Up, Up And Away, In Our Beautiful (Blue) Balloon (As Long As It's A Big One That Can Hold The Whole Team. And Backroom Staff. And 8,000 Fans.)

It had to be done. I skipped out of work early, hired a husband-shaped taxi driver and careered down the M40 to Adams Park for the Big One: if we won our last game of the season we were UP. If we did anything less and fourth-placed Shrewsbury got a better result, we would be dragged - like Edward Woodward in The Wicker Man, screaming ‘NO! Oh Christ, NO! Oh GOD!’ – kicking and trembling, into the fiery belly of the play-offs.

It was eerily silent in the walk up Hillbottom Road, the oppressive humidity seeming to portend our potential fate. It was too previous to be lording it up, despite the attempts of WWFC to create a carnival atmosphere in putting beer tents and bouncy castles out in the car park, like some sort of crap village fête. At least we hoped that our players were stoked up, daubing their faces in sky/navy blue à la Mel Gibson in Braveheart in the tunnel and roaring ferociously at wispily-quivering Southend, who, mired in mid-table murk, were hopefully just looking to play out their last game without fuss nor fight.

Hhm. In fact it was Southend’s manager who turned out in a kilt (truly! He saw the Braveheart analogy coming!), and Wycombe, seemingly stymied by the heat, confused by the kilt, and blown away by Southend’s totally natty hot pink away kit (Everton are leading the charge for the resurgence of this supposedly girly colour; hurrah!), began the match in heart-jigglingly lily-livered style. The opposition was full of attack dogs, particularly their no. 6, Mohsni, a loping Afghan hound of a player who attracted the eye with his range of winning headers and flamboyant tumbles. As Southend swept forward again and again, I couldn’t believe that ours was a team who needed to win: Nikki Bull seemed unruffled by two thundering shots so close to the bone there were probably a couple of hairline cracks. The whopping crowd of 8,500 meant an unusually noisy atmosphere, with 'OOO!'s and 'NOO!'s sounding like the depths of an Elizabethan bear-baiting pit.  Wycombe, sadly the raggedly ursine ones, eventually buckled: though Anthony Grant is reported as the scorer, it really looked like an own goal from where I was standing. 1-0 down; the pessimistic fug descended on the terrace and we all perspired with nerves. Thankfully, before we all drowned in our own sweat, the chaps recovered, and five minutes later plucky little Donnelly popped one in, and not long after that Ben Strevens got on the end of Foster’s cross. At 2-1 up, the tension melted just slightly, though the stands were hardly buoyant with joy. Bull still looked rather forlorn towards the end of the first half; clearly we all felt that, ooo, about five more goals would make us feel safe.

In the end, one more at 8 minutes into the second half, was just about enough to give the whole ground the effect of a 40-minute deep tissue massage. Betsy’s shot was saved (the Southend keeper did pretty darned well to keep more out in the second half) and Rendell (who resembles Ye Olde Dave Carroll, if Dave had eaten more protein and visited a dentist regularly) slotted it in. Hallelujah. We had plenty more chances, and Southend still didn’t entirely submit, but it was enough to see us through. Our scorers all played very well, though I can’t help doting on the two most zealous team members:

1) God love Captain Gareth, the sort of passionate talisman like Scott Parker of West Ham, when fit, or Charlie Adam of Blackpool, who is so gung-ho that he lunges head-first towards a ball which is being high-kicked by an opposing player with not a whit for the potential brain-damage which might follow, and seemingly blocks free-kicks with his very mind and being. He should probably have his wild lour chiselled into the hillside behind Adams Park, perhaps Mount Rushmore style, alongside…

2) Nikki Bull, whose double ‘k’ and Twitter-style should surely suggest a Rhianna-lovin’ 15-year old girl and not a fervid Bear Grylls/elite military assassin-type.  He brought on his kids at the lap of honour (not before an unnecessary pitch invasion, which briefly polarised the fans into two sets, one looking down on the other: a) those who remained behind the barriers, waiting patiently for some proper celebrations, who were eventually shouting ‘WANKERS!’ at b) the embarrassing prongs lording it up on the pitch, who then ran towards the Southend fans in a worringly rabid manner. FOOLS!), his little tottering daughter with ‘Daddy’ on the back of her shirt. Super-cute!

So anyway, hurrah. We have set forth aloft (obviously after a previous rebound or two, ahem), up into a glorious new (well, not new, we’ve been there twice before) world. Well, up into a slightly higher (lower) league. Woo hoo!

