This carpark is a wasteland that could be anywhere. A lorry reverses slowly across it then performs alarmingly sharp u-turn to reverse back to whence it came. This could be a metaphor for something but I can't think what. Life or something or other.
It's spring. The fragments of broken glass that adorn the concrete glitter in the fitful bursts of sunshine. Light dances on greyness then disappears as the cloud returns. There's a flag pole, the union jack twists restlessly one way and then the other. Around the wasteland are buildings that seem to be competing to be the most anonymous thing in sight. There is nothing green, save for the clipped grass of a roundabout and some scrubby sickly looking verges. Everything is straight lines, measured angles and litter caught in brambles.
A trailer sits without anything to pull it. The text on the side advertises "CERAMICS-HERITAGE-FAMILY FUN" and implores us to 'VISIT STOKE' - the main picture they've used to illustrate Stoke's potential as a hitherto underappreciated aspect of Britain's tourist industry is a quite dilapidated looking red brick industrial building. This seems seems an odd choice.
Maybe we're setting our holiday destination ambitions lower these days what with stuff and things that have been going on and that.
Anyway, I have visited Stoke before. I am Right Here. Right Now. I don't need to be told. I like Stoke. I partly like it cos it's a place other people don't like and I'm a bit contrary like that and partly because my experiences here have been generally of decent people. I like the barge that sells ale on the canal. I like that the turnstile blokes banter with my lad and the stewards run after him and give him a programme. People are shitty about Stoke for the same reasons people are shitty about Blackpool. Not everywhere is Tunbridge Wells is it? Fuck off. Those people who write those 'shit towns' books are on my list of people for 'after the revolution' Be warned if you are one of them. Srsly.
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Critch swaps out Jezza for Shayne and brings in Reece James at left back with Dujon Sterling going to play in place of Jordan Gabriel. It's a football cliche to point out that the Begambleawareandwhenthefunstopsstop Stadium is cold, but nonetheless, I am going to point out that it is cold.
In the warm up, Jerry looks all wrong. His finishing is really bad. Like, really really bad. So bad that he smacks someone straight on the head as he puts it over the safety netting behind the goal then slices one wide like a shit kid at primary school. I notice Mike Garrity does this thing where he shadows players as they shoot, but he never shadows Gaz. Maybe he's a bit scared of him. I sometime wonder if Steve Banks is the best striker at the club. He's fucking ace at shooting. To be fair, he's also really good at crossing the ball too. Why don't we put Banksy on corners?
Our end fills up. I can't see any empty seats. They play one of those stupid really loud 'club songs' and it's shite. We clap for what sounds suspiciously like the PA bloke calls 'Ukrania' - the noise builds and we're off and straight into it.
This isn't one of those games where I can be arsed with remembering what happened in all the right order. Shit happened. We were pretty good at the beginning and CJ had the best of the early play. Dougall was on it from the first minute being all disruptive. Lavery was waspish. Big Gaz got about. Stoke didn't look very good.
Stoke skim one across the face of goal. Thorniley looks mightily relieved when a ball to the far post goes away from goal not into it off him. Nick Powell has a really bad finish on the end of a move that sliced us open. It's so bad, it makes Jerry's warm up antics look positively lethal finishing.
CJ again. GO ON CEEEJ!!!! He's got a short ball to Lavery or a floated ball to Madine. He does neither, hacking it into a defender. Bowler is onto the rebound though, turning it round the corner to Madine. Gary is in full on tricky oil tanker mode as he shifts his balance and sends the defender. He's free! He lines up the shot, he hammers the shot. The keeper and a defender both sprawl, it beats the former but the latter blocks it. The ball pops up and JOSH BOWLER HEADS IT! JOSH BOWLER HEADS THE BALL!!! (weakly and well wide)
We ping it left and right. Reece James is the penultimate bit of a lovely move that sees a cross floated that Madine rises and reaches, forcing a sprawling save from the keeper. C'mon the Pool!!!
