Oxford Saddler’s Blog

THRILLING DRAW IS KID’S STUFF

15-01-2008

Introducing our new blog about the comings and goings on and off the field of Walsall FC. Oxford Saddler reflects on an eighteenth consecutive unbeaten match with Saturday’s 2-2 draw against Swindon.

This is a new thing for me, but if interest is everything and boredom means nothing, these are my credentials for writing a blog on the (currently) mighty Saddlers. I say “these”, but I mean this. A home game for me is a 200 mile round trip.

Seventeen games unbeaten in all competitions, fifteen of which I’ve been to, and I’m beginning to think not about mid table promiscuity, not about flirtation with the play-offs, but beating the scum that are Leeds United, and Nottingham’s little club, to automatic promotion. Hey, why the hell not?

Walsall promoted two seasons running? Under Dickie Dosh’s guidance anything is possible. What stands out at the moment is the crop of youth coming through the Walsall ranks. No fewer than five home-grown players started on Saturday against Swindon, and each of them looked like seasoned pros.

All of a sudden losing left back Danny Fox to “bigger club” Colchester doesn’t look like too much of a kick in the teeth. His understudy, Richard Taundry, is nothing but amazing. Calm, tactically minded, reads the game well, great close control and, importantly for a left back can distribute the most delicious cross field ball to the right winger with ease, even when their 8 stone frames are obscured (Sonko and Ishmel).

Saturday was one of those games. One that after seventeen unbeaten in all competitions, I can put my hand on my heart and say I expected to lose. Swindon may be mid table, but we all know the sequence of events when a club parts company with a manager.

Just a shame Walsall didn’t remember that two years ago when Kevan Broadhurst was brought in after the ever-so skilful, but awful manager Paul Merson wiped his feet on the mat for the last time. So wonderful to see such an intelligent man now commentating and partaking in discussions on Sky TV…..

You’d have thought that without the idle ex-England player (one cap) Michael Ricketts and the ever powerfully dominant Tommy Mooney in the side, Walsall would struggle to create chances and open Swindon up. Never underestimate the power of being thrown in at the deep end. Local boys Nicholls and Deeney were so complementary of each others tactics that even the grumpy old man I sit next too didn’t have anything to say that wasn’t complimentary.

Going one nil up was reward for hard work, and to that point, solid defending. Eddie Sonko has had a well documented hard time of late, but you cannot fault, his or any other players effort, and it was him on hand to prod home from close range putting the mighty Money Babes on the way to at least another point.

Something wasn’t right at half time, construed to me it seemed by the continual Hit the Bar to hit the bar competition where you’re lucky if the contestant reaches the box from the centre spot, never mind the mouth of the goal. I sat there and munched on my hot dog, kind of amazed I’d managed to get hot food from the kiosk as the manager usually needs shooting, and pondered Dicky’s next trump card.

The Walsall defence has been solid all season. But today something didn’t feel right. It probably didn’t help having had time to think about it all the way up the motorway with no car stereo, coupled with the morons who hogged the middle lane and slowed me down all the way. Having sat through the worst weather I’ve experienced at an away match since Stockport a few years back, at Yeovil on Tuesday, and thinking if Dicky can create a winning formula in those conditions, then surely today won’t be the end of our unbeaten run.

Sure enough the blokes shooting for the cross bar at half time missed, though probably the closest we’ve seen all season, and then out trot Walsall onto the now cut up pitch.

The first fifteen or so minutes were all Walsall, but then, defending a set piece, the Saddlers conceded. And then within a minute, conceded again. The usually solid defence fell apart, or perhaps more appropriately ended up with a great big gaping hole in it for what I can honestly say is the first time this season.

What is truly mind boggling though is what happened next. I mentioned earlier the inconsistency of Sonko, but then again, a player has to be in the right place at the right time to score with such ease. The ball into the middle from Mark Bradley was sublime. The finish from Sonko, absolutely unstoppable. I make that three minutes, and three goals. All square. Surely this wouldn’t be the end of the scoring...

Walsall’s hard work continued right through to the final whistle. A few usual tricks of adding Ishmel to the fray and the continual chasing and closing down of Swindon players from the very lively front two, weren’t enough to claim all three points. Walsall’s youngsters had come of age. Boys doing a man’s job. But you’d have never been able to tell who the seasoned pros were amongst a group of players so determined for success.

As I drove back down the motorway, slowly losing the WM signal, all I heard was moaning Wolves fans having been thumped by Palace. I’d love to say my heart went out to them, but it didn’t. I sat there in the silence of my stereoless car, playing with the morons in the middle lane, knowing that at least some of the Black Country was tonight smiling.

Smiling not because we’d won, because we hadn’t, but knowing that in Richard Money we have a manager that really does know his stuff. Smirking because we have a crop of young players that will over time make the club some real money allowing us all to live our dreams again, whether that be being sold on, or them getting us into the next division….

And grinning profusely that whatever we may have felt watching Walsall get relegated under Merson 18 months ago, is now well and truly gone forever. Wolves fans have got it hard. Give yourself something to smile about. Come and watch the Mighty Saddlers instead.