Watching that match on Sunday wasn’t just about the most amazing result – Manchester City winning with virtually the last kick of the season, a kick that impacted so visibly to the solar-plexus of the visiting manager at the Stadium of Light as he waited, this time in vain, for the regular sound of inevitability.
Still twenty five minutes to go, but it’s already too much for this City fan to bear
It was also about the way that the City fans still could not bring themselves to believe: right from the news of Rooney’s goal on twenty minutes, through the relative ecstasy of a half-time lead, then the increasing doldrums of two QPR goals totally against the laws of soccer physics. Until, of course, those last glorious seconds.
The stats speak for themselves: 19 corners, 15 shots on target, 44 more off. As a result, the raw emotions were palpable. Even playing ten men, the fans were unable to watch corners after the hour, were crying with more than twenty minutes to go, jumping on their discarded shirts as the clock ticked past eighty minutes, kicking and punching their seats in frustration as the fourth official lifted the board that gave their players just five minutes to save the world. Even then, hundreds had already given it up, and were doing their own version of ‘The Posnan’ as they turned their backs on their team and marched down the exit tunnels, only to try to return as the sound of Edin Dzecko’s 93rd minute equaliser, plus the final whistle at Sunderland, gave those who had stayed for the ensuing wake more reason to dread the final injustice of it all, just one goal away from glory.
One wonders if the stewards that stopped them returning were dispensing their own form of rough justice on those that had slunk from the field of battle in shame; extolling that biblical phrase “get ye hence oh ye of little faith!” as they stood firm, shoulder to hi-vis shoulder, against the late-penitents, while the stands above erupted when Aguero’s 94th minute winner hit the back of the net. How many of those that fled will have to face, for the rest of their lives, the ignominy of being reminded that they weren’t there to receive their invisible badge of valour when the dreams of several generations finally came true.
City legends Tony Book (left) and Mike Summerbee deliver the Premier League Trophy
I thought it was a lovely touch to see Tony Book help carry the trophy to the dais for presentation after the match. I remember nearly fifty years ago queueing for hours to get a front spot on the terraces to see Tony lead the Bath City team onto the pitch for their third round FA Cup tie against First Division Bolton Wan
derers at Twerton Park. We believed that day, all eight and a half thousand of us, and we had every reason to as we went one-nil up when Kenny Owens slotted home at the far end with just a quarter of an hour to go. For seven or eight glorious minutes we were giant-killers, until the referee awarded that cruel penalty giving the relegation-strugglers a second chance, clinically accepted right in front of us by a new England starlet named Francis Lee, another serendipitous connection to Sunday as he was also part of that Man City 1968 title-winning side.
And we believed all the way through to late the following Tuesday evening, when the news of the replay defeat at Burnden Park finally filtered through. We couldn’t travel in those days: for a start it was a school day and our family didn’t even own a car! Neither was there Sky Sports or Five-Live to bring real-time commentary into our home, nor Twitter-Feeds from those brave few that did travel the two-hundred miles by coach on snow-covered A-roads. So I just sat at home for the entire evening, wearing my favours, no belief of anything other than the miracle to be delivered on the late BBC TV news. For half an hour we sat through the day’s events relayed by Kenneth Kendall until that one black and white sentence at the end: “and tonight’s FA Cup Replay result – Bolton Wanderers three, Bath City nil.” That was it, bald facts, no story or highlights – I would have to wait for Saturday’s Pink ‘Un to read those – instead it was peel off the black and white scarf, hang it on the peg ready for the next home game, and off to bed.
Among other such connections for me to Sunday were Malcolm Allison, Bath City’s manager at the time who would go on to mastermind that 1968 Manchester City title win, and bring his champions to Twerton Park to play a friendly the following season, complete with all of the stars who we saw in their blazers and ties this Sunday. Then there were Bolton themselves committing hari-kiri on this particular final day to spare further ignominy for The Hoops, another team I supported as a teenager, although not now – not since that once flamboyant team fell into the hands of successive owners who change manager almost as regularly as we do our socks, and employ thugs instead of the type of player that would grace any Premiership stage, players like Stan Bowles or Rodney Marsh – another who ended-up playing in pale blue under Malcolm Allison.
So congratulations Manchester City. You may have ‘bought the trophy’, as your near-neighbours will endlessly and unsportingly (as ever) grumble about, but at least most of those fans that you bought it for live around the corner; you also played in the spirit of those old heroes of ’68, led by a manager who is his own man, wearing that now-famous scarf in similar style to the way that Malcolm Allison wore his infamous fedora, never being brow-beaten into submission by an opponent’s psycho-babble.
And, of course, there’s that wonderful silver-lining for all the rest of the country’s soccer-fans who will never subscribe to the theatre of dreams, and who cringe every time they hear ‘united roads’……
Not this time – United’s podium – brought with them to the Stadium of Light, and being assembled as City scored twice in injury time – is consigned to the skip
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