Boro 3-1 Barnsley, Saturday 26th April 2014 (relegation special)

‘Barnsley didn’t look like they wanted to stay up.’

Plenty of flags and seats.  Especially seats.

If ever there was a damning indictment of this game and our entire season, this was it – delivered by a Boro fan on local radio after the match.  We were awful, with intermittent average bits in the second half.  Who’d have thought we were in last chance saloon, needing to win, or die trying?  It was desperately poor – as it has been all season.  (When was the last time any of us could name every SINGLE victory of a season?  Cos I can with this one.)

1^st half, when we had the ball (possession-wise it wasn’t far off even), we ambled forward, knocked it sideways sideways backwards while nobody got up the park to support the forward line.  Of course, we were REALLY going for it, cos Wilson actually put 2 ‘forwards’ on the pitch if you include Pedersen. (And if you’ve been wondering what the Norweigan Pest has been doing these last few months, it appears to be…eating pies.  Vitesse Arnhem will be chuffed to bits when they see him next.)  We were getting nowhere, nowhere fast.

When they had the ball, they sliced through us time and again.  Some bloke called Butterfield appeared to be calling the shots.  It was bizarre watching an ex-player, someone who you know can shoot, be given the freedom of the park to trot forward and have a go.  A bit like teams used to let Redfearn do, to my amazement.  Thankfully, Steele was there to save the day.  And then there were the throughballs.  Boro obviously have something we DON’T have – scouts.  Cos they seemed to know that if you drop a ball BEHIND M’Voto, he’ll never be able to turn around and run after it.  Cue a series of one-on-ones Steele saved.  It coulda..shoulda…been 5 or 6 at the break.  We crawled in goalless.  Maybe it was gonna be our day!!??  (Don’t worry folks, I never for once thought we were going to win this game.  Avoiding embarrassment appeared as good as we could hope.)

The sides are introduced...

2^nd half, more of the same, till we got a corner.  Would ‘TK’ dink another pointless ball into the keeper’s arms, like the 2 in the first half?  (The lady who I sat next to thought I was a clairvoyant when I correctly predicted TK would do this with his first one.)  Well…TK did indeed dink a gentle outswinging corner in and while Boro ran around like chickens in the 6 yard box, M’Voto was allowed to gently sidefoot a bobbler into the far corner.  (Wadd: pls note, ANOTHER goal wot would have been avoided had they a man on the line).  The worst defended corner in history.  Anyway, who cares…’HE’S MAGIC YOU KNOW, YOU’LL NEVER GET PAST M’VOTO’.  (Strangely, no ‘he scores when he wants’ this week).

But damn right – you’ll never get past M’Voto.  You don’t have to.  Within a minute he’s handed Tomlin the ball on a plate for the latter to rifle home off the far post.  Oh the irony - the ex-Posh striker must have been p***ing himself after that goal.

Then Boro take pity on us.  They take off Butterfield, the best outfield player on the park.  From the away end, there’s a smattering of boos and applause. For what it’s worth, I applauded him off, and he turned round and applauded me for applauding him.  Class act.  Compare to Perkins, Dawson, O’Brien, Mellis, Cywka…anyone in our midfield, really.  ‘One greedy ba5tard’?  Yeah, he coulda signed a new contract with us, but we can blame Hill for that one…he shoulda tied him down long before THAT injury.  A caller to Radio Tees described the substitution thus: ‘We took Butterfield off and we went to pot.’

I know, it’s hard to believe, given the final score, but it gave us an ‘in’.  Boro lost their fluency and we started creating some half chances.  Lardar5e was taken off and German Nick came on, and JoB returned for Lawrence.  Soon after, Herman prodded a volley just wide (unlucky: it was a snapshot) while O’G shot over.  Mind, Nick ruined another attack by going one way, then the other then back again before running the ball out of play.  With at least two chances to cross the ball, or cut it back to Dawson, this was the finest impression of Paddy McCourt since…Paddy McCourt.  Then, a defender slipped and we were 2 on one….but the defender took one for the team, diving on the ball, handling it and getting a booking.  We never came close again, though Danny Rose came on and did at least actually run 10 yards and fling himself at a cross (too high) while everyone else stood and watched.

With injury time looming and us camped on the edge of their box, O’Brien lost it cheaply and they ran to the other end to score, albeit from the rebound after Steele saved ANOTHER one-on-one.  Still, we had 5 mins to bag two, but while the foul on Jennings on the edge of their box was ignored, they ran up the field again to notch, Steele outnumbered.

So there it is, goodbye Championship, hello Ale House League.  Down with a whimper.  (What a great chant!  ‘Down with a whimper, we’re going down with a whimper..’)  A fair few Reds left at 2-1 while the rest stayed to applaud the team off and give it ‘Barnsley till I die’.  If only the players would give it some – we have been down since the opening day (0-4 at home!?)  The recent away wins have only delayed the inevitable.  Unbelievably, we’d problies have stayed up this year on 46 pts – 10 less than last year when we scraped up.  And we couldn’t even get that.

ONE of their home ends...

*** Ste-ele (Ste-ele).  So far the MOTM it’s untrue.  After the other players were trooping off, he came over to applaud us.  This finally looks like the end for us and Steele – far and away the best player we have.  I’ll be sorry to see him go.

** No-one.  We have a match to win and nobody else turned up.  F***ing appalling.

* Dawson.  Prompted and drove from midfield and looked alright, actually (once Butterfield had gone off).

Despatches:
M’Voto is lost when teams don’t punt balls to his head.  Anything behind him and we are in serious, serious trouble.  (See also, the goals 3^rd division Cov scored to beat us in the FA Cup).  Why Crainie wasn’t the last man, I’m not sure.  I think he was marking Graham, which allowed Tomlin et al to run in behind.  Jennings was garbage.  Never had a kick till late on, when he kept trying to cut inside for a shot despite having better placed players to kick it to. O’Brien came on and confused our entire forward line with a gorgeous reverse pass.  It was like Sheron in his pomp – different wavelength to the rest of the team!  But our forwards could make Zico look like a numpty, having NO IDEA where to run to for a goalscoring opportunity.

Oh, and after the match I met a disconsolate Sir Bobby of Hassell in the car park (with his mate Lawrence – they must have got out quick!)  I wished him the best for his testimonial, but he really did look like he was fuming.  A sorry end to the Great Man’s BFC career.  I thanked him and wished him luck, presuming he wasn’t going to be with us next year.

Away: c 1000.  Not the 1700 who went all the way to Plymouth t’other year with BELIEF.  And not the 3000 (free tickets) Blackpool took to Wigan to cheer their team to victory and give them a chance of staying up.  Still, plenty of ironic chants of ‘Your ground’s too big for you’ and ‘We’ve got more fans than you’.  The rest of the ground really did look empty.

Over and out.
A

The road to division 3.