A PROPER Yorkshire derby...and this time with the right result.

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    Barnsley                        Wednesday

Well it was finally here….another chance for the players to make Beasties grandson Charlie a Wednesdayite for life.
After the opening game of the season had ended in a draw and my dreams in tatters this was it…if this game couldn’t decide Charlie’s future one way or the other it would go to league position and I really didn’t like how that was going.

For most Wednesday and Barnsley fans there were nerves leading up to this, for different reasons…The Dingles wanted to keep their recent good form against us going and Wednesday fans were eager to see a win…especially under the new manager on his first day at work proper…

Both sets of fans had reason to feel a bit of renewed confidence and fancy their chances but for me I was just shitting it…plain and simple….and I had been all week.

I was determined to pull out all the stops, use all the good luck stuff I had, I didn’t want to leave ANYTHING to ‘chance’.

Of course I had my 3 Sh’s….and I did my shower yoga…I had to feel at me best…everything perfect.

Choosing me boxers…first pair just didn’t feel right so I kept going until I found a pair with the right 'win' vibe…same with the socks…and the shirts, only when it came to shirts two different shirts gave me a good vibe…so I wore em both! And once I was all togged out I felt good….and THAT is vital for the good luck vibe.

Oh aye, I felt GOOD! (Daddle addle addle ah…I knew that I would now)

I go down to the Young Uns to get her and have a quick moment with Charlie, tell him his future’s safe, get a good luck kiss and a loud giggle from him and we’re off…

It’s only a short drive to the Halfway House Pub that I’d told everyone we were meeting at, the same pub as last season…only it wasn’t…I get a call from Tommo a few minutes into the journey ‘I’m at the pub but it’s called the Junction, NOT Halfway House’…err….yeah, I knew that…it was close enough…considering how bad my memory is I thought it was pretty damned good TBH…A bit of rearranging to let everyone know and we get there in plenty of time for a drink and a pre match natter.

When we’d done Tommo and Jamie got into our car and we led the way to the ground as the others weren’t sure of the directions, so followed behind…Oh aye…everyone following ME!

We get out of the pub, the very first roundabout and Tommo says ‘Take the first exit’…I said, are you sure it isn’t that one up there? ‘No, take this’…so I did…and as we pull off he says…’Oh yeah, it shoulda been that one’

BASSAD! You know what they’re gonna be saying in the cars behind us don’t you?
They’ll say ‘Fookin Beastie the bassad! Gerrin lost already!’
So I waz it round and we get back to that roundabout…just to make sure they’re still following I go all the way round and back again….they DID follow though all the way round the roundabout…that’ll teach em to bad mouth me without me being able to hear it…and we’re back on track…

Next roundabout we come to and a bus pulls across in front of us and as he’s going VERY slow, the driver is doing that shuffling motion, rocking backwards and forward to make the bus go faster. WHAT THE FOOK!
You do realise how fookin big that bastard is you’re driving don’t you mate? It’s not a fookin sledge!

A bit further on and I’m told by Tommonav to take a left at the next roundabout…are you sure?
Oh aye…straight down there….
As we get halfway across and stop at the lights…Tommonav says ‘Oh no…we want to be down there’
Bollocks!

So I try to nip across this juggermanaut whilst he’s doing the rocking motion to get his rig going faster and….stall the fookin car…like a girl…BASSAD!
And again, I know what they’re gonna be saying in the cars behind me….in a their little girly voices ‘Fookin Beastie’ and as I look in me mirror I can make out some strange sign language….
I restart and still nip in front as the driver is still shuffling away trying to build up speed…he wasn’t right chuffed when Salop nipped in front of him though at the last second and fook knows where JFD had gone…we decided to cut him loose…forget about him, he’d become expendable…he’d taken one for the team…

This was another of those games where I’m sure it would have been closer if we’d parked at home…it was a right trek and by the time we got to the ground Salop was blowing like a bastard but we made it…just in time to see a flash of ginger outside the turnstiles…I wondered what it was…it was like some great ginger mirage…had we been starved of oxygen on that long trek from the car park? Were we now seeing ginger hallucinations?

It scared me a bit and stopped most of us in our stride for a moment…until we realised that it was Jonnyboy and he’d grown a tache well TBH, it scared us even more when we realised what it was, this tache he’d grown for some strange reason had come out in the brightest most golden ginger anyone had ever seen… We wouldn’t sleep tonight after seeing that.

We whispered to each other ‘Don’t look right at it and you’ll be fine’…we all tried to avoid it’s lure…but it was no good, it was hypnotic…everywhere you went it followed you, it was like them scary paintings on the old Hammer Horror fillums ‘The Curse of the Ginger Tache’…. it followed you round the room…or all the way through the turnstiles…if it got behind you it made you shiver…and up to the seats, you could feel it’s eerie presence right up there and as he took up his seat the Dingles in the far stand all shielded their eyes….such was the brightness of its gingosity.

