Friday Night Aperitif
We’re safe with two games to go, there’s talk of £50 million or more being on the table for new players, Jonny Evans is fit again, it’s a holiday weekend… all in all it’s a splendid way to approach an away game against former relegation rivals. There’s no doubt we’ll be geared up to try and win tomorrow as apart from extra revenue, we still have a chance of catching the Mags and anyway we owe it to the other struggling teams to give it our best shot. My tickets from the London Branch came through a week ago and they were only £21 a pop, the cheapest all season for me. I’ve thought for a while that tomorrow’s game was going to be a gala day out and I’m confident that it will be. Result? A draw, at least.

Getting There
They were repairing the track on the West Coast line and it would’ve been quicker to get to Tierra del Fuego than Bolton by rail so I opted to catch the coach up to Oxford where I linked up with my old mate Anth who drove us up to the Reebok. When we stopped for some chips at the motorway services near Stafford, there was plenty of red and white in evidence. We tuned into Five Live and it was nice not to really care too much about the other results. The sun was shining and we had no problems finding the ground, which has an unusual superstructure and it looks as though the floodlights are about to collapse inwards. The Harvester pub wasn’t accepting any away supporters so we set off to the away pub, appropriately called The Beehive, but ten minutes later it still wasn’t in sight so after a quick consultation with two cops we headed back into the stadium. We saw the team coach arrive and the lads looked very smart, I must say, as we applauded them in. There was a big queue at the bar and the mood was extremely buoyant with very loud chanting and much battering around of inflatable balls. Fancy dress was very much to the fore and I spotted two junior Elvises, a couple of Wombles, a La-La, several Arabs, a Marilyn, a Catwoman, a Leprechaun, a Van Morrison or maybe just a podgy bloke with a pork-pie hat and a Freddy Krueger. Freddy had to peel back his mask every time he took a slurp of beer and I thought it would’ve been better if he’d had an even more horrible face underneath. We got two pints in each and savoured the happy atmosphere. I was in seat 98 in Row X and anticipated being stuck in a high corner but in fact I was sitting right in the middle behind the goal right by the division between the two sets of fans. Anth’s wife called with the results of the other games and I was pleased that Fulham won as I want as many London sides in the Premier league as possible for purely selfish reasons. I was also pleased to hear of Derby’s defeat as this meant that they couldn’t reach our ignominious total of 15 points from the 2006 season and we can finally draw a line under all that. There was a large inflatable bottle of Stella Artois floating around above our end (other lagers are available).

The Match
There were no surprises in the starting line-up except for Higgs playing in the centre with Evans while Whitehead moved into midfield and Nos replaced him at right back. Bolton had much more of the first half though we were defending well and coped with just about everything they came up with. Having criticized Higgs before, I have to say that he played well throughout while Evans was cool, calm and collected. Reid again showed a lot of class. Diouf appeared to be getting booed every time he got the ball but I concluded that the Bolton fans must’ve been shouting “Diooooooooouf!” Anyway, he was having a very good game and he put them one-up in the forty second minute after they’d been allowed to penetrate down the right and cross for him to meet the ball unmarked and blast it into the opposite corner before Nos and Evans could close him down. One of our lot was escorted out just on half-time and he dropped his inflatable spider as he took the long walk. The spider at any rate continued to play a lively part in proceedings. There was a good atmosphere for long stretches of the game and the very loud drums from the Bolton end provided a strong rhythm for each set of fans to sing their own versions of popular chants. I’m sure I heard their lot singing ‘Blaydon Races’ at one point but maybe the bright sunshine was affecting my wits.

We battled a lot more in the second half and created more chances but Bolton were just more up for it than we were and too many of our passes were going astray. Kenwyne missed an absolute sitter in the 69 th minute and it looked like it was to be one of those days. Roy had made a triple substitution on the hour-mark with Murphy, Leadbitter and O’Donovan coming on and Chops, Miller and, surprisingly, Nos going off. We went two-down in the 82 nd minute and there were horrible flashbacks from the Reading game as Bolton were suddenly celebrating a goal while none of us realized that they’d scored. There was no announcement and no repeat of the action on the big screen so at the time of writing I don’t know who scored. We continued to storm forward and I was still hoping for at least a consolation effort but we had a bit of a lackadaisical air at times up front and it wasn’t to be. At the end Diouf did a farewell lap to great applause and the Bolton fans were all chanting, “We are staying up!” so I shouted back, “So are we!” Well, a disappointment of course but the general mood was fairly bright as we managed to get out of the ground surprisingly quickly.

(Clement House, 2 nd May 2008)

ALS Books click here