PS I absolutely love Twitter's enrichment of my WWFC-life: Check out Nikki Bull's tweet some time after the match yesterday - it doesn't get any more sweetly lower league than:

NikkiBull1 Nikki Bull 

 by WWFCAdvertiser

Me & Mr Ainsworth having a celebration meal for two at Pizza Express in Windsor waiting for all the other lads to show up to get on it!!

The Fight For Third Place (Starring Viggo and Russell)

I finally made it to Adams Park before the season was out, timing it perfectly for some top-table drama: with Shrewsbury winning their game in hand on Saturday, we had lost our footing on the automatic promotion place we'd been coveting on all season, and were in the murky quagmire of the play-off positions. YUK. So, with the blaze of glorious Easter sunshine illuminating Crewe's tangerine shorts and Wycombe's right royal blues, and the town's local red kites arcing a pretty pas de deux above the pitch, the scene was set for some 3-D, high-definition guts 'n' gore.

Unfortunately, no-one had yelled 'action!' to the chaps, and, at least from where I was standing on the terrace, the next 40 minutes were a plotless bore. Crewe weren't up to much, but nor were Wycombe; there was very little on target, endless hoofing, and only some short sharp bursts from Betsy breaking the monotony. The only player really giving it his all was the heroic Gareth Ainsworth, who with his ludicrously flowing locks, set jaw and endless worrying of the players on the right-hand side of the pitch, clearly thinks he is Viggo Mortensen in Lord of the Rings; the method man of WWFC trying to galvanise all his confused but plucky little hobbits! Frankly, the most exciting moment was a barney to our left between an old guard supporter and a twentyish whippersnapper, who were arguing about an offside decision; their mouthy spat seemed to denote a deeper conflict between the doggedly pessimistic oldies, who delight in heaving a collective groan at the drop of a hat, and the sunny younger boys who constantly check their smartphones for score updates and think it's not helpful to rant at your players at every opportunity.

A different sort of battle to the one on the pitch, which suddenly flared alive at the end of the first half: Scott Rendell, Wycombe's blonde starlet, headed one in, and while we were still celebrating being 1-0 up, a Crewe player fell over in the box below us and our cheers morphed into 'WHAAAA?'s as a penalty was awarded. This is where I saw the wondrousness that is Nikki Bull come in to being; he started psyching himself up in gladiatorial fashion, chest puffing to twice its normal size and face all a-glower, as if Russell Crowe himself had suddenly teleported into the six-yard box. With a slavering Aussie filmstar taking up half the goalmouth, the cowering, starstruck Crewe striker could do nothing but turf the ball into a corner to be met by the Wall of Bull, who met the roars of the terrace with his own leonine yowls sent heavenwards. Brilliant stuff, which was topped by an almost immediate penalty up at the other end for us; Rendell, unruffled, popped it in and we were headily drunk on 2-0 elation as we went into half-time.

This seemed to be enough for Wycombe, who perhaps wanted to save Waddock's heart from seizing, and nothing quite came of the second half. We even got another penalty decision for a handball, but Spot Kick Man 'Ruth' Rendell (no mystery there, etc etc) couldn't muster the gumption to power it in, and it was saved. A shame, as we still need all the goals we can get to try and scramble above Shrewsbury's goal difference. It could still come to that, though Shrewsbury's goalless draw puts us thankfully back into third, teetering one precipitous point above the play-offs. Now all we have to do is keep winning! EASY! (Gulp.)

Love Is...

Love is: your husband doing a podcast for you when you're away gigging in the US, of him reading Hunter Davies' football column from the New Statesman, and texting you updates of the Wycombe score... 

Sky's The Limit

So, the talk this week is all ‘bah, humbug’ to those hoary old granddads at Sky, Andy Gray and latterly Richard Keys, who jumped before he was pushed, hopefully off a cliff into a slavering pack of feminists ready to bash his misogynist brains out a bit with some homemade placards. Is everyone getting a bit too excited over a couple of daft off-the-cuff (or below-the-sweaty-belt) remarks? Even if so, it’s like Big Bad Ron a few years ago: no matter whether the comments are meant for public consumption or not, if you’re revealed to be a lumpen caveman-type with prejudiced views, you probably have to go.

I wasn’t so comfortable with those who defended Sian Massey’s marginally correct offside decision as something of a miracle, with a sort of ‘what a clever girl!’ tone as if to prove her worth. She’s a qualified official, and like most linos will mostly get things right, and probably occasionally wrong. And when she does stick her flag up too hurriedly, I look forward to the sound of the crowd shouting horrible abuse at her. Just in a totally non-gender-specific way.