-
THE MATCH
-

Hollie was late to her seat as she’d needed to make a visit and no sooner had she made her way right to the back of the stand to us, than we got the corner and Tommy nobbed the ball home…we went fookin mental. I jumped on Jonny, recoiled momentarily as the tache snarled at me, then went back in…I grabbed the young lads from the row behind…GET THE FOOK IN YOU BASSADS! You’re future’s safe Charlie…it’s safe….just 88 more minutes to hang on!

Fook me this was brilliant…what a start…it didn’t last long though, as Barnsley made their way down our right and Soares and Potter went to block and hold them up but Halfredsson still managed put a wicked cross in that went over a back-pedalling Granty and into the net for the equaliser…SPOZZY BASTARDS!
We were gutted…couldn’t believe it…IT WASN’T EVEN A FOOKIN SHOT!
Bollox! 

Of course the Barnsley fans loved it and to our right they matched our mental celebrations from minutes ago…SHIT!

It was around this time that I noticed North Stand Man and the North Stand Boys stood in the row in front of us...all looking equally pissed off at the equaliser…

There were murmurs of ‘typical fookin Wednesday, can’t hold onto a lead’ and it was difficult to argue with em…

The good thing here was that as a team we didn’t lose our way…we kept our discipline, we kept our shape and more importantly, we didn’t lose our heads and the fans rallied for the team and upped the noise level…

Mindst you, every one of us held our breath when Purse headed back almost from the halfway line, with Bogdanovic breathing right down his neck…he was never gonna get that back to Granty from there and it fell perfectly into the path of the quick as fook Barnsley striker who hurtled headlong towards goal for what seemed a certain lead for his team…

As he ran forward, Purse toiling in his wake…my heart missing a beat and images of Charlie in a Barnsley shirt flashing through my mind…

FOOK!

FOOK! 

Sorry Charlie…

…all he had to do now was keep his composure and leather it and it was goodnight Vienna…instead he just kept going…and going…with no idea or foresight as to what he was gonna do with the ball…and with only Granty to beat…he failed…he fookin gloriously, wonderfully, absobastardfookinlutely royally fooked it up…

Granty kept his cool and stayed strong, he blocked the eventual feeble shot and then had a right go at Purse…and rightly so…he'd almost cost us dearly...and as Purse took the fooking, Bogdanovic sat just off the pitch, wondering how he’d managed NOT to score…

My heart got back into it’s natural rhythm again….and the Wednesday fans regained their composure and lifted the noise level again….soon after there was a fabulous move where Tudgay flicked on the most sublime ball for O Connor run onto without breaking stride and to leather at the goal, which Steele in the Bransley net did very well to push away and onto the outside of the post…great shot, cracking save....

It all came together 10 minutes or so later when Tudders from a superb pass by Lewis Buxton, sublimely nodded the ball on and JJ pounced on it, giving it a right royal fookin twatting goalwards and into the back of the net…

I was having the North Standers this time and leapt gazelle like, landing hippo like on top of them…GET IN!
As we’re celebrating and I’m grabbing everyone, in front and behind, I just caught a glimpse of Hollie flying through the air as she jumped from the row above to land square on my noggin, it went dark for a bit until I recovered and she seemed to just stay on me head, like some kind of hat…it was mayhem, it was fookin brilliant…

70 minutes to go Charlie…70 minutes…COME ON!

The half just seemed to flash away now and ended with us attacking the Barnsley net again and it was the outstanding, rejuvenated JJ that danced his way forward and into the Barnsley box just getting off a shot but the ball got stuck under his feet and went tamely to Steele just before the whistle went and we finished the half on the up...time to calm down a bit now...deep breaths...Come on Beastie, breathe, nice and slow...calm down....

It didn’t help though…I was still feeling sick, me head was pounding and me nerves were at their edgiest so far…it had been a right contest so far, a cracking Yorkshire derby, as good as anyone could have hoped for and a proper rollercoaster ride…I don’t think I could take another 45 like that…

I couldn’t…

For most of the second half I spent sat down, with my hood over my head in absolute bits…and the daft thing is, we played very well second half (what I saw) and were very strong as a team.
And that was across the board…across the back, suddenly Purse remembered what to do and didn’t put a foot wrong defensively, OK, his distribution was absolute shite and brought pressue back on us straight away but that aside the back 4 protected Grant very well….the midfield too, did their part, not only in going forward but shielding the defence and up front JJ continued to play an absolute blinder….

During this second half the Wednesday fans were magnificent, truly magnificent…

The noise FFS!
Alan Irvines Barmy Army…the way it builds up, just behind us…so fookin loud, then…drifts away…as the game goes on or something happens, mybe the ball goes out, less people sing and it gets so faint….so very distant….but there’s always a least one lone voice that keeps it going….and gradually it builds back up…gathering volume all the time as more and more rejoin the singing….building it right back up…RIGHT BACK UP!…To that wonderful cacophony…and that went on for so long…it was wonderful, wonderful stuff…

There were a couple of ‘heated’ moments this half, one where the Barnsley fans were absolutely adamant that we’d handballed it and all started sticking their hands up shouting and appealing to the ref for the handball…that’s quite an unnerving sight I can tell you when the person to finger ratio is all to cock, still it took me mind off the ginger tache…for a while…the ref was having none of it either, he wasn’t listening…but the Wednesday fans were on it in a flash, taking the piss mercilessly as every Wednesday fan started mimicking them shouting ‘HANDBALL!’ at the slightest thing…All waving our hands about, (only this time with the right number of fingers obviously) pointing to our hands and shouting HANDBALL! It continued to the end from that point, for anything and everything and whenever the Barnsley fans whinged about a refereeing decision the shouts got louder.

