Even the 90 minutes of crap couldn't spoil this day....
3 - 0 
Derby Wednesday
I’ve just about recovered enough to write this now…not just from too much alcohol, though that was the main reason, but from anger and frustration…
Mainly drink though I must admit…and it continued to today…I put me shreddies on back to front and didn’t realise until I went to the toilet at work…at least no one will find out though.
All day yesterday my clack valve was broken…it felt like I’d got a 6 inch oyster stuck at the back of me throat….all down to the singing in the pub…if only we’d done the same on the terraces and got behind the team.
Anyway…start at the very beginning….
 | This was officially designated as ‘Wet the babies head’ day and in
the pub we’d arranged to raise a glass to my grandson Charlie…it was
really fitting then that Hollie brought Charlie round in the morning
before we set off and I was able to get a photo and a good luck hug and
kiss off him…oh aye…nowt could go wrong with a start like this. Lucky 3 Sh’s, lucky socks, lucky boxers, the finest Oh Di Toilet and now a kiss from me grandson… Perfect! |
So we say good bye to the little fella and we’re legging it round to the train station…halfway round and I realise I’ve forgotten the match tickets…I phone our lass to meet us halfway with the tickets, which she does, bless her…unfortunately, it’s too late and we waint make the train…taxi time…sixteen chuffing quid!
We accept it…we’ve no choice have we if we want to get the next train to Derby on time….I make up some ‘Special Oasis’ from a bottle of 50% proof Vodka I’ve been saving…it’ll ease the pain if nowt else…If I’m honest here, I’d run out of Oasis bottles so it was ‘Lilt’ and it definitely had the totally tropical taste about it.
We meet Harry Speakup at Wakey train station, he’s got our train tickets and we’re on our way…mindst you he mythered a bit because we were sat in some reserved seats…’we’ll get done’…’we’ll get booted off’….when we got to Sheffield, Ante joined us and so did the group who’d reserved the seats…a couple of blokes and around half a dozen kids aged 8 to 10…all in their Wednesday togs, they were buzzin.
What a crackin’ day out for a couple of blokes that is eh?
I don’t know if they were all their kids but who cares?
Takin’ a bunch of over excited lads to a game…oh aye…ya got to love it.
As we’re sat there I hear one of em say ‘Look…send it to him…Steve:Beastie’
They’d bluetoothed the train and spotted my name.
I thought aye aye here we go…
A second later and my phone’s playing ‘Lady gaga’
LADY FOOKIN GAGA!
Who sent that?
They all stand up and point at their mate who’s slinking in his seat…with a big grin on his face…
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIGHT!
So I check me phone and send ‘CJ’ a recording of Tommy Spurr scoring against the pigs and ‘Ring of Fire’ to which they all cheer and start singing along to…
Then me and Hollie start whistling the start of Wednesday songs, we pause….and they finish them off by singing them out loud and proud…seeing who was first to get the song…excellent stuff….
This, plus the fact we’d started early on the special Lilt was making for a pleasant start to the day…mindst you, the faces of Harry and Ante when they had a drink wasn’t a nice sight.
By the time we got to Derby, the Lilt was gone
Another taxi ride to the pub and the day was underway properly now….
It didn’t take long for the atmosphere to get going in there and the jukebox kept everyone in fine spirits…Especially when the Stylsitics came on, followed by Sweet Caroline…
Both songs got everyone singing but the latter brought about the best from an owd bloke on the next table as he was up on his stool, belting it out…
If Carlsberg made starts to match days…it would probably be like this…Everyone in the pub was in a great mood…we’d had a drink or two, we’d sung a song or two…and every single person in the pub was confident we’d win…including Derby fans.
Unfortunately if Carlsberg made football matches, it most definitely wouldn’t be like this one…this was the Stoneses of football matches….The Marmite of football…the peanut butter of matches…you get where I’m going with this?
THE MATCH
Things started bad here when there was a minutes silence as a mark of respect for a former derby player who’d passed away and the shit head in front of us was gabbling on and taking the piss…Fair play to the young un she rounded on him straight away told him to shut up and show some respect. Then when it finished she pointed out that had someone done it at ours, for one of our players, he’s have been in uproar…Kudos to her and fook him, the sheepish embarrassed look on his face was the least he should have.
OK so it was cold, it was wet and it was windy…In fact it was fookin’ horrible!
BUT….it was the same for Derby and it was the same for the fans and we’d paid for the privilege…I don’t want to take a thing away from Derby here. They were better than us and they easily deserved their victory.
 You have to pay for this shit too! | They looked up for it from the start. Clough had obviously fettled
them since their pasting by Cardiff and it showed. They were first to
every ball, they looked to work for each other, the passed and they
moved…they did what we KNOW we can do so well…they did the basics…the
stuff we SHOULD have been doing and they got exactly what they
deserved, a resounding victory. I won’t go as far as to say they looked a good side because we were so woefully bad, but they did what they needed to do and they did it with gusto. We also got what we deserved from this game, FOOK ALL! |
Fair play to Derby.
This rant isn’t to detract from their victory; we can have absolutely no complaints about that at all but our players have a hell of a lot to answer for.
If they think one performance out of 3 is enough to keep everyone quiet they’d best think again.
They took all the plaudits after Cardiff last week and rightly so, with everyone gushing about how good the football was…
They were let off the hook at Palace by coming away with a clean sheet and a point from a notoriously difficult Selhurst Park but it all went shit shaped the moment they stepped onto the field at Pride park.
This week they need to own up to a piss poor performance that is inexcusable.
Pretty much from the off they looked sluggish and most players looked like they’d rather be anywhere than here.
Not good enough.
I don’t care that it was windy…
I don’t care that it was cold…
I don’t fookin care that it was pissing it down….
NO EXCUSES!
We made Derby look like Real Madrid.
We didn’t pass well, we didn’t move well, we simply weren’t thinking, no one was in the right frame of mind, basic stuff and when it came to shooting, we were laughable.
Having said that….the travelling Wednesday fans didn’t help matters.
I accept that when the performance is shit and we’ve paid a lot for that privilege that fans are entitled to make their views heard but I always thought we were there to SUPPORT our side, to drag them through patches when we’re playing below par…the proverbial ‘twelfth man’.
We sang 3 songs all afternoon…
When Derby went one up we sang…
‘One nil and you still don’t sing…one nil…’
We sang…. ‘Beevers, Beevers, Beevers’ as Purse made yet another mistake…
We sang…’Sodje, Sodje, Sodje’ as Leon missed another goalscoring chance.
How does that help the team?
How is that getting behind them?
How often have we sang ‘Sing when ya winning’?
Well fook me…when our team needed us most, we were found wanting…
All around me, there was...whinging about everyone….and fair enough, some players were way below what was acceptable but some of the comments were ridiculous…about Grant, and how he’s done this all season, about O Connor…and the now regular pile of shit about Buxton being rubbish and Frankie being miles better and he should be in the team ahead of him…It’s a crock of shit….let it go!
He’s got his faults has Lewis and he’s going through a tough patch but Frankie is not the player he was a couple of seasons ago, he's a long way of that right now and he isn’t as good as Lewis at this moment, just leave it alone FFS!
Buxton certainly wasn’t one of the poorest on display today.
| Don’t get me wrong…In the case of Darren Purse it was one of the worst performances by anyone for a while, it was Guy Branston bad, it was Jon Beswetherick bad…It was Branston Beswetherick bad! That says it all and there absolutely cannot be any excuses made for him this game. Whether Beevers would be any better is neither here nor there in this instance TBH. If a player plays this bad, on top of other poor performances and isn’t dropped then what message does that send to those trying to get into the first team? What message does it give Purse? That he’s undroppable? |  |
I know where the fans are coming from, I know they were pissed off…I was too…and Purses performance more than any stood out as being particularly shit…BUT…Barracking him, singling ANY player out for that matter, DURING play…I genuinely fail to see what good it does, what the fans think that will do for the game, for THEIR game.
