Why Wolves should call Fulham 'dirty'
Wolves columnist John Lalley saw the ugly side of Fulham as the row between the two sides erupted again on the pitch in a high-stake game at Molineux.
Wolves columnist John Lalley saw the ugly side of Fulham as the row between the two sides erupted again on the pitch in a high-stake game at Molineux.
Intriguing elements of gamesmanship are constantly evolving in the game, but I can safely say that I've never caught sight of what Fulham striker Bobby Zamora tried last Saturday.
At first I was bemused when Zamora, before even touching the ball, raised his right arm the moment goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey was in possession of the ball.
When the Fulham substitute continued his semaphore routine using thumb and digits to count the seconds, he resembled a boxing referee standing over a prostrate fighter with brains scrambled struggling to beat the count.
It turned out that Zamora was somehow trying to influence the referee into penalising Hennessey for holding onto possession for longer than the requisite six seconds.
On one occasion, Wayne - instead of taking not a blind bit of notice as he should have done - hastily booted the ball into touch and paid unnecessary heed to the pantomime performance on Zamora's agenda.
Clearly there was a genuine spill over of the ill feeling the two teams generated at Craven Cottage six months ago.
Fulham manager Mark Hughes made an exhibition of himself with his hysterical over-reaction after one of his players was routinely penalised.
His inaccurate bottle booting was a display of infantile petulance which, in retrospect, he should cringe about.
Banished to the stand, Hughes couldn't resist cupping his hand to his lughole when his team equalised, safe in the knowledge that a TV cameraman would dutifully record such a childish and predictable response.
The Fulham players engulfed their dugout after the goal and their wildly over the top celebrations said more about a residue of resentment than a run of the mill point that had been theirs for the taking virtually from the kick-off.
Clearly, should we take the drop there will be few tears shed in on the banks of the River Thames.
For our part, Richard Stearman set the ball rolling with a thoroughly ill-advised studs-showing lunge that risked immediate dismissal.
This was a worrying reoccurrence of the rash and reckless time-bomb that ticks resolutely within Stearman's DNA. Had he seen red, the consequences could have been calamitous.
Stearman is not a dirty player but there exists this latent urge that surfaces in spitefully ugly fashion from time to time, when all reason and common sense is shot to smithereens and he is left with not a shred of mitigation to excuse his lack of discipline.
It's a failing he needs to address with immediate effect, his sometimes inflammable temperament is not doing neither him nor the team any favours.
Karl Henry felt the need – understandably born out of immense frustration – to label Danny Murphy a 'bit of a big mouth' after the game and also to rake over the spat with Joey Barton to infer that referees have been influenced against Wolves after listening to criticism about our supposedly robust approach.
Henry's sense of injustice is easy to understand - Murphy's partial and less than objective summary of the Wolves tactics and the Match of the Day judiciary inviting the population to condemn Wolves without trial with Barton, of all people, turning Queen's evidence were both infuriating and demonstrably one-sided.
But, this time, I can't help feeling that the Wolves captain would have been better advised to say nothing.
Six months back when this nonsense started, Wolves were rattled and temporarily destabilised and Henry's over robust challenge leading to his dismissal at Wigan was the boil over at the sense of injustice, but events move on and so now should Karl. He has enough to occupy himself given our current predicament without raking over events of last September.
Years ago, the notoriously belligerent Australian cricket captain Ian Chappell engaged in a furious on field spat with his equally competitive England counterpart Tony Greig.
Asked to explain details of the set to by an inquisitive press afterwards, Chappell explained it this way "I said, good morning Tony and Tony answered, good morning Ian."
It's usually best to leave disagreements on the field instead of running off at the mouth in front of a microphone.
Anyway all this superfluous chat about Wolves being too physical, Murphy influencing referees or what personal vendettas were shaped six months ago, carries absolutely no weight in relation to our survival in this league.
Our level of performance has dipped alarmingly since the outstanding win at Villa and Karl Henry, players and management should turn their attention to identifying the reasons why.
Events from last September can look after themselves, I just hope we can look after the next four weeks.
