to the edge of their box…zip, zip, zip…it was gone, a wonderfully confident move…superb to watch

And me?
Well I was counting down to the whistle as soon as that second goal went in…I was already making a shopping list…straight into the Owls Shop after the game, babygrows, bibs, rompers, dummies, rattles, mini kits…the lot…Oh aye…Charlie was an Owl, I had a credit card and I was gonna go mental…that shop would be empty when I finished with it.
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At halftime, Charlie and Titch came down the front and Bradders and Harv and we were all saying pretty much the same thing, that we’d enjoyed the half, seen good football and hoped we could turn the style on second half.
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Well…it didn’t happen did it?

I don’t know either TBH.
I don’t think it was because Barnsley played better and I don’t think it’s because we were unfit…it was almost like we just didn’t know what to do next….and the longer this blankness went on the better Barnsley felt about themselves and when they got the first goal it started to get that all too familiar feeling we had last season…

Butterfield scoring his first goal for Barnsley, right in front of their fans….as an away fan you can’t help but love that can you? For a young player to score his first goal for a club, it doesn't get much better does it?

They were enjoying themselves on and off the pitch and we did nothing to stop it….all of a sudden the movement stopped, the passes were short or went astray and our defence wasn’t looking as close knit as we thought…Purse looked slow and all over the place, the midfield went missing and the strikers didn’t see the ball for nearly 45 minutes…How can it change so much so quick?

We didn’t look like scoring, we didn’t look as though we had anything…either spirit or willingness to win…and you could feel the equaliser coming…when it did with 15 minutes to go…I could feel my shopping list disappearing….it was heartbreaking…at the other end Adam and the rest of the Dingles were loving it…I could almost hear Adam making his own shopping list…dingle bib…6 finger gloves….it was painful….fook me it was painful….but they were loving it and they’d found their voices now and making plenty of noise…

They were up for this now, their tails up and they wanted the winner, just to finish it all off...fortunately, they didn't have it in them to kill us off and even though every Wednesday fan in the ground was fearing the worst...we still clung to the hope that WE would get the winner...

Well I was still clinging on to the fading hope that we’d snatch the winner late, even if everyone else might have been a bit dubious...right up to the last few seconds I was hoping…urging them on…busting for the players to score, hoping that we could lift ourselves and find a glimmer of what we had first half…

COME ON YA BASSADS!

LOOK LIKE YOU WANT TO WIN THE FOOKER!

They didn’t listen.

In reality we did absolutely nothing to suggest we could score…it was pathetic really…nothing at all…no up and at em....no, 'COME ON DO IT FOR THE FANS!'....Nothing...and as the game fizzled out to a draw, the Barnsley fans celebrated like it was a victory and we felt like we’d lost….I was stunned.

All my plans for Charlie lay in tatters....BOLLOX!


After I’d pulled meself together and we’d all got over ourselves and said our goodbyes, and we’d gone to the carpark to meet Adam and his dad Neil….we decided that it was probably a fair result…certainly on chances…and Charlie’s future will now be decided at Oakwell in the return fixture…I must admit, I’m less confident about that than I was about this.

I don’t think Barnsley played well at any point and I don’t think they’re a good side but they got a draw against us…when it looked a lost cause…fair play to em.

We simply have to take the good stuff from this and put the poor stuff down to a bad day at the office and hope we don’t see it again too soon this season.

OK, we threw away a 2 goal lead and it was against the Dingles but we didn’t lose and we saw some fablious football from our players…we’ve seen what they’re capable of.
If we’d won and gone to town on Barnsley we’d all be getting carried away with ourselves and talking about play offs and promotion and all sorts of silly things…at least this was a gentle wake up call.

There’s worse things than this and there’s been worse than this…there WILL BE worse football days than this ahead.

This was the start...the first game in a long old season…the sun was shining, the ground was full, we met up with mates for the first time in ages, we got to enjoy a lead and see our new players…We didn’t lose.

The ups and downs of footy eh?
The agony and the ecstasy...it really is good to be back.

Steve:Beastie
Owls Alive