January 2 2005

Craven Cottage

Many of us were hopeful of getting something out of our New Year's Day fixture away to Fulham, Jamesey amongst them...

Prompted by the box office saleslady, I bought two tickets for our Jan 1 date at Craven Cottage, certain that someone would snap the other one up.

I told the Missis I had an extra ticket and heard her say: "I'll come, then".

When I picked my shattered jaw up off the floor, and inquired the reason for this uncharacteristic burst of enthusiasm, she replied that Craven Cottage looked like a "pretty ground from the outside".

Here, I must explain, as additional background, that Mrs J has attended two live football games in the past 30-odd years - home to Millwall in the early 70s and the FA Cup Final replay in May 1990.

And so it was that we found ourselves walking from our Wandsworth home on New Year's Day, along to Putney, over the bridge, and then seated in the Putney End with the very noisy and passionate (at that point, at any rate) Red-and-Blue Army.

Incidentally it was great to see us wearing our definitive red-and-blue colours rather than an anaemic away strip - if only it were always so when there is no colour duplication.

After the shock of Fulham's early goal, Mrs J thought we had the best of the first half and I, for one, agreed.

She was most impressed with AJ, our "little No 8", saying "he's so fast, they have to trip him up to stop him". Penalty. Exactly.

In the second half, Mrs J questioned the application and motivation of our team. "We are letting them dominate the game."

As things went from bad to worse and our defence went into kamikaze mode, she queried why Keeper Kiraly "always kicked the ball high straight back to a white shirt."

I did point out that he was getting little protection form his defenders and was probably so demoralised that he had forgotten all he had ever been told at the training ground.

As we now all know, we ended up 3-1 losers, making our Premiership survival prospects look even more shaky.

Mrs J and I have had our arguments (understatement!) but I found her comments hard to disagree with - it's a simple game on the whole and you don't have to be an expert to spot the flaws.

"Why are all these people leaving before the end of the game?", she said, as quite a few of our supporters left before the final whistle.

What could I say?

Email Jamesey with any of your comments to Jevans3704@aol.com

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