FA Cup exit is always painful
BLUE-EYED BOY’S BLACKBURN VIEW
OH well, I’ll just have to wait till I’m sixty to see Rovers in an FA Cup Final then.
It’s not quite accurate to say they’ve never made one in my lifetime as the ill-starred 1960 debacle occurred when I was 16 months old and most of the conversation in our house at Princess Gardens, Feniscowles would have revolved around the fact that nobody in our family managed to get hold of a ticket.
But I still feel a little pain inside when we go out of the tournament I dreamed of seeing us winning as a boy, even in a year when the odds against us doing so are overwhelming and common assent says we are best off “concentrating on the league.”
In truth there was nothing particularly dramatic, cruel or heroic about a humdrum defeat to Championship relegation candidates Hull City. For an hour Rovers wore the disorientated air of a bunch of exhausted dads being forced to play some dumb blindfolded game at a kids’ party full of over- tired infants and adults watching the clock wishing it was over with so they could get home and have a drink.
There was nothing much about Hull but only after they had profited from yet more Rovers’ setpiece generosity and Danny Graham and Bradley Dack were introduced did we make much of an effort to convince the crowd that they were having a good time.
Graham is such an enigma, often looking the consummate craftsman of a centre-forward we saw during his initial loan spell in his cameo slots while lapsing into that lazy, shirt-tugging, grappling, referee-imploring nonentity which often sees him substituted to no-one’s great indignation when he starts.
It’s to be hoped his recent rather better contributions will become the norm while Dack is in a rich seam of form. He sees gaps and passes and opportunities where others haven’t even switched on to the possibility.
It doesn’t give me any sense of satisfaction that Wigan, Shrewsbury or whoever is still in this or that competition or piling fixtures and replays up.
Not many will recall that on that night at Gigg Lane in late April 1980 when Andy Crawford shot Howard Kendall’s team to promotion, we were playing a re-arranged game which should have taken place much earlier in the season but was postponed in late December. Wellremembered home games against Exeter and Sheffield Wednesday were played on midweek nights as the original dates were FA Cup days.
The two most taxing games were surely the Villa cup tie and replay which took place within four days in February. I’d seldom been as proud or as certain we’d blow our next Third Division opponents away. We went to Plymouth the following Saturday and won – in fact we won nine of the next 10 after our long FA Cup run.
So I don’t really believe anybody’s cup exploits will influence matches at this stage, certainly not Saturday’s crackerjack at home to second-placed Shrewsbury.
I’ve seen a few moans here and there that playing Shrewsbury in a Tier Three six-pointer is evidence of our demise under Venkys and while I take the point, I think with regard to both our next opponents’ superb performance this season and history itself, there is little need for Rovers fans to look down their noses.
On that 1980 promotion occasion described above, we actually lay a division below the Salopians who had been promoted a year before us.
They gave us plenty of problems throughout that decade. In 1988, they effectively denied us a spot in the old Division One under Don Mackay after they came back from two down to draw at Ewood on Easter Monday.
I’m pretty sure Bernard McNally scored one of those goals for Shrewsbury. If games had been televised live then and it had been on the Sunday he wouldn’t have played as a devout Christian who steadfastly refused to work the Sabbath. No wonder I grew up thinking more than earthly fates and the annual “They can’t afford to go up and are under orders not to” rumours of a board unwilling to shell out top- flight fees and wages often conspired against us at the tail-end of promising seasons.
None of those factors will apply this time, hopefully, with signs that there are at least some funds to consolidate our effort.
So to my mind, disappointed, angry, bitter about the owners and the last seven years or not as you might be, this Saturday’s game, as one forum poster very presciently set it up, looks every inch as titanic a fixture as the Plymouth Argyle match(es) of February 1975, the other Third Division promotion season.
We actually played them twice in 11 days and lost down there so with no play-offs in those days, another defeat would have given them the advantage in the run-in and allowed competitors to close the gap.
It looked to be going that way at 2-0 down as well with a missed Don Martin penalty but a crowd of 17,818 witnessed one of the great Ewood comebacks, one of the great Ewood days full stop actually. Don’t miss this one.... can we get a gate and a result to match that?