I Wish This Fitted

I can remember almost to the day when I bought thus tracksuit top. It was at the very end of my drinking days, the morning after my works' Christmas party. Somehow I had lost a coat and so I nipped to Birmingham's Rag Market to see if there was anything I could get as a makeshift replacement. I found this and I could get it on- though only just. Obviously, I had to have it having never even seen another one in the flesh before- nor since, so far anyway- and wore it below a standard trucker denim jacket.

After stopping drinking I gained over a stone (I didn't eat for days on end when I was a drunk) and what was a tight uncomfortable squeeze became an impossible task. And so this sits in my loft, never to be worn and never to be sold. A tragedy.

Here is the incomparable Laurie Cunningham showing how it should look.

Football Amongst The Enemy

Liverpool 1 West Bromwich Albion 0

Had the opportunity to go up to Anfield in amongst the Liverpool fans today. I had no worries about problems inside the ground knowing that I can behave myself and talk myself out of minor bother but thought it would be wise to go as incognito as possible to blend in outside and avoid revealling my obvious West Bromwich accent; hence my Casual-inspired get-up today (which I am modelling with a very strange expression in the photo below).

The match itself was as frustrating as ever, we still haven't scored against the fuckers since 1985 and again had two blatant penalty appeals rejected by the referee (he also sent off Morrison because the crowd told him to) late on.

We kept the ball well, used it wisely and looked pretty solid at the back. We'll beat plenty of the mid-ranking teams if we keep that up and my pre-season prediction of 16th may even be a little conservative.

A happy loss tonight, then.

I Love You West Bromwich Albion

The Albion's new signing and my new hero Peter Odemwingie made his debut at the weekend in the lone striker role. He played well, worked hard, showed no little skill and scored the winner. What is more in his post-match interview he was charming, articulate and self-effacing.

And then I learned a couple of days later that the fans of his previous club Lokomotiv Moscow had marked his departure with this banner:


The banana, of course, is meant to indicate that Odemwingie is a monkey. He is half-Nigerian and half-Uzbekistani. Does he really look like a monkey?


As distasteful as this truly is, the response of my fellow Baggies has been wonderful. The blogosphere and message boards have been busy spreading the word and a fast-growing Facebook group expressing out disgust at this racism has been created. A banner has been designed and is in production, hopefully to be on display at our next home game:


Of course we do have form in this regard. In the 70s the Albion were at the forefront of the integration of black players into English football; while most clubs in England were exclusively white we had three black guys in the first team (in contrast Everton didn't manage to find a black player who was good enough to play regularly for their team until the 1990s). And it was a superb team too.

It's made me even prouder to be a Baggie. And I'm always very proud to be a Baggie so that's no mean feat at all!

Dining Rooms

Is there anything more fecking stupid in a densely-populated country where housing tends to be smaller than in neighbouring countries than a tradition of reserving one room for some overpriced furniture that you hardly ever use? It's a sop to that section of the working classes who inexplicably want to appear affluent and will go in hock to their eyeballs to do so- a strange demographic that Tony Bliar did very well out of as it happens.

You have families where two kids share a bedroom or one gets a box room so small that it won't accomodate a bed and wardrobe and yet in the same house there is a fucking 'dining' room where no-one ever eats and kids aren't allowed to play in the pretence that life is as sophisticated a Gold Blend advert.

A pox on all who persist with this lunacy.

2001-2: What a season that was!

This has been a rollercoaster of a decade to be a Baggie; a decade summed up by the greatest Baggies season I’ve ever witnessed.

The 2001-2 season really did have everything. The most memorable promotion of this or any other decade came at the expense of our embittered local rivals Wolverhampton Wanderers. The fortunes of the teams have reversed somewhat in recent years- indeed this season was a major factor in that turnaround- but back then the Baggies were the poor relations whilst Wolves were still being bankrolled by the self-titled ‘Golden Tit’ Jack Hayward. Whilst the financial gap stacked the odds in favour of Wolverhampton, early season results had exacerbated the gap. Seven straight wins from the turn of the year had left Wolves eight points clear of Manchester City in the race for the title. My beloved Baggies trailed them in third place, eleven points behind. That day- so legend has it- Wolves instructed their suppliers to begin printing “Premiership 2002-3″ on their club stationery and registered ex-player and folk hero Steve Bull as a player to allow him to make a crowd-pleasing appearance on the final day of the season. You should never tempt providence, should you?

