I’ve a deep-rooted dislike for the West Midlands and I make no apology for this. I’m sure there are picturesque parts of this area of England; however, I’ve yet to see them.

I lived in Wolverhampton for a year and despite being young, drunk, in a band and in love most of the time, it was still shit. My mates would come and visit and say something along the lines of… Sunderland is hardly the Athens of the north, but come on mate this place is the pits. They were right, of course and I had to get out.

The only occasions I’ve been back down there since were to watch Sunderland play and let’s face it why else would you want to go to Wolves?

Ahead of this visit I did question whether it was worth paying £38 to watch an end of season game with no significance. However, in the end I decided to attend on the basis that I’ve spent my entire life being totally stressed out on the final day of the season, hoping that one year we’d have the luxury of having nothing to play for.

Ironically, now we’re in that safety zone it’s all actually quite boring and dull, but I’m not gonna complain. The excitement of Newcastle being relegated on the final day of 2008/09 would not be repeated today, but neither would the month of anxiety that came before it, as we worried about the possibility of them staying up and us going down!

The drive down was simple enough and despite Wolves banning beer in the away concourses, I managed a couple of quick ones in the imaginatively named Goal Post, opposite Molineux. We met a couple of spot on old timers from Wolves in there and regaled tales about the time we had two men (Gordon Armstrong and John Byrne) sent off down there.

We said our goodbyes as the team news filtered through and joked that with only pride to play for there’d be nothing so mad happening today. So Hutton was back in for Bardo as expected and Colback was on the bench, as we lined up: Gordon, Hutton, Turner, Kilgallon, Richardson; Campbell, Henderson, Cana, Malbranque; Bent, Jones. Subs: Carson, Bardsley, Ferdinand, Da Silva, Zenden, Colback, Mwaruwari.

It all started off very well. We took the lead after only eight minutes and I was beginning to think about an easy win. Well for two whole minutes until they drew level! Despite this, we managed to play some decent stuff until half time, but after the interval we looked disinterested, stale and if you ask me half the players already had their head on the beach.

It was no surprise when Wolves made it 2-1, but what did astonish me was the fact that Micheal Turner and Jack Colback both managed to get themselves sent off late on. Turner’s spent much of the season rashly diving in so I guess two yellows make a red, but Colback was only on the pitch for twenty minutes and isn’t what I consider to be a dirty player.

Oh well, that’s life. Shame for Colback’s old man who travelled down on the ALS bus probably full of pride and anticipation at the prospect of seeing his lad make his Premier debut, only to see the youngster shoot himself in the foot. Hopefully Jack will be back next season, because I rate the lad highly and to be fair was he probably a little unlucky to go...

Maybe if the club’s spin doctors hadn’t have spent the last two weeks talking about how good we are and concentrated on getting some points in our last game we’d have been a lot more likely to do so.

Have a good summer.

Final Score: 1-2

ALS Man Of The Match: The Wolves fans in The Goal Post

John Higginson

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