Blues Vs Charlton – A Report From Down Under
After staying up until stupid o’clock (3:30 AM to be precise) playing Xbox games at a relatives place the previous night, the 2 AM Sunday kick off time for Blues – Charlton was always going to be a big ask. I had planned to go to bed at around 7 PM on the Saturday night and get about 6 hours of shut eye so I could be fresh for the game when my alarm woke me up at 1:45 AM.No such luck.
Have you ever played Football Manager? I suspect so. I found a copy of FM 2006 in a shop for $5 (about 2 quid) the other day and decided that, with the majority of my entertainment stuff still floating somewhere around the Atlantic on its way to Australia, it would give me something to pass the next few weeks. It’s beginning to cost me.
Have you ever seen the screen that tells you your Addictiveness Rating and it starts off ‘Just One More Game’? Well, this is where I found myself on Sunday evening having led an average Perth Glory team to the top of the A-League at the expense of the Dwight Yorke and Steve Corica inspired Sydney FC. 7 PM rolled by, I carried on playing. 8 PM rolled by, I carried on playing. 9 PM rolled by, I carried on playing, 10:30 PM came and I finally switched it off. I eventually got to sleep close to midnight.
My alarm buzzed and my first instinct was to throw it through the window. Then I remembered that I have a blog to keep and it would look unprofessional to sleep through a game. Actually, I just can’t stand the idea of missing a Blues game and so I leaned over to switch the alarm off before grabbing my pocket torch off my bedside table. It’s pitch black in the middle of ‘the bush’ and no street lighting means that a torch is the only way I can navigate to my dressing gown and into the living room without waking most of the house up. I’m dreading the day I’m mistaken for a burglar and shot.
By the time I’d plugged in the dial up cable, plonked my laptop on the table and found Fox Sports, I’d almost fallen asleep again. I fumbled around my favourites looking for Blues World. Eventually I found it. I started up the commentary for Blues – Charlton. I was greeted by silence. Nothing. Notta. Zip. Zilch. I cleared my cache and tried to reload. Still nothing. I got angry. Then I realised that it might be my PC. So I tuned in to Torquay versus York City via the same medium. Commentary came through loud and clear. Useless. Utterly useless. Blues World that is, not York or Torquay, both of whom I quite like. Although I suppose me liking them doesn’t prevent them being useless.
I listened for a while whilst keeping one eye on the Villa versus Arsenal on TV (and I know they’re our local rivals and I wouldn’t waste water if they were on fire but anyone who makes Arsene Wenger look like he wants to cry deserves congratulating) and watching a bit of Blues text commentary. Blues took the lead. I was frustrated that I’d missed it. Apparently it was a corker too – Championship highlights are on on Tuesday nights here in Australia, if I can ‘book’ the TV. Other people in the house watch stuff on Tuesday nights. Fingers crossed for tonight.
I was in a funny headspace. Blues were winning but I wasn’t particularly happy. I was annoyed by Blues World not working, annoyed by my own lack of self discipline in going to bed at a reasonable hour and annoyed that I’d found out that Blues commentaries are readily available online for free if you know where to look. Eventually – after twenty minutes had gone – the commentary kicked in. Success. I settled in for the long haul with Fox Sports on the TV and Blues – Charlton on the radio. Okay, I’d paid £20 for a commentary that people were getting for free but fudge it, Blues were winning and that’s pretty much the only thing I’d wanted when my alarm assaulted my ears just under half an hour earlier.
Only, then it went wrong. Shortly after tuning in, we conceded – twice. My bad language cup runneth over. All under my breath in case anyone had gotten up in the night and crept into the room behind me. Bad language isn’t appreciated in this household! Except, interestingly, the word tw@t because they don’t have such a word in Australia and my relatives happen to think it’s ‘cute’. Tw@ts!
And speaking of, Blues seemed like they were playing like it. Half time came and quite how I managed to stay awake through those fifteen minutes, I’ll never quite know. I don’t actually remember the half time break but I remember half time coming. It’s possible that I fell asleep. It’s also possible that I wandered around completely naked. I might’ve done coffee, I might’ve gone out onto the balcony and belted out Keep Right On, I might’ve updated my Facebook status with something tw@t related. I genuinely have no idea. This is how those murderers on God-awful shows like NCIS must feel when they swear they blacked out the second they caused ‘blunt force trauma’ on the back of the poor victim’s head.
No matter, Blues were losing – again.
The hardest place to be in the world is away from St Andrew’s on match day. You have no idea of the shape of the team, how individuals are performing or even what the crowd is like. Sure, commentary gives you an idea but I’ve been at matches when I’ve had different opinions to others on pretty much every single details of the game – including atmosphere. It all depends on where you watch the game from and match reports really are tricky to judge because you don’t get a sense of what a player excelled at or what he struggled with. Highlights aren’t much better out here because they try and squeeze the League Cup, the Championship and Leagues One and Two into a half an hour slot. Might as well attempt to dunk a Travel West Midlands double decker through a basketball hoop – impossible.
For example, they showed Quashie’s (or Squashie as he’s become known in this house) second booking but not his first. Superb considering the first incident is shrouded in so much opinion. I’ve read people say there was no contact, people say he headbutted the Charlton player and people say that he simply chested him in a squaring-up sort of motion. I’ll never know. Which annoys me. But it was 25 degrees and gorgeous yesterday so I’m not regretting missing out on Nigel Squashie possibly or possibly not headbutting someone just yet…
The team for Saturday was a bit of a mystery. Was it 4-4-2 with McFadden out wide left or was it 4-3-1-2 with McFadden having a free role? Again, I’ve read both. Considering where McFadden scored from (and what a goal although Fox Sports gave Goal Of The Week to Stewart from Derby) perhaps it was a free role? Although in a post-game interview, McFads says that he is put there at corners to shoot from range. Answers on a postcard for where he played (and perhaps I should add here that I started writing this article before Tuesday’s highlights show – I finished writing it afterwards hence me having seen McFads’ goal.)
Not much to say about the second half, really. Mostly, I battled to stay awake with the commentary little more than background noise. Thankfully, we scored both of our goals early so I managed to get a couple of celebratory “YESSSSS!!!!”’s in before I went off to the land of ARGHSTAYAWAKE! About the last thing I heard was Squashie’s dismissal. Pretty much my last thought was that he’d get stick after the game and probably a lot of Blues fans hoping that we send him back to West Ham sooner rather than later.
It’s typical that according to most, we threatened to play some nice stuff in the second half before we were reduced to ten men and that after the sending off, the crowd really came alive. The web-stream here runs at a dreadful bit rate and it sounds as though it’s been broadcast from the middle of a very echoey shed – that’s underwater – but still, the strains of Keep Right On are a joy and a much better stimulant than coffee.
We remain second and from my point of view, there’s not much to complain about. After reading the match reports, trying to debate tactics and chewing the fat about Alex McLeish’s decisions, we’re still in the automatic promotion slots. This got me thinking about points versus performance and just how the views of exiles might differ from those paying their dough week in and week out. God knows, I’ve walked out of St Andrew’s complaining – even after we’ve won but this soon simmers down a little by the time I’ve reached town – but when I get up at 2 AM to listen with a cup of steaming coffee, I just want three points and though it’d be nice to hear us knocking it around like Real Madrid, all I want is for us to succeed and bag three points at the end of the ninety so I can go back to bed with a smile on my face.
It’s food for thought and probably something I’ll come back to and explore a little bit more in the coming weeks. As far as Charlton goes, we won, I’m happy. Promotion is still on.
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