The West Bromwich Albion team was built on strength of character and defensive resilience. On the eve of the season top scorer Lee Hughes moved to relegated Coventry City for the galling sum of £5,000,001 (thus invoking a £5m+ release clause) and star striker Jason Roberts broke his foot. Roberts returned for our 4-0 home thrashing of Manchester City and broke his foot again. In the same game his strike partner Danny Dichio also broke his foot. When Roberts returned again, he broke his foot shortly after for the third time in the season on the day that Wolves established their eleven point lead.

From the day that Wolves moved into their eleven point lead, the Baggies played ten games and won eight drawing the other two including a game where a disallowed goal was shown to be well over the line (a refereeing mistake which, incidentally, rescued Rotherham from relegation at the expense of unlucky Crewe).



The most crucial result in that run came in the penultimate game of the season as West Brom travelled to Bradford’s Valley Parade the day before Wolves hosted Wimbledon (now AFC Wimbledon). We were a point ahead with two to play and an inferior goal difference. The Baggies dominated the game but could not manage to find the breakthrough until we were awarded a penalty in the 93rd minute. That season we had already been awarded ten penalties. Sadly, though, we had missed nine of them and our penalty hoodoo looked likely to strike again. It had emerged, though, in the week preceeding the Bradford game that our non-English speaking Slovakian right back Igor Balis was a regular penalty taker for his country. He just hadn’t known how to tell anyone! Only in West Bromwich could that happen.

Nerves jangled from all parts of the stadium as the Slovakian lined up to take the kick. The award of the spot kick had been met with jubilant celebrations in all four stands as it became clear that the Baggies’ fans- having long since sold out our official allocation- had infiltrated the three home stands wherever tickets were available.

The despatch of the penalty was cool and confident, the ball nestling in the bottom corner of the net as the ground erupted in celebration. Balis, meanwhile, looked bemused. Perhaps he didn’t understand what it meant to the fans until that point- would he have beaten the keeper so comprehensively if he had?

Wolves defeated Wimbledon the following day, but their hearts had truly been broken by the Balis penalty. In order to secure promotion, we simply had to equal their result in our home match with Crystal Palace. Pre-match mindgames from the Wolves camp included the Golden Tit telling the local media that a fortune teller had told him that Palace’s former Wolves striker Ade Akinbiyi would score a hat-trick against us and Wolves winger Mark Kennedy stating that his international team-mate Palace’s other striker Clinton Morrison had assured him that Palace would win as “all the Irish lads hate West Brom” (a fallacy, as it happens). Morrison was conspicuously less forthcoming during the game after a pre-match conversation with two of our centre-backs who assured him that if he scored, he would not be joining the Republic of Ireland squad for that summer’s World Cup in Japan and South Korea. He limped off with a mystery injury early in the game.

The Palace game was played in a carnival atmosphere and glorious sunshine and- aside from the club’s clean-sheet-record breaking keeper Russell Hoult palming over a long-distance drive- entirely as the Baggies would have wished. A Wolves goal in their match at Hillsborough failed to set the nerves jangling, in fact the crowd became even louder in response. Partway through the first half a goal by cult hero centre-half (and largest man on earth) Darren “Big Dave” Moore was swiftly followed by a Sheffield Wednesday equaliser. We were playing out time waiting to celebrate the final whistle and not worrying how long it took to arrive.



Fittingly, the second half gave us a memory to cherish forever. Legendary striker Bob Taylor scored a typical poacher’s goal in front of the main home stand to seal the victory. He came, he set a season scoring record to win promotion, he was forced out by a manager and became a legend at Bolton, then returned to save us from relegation and finally scored the goal that took us back to the top tier for the first time in 16 years. At Hillsborough, Wolves’ capitulation was complete as they failed to beat a Sheffield Wednesday side with nothing to play for but it didn’t matter as we won 2-0 to secure promotion with the most dramatic comeback in our history. An eleven point lead for Wolves- the rich team with the Premiership stationery- turned into a three point deficit in the final nine games by the underdogs, the paupers, the pre-season relegation favourites: West Bromwich Albion

What a season that was! And just look at how the Wolves fans saw it all:

Attacking Gary Megson

Bolton fans are continuing to get on Gary Megson's back for his pragmatic playing style. But it appears to me that he's been on borrowed time since he arrived because the fans want him to sign the calibre of players that Allardyce did despite the cost of those signings jeopardising the whole future of the club and making the current budgetary restraints entirely necessary. And the fact that those players had all of the skill drilled out of them- take JayJay Okocha, the audaciously gifted Nigerian who was selected purely on the strength of his long throws. Allied to that is the seeming belief that after X number of Premier league years there is a right to expect survival AND entertainment, even if what has brought success this far has been distinctly unentertaining. Let's call that the Charlton syndrome.

