February 12 2006

Crystal Palace

Jamesey packed his travelling bag and set out for Yorkshire to see our 0-0 encounter with Sheffield Wednesday.

The day started so promisingly - blue London skies, sunny weather amd a good-humoured band of Eagles supporters at St Pancras, all eagerly anticipating their trip north to an illustrious ground, Hillsborough.

In due course, safely booked in at my central city hotel, I hopped on a tram to Leppings Lane.

Perhaps "Hillsborough" is a famous name for the wrong reasons and "Leppings Lane" sounds as sinister as "Heysel" all these years later, considering the tragic events which occurred?

Nevertheless, Hillsborough is an impressive and superb ground and a good turn-out of nearly 25,000 filled it out nicely to my eyes.

As for the game, the less said the better.

We played as we have done so often this season - no apparent game plan, unable to keep the ball and fragile in defence.

If the Owls hadn't been as bad as us, we would have lost, although it has to be said, Dougie Freedman missed two chances that one would have expected him to gobble up with ease.

But the star (or perhaps another four-letter word starting with S) was Mr K Wright, the referee.

He and his two assistants appeared to have been beamed in from a parallel universe where everything is opposite to ours.

Time and again, obvious corners were designated as goal kicks, Owls throw-ins were awarded to Palace and vice-versa, offsides were ignored but non-offsides were flagged.

And obviously in the parallel universe inhabited by Mr Wright, taking a free kick too quickly brings a yellow card (Michael Hughes) while nearly removing Andy Johnson's upper thigh from its moorings attracts not a even a reprimand.

But to be fair, the officiating was impartial in its ineptitude and the idiocies were shared equally between the Owls and the Eagles.

To follow all this, we were told away supporters would be "kept in" for five minutes at full-time. But we weren't.

What a strange day.

I suppose an away point is no tragedy but the way in which it was acquired left a lot to be desired.

Supporters behind me were chanting "What a load of rubbish" towards the end but I am not too sure whether it was aimed at the officials or our players.

I made the mistake of catching the tram back to the city centre, little thinking that half the apparent population of Sheffield (some with flatulence problems!) would be allowed to cram themselves in.

But, by then it was too late. So packed in like animals to the abattoir (No, EU regulations would never permit animals to me transported in those conditions) we inched our way through the traffic in one of the most unpleasant journeys I have ever endured.

The big city centres of England on a Saturday night are not really a great prospect for a senior citizen on his tod.

So for me, it was an early dinner and Match of the Day (mercifully not Wednesday/Palace), accompanied by an excellent bottle of Aussie Merlot in my hotel room.

Please let my next away trip be a little more fun...

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