Bristol Rovers 1 - 1 Everton

Paul Gascoigne was rested, and Weir injured, allowing Stephen Hughes and Joe-Max Moore back into the first team.  

After a nervous start, Francis Jeffers beat the offside flag and slotted it home for the first goal to Everton.  But Jeffers got smacked hard just before half-time and was stretchered off with a badly swollen ankle!  Later in the half, two golden chances were spurned by Everton as Stephen Hughes missed a shot, and Joe-Max Moore blasted over.

Unsworth failed to appear for the second half, and may be another addition to Everton's ever-lengthening treatment room roster.  Michael Ball came on in his place.

Then, in the 2nd half, the inevitable equalizer came from Marcus Bignot.  Joe-Max Moore then failed to score on a breakaway as the game really hotted up.  Rovers pretty much matched Everton and pushed the game into extra time, and then to the almost inevitable penalty shoot-out.

Moore hit the post, Ball scored, Campbell's was saved and Gravesen made it 2-3  before the critical coup de grace was administered by Plummer to provide the ultimate embarrassment and humiliation of yet another defeat to lowly opposition.

“Dear God – Oi’ve just drawn Verybig FC in the Cup.  Oi’ll go to church all season, make the players go, and let them Gideons put boibles in arr compo boxes if you can fix it for me to beat ‘em”.

“Ay” said God – “you can forget that, I support that lot”.

“Bless moi paarsties – oi thourght you supported Man Unoited.  Most of us down South do y’know...  thaa’s woy we’re thankful to you God, cos we all live in these foine posh owzez with ample pavement paarkin and a zoider owze every square moile..  not loike up north...”

“If yer look in yer bible” interrupted God, “you’ll see the devil and all his minions get to rule for a while before my lot take over.  Ever noticed what colour United, the Shite and the devil all wear..?”

“Good point, God” said Ian.  Rovers’ rivals Sad City wore red too.

“But yea, since you’ve called on me and Walter hasn’t been in touch since St Duncan knackered hisself again, I’ll give you some help.  I can’t affect the football itself mind, but if you need help with the weather and the like...”

Ian dug deep into his managerial brain but didn’t find much, so he thought back to his playing days with Rovers and renowned powerhouse QPR instead.  Soon he had a list of wishes and got back to God.

1. "Make it rain for 24 hours before & all during the match, enough to mess up their paarsing but not enough to get the game postponed. 
2. "Make the wind blow in strong gusts to spoil crosses & corners. 
3. "Keep their best player on the bench. 
4. "Have their top scorer get injured in the first aarf. 
5. "Give us the go first AND the choice of ends in the Penalties”.

And lo, it came to pass that God’s own team did lose on penalties, and the 3,000 Tinytown fans and 6,000 part-timers did rejoice and feast on many paarsties and zoider...

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Strange story?  Well the reality could not have been much stranger...

I’ve never seen so much rain last so long over such a wide area.  It was pouring in the North in the afternoon when we set off; pouring all the way down the M6 & M5; and pouring all through the match.  Drainage has come a long way – 25 years ago, every match in the country would have been lost to waterlogging.  Radio reports that it was also raining in Sydney and Turkey made it feel as if it was raining everywhere in the world.

I’ve been to a lot of these Mikey Mouse 2 away games.  Usually it’s a warm late-summer evening.  Usually it’s the first leg.  Usually we draw or even lose, but then stuff ‘em at home (1-0, usually ;)...

So this year we had an open terrace in the cold and pissing rain and lose a comfortable advantage (yes comfortable – the way they were playing, they had no hope even well into the second half) when the midfield is a paddling pool.  

In case you are ever unlucky enough to go to Bristol, bear in mind that parking is impossible.  Even when there is no match on, every foot of pavement has a car on it.  If you don’t leave yourself a clear hour to cover parking, walking to destination, finding a pub (NOT easy, though by pure luck the one I did find was the Foresters) and getting to the ground, you are going to miss the start. 

