Sorry about the delay in sending this out to you, but I have been in St. Louis all week with, blissfully, no Internet connection. The most fun thing about Missouri is that I had not been there before so therefore could tick it off my list, and my company paid for the privilege. When asked what I most wanted to do there, I said it was to visit the very point where the Missouri and Mississippi rivers joined, the confluence, and it is damn cool. Few people venture that far north in St. Louis County, so I was told. It is beautiful, and it is also the point where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left the known world, sailed west and made sure California was safe for Posh and Becks. It’s all history!
On Tuesday I went to watch the St. Louis Cardinals, which plays a sport called baseball that we know as rounders. No one did much rounding, as the score ended 3-2, and even so, after the eighth innings, we were told the coach was going to leave, with was surreal. And we were not the only ones leaving. It reminded me of those Newcastle fans who left when Arsenal were winning 0-4, only to miss on another slice of epic history when the Barcodes did the unthinkable and equalised (us vs. West Brom?) Even if West Ham—er—give up a two-goal lead and are now losing by two, I am not leaving. West Ham to the 92nd minute! Or if we’re playing one of the Big Four, to the 98th minute or until such time as any of the four of them equalises.
As I knew you’d be proud, to the game I wore claret n’ blue, and even sung my colleagues our club song. Incidentally, the Cardinals play—quite sensibly—in red, as do the birds it is named after, but during the 80s, the team flirted with a light blue. This did not last long, but light blue and scarlet “retro” shirts still do a fair business in their club shop…so my West Ham top did not look too out of place. Damn!
West Ham Utd. 2 Manchester Utd. 4 (English Premiership), Saturday, April 2, 2011.
I mentioned to someone at halftime that the scoreline of us 2, them 0 reminded me a little too much of the Game That Will Not Be Mentioned, when señors Carragher (own goal) and Ashton gave us a commanding lead with two fortuitous goals. We lasted well in the Utd. game, but none of us supporters looked shellshocked at the end, and the “other” scoreline of West Ham Corners 0, Man. Utd. corners 19 rather told the story. Apparently, this Utd. fan standing next to me (yes, he might have polluted my shadow) said that Utd. have not scored from the corner spot all season. Interesting.
Carlton Cole continues to be an enigma. His run towards the ball that did lead to the first penalty was so slow that I wondered if he remembered where he was supposed to be going.
Man of the Match—Roberto da Costa I thought our Portuguese-soon-up-on-charges played very well, neutering all Utd. players’ crosses. It might have been inevitable that we’d play deep by our level of skill (Man. Utd dominating, especially on Valencia’s wing) as opposed to our formation (Demba Ba and Cole up front). And Utd.’s fourth goal was deflected off a Hammer and then shot through Da Costa’s legs—not an error on his part.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment