April 15 2012

Selhurst Park

An uninspiring 1-1 draw against Ipswich saw our penultimate home game of the season limp to a close. Jamesey joined the quid kids in the Arfur.

Unlike our Easter Monday game against Southampton where we actually played some half-decent football until they scored, our performance against the Tractor Boys (Apr 14) seemed the complete opposite.

We were dreadful for most of the first half - misplaced passes, ball constantly given away, high balls pumped to Sean Scannell (Sean is a pretty good player on most fronts but has he ever won a 50:50 high ball?) and general cluelessness.

But when Chris Martin banged one in a few minutes before half time, totally against the run of play, it seemed to lift our confidence and we improved considerably.

I almost felt sorry for Ipswich but my pity would have been wasted. After their inevitable equaliser in the second half we were, just like on so many occasions this season, hanging on a for a draw.

Anyhow, a crowd of nearly 18,000, swelled hugely by the Kids for a Quid initiative, saw us stay at 16th in the league and draw nearer to a lower mid-table finish.

I am not too sure what our owners hope to achieve by helping to subject innocent children to some of the boring and inept football on display this season. One can hardly be surprised to see so many Man U and Chelsea shirts on the streets of Croydon and Bromley.

But now to another matter.

Somebody, somewhere, within the CPFC2010 organisation bears a monstrous burden of guilt.

Yes, somebody, somewhere, was responsible for authorising the half-time "entertainment" at the Ipswich game.

I didn't even hear the name of the "singer" - and don't think I could bring myself to type his name even if I knew it - who inflicted the vilest of atrocities on our earholes during the interval.

First, the deluded jackanapes who thinks he can actually sing should never have been allowed within 100 miles of a microphone.

Not only did he begin in a different key to the backing, but went on to wander from key to key in a vain attempt to interpret a reasonably simple melody.

Second, not content with inflicting his dreadful cacophany on us, the vehicle he chose to murder was our sacred Selhurst anthem, "Glad All Over".

Many chose to boo him at the end of the travesty but was it really his fault? Our TV screens routinely feature people who mistakenly imagine they have talent and are excellent targets for ridicule.

A few minutes of shameless caterwauling is one thing but to murder "Glad All Over" is a blasphemous crime.

Whoever allowed this appalling act should be paraded round the stadium at half-time during the Cardiff game, publicly flogged with Dave Clark kipper ties, then rendered to a darkened room, tied to a radiator and forced to listen to endless repetitions of "Telstar" accompanied by flickering slideshows of Simon Jordan pictures on the wall.

Justice must be done...

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