What a fucking week. Tuesday was magic but the rest can get in the sea. That's my life though and my life isn't interesting. Why the fuck would I think you'd care cos your life is probably not a jolly barrel organ tune all the time either... Football is much more interesting than that shite and I'm going to an actual game.... I'm looking forward to it so much that there's even a tiny regret that we're so far in front. I really want a proper game of football. Promotion and all of that is great, but part of me just wants to live through a game in its own right and feel it. Properly. Tension. Anger. Release. Frustration. Delight. All of that please.
The skies are dark and dramatic as I approach Bloomfield. This is nearly July and yet it looks and feels like November. I see a car with the reg 'GAZ' ahead of me at the lights at the top of the road of dreams. That's got to be a sign. The Bloomfield is buzzing. There's kids with facepaint having their picture taken. A lady is gossiping with her neighbour and I overhear her surprised remark about 'it looks like there's a game on.' A fella with lots of tattoos smokes in the doorway of his flat, all tightly sprung menace, watching the crowds pass by, a look of surly, dangerous resentment in his eyes.
I fucking hate the paper tickets. It pisses down briefly as we walk up and I'm convinced they're going to turn to mush and then I'll get turned away. Perhaps this is a dream that is about to become a nightmare?
Critch surveys our warm up with a clinical eye. The noise builds. Oxford leave to a chorus of boos. Our players leave to a rapturous send off. A fine rain begins to fall. This is a football match. We even cheer the names in the line up and we've not done that for ages. Demi is in for Keshi but otherwise it's unchanged.
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Pool start well. We move it nicely, we probe, we shift the ball about, we try different angles. The best moment is a cute little Ellis Simms back header. It's not that dangerous, but it's just the sort of thing a player in form tries and a player out of form doesn't. The press. The press. Oh, the press... It's fucking brilliant. A thing of beauty. They can't get out. We pin them in. We're tigerish, we're so alert.
But... Ballard concedes a free kick on their left. They cross. It's not cleared well and there's a low drive from one side of goal into the bottom corner of the other. Shit. I sit down. Anyone of a certain age knows what I'm thinking. I stand up. Come on POOL!
Demi intercepts. He spreads to Embleton. Embo must give it, there's an overlap. The greedy get goes inside again, he's going to run into a man and waste it, but no! He's sent his man with his eyes, shaping one way, then going the other and he's drifting right through and he's digging out a beautiful, beautiful curler, and now he's running away arms aloft and I am going mental and so is everyone else. Jerry is behind the goal, he's whipping the fans up and we're drinking it in, delirious, joyous, release... Fuck you Bradford. This is not a repeat.
It's a corner. Embleton goes to the far post, Ballard chases, twists into an almost impossible shape, nods back brilliantly and Dougall leaps and forces home. Same again. It's a cauldron of noise. This is everything I wanted. This is wonderful.
We control the half. I've never especially rated Stewart on the laptop but in the flesh, he's much more impressive and a gorgeous outside of the foot pass sees Jerry almost through. Simms and Demi combine and shirtless Jerry fires it into a defender. Embleton this time does use the overlap, Garbutt finds Simms who hits the hits legs of defender. Demi goes wide, he's slowed it right down, he's teasing, teasing, waiting and waiting then bang! He goes, so quick, so sudden, so direct and his half cross cross half shot is tipped away. He's playing really well.
Maxwell has a chipped pass, a lovely, perfect lofted ball over the top. Yates kills it perfectly. Is Maxwell a keeper? Are we sure? I honestly don't think I've ever seen one better with his feet. Jerry is just crowded out, but the ball breaks to Ballard.. SHOOOT! go the crowd, but sadly wor Dan doesn't take the invite, you can tell he thinks of it, but instead he just lays it sideways and runs back to the defence almost embarrassed at not quite knowing what to do.
We're so on top we're already requesting waves from our heroes. We get one from Simon. We get one from Critch. There's an either an absurd (and unpunished) dive by their 17 or my eyesight is really going. Maxwell however, is booked for arguing an offside. It's a petty booking to give and then the ref seems happy with Demi getting battered and Ballard's ankles getting twatted. No bookings for aggressive foul play or blatent cheating, but questioning the linesman is out of order seemingly. ---
It's been superb. We've cruised it after the early mishap. We're class. I can't believe the quality in the flesh. We're just so commanding and we rarely waste the ball. Oxford are far from a bad side but they knock it out of play from time to time or hit the odd pointless pass and we just don't do that. Demi is a proper whippet, I really enjoy watching him play. Dougall just makes a mockery of the fact we once couldn't live without Spearing. Yates has so much presence for a smaller front man. He uses his body so well, he knocks much bigger players off balance, he's always trying to roll his man, he's just relentless in his movement. Ollie Turton isn't the same player I last watched live. He just fits perfectly. He looks twice as good. Last time I was here (15 months back), I wrote a blog about the lovable idiosyncrasies and tragi-comic repeated failings of some of our team. There's none of that today. They all just look totally comfortable. They look like they know exactly what they're doing and the most impressive thing is how they make the prodigious effort of keeping a decent enough side like Oxford pinned back look easy. They're working so hard, but it's not desperate effort, it's controlled energy. This is a machine of a team.