They may as well sack him now because he'll be forced out sooner or later anyway. And the next bloke who is given the same low budget and high demand job will follow shortly afterwards. Bolton fans may be interested to know, though, that Megson's
footballing style is all Bolton's fault. That is scientific fact.

You may recall the season that you won promotion to the Premier, you beat Megson's West Brom in the play off semi-finals. That West Brom side was almost impossibly cavalier. Megson used a 3-5-2 with two ball-playing centre halves around a sweeper and Ruel Fox in the hole behind the strikers. Despite being bookies' relegation favourites we made the play-offs in 6th and were 2-0 up in the first leg with ten
minutes to go before you pulled it back to 2-2. Obviously you hammered us in the second leg because our spirit was broken and, frankly, you were light years ahead of us anyway.

The thing was that Megson was never an attacking manager again after that, he became increasingly dour and pragmatic becoming the man you see now. Possibly apocryphal stories around the club told how he barely spoke to anyone for weeks after that. All down to that ten minutes.

There you are you see. Victims of your own success.

No-one to blame but yourselves.

Road to Bali (1952)

In 1978 the famous West Bromwich Albion became the first western football team to tour China playing exhibition matches. The whole thing was recorded for posterity by a BBC documentary crew including a famous exchange with the player John Trewick who asked why he hadn't joined his team mates on a visit to see the Great Wall of China replied "if you've seen one wall, you've seen them all".

The 'Road to...' movies were a bit like that. They may have been in exotic locations but if you've seen one, you've seen them all. It's not necessarily a criticism- Bond fans like me don't have a great deal of secure ground for attacks based upon films following a formula- but it does mean that they're pretty indistinguishable from one another and that there's an all-pervading feeling of unspectacular adequacy about them. In fact but for being the first one to be filmed in colour (and the only one for that matter; Road to Hong Kong reverted to black and white to hide Bing and Bob's advancing years) this could be any of them.

In fact, the opening five minutes sums up the whole series- there's a costumed song, a dance routine, some witty banter ("we've been fighting over you all week and I won. He's going to marry you"), some straight-to-camera wisecracking and it ends with Bob and Bing fleeing in fear of their lives after another failed romantic encounter. It's completely vacuous and pretty entertaining- if, sadly, dated. I say sadly because it is a real shame that films like this don't get made any more- I love them. The only exceptional thing about Road to Bali- as if you couldn't guess- truly is the colour, and that's only because they use so much garish colour that it's a bit like a Timothy Leary nightmare.

I might sound critical, I'm not. I enjoyed it, I'd watch it again if I want something cheery on a rainy day. But I won't remember anything about it a couple of days from now. 4/10

The 39 Steps (1935)

This is what used to be called- and probably still is- an adventure yarn. I think it's fair to say they don't make them like this any more. Hitchcock's gift for suspense allied to his much underrated comic direction are both utilised to the full in this film.

Robert Donat plays a holidaying Canadian in London who stumbles across a spy plot and is engaged in a race against time to save the entire Western world. I'll be honest, it requires a pretty healthy suspension of disbelief. The whole thing moves at great pace, the dialogue is snappy and memorable, the performances are- and I don't think it's a criticism necessarily- very typical of the period (especially Lucie Mannheim's death), and the drama is intensified skilfully with occasional and timely comic relief by Hitch.

The whole thing exemplifies pre-Hollywood Hitchcock at his most confident- the maid's squeal which is replaced by a screaming steam train, the suspicious and oppressive crofter who is by turns comical and villainous, the conversation in which Donat persuades the milkman to aid his escape and lurches from sinister to comedic to dramatic in mere seconds, the dramatic chase across the Scottish moors and finally the mise-en-scene which switches from the death of Mr Memory to the chorus girls to the happy coming together of the film's stars. Marvellous utilisation of the raw ingredients.

Most importantly of all, the film's female lead Madeleine Carroll was born in my home town West Bromwich. If this was awful I'd still give it a decent mark on the basis of that alone. But it isn't, it's delicious and dramatic and funny and exciting and a worthy 9/10.