Ben’s thoughts on a big win in Tuesday’s rearranged match against Port Vale.
Port Vale Part 2.
Vale: The Return.
Revenge of the Vale.
Call it what you want, but this was THE match to attend. One for the ages. Probably. Listen, Vale have a great fanbase. I actually think they’ve bagged themselves a decent manager in Darren Moore. But make no mistake about it, we needed to win this game/not lose.
Before the game I met the man, the myth and the legend Mr Marc Mayo. He handed over a TTE mug: a passing of the torch between podcast hosts, if you will. He was nestled under a fake tree in the hotel and I wasn’t. He also passed on 500 TTE business cards, harking back to the days of the early 90s when they were all the rage. If anyone wants one or 60, do let me know and I’ll post one, free of charge.
The team news had me shook. I would say more but I know that complete idiot Ross Webber will goad and abuse me and, to be honest, I don’t need it. Basically, I’ll discuss it on the pod at the weekend so tune in to me defending my corner like an agitated badger protecting its nest.
Upon entering the Dolan I was handed a red card. Nice size, good weight, clearly spent some pennies on the quality of the card itself. Fair play. To be fair, I’d like to stick my neck out and say that our little audio show had something, at least, to do with it as Mark Porter, chair of the Vale Supporters Club, mentioned it on our pod a few weeks back.
Either way, it was a good idea and one which I was sure would look decent. To add a complicated spanner into the working machine, the scoreboard went a bit sad and began quoting incorrect minutes to confuse everyone. You could sense the unease around the Dolan, swirling around like a discarded bag of empty crisps in a mild wind.
As the 15th minute approached, a few people went early. Panic! I bent to pick mine up but couldn’t grasp it. (You know when a piece of paper has been on the table for too long and it’s almost stuck to the surface, despite that surface not being wet? Well it was like that.) But the time I had it in my hands, it was 16.28. I could feel people tutting behind me, so sheepish held it up, my face as scarlet as the very card I was holding.
In contrast to Saturday, I’d argue that the opening 30 minutes were probably the most turgid bunch of crap I’d seen this season. I’m not sure we strung two passes together and nothing of note occurred. Nothing. You could see the managers on the touchline getting animated, probably because they realised their teams weren’t giving anyone anything close to value for money with the fodder on show.
Whether it was boredom or the fact I’d not eaten, I was absolutely ravenous. I snuck off down the tunnel just before half-time to grab a fizzy, lager and sausage roll. The bloke handed me the cardboard tray and told me it was hot. I gave him a look as if to say “listen mate, I’ve had my fair share of food at football grounds both home and away and also abroad, so I know what I’m about and if I can’t handle the temperature of this, call me a cab because I should head home”.
Well goodness me this sausage product was beyond hot. It was basically molten lava temperature and I could barely get to the metal shelf before my fingers collapsed in on themselves. It was really, really hot. I dipped both my fingers affected by the warm pastry into my beer to cool them and then drank said beer to cool my insides too.
My fingers were still feeling the full effects from the food burn well into the second half. The ref came near to the north-west corner and someone shouted that he was a dickhead. I laughed out loud. Femi Azeez did a shot that nearly hit me. Genuinely, I feared for my face.
But then we clicked into gear. Charlie Savage’s arrival had Lewis allowed Wing to get forward into the pocket a lot more and this eventually led to a stunner of a strike to break the deadlock. Harvey Knibbs bundled home the second shortly after and, at that point, there was no way back for the Vale.
A much-needed but slightly undeserved win was the perfect response to the pasting we received down on the South Coast in the previous game, and might ultimately prove to be a massive result come the end of the season. There’s still a fair bit of consistency to find within the overall performance level of this team, but it doesn’t matter if we win games and stay up, and I’m growing more and more confident each passing match day that we can do just that.
Until next time.