We're all good, except somehow Josh Maja (who will for evermore be 'that lad who was a bit snide about how he left Sunderland on Netflix') sneaks in and hits the post. It was weird as hell. The defence didn't really know what was going on and even the sainted lord of the still quite neat beard Grimshaw kind of half dived like he thought it was going well wide when it wasn't
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To be honest, it's a scrappy game, even if we are the better team. We keep having misplaced Stoke passes to cheer but we've missed our chances and it feels like Stoke shouldn't be as poor as they were again.
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I don't know if Stoke aren't as poor or we're not as good, but we really struggle to make anything happen. The second half is like eating porridge that's gone a bit cold and thick. Passes go all over the place. Stoke keep trying through balls but they're dreadful. We're really finding it difficult to turn pressure into efforts on goal. We get a corner. Kenny can't beat the man at the near post, even though Thorniley has come short and is putting him off.
We get a free kick. Kenny lifts it cleverly. Gaz (of all people) bursts through but the keeper is alert. We have another free kick on the edge of the box. I can't remember what happened to it. That tells you about our dead ball prowess today I think.
Bowler sets off. His run against PNE was one of the greatest things I've ever seen and he pulls out a carbon copy of it. He's Colin fucking Jackson in the 110 metre hurdles as he vaults one filthy slide after another. He sways after flying past two, cuts inside, leaves another two for dead before just being unable to control the pace of the ball and running it out of play, before colliding with the advertising hoardings. What a player, what a fucking player. Drink him in. Drink every second of him in.
Reece James is not quite leaving the same impression. He gets all mixed up. He gets knocked off the ball. He drops passes short. He hooks passes out of play. He has time. Gary is left, Shayne is right. James goes straight up the middle on to the head of Jagielka. Stoke have a bit of a chance. James is miles away from where a left back should be. Marvin (I think) tidies up.
"Fuck off you fat luminous cunt!" The linesman is not endearing himself. The ref neither. We're used to this. Big Gaz has a right radge at both the lino and the ref and I think we all feel that's fair enough considering the shite we've had in the last few weeks. Gaz speaks for us all.
Stoke bring on Tyrese Campbell. Finally the Begambleawareandwhenthefunstopsstop Stadium makes a little bit of noise as they like Campbell. That worries me. I don't know owt about him other than Stoke fans like him and I wonder what they know that we don't know.
It's getting edgy. Thorniley goes down in a heap. A bloke behind me explodes "He just fucking hit him. In the back of the head. In the back of the head! He just hit him" - I haven't seen it so I can't verify if it was assault or accident, but Thorniley stays down. Oliver Casey comes on to add to the jitters. Casey and James isn't exactly the pairing you'd want. We try to calm ourselves by singing about Jerry Yates. I fucking love Jerry. Everyone loves Jerry.
"They're going to fucking win this. Best team by miles us, but they'll fucking score now. I'm telling you" From my left comes a burst of optimism. From below me, comes a substitute. We sang his name and here he is. Lavery takes an age to leave. Yates leans into the pitch, touches fists with Shayne and explodes onto it.
Come on Pool. I'm just thinking how shit it would be if the lad up the row is right and how it seems typical that they seem to have loads of subs you've heard of like Campbell and Fletcher and we're throwing on Ollie Casey and just have some kids from Crewe on the bench that I'm not sure Critch fancies that much really when it comes down to it and actually, how 0-0 would be really much better than losing 1-0 when Yates take it quite deep, now Bowler, now Yates again and there's the little bit of magic from him, a little shimmy and a lovely touch and there's Josh Bowler and there's the ball in the back of the net.
Everything folds in on itself. There's suddenly a bloke next to me who was 4 rows back. I scream at him, he screams at me. The guy in front has turned around and we grab him. Another random face is screaming and I'm still shouting. The ball has been in the net for 20 seconds and still it's just noise. Just noise. Pure white (tangerine) noise. Nothing else exists other than this noise and I am part of it. It's flows through me and is all around me. It's everything.
I punch the air as we chant. Scarves twirl. Scarves are held aloft. We stand on seats. I survey the crowd for a second or two. It's a sea of joy. Electric joy. Together in electric dreams. He's electric. And he scores for Pool.
