Down to the short strokes

I’m sitting here on a train, on the way to Falmer for a massive game. I know they are all massive but this one is especially so. After a spectacular combination of results, kicked off by our win against Palace, we are now in with a real shout of the play-offs. The people who were moaning and groaning just a short while ago must be feeling a bit uncomfortable right now. So how did we get to this?

Well, it all started just two and a half weeks ago when we played Palace. The train to that game was a very different place. We were travelling in hope rather than expectation. Palace were on a run that seemed destined to take them to ‘the promised land’ of the Premier League. Why it always called the promised land by the way? The Championship is a way better place to watch football. It’s more competitive, the league is closer and it clearly means more to the players. Someone pulling in £75,000 a week for Stoke City isn’t going to be too fussed about a 5-0 defeat to Manchester United. In the Championship, things can (and do) change on a daily basis and teams seemingly out of touch with the top can surge back into contention with a couple of wins.

So anyway, we were all really nervous about Palace. Even walking up to the ground, there seemed to be an air of tension about the place, not just caused by the rows of Police in full SWAT gear that lined the approaches to The Amex.

Some of the police horses were nervous as well, judging by the amount of shit on the Tarmac. Maybe they were worried about the game as well. The team news was, on the face of it, music to our ears. All season, Gus had put caution and safety first, seemingly afraid to unleash the power of our flairniacs on opposition defences. Not for this game though. Both Will Buckley and the mercurial Kazenga Lua Lua were in the team, hopefully with the instruction to rampage down both wings for me.

A packed house, with the new seats in use for the first time, anxiously awaited the teams, Palace with the talented Zaha and Bolasie in a rich vein of form. And what about Glenn Murray, or to give him his proper name, Glenn ‘Judas Bastard’ Murray. Again, people have very short memories. There weren’t too many people complaining when he was offloaded and Craig Mackail-Smith arrived in his place.

The first half hour was fairly standard 2012/13 Albion fare. Plenty of possession, lots of pretty passing but not too much in the way of penetration (sounds like the story of my life but that’s another story altogether!). The Palace fans were not as noisy as they had told us they would be and we were not as noisy as I thought we should be – it was all very tense. The young Welsh lad Williams was having a great game for Palace and he came close when he was teed up by Bolasie on the edge of the box. To our relief though, he didn’t trouble the magnificent Thomasz Kuszczak in goal. With about 7 or 8 minutes to go to half time, our thoughts were turning to (managerial cliche number 368) ‘keeping it tight until half time.

Palace attacks were starting to get a bit more frequent and from one of those, Matthew Upson stuck out a leg and deflected a shot. In the North Stand, we held our collective breath but then let out a massive sigh of relief when that man Thomasz stuck out an arm and pushed the shot out. The ball was cleared forward and as we were watching the save again on the big screen, we were on the attack. The ball came in from the right and at the far post, our new hero from Argentina, Leonardo Ulloa (pronounced Ooo-Joe-Ah, or so we are told) rose like a spawning salmon at the far post to power a header into the net (it wasn’t actually like that, but in the words of the great Barry Davies, ‘who cares’). The ground erupted with noise and thoughts turned even more strongly to the managerial cliche booklet. Whatever you do, don’t concede.

As half-time approached, we won a free-kick just outside their area and David Lopez, Spanish Dave to you and me, lined up to take it. A ballooned shot into row Z of the South Stand would do, it’s nearly half time and we’re 1-0 up. Bollocks to that! He strode up and smashed the ball into the net off the underside of the bar. Cue mass hysteria mixed in with a liberal helping of delirium. I am 53 years old but went just as mental as the ecstatic 12 year old next to me. The half time whistle came and we were 2-0 up – beyond our wildest expectations. The Palace great unwashed were strangely subdued.

After 3 minutes of the second half, I really felt as if I would need the services of the St John Ambulance crew. The ball was whipped in from the right, Andrea Orlandi nodded the ball back across the goal and Ooo-Joe-Ah further wormed his way into our hearts as he swept the ball majestically into the net, in front of the North Stand. We were by now almost incoherent with joy. But hold on, Palace have these great strikers, including Kevin Phillips who (here’s another of those cliches) will score for fun. No chance. The more the game went on, the more dispirited Palace became and it became a bit of a procession.

After the game, we took our beers back out into the stadium to watch the Palace players warming down to a backdrop of ‘banter’ and the match highlights on the big screen. Marvellous scenes, as someone once said.

Fast forward to this evening and since then Palace have been beaten at home by Birmingham and away by Blackpool. We, on the other hand, have drawn at Forest and seen Leicester implode more spectacularly than Palace. We are 6th and know that a win tonight takes us 5th. A win on Saturday against Leicester will take us 7 points clear of the foxes and surely in a great position for the play-offs.

Tonight’s opponents are Charlton Athletic, a team against whom we have history. A the end of the 1977/78 season, a tense final week included a game against the Addicks and a 1-0 win in front of a 30,000 plus crowd at The Goldstone, set up a final-day cliffhanger.

I have a good feeling about tonight.