Ok, let's do this. You don't want flim flam. This is the FA Cup and it's here and now. So it's into the car and it's the almighty noise of the Membranes as loud as the car will play them. It's the tower, shining in shimmering multi colour glory against a coal black backdrop. It's 1953 (and all that.) We're on fucking telly and we're in tbe cup still and we're going to win the fucking thing. Then we'll win whatever European shit we get entered into afterwards. Promotion? Who needs that mundane crap? Death or Glory awaits. No formbook shite, no crappy tables and fucking goal difference accountant wank.
Even Critch looked a bit excited in his pre match interview and didn't bang on about tough games and respecting the opposition. Kind of like I imagine he looks when he's changed the screen wash and has popped a new air freshener (restrained scent to avoid distracting odours when driving) in the Volvo and is looking forward to checking the oil.
Literally, what's not to love about this? Team full of right wing backs. Super Sonny at the ready. Let's smash them dodgy green jumper wearing, Josh Bowler stealing, play off semi final losing impending Premier League charge victims into next week.
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It's like an actual football match. Two proper sets of fans trading songs. Ice on the touchlines. A rock hard pitch and a Pool side snarling out of the traps. Ok, not so much snarling as doing a slightly cross face and going 'grrrrr' in a flat voice but we're definitely the better side initially, forcing them to kick it out of play and generally look a bit rubbish. Albie Morgan has a shot. All is good.
'They don't want this' I wisely pronounce and then they almost score, Grimmy sprawling flat to the ground to claw away a downward header.
Then they do score. A corner, a flick and someone in an absolutely outrageous amount of space taps it home. I'm not a defensive coach, but I'd imagine someone who was would say 'didn't quite get that one right chaps'
Forest have grown into the game as a whole and generally keep us at arms length. Hubby and Connolly have not only got boots on the wrong feet but have possibly got each others boots on the wrong feet. The marauding centre back tactic looks a bit more like a strategy to release a couple of clowns up the pitch as they trade increasingly hilarious wild attempted passes.
It's stodgy and frustrating. We're not rubbish, but we're nowhere near good. Carey isn't on fire by any means but briefly flickers into life, spraying a lovely pass wide, sprinting and missing the glancing header on the return. His flame is doused. CJ is peripheral and can't get the space to accelerate. Morgan has another shot but it's never ever going in. We're kind of chasing shadows. I can hear Critch saying 'good areas but lacking quality' as he always does when we can't make anything really happen. There's Marvin at the far post though somehow. Here we go... but there's the shot and it's whistled across the goal getting no touch.
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Forest look better than us basically.
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I'm not really concentrating. It's cold and I'm thinking about my feet when I suddenly tune in to see that where there was seemingly nothing happening, Grimmy is now throwing himself at the feet of one of them and making a fine stop but the ball is breaking and it's a low, hard effort, Grimmy is totally bypassed and Marv on the line can only wave a leg at it, like a cricketer trying to defend a ball on the stumps with a thin garden cane and the ball deflects off him and into the net. I've still not watched it back, but I'm assuming someone fucked up somewhere whilst I was dreaming of something else but hey, this is a blog about a dickhead going to a game, not a court of law so I'm fucked if I'm checking whose fault it all was.
Game. Over.
Except it really isn't. It's kind of just the beginning. Grimmy waves to the bench. He's been injured making that earlier save, his pain all in vain. Gary Goalie is coming on. I used to think Gary Goalie was just a reliable and amiable lad from Rochdale who we got cos he would sit on the bench without complaining. My view now is that Gary Goalie is some kind of hitherto unacknowledged creative spark cos basically, he enters, all reassuring height, stubble and sleeve tattoos, and it all goes mad. The man has short sleeves on like he's playing for Mexico and it's about the same temperature as Siberia. Love it.
We chase, we huff, we puff. Then though, just as it seems almost inevitable Forest will score again , the ball ricochets around in the box and Albie Morgan whistles it home beautifully, a perfect connection, the ball rising into the net and lighting a fire inside Bloomfield that will burn for the rest of the game. Another fine goal from a young lad who is looking like an increasingly fine player. That's only the beginning of it.
Critch is ignited too. He makes more subs. Attacking ones at that. Rhodes, Sonny and CJ hasn't been the most effective attacking triangle so it's Dembele, Joseph and Lavery to see what they can do.
Now we're in business. Where we looked hopeful and a bit leggy, we now look precision engineered for a specific purpose, breaking with pace, chasing with intent, dangerously charging at Forest with the ball and snapping at them without it. Lavery is a wasp. With Joseph beside him, the pair of them become a swarm, Lavery all hustle and acceleration and Joseph flitting across the front line, a combination of rangy physical presence with touch, pace, skill and desire. Their relentless pace is greater than the sum of their parts.
The crowd is here too. It might be half empty but the noise is worthy of ten of this season's league games put together. Gabriel is battling. Hey! Heeeeeeey Babeeeeeey! One tackle from behind is man is worthy of a place in our hall of fame, such is the timing and determination.
It would be impossible to sum it up chance by chance. I'd be here for hours. We just keep going at them. The noise rises. Forest are shaking. The momentum is with us.
