Wolves blog: My Premier diary part two

Before the game on Tuesday night, I met up with Pete, a Wulfrunian now living over in Australia, writes Wolves blogger Nathan Lloyd.

It was his first taste of action at Molineux in six years.

He was unfortunate enough to move out to Oz just as we reached Cardiff in 2003 and he ended up on that famous day huddled around listening to the game on the internet at 1am with a load of other Wolves fans from Sydney.

He has followed the club all his life and it’s unfortunate that his trip back to Blighty didn’t coincide with some better opposition than Scunthorpe on Tuesday night.

Pete asked me whether or not he needed to learn any new songs and I said really at the moment just the one, “Freddy, Freddy, Freddy…..[repeat to fade]”

I told Pete not to expect a free-flowing game. And you wondered if as the team trudged off after a woeful first half display, whether our season was beginning to draw to its likeliest conclusion.

Yes we were never really at the races, but we got the three points and as Mick said, that’s all that matters at this stage of the season.

Freddy and Jarvis made a massive difference and I doubt we would have won the game without them.

QPR should be a much sterner test at the weekend and the midfield will need to be better balanced and the defence much sharper if they are to stop the pace of Rangers.

I put aside my personal feelings about Mick McCarthy in my last blog to say that the fans should support him and the team until our season is done and dusted.

Hopefully we can celebrate a third win in a row for only the second time this season come five pm on Saturday and maybe even a place in the top six.

Below is the second half of my diary from our one and only Premiership season. As explained last week, it tracks my season of corporate hospitality indulgence and how it really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Enjoy the game and good luck to the lads.

Click here to see Part One of Nathan’s diary

 

The Prawn Sandwich Brigade – The diary of Wolves Premiership season Part Two

Memorably beating Man Utd and drawing against Liverpool at home, perhaps somewhat fortuitously in one week in January 2004, gave us hope that the season could be saved and we could be spending another spell in this glorious league.

And so it was off to Elland Road for a midweek game to face a Leeds team whom we had beaten at Molineux in December and who had lost their previous six games.

Could that elusive first away win actually happen up in Yorkshire?

I’ve a couple of abiding memories of this game. The first is that because we were sitting in a corporate box in the Don Revie Stand, you had to wear the appropriate attire.

Of course, there is always one idiot that turns up in jeans. So with kick off about an hour away, we trudged into Leeds town centre to buy a pair of trousers to enable this bloke to join us.

Secondly, the corporate seats are literally with the Leeds fans.

So again, following my rule about sitting on your hands and not making your allegiance known (which I admit I am useless at), I settled down to watch the game.

Ganea scored our only goal of the night, a belter from 20 yards and I punched the chair in front and the bloke turned around.

I apologised and he seemed fine, however, the Leeds fan in front of him turned round, stood up and said, “If you do that again, I’ll rip your ******* ********* off and shove them down your throat.”

Fair enough I thought. Leeds went on to beat us 4-1 and the fat-lady was ready to clear her throat and announce that our season was slipping down the pan.

The bloke who threatened to end any chances I had of populating the world with tiny Lloyds in the future, turned round and offered his hand and announced it had been a good game.

I politely accepted his handshake, not wanting to cause any further antagonism.

After Villa had given us an almighty thumping at home, I travelled to Anfield for the next chapter in my Premiership hospitality gravy train.

I travelled up the M6 to the game with my MD, whose knowledge of football was woeful and he was more interesting in talking shop for the entire journey than formations or starting line-ups.

When we got inside the Carlsberg Suite at Anfield, I managed to shake him off and find my brother, who I’d also wangled a corporate ticket for.

After a pre-match meal and presentation by a couple of ex-Liverpool players, I took my leather seat behind Kenny Dalglish and next to Ian Rush in the Director’s Box.

Again, the Wolves faithful out sung the Liverpool fans for the entire match.

Up to kick-off I’d had a really great time, but when the game actually started, I felt like I was betraying the club in some way by not being with the paying Wolves fans.

Unlike the game at Molineux earlier in the season where Liverpool outplayed us but we escaped with a point, this time it was Liverpool who were the lucky victors.

A last minute goal from Hyypia meant that we left the North West empty handed.

After the game I went back into the Carlsberg Suite to find that not only had my prediction of 1-0 to Liverpool been spot on, but I’d also predicted the correct time of the first goal.

My prize was a Liverpool shirt and a signed ball.

Stephen Gerrard had been named player of the match and a queue had formed for autographs.

I waited patiently with my shirt and ball and when I got to the front of the queue, he signed the ball without looking at me and when I asked if he wouldn’t mind also signing the shirt, he said, “ermm, one each mate, alright!”

Annoyed, I turned away and spotted Ian Rush who was more than happy to oblige and autograph the shirt.

Now, perhaps Gerrard is a bit miffed that most of the stuff he signs ends up on ebay, but whatever the reason was, I felt he was bang out of order.

He gets paid in a week what it takes most of us four or five years to earn and if he can’t be arsed to spend an extra five minutes signing a few shirts then shame on him.

Rushy on the other hand was an absolute gent. He’s from an era in the Seventies and Eighties when footballers were perhaps more in touch with what really goes on in the world.

Anyway I gave the signed ball to someone at work and the Rushy signed shirt ended up with a friend of my mum’s who proudly framed it.

The following week I travelled down to Stamford Bridge for some more free hospitality.

Not the usual corporate glitz, this time it was a free pub meal followed by a couple of seats next to my contact in the East stand.

With the match kicked off, I noticed that a few people weren’t bothering watching the game but were oddly reading newspapers.

Is this part of a London culture that has passed me by? Pay a fortune to get into a footie game and then be so cool as to not even bother watching?

Anyway, having seen a recent TV programme regarding the infamous Chelsea Headhunters, I really did think it was best not to show any trace of emotion should Wolves somehow manage to score a goal.

Half and hour left of the game and we are leading 2-1.My god it was difficult not to get excited, but the thought my legs being broken enabled me to keep my emotions in check.

Lampard scored a cracker to make it 2-2 but it still looked like we could be leaving with an improbably point.

But with only 13 minutes left, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink scored his 100th Premiership goal on his way to an astonishing late hat-trick and Chelski ran out 5-2 winners, a scoreline which was incredibly flattering.

Our Premiership journey was beginning to come to an end.

We picked up one point in the next three matches, including a heavy loss at home to Southampton (nothing new there) which included a brace from Kevin Phillips of all people.

We then beat Carling Cup winners ‘Boro in convincing style at Molineux and drew at Blues, where again I enjoyed yet more lovely food and the pleasure of sitting on my hands.

The month of May came and we were clinging onto Premiership survival with our fingernails. We beat Everton at home in a terrific game.

Rooney received only a yellow card when he should have seen red. He lunged two footed at Paul Jones in goal, leaving the Welshman with a big red mark on his face.

Had he have done the same this season, he would have probably ended up with a lengthy ban.

But the game demonstrated that we really could have competed in this league had we not been scared stiff back in August.

Our dominating display in our next game when we drew against Newcastle at St James’ Park underlined this fact.

And so to the final game of the season, Spurs at home. And the return of the majestic Robbie Keane, who earlier in the season had scored a hat-trick in a 5-2 win against us at White Hart Lane.

Molineux had a West African flavour to it that day, with the Express & Star asking for fans to deck the stadium out in Senegalese flags in a bid to persuade want-away striker Henri Camara to stay at Wolves.

Judas Camara played some decent football in the late stages of the season and scored some great goals, including the winner against Leicester as we came back from a three-goal deficit at halftime to eventually win 4-3.

But for the majority of the season he couldn’t hit a barn door from five yards with the world’s largest banjo and subsequently cost us a lot of points.

He somehow pipped Alex Rae to the player of the season award, an award I’m still convinced was rigged in at attempt to keep him at Molineux.

At the end of the season as expected, he quickly buggered off.

And love him or hate him, Jez Moxey did a very financially astute deal in sending the Judas on loan to Celtic, where Henri had aspirations of succeeding the departed Larsson in the Bhoys affections.

When it quickly became apparent that he wasn’t worthy of lacing Larsson’s boots, let alone filling them, Camara eventually ended up at the big club he had always strived for when Wigan took him on.

He can now been seeing playing the last couple of minutes of Premiership games as a sub on loan at West Ham.

Anyway, we lost the game against Spurs 2-0 with Keane getting his inevitable goal and Defoe with the other.

At the end of Premiership campaign, we said goodbye to the likes of Rae, Irwin, Camara, Newton, Sturridge, Butler and Silas and hello to the Championship.

We finished with 33 points that year, just six off survival. A far cry from Derby’s pathetic 10 points so far this season in the Premiership.

If our away form could have matched our impressive home form of 7 wins, 5 draws and 7 losses, we could have finished in mid-table!

I certainly enjoyed many aspects of my free trips to some of the big away matches that season.

But you can’t beat that away game atmosphere, sitting with your own fans, singing songs and having a laugh.

My fondest memories of the season were beating Man Utd at home and that memorable comeback against Leicester.

Meeting Gerrard at Anfield left a nasty taste in my mouth. Meeting Sir Jack on the other hand was a moment I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.

The following season I got to play in corporate football tournaments at the Millennium Stadium, St Andrew’s and the fabulous Bescot.

I was also treated to the ultimate in corporate hospitality when Budweiser flew me to Chicago to watch Bayern Munich play Man Utd in a pre-season friendly.

But after all the corporate speak and prawn sandwiches, my favourite ever memory will be that day in Cardiff when the dream finally came true.

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