When Laws tried to change it, it still wasn’t good enough…Miller didn’t get into the game and JJ may as well have not bothered, but Sodje did at least have a go and almost got a goal with his first touch…a header that looped over the Derby keeper and off the bar. Rather than galvanise team and fans though it spurred Derby on and they turned panicked defence into swift attack and went down the other end and scored.
 | I’d like to say whatever chance we had of getting back into this game
disappeared at that moment but in truth it was gone way before and the
third and final goal, the fact it was a penalty and the fact it was
scored by former Blade Rob Hulse just topped it all off TBH. Any fan that was pissed off before, well, it was tenfold now and loads had seen enough before that moment… It was pretty much dreadful and painful for the whole 90 minutes and it just isn’t good enough. |
If we see a performance like that at home then forget any talk of a 24k average gate, forget all the good work done by the chairman and others at the club…if the home crowd see that, then we’ll be lucky to average 16k.
You can put as much icing on the cake as you like but if the basic product is shit then people will not buy into it.
The mood from Wednesday fans leaving the ground was not good, and with good reason….
…we headed back to the pub….
It’s a good job we don’t rely on the 90 minutes of football for our entertainment otherwise we’d never go.
Get back to pub and instantly dismiss the game…
Tommo comes over, obviously I’ve got a mytherd face on, and he says, ‘we’re not here to myther about how shit that lot was, the team OR the fans, we’re here to celebrate your grandson Charlies birth and wet his head…forget that lot’
And that’s exactly what we did….
We loaded up the drinks, doubles, trebles, and they kept on coming…the jukebox kept getting cranked up and the place was full of Wednesday fans…all, despite what they’d seen, in a great mood…
All singing at the top of our voices…and joined by Derby fans, who loved it…
We got the Jukebox turned down I proposed a toast and we raised a glass to Charlie….everyone…we ALL saluted him, Derby fans too and then we sang for him…no one stood back…to my little fella…Oh aye…..
We sang down the phone to Charlies dad Adam...’Charlie, is a Wednesdayite, Charlie, is a Wednesdayite’
It was a fookin wonderful moment…absolutely fookin wonderful…I felt a bit emotional at it all TBH…..the fur was up…I was tingling.
OUTFOOKINBASTARDSTANDING!
Even a fookin gash display like we’d seen today couldn’t’ take that moment away, it was superb.
To share that moment with friends…it was incredible I can tell you…and I thank every single person that was there…and for those that weren’t…we’ll have another one.
When I put Sweet Caroline on again, the little owd bloke was up on his feet again…this time using a pool rest as a microphone…and his trousers disappearing downwards…his builders botty got bigger as they headed south….and the singing from every single person in the pub…as the chorus changed to….
‘Sweet Caroline….FOOK THE BLADES!’
Every bassad in the pub was on their feet…the Derby fans joined in again…..
‘Sweet Caroline….FOOK THE BLADES!’
It was incredible…We just need to change the first bit to ‘WE’RE WEDNESDAYITES!’ and we’ve got ourselves a new song!
Get the band playing that bassad!
A cracking night came to an end as the landlady ordered our taxis back to the station…she loved it…well she would, we stuck a shitload of cash over the bar…and in the jukebox…chuff me that thing must be full to busting…but she said the atmosphere in the bar had been belting all night…and she was right.
Sometimes the away day isn’t about the 90 minutes of football…and sometimes, it’s just as fookin well.
I’m prepared to put this game behind us…I’ve had my say and got me rant off me chest, but I don’t want to see that sort of performance again…
Cheers
Steve:BeastieOwls Alive
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