29 November 2013

COAST TO COAST


Tomorrow we head down to Bournemouth for an away match live on television. It means that we have an early kick off time of 1215. I know this because I booked train tickets to arrive in perfect time for a 3pm kick off. And then I booked some new ones. Regardless of my ineptitude in pre-booking train tickets, tomorrow should see a better performance than when we last visited the Steve Fletcher Stadium - we lost on our way to the Division 3 title in early 2011. But the last time we were at Dean Court on television was this little doozy of match back in the dark days. It was broadcast back then on ITV Meridian - one of the last Albion matches to ever be televised on terrestrial.

This YouTube video is quite incredible, and just shows the lengths Albionites across the board went to in order to attack Bill Archer's inept board. It wasn't as co-ordinated a protest as they became - certainly Liz Costa wouldn't have agreed to this one. And, as you know, it took another few (!) protests to finally depose of those rapscallions. But this shows the early beginnings of direct Albion fan protest in the dark days, and it sort of worked (well, we didn't ground-share at Portsmouth anyhow). Plus the cameras were there to see it. Personally, my favourite bit of roysterdoyster06's video is at 2 minutes 23, showing a policeman clearly hard at work clearing the field of play as he grapples with some newfound technological device.
While we bemoan the loss of live terrestrial football, Ceefax, the Albion's short shorts and £8 tickets for standing up in the North Stand - as well as everything else that was good about football in 1990s - we can conveniently forget quite what tosh-based football we played back then. And what ridiculously poor ownership we were under. Paid for television may have ruined my ability to book the correct train tickets, but we can all at least head down the coast tomorrow safe in the knowledge that there probably won't be a pitch invasion of any sort. And I can watch it all again on Murdoch TV later.

No comments: