7 January 2011

AN ODE TO WHINGY


So that's it, see you Whingy, thanks for everything.

I write with mixed emotions about our former full back, on one hand I hold him in really high regard as a player and a person and don't want him to leave, but on the other it's with relief to know his Albion nightmare is over.

Andy Whing was our first TSLR player of the year.  In a  season that started so brightly and ended nearly disasterously, Whingy was - for many games - the only player in the stripes who looked like he wanted to win a football match.

Dark times, and don't forget it.  In fact, at times over that season Whingy provided the only light at the end of the tunnel, though the light was often just the floodlights reflecting off his vampiric complexion.

We interviewed the man - the first to be interviewed in the fanzine - and he came accross as a really nice bloke.  He was going to come to our end of season party, in fact he was in the taxi on the way down before we had to call him and tell him not to bother (Dalmatiangate, if you were wondering).  We later found out that he had left the rest of the team at a party to come and meet the fans on his own, a gesture that certainly left an impression considering it was the evening of that Stockport County match.

In fact, Whingy never had a problem with the fans.  You'd see him in the stands with the rest of us (check his wiki page) when he was injured, suspended or latterly, just dropped.

But things change, and though it's obvious that Poyet likes Andy Whing, he does not like his feet.  Unlike the occasionally poisonous Forster, the post-Poyet Whingy just got on with training, never gobbed off to the press or put in dramatic trasfer requests.  Remember when we played Villa in the Cup?  Poyet didn't even name Whingy - a lifelong Villa fan - on the bench.

We shouldn't really feel sympathy for these footballers but I felt for him then.

A loan at Chesterfield got him some games last season but he still came back, like a faithful old dog who sniffed his way home only to see his new master playing with a new, hairier full back.  From Spain. 

Now perhaps we have a happy ending, Russell Slade has offered a deal until the end of the season and at least Whingy is playing football again, at least he's wanted again.

Andrew Whing, best of luck and thanks.

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