I didn’t.  I missed the start and the goal.  Bizarrely, the stewards were all not only friendly but keen to let me know we were winning 1-0.  Perhaps they are used to it ;)

Once inside, there was the odd experience of being more glad that there was partial shelter back against the stand than that I had made it to a 220 mile-remote ground and could watch a game, but more strange was that two separate blues told me Campbell had scored (he didn’t in fact come on until the second half).

That apart, the atmosphere in the first half was the reason everyone should go and experience Everton away games...  we were soaked, travel weary, scores of pounds poorer, cold, far from safe from humiliation, but we were THERE and the spirit of camaraderie amongst blues fans on that freaky ground (which was a dump apart from a really pretty main stand opposite that looked like an elongated new cricket pavilion) was the whole insane, inexplicable reason we do this.

In Olympic terms, the Memmo won the Silver Medal for the wettest game I’ve ever been to.  When WS made his traditional 15-mins-to-go sub, the water had soaked even through underwear.  It was certainly the only time we’ve ever thought not ‘shit, they scored’ but ‘shit, we might have to stand here another 45 minutes...’ 

This in mind, in injury time there were shouts of ‘shoot’ not only to Gasmen/Pirates/Rovers players, but to Everton defenders passing back to the keeper.  [The Gold Medal, of course, still goes to That Night at Boundary Park when constant rain was compounded by wind of a much lower temperature and sliding down the mud banks at the back was a popular sport].

There are no excuses to make because none are needed.  The conditions brought both teams to an equal footing and who won was a lottery.  Whatever advantage we had in ‘better players’ was balanced by their home advantage and greater experience with the basic alehouse style of run+cross+hope that thrives best in poor conditions.  

It took no psychic to see that, by the time Campbell came on, you could have left and missed 45 more minutes yet not have missed any football worth the name.  Only mistakes or penalties would have a say in what was to follow, and the odds were 50-50 on who would 'win'.

In a low dark corner with rain all over yer specs and your will to live ebbing rapidly, any individual assessment has to be taken with a pinch, but here's what I saw...  

FJ was looking good but there’s no way of telling if he could have made an impact in the later stages when the conditions, cold and tiredness reduced the game to a hackabout. 

Gravesen was the only player who looked a class above, running like a steam engine through the heavy sodden grass for the full span of the meteorological nightmare. 

Nyarko looked completely lost and was not the only one.  Not too many rainstorm games happen in Africa, perhaps. 

Joe-Max Moore is unlikely to have seen much this bad before – he only looked effective taking corners. 

Alexandersson couldn’t seem to do much with the ball not running. 

Hughes (S) had little presence.  Rovers just took the ball off him at will.  

Hughes (M) Whatever it is he does that merits a place eludes me.  I know that many blues like what he does, but I just don’t get it.  

Gerrard  I also don’t get the Gerrard critics.  Blinding freezing rain and slippery grass & ball only spell trouble.  Mistakes are inevitable but he made none that were detectable from our remote soggy corner and he saved a few that could have been killers.  No-one alive can kick well out of long wet grass into swirling winds.  I also don’t get the ‘he’s been crap for ages’ theory... his reputation among the home crowd was fine.  Did conceding 3 to MU negate all that?

We drew all the crappy luck in this tie and only just went out.  I doubt many of those soggy 1,500 Blues (850? no chance) who went will be blaming the performance because it was not possible to perform, and none will be hysterical about humiliation because no other team would have been able to impose themselves there either.  Not M** U**, not Lazio, not even Brazil themselves.

A couple of mysteries do still remain – why, in a match where one flash of genius could have decided it, was Gascoigne not tried?  And why DID they get first pen AND their home end?  Postcards only, please.

The journo vultures will have their day and Rovers will claim for 20 years to come that they beat us with skill and determination, but what really happened?  There was no miracle, there was no big club disgrace; Rain Stopped Play.

Memorial ground match? Forget it.
  

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