Published: Wednesday, 24th September, 2008 08:00
Royal Blues - the view from Y24
By By Jon Busk
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Imagine this scenario. Neil Warnock brings a team to the Madejski. In a close fought game, the ball goes wide of the goal and crosses the goalline – outside of the post
None of Warnock’s players celebrate a goal and all the players trot back for a goal kick. Unbelievably, the lino flags for a goal. Despite a stunned reaction from the away players, and much rancour from our players, the ref gives the goal.
The atmosphere goes very sour as we vent our fury. Warnock and his players play on, one goal up, as if nothing has happened. Wally Downes gets sent off and a chorus of boos greets half-time.
At the restart Palace kick off and again simply play on as the boos get ever louder.
Amazingly we go two one up and justice, it seems, is done. Except in the dying minutes, an opposition striker pushes the balls past Bikey, there is minimal contact and he goes down. The ref gives a penalty. They score.
Not pretty is it? I suspect if this ever happened the phone lines would jam, the message boards would have steam coming out of them, and Berkshire would swell with indignation and fury. And quite right to.
Steve Coppell is and always will be a legend at this club. Not just because of what he has done, but also for the way he has done it.
We strive to play attacking, passing football but we rarely dive, spit or hit out. We rarely take it out on the ref and the cards we do get are more down to clumsiness than malice.
But I’m sorry Sir Steve, on this one I think we got it wrong.
What we did was undoubtedly to the letter of law. But it was not in the spirit of it, and that is uncharacteristic of the manager and this club. We should have given them a goal at the restart in the second half.
Aside from being the right thing to do, I suspect it would have also knocked the wind out of Watford’s sails. We have a better team than Watford, and with the sense of injustice gone I doubt the second half would have been such a struggle.
A willingness to play a replay suggests some second thoughts in the camp as well, although thankfully a draw enables both sides to move on and forget the incident.
The officials, though, were all abject throughout the game and the road to redemption may well be a longer one for them.
So our away day hoodoo continues, and the longer it does the more pressure there is to win every game at home.
A record landslide election victory for Gordon Brown is more likely than us getting a win away at Wolves next week, which makes Swansea a must win game.
We underestimate them at our peril, but should sneak it. Maybe the ref will give us a one goal headstart…
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