Nice interplay on the left. Lyon, surging, has he gone to far? He lifts the cross, it's hanging and there is Kyle Joseph bundling the ball in. We erupt. There's a sideways surge into the empty seats on my row and I'm ten seats away. Yes... ! Scream in delight. Take a moment to soak it in as the occupants of the stand opposite go wild, our collective delight embodied, framed by the extremities of the stand as a picture of joy. Go again. Scream again. YESSSSS!
By now, too much has happened for me to keep listing it. An impression will have to do. It's end to end. There's runs down the left. Jimmy finally warming up and starting to flow. There's Dembele not quite pulling of some moments of magic, There's Lavery spinning his man and haring away. There's tussles and clashes and bookings and chanting. Glorious noise. Allez, Allez. For the first time in ages, the game has me hoarse, drained and happy. SEASIDE! (Barmy Army!)
There's 10 minutes of added time. There's so much Pool pressure. We can win this. We nearly do. There's head in hands from what I can't remember because it's all a blur of racing tangerine. There a save or two from Gary Goalkeeper, one a particular good close one on an angle and there's Dembele...
Oh, Kaddy. I don't think I can relive it. He's breaking... He's done his man, he's in... The keeper is coming and it's all set for him to slide it, or maybe lift it, or maybe shimmy and put him on his arse and then juggle the ball over him because this is Karamoko Dembele and he's so fucking good that he's not going to fuck this up and we're in the next round and... he's taken it wide. Why's he done that? Kaddy? Oh no. The chance has gone.
I need to lie down. Oh, fuck. There's more.
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Take a breath. Wow. Right. More please.
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We get more. Some of the below could have happened earlier. Or later. It doesn't matter. This isn't about cataloguing the game in a spreadsheet. It's a night for the raw feeling of football. The loosening of normality as you turn into a bating and swaying animal, howling in desperation as Gabriel tumbles in the box, screaming for a hand ball moments after. Roaring on Joseph as he twists and bursts forward, a hurly burly mixture of brawn and skill. For the first time in forever, I'm not yearning for Jerry Yates.
Morgan hitting it first time. OLLIE NORBURN STOP APPEALING FOR SHIT YOU HAVEN'T GOT AND PLAY ON FOR FUCKS SAKE MAN!. Marvin is playing beautifully. I know he's a chaos engine but he's by about a million miles our best pure defender. Jimmy stops one by basically lying down in the way of the ball. Jimmy has a fight with one of them. I don't care if he's not had his best game ever, Jimmy transcends mere football competence. Jimmy tries to trip one of them and it's fucking brilliant the way their lad rides the contact. You see quality in little things like that at games that you can't see on TV.
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It's a dream. I love football. All of it. The fuck ups and misplaced passes and the way tired players on a cold night are all out of position and it's unravelling into a playground battle that is 30000% more engaging than all the precision tactics of a 'perfect' game because you can see yourself in it. You can see the football you used to play, wild and ragged and desperate.
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They're a rule breakingly expensive squad that can piss Josh Bowler up the wall and we're really not. We're just a bit leggy now and Forest work it down the right. The bleach blonde haired lad gets it in the box. His feet are quick. Ours are heavy. He squares it. Chris Wood. Gary Goalie can't get near it.
Oh. Blackpool. My heart breaks. We don't deserve that. So much given and that underwhelming tun of the mill goal is the reward? Football eh?
There's more. We're so tired it's painful to watch. Even Morgan can't pass it now. Everything is under or over hit. We're dead on our feet, but we're still alive somehow.
Oh my fucking life there's OUR KEEPER UP FRONT FOR A CORNER. THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER IN THE WORLD AND THE BALL HAS COME TO HIM!!!
Even Gary Goalie with all his game changing presence can't turn the magic of tonight into a full blown miracle though and whilst he gets to hack at it, it's quickly robbed, they break and have a shot from the halfway line but it sails wide... Their miss is greeted like a goal. Exactly as it should be.
A free kick. Last ditch. I'm actually praying I think. I'm not doing it deliberately. If we score this, it will make a wonderful game last longer. It will add icing to an already fabulous cake. C'mon Pool...
It's not to be.
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All I can sum up with is that football is often shit. It's often boring or frustrating or unsatisfying. Sometimes though, it's like nothing else in the world. That's the deal. Put up with when it's rubbish and sometimes it's the best thing ever. We lost, but I feel like we won. We didn't and I'm not being all 'football was the real winner' but there was noise and fight and blood and thunder and we took them to the line and we gave everything and more. Maybe football is just some stuff that we should enjoy and have a good time at? I don't just mean the fans. I mean everyone in the game. Fuck the league with all it's seriousness and tiered payments and empty, joyless treadmill inevitability and precarious financial implications for failure. It's football. Play to win and fuck it. Sometimes you don't. Go again. Sing. Let go. C'MON YOU POOOOOOL.
Cup football is pure soul cleansing magic. I was wrong in the intro though. Tonight was both death AND glory.
We love you Blackpool. We do.
(Should bring Gary Goalie on more often.)
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