It’s impressive that the media across the board are largely in support of the sacking, even The Sun, whose self-aggrandizing trumpetings of 'SEXIST SHAME' I read at the weekend whilst waiting for a supremely chillified kebab in Camberwell; sadly, this newfound ardour for equal rights was a leetle dampened by the sight of the near-naked airbrushed lassie on page 3; the numbshits.

In much more important news, WWFC are now sitting on the right hand side of Chesterfield’s throne in 2nd. Get in!

Footywatch 2011

Ah, 2011, what leather-bound, spherical-shaped joys shall you bring to us? First of all there's a few promising signs from the Beeb:

Presenters: Gabby Logan has been doing an excellent job in taking the edge off the smug, lads-on-a-Costa-Del-Sol-stag-mini-break feel of the Gary-Alan-Alan formation. Plus she has great new hair!

Shirts: Startlingly, Alan Shearer's recent number was plain black with a glaring lack of epaulettes, frills, pocket detail or piping. Has someone had a word? Happily, another sofa-expert did the honours. Lawro, a tip if I may: you're supposed to wear the shirt your wife got you for Christmas, not the wrapping paper it came in...

Pundits: The QPR's Neil Warnock was great fun last night, with a refreshing Northern 'football's great, in't it?' enthusiasm and cheerfulness that knocked spots off MOTD2s oft-also-rans. However he did often forget to finish his sentences ('they've got a fantastic - ') and say, with not exactly medical precision, 'It was so exciting I wish I'd had one of them pulse things for your heart', so there's still some work to be done.

In other New Year news, Wycombe are up to THIRD after a 2-1 win at Cheltenham, whoopee! So 2011 shall obviously, no doubt about it, it's a sure-fire thing, rest assured, be back in League One with the big boys (well, the boys who've lost their milk teeth and have started thinking girls aren't totally disgusting) come August. Elsewhere, the multifariously-tattooed wonder-god who is David Beckham may come to London, in which case I shall bunk off work one Saturday in order to go to White Hart Lane/Upton Park plaintively holding up a homemade sign saying 'I HEART DAVID'...

Boyz in the Snood

There's been a lot of posturing machismo steaming up the studios and interview rooms with its musk-reeking, nostril-flaring harrumphing in the last two weeks. The ones who consider themselves Men rather than Boys are collectively scoffing at the latest Premiership fashion: the snood. A winner in the cross-breeding of winterwear where glarfs and balaclamuffs have failed, the scarf-hood combo (last seen about my neck in the year of 1988, when I sported a bottle-green one whilst skipping to primary school) has taken off bigstyle. This has caused the Proper Men to (whilst holding a pint of ale, scratching their virile bollocks and doing some bare-chested bricklaying, I expect) declare things like:

'You won't catch Man United players wearing a snood' - Rio Ferdinand
'Real men don't wear things like that. They're for powder puffs' Alex Ferguson

Elsewhere Lawro and Alan Shearer gamely tested them out on Football Focus, whilst declaring they felt like 'right nancies' and Roy Keane has threatened to tear the throat of any Ipswich player who wears one with own his slavering gnashers, whilst he stands proudly naked in the snow because he can TAKE IT. Probably.

Hhm. Mefears a little bit of metrosexual-phobia amongst the great and good... are they feeling a bit threatened by some players' unabashed accessory-adornments ('powder puffs'? I ask you)? What's it to them if some players, being a wee bit chilly in the quite genuinely hibernal conditions, cover their necks with a bit of all-in-one wool? Fair play, I say. The sponsors should leap on the chance to emblazon more merch - next up: fur-lined over-short thongs proudly displaying 'Le coq sportif'.

Elsewhere: was this the best FA Cup match in terms of incidents ever? Two hat-tricks, a last-gasp equaliser, four sendings-off after brutal fouls, a penalty, and six goals in extra-time. Brilliant!

MOTD2 Does Arthouse Horror Pastiche!

Best tv football moment of the season so far: the BBC's rather brilliant pastiche of the opening of 'Psycho', all Hermann's stabbing strings and sliced monochrome graphics to introduce the match between striped-shirted bitter rivals, Newcastle and Sunderland. Some Hitchcock-loving studio grunt was obviously having a bit of fun on his or her overtime... genius! It almost makes up for Lawro's 'drunken pessimist uncle' sneers and terrible shirt. Almost.