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Big Marv is on. Ballard has gone. I hope it's not the ankle he got hit on... (Critch reveals afterwards it's not.) We've not played for long when Oxford hit the post. It's a scare but at the same time, there's something really satisfying about hearing the thump of the ball on the post again. Then they get it wide and play in a floaty ball… and it's just headed in... That was weird. It was a really easy goal. It's not iFollow, so I can't rewind or anything and I don't know who to point at as a result, but it was quite bizarre how simple it was. Surely it can't go wrong now? It can't, can it? Surely not!
Simms takes and lays off well, Demi scampers away down the right, taking it wide, he knocks over a flatish cross, Ellis stretches but it's a touch too high.. Jerry is there at the far post, he takes it down with one touch and then bang. Shot to the head, ball in the opposite corner and I just can't get enough of this game and this Pool team. The sniper hits the target. Perfect. It had to include a Jerry goal and here it is.
Maxwell is brilliant with his feet again, as he has been all year, he takes it under pressure, and he not only clears it but it's a decent ball forward. He's absolutely cleaned out a second later though. I'm apoplectic. It's a pointless, dangerous late challenge and Maxwell is the one player we don't have anything like a like for like replacement for and he looks hurt. I'm immediately thinking it's a red for a nasty, badly timed challenge. The ref shows a yellow and I lose it. I'm angry, but fucking hell, does it feel good to be hurling foul mouthed invective at a referee. The bottling twat.
Two minutes later a little trip from Stewart. Yellow card. Fucking dickhead ref.
Kenny Dougall though. Great work, a tackle, it's a 50/50 and he falls, but he just bounces up, tackles again, and then again and comes through with the ball, plays it out to Demi. Off he goes again, a cross to the near post, Simms darts onto it, hits it first time, side netting.
Oxford free kick. Ref does a stupid repeating blackbird type whistle. Then he does it again, marching over to deal with some pushing looking like a jumped up deputy head compensating for his lack of control over his own life by meting out pointless playground punishments. I really have taken against him and I'm usually fairly sanguine about referees. They're no worse than they ever were, they're going to get shit wrong sometimes and we should live with that but this lad is a knobhead. Petty one moment, laid back the next.
Sub time and wor Gaz, Keshi and Gabriel are on. They've barely settled in when Oxford cross from wide again. Maxwell paws it out. It's bounced. then seems to be cleared but as it happens, it turns out not to have been cleared and someone pops up and pokes it in. Again, it just sort of happened. Since Ballard has gone off there's been a kind of hesitancy in the defence which is quite atypical of our season of late.
Garbutt has a free kick. Madine gets free and heads it well, but it's saved. Oxford aren't done thought and again, a floating ball causes doubt in the defence. It gets through to the far post, we dither and in nips one of them, a close range effort is blocked away. The man next to me looks tense and says 'It's not over this.' They get a free kick. A lady near me shouts the beautiful phrase "C'mon wall - stand tall!" and then follows it up with an admiring "Well done wall!" I've missed this so much.
We take control back. Madine holds up and his lay off is the catalyst for a simply lovely move, from one side of the pitch to another, keeping it moving, till the space opens for a wide man to be set away. The cross is in between the two strikers, but had it found one, it would have been a goal to salivate over. Jerry goes down the line and blasts at near post and it's touched over. Keshi is free a few times, but good as his running is, his efforts are a bit tame.
Oxford engage in some completely pointless shithouse behaviour, tripping people and storming round like if they can't win it, they might as well piss us off and maybe leave their mark on us. There's a bit of a scrap and one of their lads is held back by another. It seems a bit of an empty gesture when the game has gone.
I'm well beyond nerves and just soaking it up. The east is the north tonight. The crowd has been brilliant but the presumably enormous shared household grouped together just to the north of centre in the east is has been the heart of it. Now they're massing by the advertising boards. We're urged to stay off the pitch. Dougall is man of the match. There's a brilliant chorus of 'tangerine, tangerine, tangerine.' Sometimes the old ones are the best... My voice is going. I haven't felt this alive for months.
The whistle goes.
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The noise goes on. The players don't even go off to come back on. They're round the ground at the first chance. Dan Ballard is dancing stiffly, but he looks fit to burst with excitement. Yates is ahead of the pack, he's giddy as anyone in the stands. Critch is giving it fist pumping delight and applauding earnestly. There is just a touch of that man from years ago who evokes more feeling than any other manager in the way he shows that calm surface but is clearly raging with passion on the inside. Billy was more expressive, more demonstrative, but Critch burns quietly. Billy was an intelligent, measured man. A good man. The best of men. Critch is a good man too. He knows the value of respect. He's got a decency that Ollie liked to project performatively but Critch seems to really possess deep down.
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Football is stupid, it's pointless but it's noise, it's people. It's something. It's special.
I fucking loved that. I needed that. I think we all did. Lets do it again in London in a week and bit?
FUCKING YES!!!!!!!
utmp
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I think that you have summed up the evening's football in a way that is beautifully written with passion, intensity and a brilliant eye for connection and detail. If you aren't a professional football writer then why not?
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