From April, 2007
There is something wonderful about the sense of anticipation before a big game. In a good two decades plus change of watching City I’ve seen bigger than Saturday’s relegation crunch against Leyton Orient but the stomach churning wait - the mixture of excitement and dread - is the same this Friday as it was the weekend of the 9th of May, 1999.
Remember that weekend at Wolves I recall a sense of foreboding not at the idea that City might not win the game or might not be promoted but at the idea that a resolution was going to come at all. From the Sunday before when Birmingham beat Ipswich 1-0 to put City in the driving seat for promotion to the kick off at Molineux on Sunday we enjoyed a suspended animation of being on the brink. For seven days the mind buzzed with pleasure delaying thoughts which inexorably drew to a close once the first ball was kicked.
The ninety minutes at Wolves was pretty much Hell but everything up to that was a blast.
Which is how the mood for Saturday’s game is. Right now City are in good form going into a crucial game - we are potentially safe, wonderfully poised and waiting for the swing of genius that will make a crucial difference - but come 15:00 reality will set in and two hours later wonderful poise will be either realised or not. City will either be looking at a win or two from two games to stay up or look at League Two.
Not strictly true. A draw delays things. No one seems to have considered the possibility that City might draw the game despite the fact that Orient will most likely come to Valley Parade to get a point and keep City beneath them.
City go into the game minus Moses Ashikodi following his broken leg at Brighton but with Spencer Weir-Daley - SWD - ready to fill the gap. The striking change aside David Wetherall has picked a settled side in marked contrast to Colin Todd’s later tendency to tinker. That Wetherall has nailed down a best team - even if it is not the best team - has started to bring rewards of which the anticipation is one.
It seems to me that booing is the new cheering. I’m old fashioned and I remember a time when a supporter would make good on the term and shout words of encouragement from the sidelines with the hope that a passing player may be effected. Of course I have no idea if whailing “Skin ‘em Johnny” to Hendrie caused the dominative Scot to make that one final but perhaps decisive run past a defender or not - one doubts his plan was to do anything else - but I like to feel that he felt inspiration.
I like to think that had someone bellowed at lung limit to Pansear yesterday Stay in for more than three balls and make a hundred run last man stand
then he might have at least been inspired to do so.
Nevertheless the chorus of boos has replaced the round of applause at sporting events these days and there is no better example of this than the treatment of Joe Colbeck at Valley Parade. The lad has a few thousand of the worst sort of School game Dad’s berating his every mistake and like a shrinking 12 year old it shows in a lack of confidence.
Booing has replaced cheering because it is easier to do. Destruction has always been easier than creation and recognising the good has always required a little more than pointing to the bad. Especially in situations like City’s were the one so obviously outweighs the other. Of course this is all Thatcher’s fault. The every man for himself model of society clashes with the ethic of team sports as a community representation. Success at all costs, loathing for those without.
Realpolitik aside this is hardly a new phenomenon. In the Coliseum Emperors signaled who was to live and who was to die with the famed thumbs up/thumbs down gesture. It is a curio of history that the with the digit pointing upwards signalled that to the delight of the masses the Gladiator in question would be ripped apart and generally killed which while pleasing for the crowd was so what damaging to the fighter’s career.
We use the thumbs up to mean good things - at least The Fonz did - in recognition of how it means that good things would happen. A thumbs down probably saw the Emperor booed so he will have avoided it. As long as the crowd get what they want everyone is probably happy.
None of which brings us round to Valley Parade on Saturday. It has long been the opinion of many that there is a significant section of City fans who enjoy the moan more than the match and the thumbs up of City getting beaten gives them a focus for their week of conversation.
City’s own Julian Rhodes - and Emperor of sorts - said about the weekend all or nothing game with Leyton Orient
“Saturday is not going to be pretty. It’s all about blood, guts and endeavour. But the pleasing thing is that every player is giving it their all. To see the loanees putting in the kind of effort they are has been a joy to watch.
Me, I’m less keen on the sight of someone being ripped limb from limb and old school enough to cheer or say nothing at all. I was brought up on “Skin ‘em Johnny” not skinless Gladiators and I’m happy to stay that way.
Do not feel the need to got to www.all4humor.com. The footage of the Bradford fire is not there any more - or at least I’m told and so with it go the lies about City fans watching the game and the pictures of 54 Bradford City fans and 2 Lincoln supporters dying.
Do not go to the site and leave these sick bastards to show videos of footballer’s breaking their necks, of trains crashing, of suicides, of executions, of children being sexually exploited, of guys on the 115th floor of the World Trade Centre.
If they re-post the video - or if it is still there now - then it is probably not worth trying to reason with the people who find some kind of humour in the parade of videos on show. We live in a world - and I’m a liberal sort of guy - where morality is relative but I’m perfectly happy to call this sort of entertainment for people who need mental help.
It is probably not worth trying to get this sort of video removed. YouTube constantly show the footage and someone connected to Yorkshire Television or the Fire Services who used it as training footage but allowed it to escape should take a look at themselves but this constant process of discovery and - one assumes - emotional negotiation to have the footage removed from whichever service or server has it on is becoming far too frequent.
It is never short of amazing the difference between the treatment of the Hillsborough disaster and Liverpool supporters and Bradford City fans and 11th of May, 1985. The combined weight of that club descending is enough of a threat to prevent even the mention of the 95 who died that day yet our tragedy is traded and - by some - enjoyed.
If someone believes that watching 56 people die in a horrible way is amusing, if they want to believe the lies that often accompany it then they can believe that. The people of Bradford - us - should act today as we did on that day and every day since.
Let them amuse themselves as they like, the sick bastards, we will never let them shake the refined dignity that marks Bradford City’s commemorations.
That is the last word.