Now comes the tension. Scoring late like this is a release, but then it gets nervy. Ladies and Gentleman, the fourth official is a luminous cunt who is indicating a mental amount of stoppage time. 8 fucking minutes? Fucking hell. Can I take this?
It doesn't look like I can because Stoke have breached the Casey/James side of the defence and are in. They're in. It's fucking Steve Fletcher as well. For fuck's sake. Not him... Dan Grimshaw though. He was just skinning up but he tucked it behind his ear, chucked the lighter into his sock and with ninja sharp reflexes throws himself at Fletcher, covering an astonishing amount of the available space with his arms and legs at all angles. Fletcher hits it low and true but it smacks into the man with the beard and away from goal. Fucking love Grimmy me.
Corner in. Corner away. Madine in the corner. The ball hacked out. They come again. A huge cheer as we head it away. CJ runs. CJ turns his man inside out. Bowler is shattered. Connolly on. Madine in the corner again. Gaz, footwork. Such footwork. Gaz takes twenty seconds out the game. Gaz lies on the ball. They get a throw. Gaz stops the throw by taking the ball and running away. They push Gaz over. Gaz goes over like some collapsing chimney that Fred Dibnah has demolished. Face down. Gaz gets booked. Gaz has wasted 90 seconds. We make some brilliantly dirty tackles. CJ again, CJ puts his man one way then the other. CJ is through. He goes to the corner. He's not Gaz, but he does a grand job. It's a throw. It's thrown.
THE WHISTLE GOES!!! FUCKING YES!!!.... YES!!! YES!!! YES!!!
Critchley is there. He soaks it up. He looks like he just wants to record this moment to keep in his mind. Who could begrudge him that? He surveys the stand, he thumps his badge. The little impish tinker only goes and makes a heart gesture with his two thumbs and forefingers. Neil Critchley's Tangerine Army. Pool Fans 4 Critch 4 eva. He looks like he might not leave the pitch tonight. I'm not going till he goes.
It takes forever to get out. The subs come on for a quick warm down. Jerry is grinning. Callum Connolly whacks a ball into the stand just because. Everyone cheers. A couple of women beg the stewards to let them down to the pitch level to ask Jerry for his shirt. I don't know if they relented. I hope they did. Simon Sadler is serenaded. He claps and disappears. It's been a magic day. Pure fucking magic.
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As shaky as James was, I thought Sterling played well. CJ didn't always make the right choices, but he was a proper outlet and his aerial ability is a handy thing to have. There are worse things than a winger that just keeps going. Dougall really impressed me today, Stewart again looked like he's adding a lot to the spine. I loved that Jerry came on and did something substantial cos I fucking love Jerry, but I thought Lavery played well and his use of the ball was quite canny, something I don't always associate with him.
Honestly, whilst it was a mind blowing experience, it wasn't a classic game of football but fuck that. We're not dickheads watching on SKY complaining at 'quality' are we? We're fucking football fans. On the way out, I hear a Stoke supporter say 'I envy Blackpool, they've had it bad with their owners, yeah, but they're enjoying football now. They've had up and down and now up. It's just the same, week after week, after week for us' then her mate laughs and turns to the two kids with them and says 'So, did you enjoy your first ever football match?' and part of me feels something really weirdly sentimental.
This is what it is. Shit towns, shit teams, never fucking actually winning anything, losing as many as you win, most seasons come to nothing, but fuck it. Fuck it. FUCK IT. Who would want to follow Man fucking City? I hope they did enjoy it. I hope they got bitten. I hope they understand that the glum trudge home is part of it. It's the yin to a beautiful yang.
Because some days are like this. Them Stoke kids will one day be away from home somewhere and it'll be magic. They'll be walking away from an away ground with a spring in their step and noticing how Stoke in the setting sunlight looks rather fine really all things considered. They'll feel 10 times lighter than they did on the way in. Their heart will be full of noise and people and everyone losing their shit over a magical goal and screaming in each others faces and hugging strangers just because they're alive and it feels for just a few blissful minutes of glorious relief and release like it's the best thing ever and nothing else matters or ever will.
Football is fucking magic.
Fucking loved that.
We're still 14th though? I'm sure the league is rigged against us...
Onward!
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