The other moment late on was when there was a foul in the corner right between the two sets of fans and the argy bargy between the players got the rival fans all het up too with some daft sods trying to actually climb over the stewards to get to each other….

These were brief highlights I caught if I’m honest because as I said, I couldn’t watch the game and in that last 10 to 15 minutes it was unbearable…. If spent most of the half not looking and on edge then that last 15 minutes are the sort of thing that drive you to an early grave….I sat there looking down, burning a hole into me watch, thought if I concentrate really hard, we’ll get through this…concentrate and make that fookin clock tick faster…12 minutes to go…I told Hollie…She sighed at me…I know, I know…fookin soft and fookin daft…the only connection I had to the game was the crowds response…I was desperate to hear cheers close to me and not those from afar…every now and again I’d get a tap on the head to tell me we were ‘safe’ and I’d stand up…when we lost it seconds later I sit straight back down again…10 minutes left…HOLLIE! 10 minutes left…the look of despair on her face….Tap-tap…we got the ball I’m up….when they got it back down I went…OH LORDY LORDY! I felt sick…8 minutes left….my head was pounding, my heart was fit to burst and I was digging my fingers into me forehead…Come on…Come on!…COME ON! FOOKIN COME ON!

5 minutes left…I was fit to burst…3 minutes to go…Tap tap…Substitution JJ off, Sodje on…A standing ovation for JJ, he’d done a wonderful job today and a bit opf singing for Sodje…I sat back down…

That’s it time up…I stood up…the bastard fourth bastard official holds the bastard board up…5 bastard minutes.

5 FOOKIN BASTARD MINUTES!?!

WHERE THE FOOK DID HE GET THEM FROM?

TBF, I hadn’t a clue as I hadn’t seen most of it anyway…but another 5 minutes of agony…

I sat back down…Heart pounding, head aching, fingers burrowing into my forehead and eyes burning into the clock…

3 minutes….the Barnsley fans blathering….2 minutes…more handball chants from Wednesday…1 minute…I’m gonna be sick…tap tap…I stand up…They’re just outside our box…we hoof it away…Hollie says, ‘He’s looked at his watch already’ and as the ball sailed through the air the ref blew..

OH FOOKIN LORDY FOOKIN LORDY!

It was all too much…it was just so fookin emotional…I couldn’t take it…I buried me face in the young un and hugged her for all I was worth…It was a bit of a moment for me…

When I recovered we all celebrated with each other…JFD, Jonny, Leroy, Salop, the North Standers…it was fooking excellent…

I cannot tell you how emotional this made me today...it was wonderful...and scary...and wonderful....and nerve wracking....and wonderful...

That performance today from Beevers was his very best, the potential, the reason everyone was singing his name a couple of seasons ago...and why every fooker wants him. I dunno where he's been for the last few months but welcome back youth, welcome back…. Buxton too was simply outstanding and never put a foot wrong and those along with the uber consistent James O Connor and the revitalised JJ went a hell of a long way to making this victory but every single player played his part….

I was watching yesterday particliarly to see if we kept out shape and it was very noticeable that we kept it well. There were only a couple of times that it went astray at the back but that's acceptable, it's never going to be 100% but the likes of Soares and Gray helped us do that….and it’s a great part of why, although Barnsley had plenty of play in our half, especially late on, and it looked like we were under the cosh at times, they never really threatened the goal and Grant hardly had anything to do second half. Our midfield were very influential in all this and all across the field everyone knew their role and stuck to the task right to the last, something else we haven’t done in the past, we don’t keep our concentration right to the final whistle…today we did…or I’m led to believe we did…I didn’t really see.

Sure enough we had a bit of luck today, some things went our way, Potter clearing OFF the line, the ref waving away what looked a certain penalty but it’s about time we had that rub of the green, but we were also good value for this win, we were the better, more creative side and had by far the more meaningful shots on target, in fact I can’t remember Granty having much to do second half.

It was also a pretty good tactical battle from the two managers. For Irvine to go with this line-up in this formation was incredible, but I think Robins deserves some kudos for his substations. He made three at once second half and they had an immediate impact on the game and gave Barnsley fresh impetus, which they needed desperately at that moment in the game.

It all made for one of the most ‘enjoyable’ results and most difficult to watch games I’ve experienced and as the teams walked off and the beauty of this ground is where the tunnel is positioned, in the corner of the away end…the players and manager walked towards a wall of sound…I don’t know how many times Alan Irvine will have experienced owt like that, certainly at an away game but it must have been a fur up moment for him and something that not only makes him gawk in awe but something that makes him shudder with anticipation at the job ahead…

To Alan Irvine and all the players….THANK YOU.

Charlie is a Wednesdayite!

Cheers

Steve:Beastie
Owls Alive


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