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MIDDLESBROUGH v BIRMINGHAM BLAST FROM THE PAST
Birmingham City - with the chirpy loveable scamp known as Steve Bruce. No, me neither, I find him strangely annoying as well and I can't really work out why. Still nevermind.
Meanwhile, I believe that Birmingham think they some sort of Chelsea of the Midlands - ridiculous ticket prices, check, play in blue shirts, check, buy the top quality players, erm, maybe. After all, Birmingham do try to buy quality but in the end it always seems to turn into Emile Heskey, which I guess is a shame for Blue's fans really. Still, Bruce had made them into a solid mid-table Premiership side since their promotion but just look at them now. A cautionary tale for many a Premier League club, including the Boro...
Lemontop
My first memory of seeing us play against the Blues was at Ayresome Park in our second consecutive promotion season of 1987-1988. Before the joy-frustration-joy-nervousness-euphoria of the Barnsley, Leicester, play-offs run-in we came up against Birmingham around the time of my twelfth birthday. The game was Trevor Senior's home debut for the Boro, and I, in the naivety of youth that I'm still afflicted with three weeks shy of my thirtieth birthday, expected great things against relegation threatened opposition. I was even more confident as their goalkeeper was forced off the field early on and striker Andy Kennedy went in goal, but the best we could muster was a draw. And that was pretty well that for the next fifteen years or so as our paths rarely crossed. Yes, between us we've shared more ups and downs then, well, I'm sure you can think of your own metaphor.
Since Birmingham made it back up however, the relationship has been more straightforward. We win at home, we lose away. As regular as clockwork. In their first season back up, we managed a narrow 1-0 win at home in a distinctly unmemorable performance. More memorable for me unfortunately, was our 3-0 thrashing at St Andrews with my gloating mates having mysteriously re-discovered their allegiance to 'the boys in royal blue' as, for the first time in many years, they found themselves back in the top flight and beating Aston Villa.
The following year's away game was even more of a shambles. Birmingham's inability to interpret a Friday morning weather forecast predicting 'continued heavy rain' as 'put a tarpaulin cover over your pitch', meant the original fixture had to be replayed on the Tuesday after Cardiff, in the definitive 'after the Lord Mayor's show'. This was more than rectified however by our subsequent, bizarre, 5-3 win at the Riverside as Mendieta and Maccarone ran Birmingham into the ground, and Forsell at the other end displayed a ruthlessness in front of goal that injury has pretty much prevented him rediscovering since. Let's hope it's still missing come Saturday.
In last season's festive match up we lost again, when the high-tempo, nay bullying, approach of Birmingham was way too much for our Boateng-less team and, once Viduka had gone off, having dallied for an eternity before squandering a one-on-one, we were never in it. Mind, he had scored a couple of goals in the winning home game where I finally became convinced Emile Ivanhoe Heskey had the Indian sign over us. The pattern had repeated itself yet again. Win at home, lose away.
So on to this season. We've finally won at St Andrews, for the first time for ages, so will they buck the trend completely and beat us at the Riverside? In the last two games he's completed against them, Viduka has scored twice in each. But he won't play. Heskey always scores against us. And he will play. Am I superstitious? I'm not sure. Am I confident? Again, I'm not sure.
Indeed, given this year's match is in the middle of my brother's stag do, I doubt I'll even know my own name by the time I take my seat on Saturday. But let's get the win that'll send us into the Roma game with confidence. Come on Boro!
Great Smog #2
Birmingham City 1-0 Middlesbrough, 08/03/1975
March 8th 1975. The good old days of real Labour governments, Tory Party shit scared of the miners and Boro flying in their first season back in the top division after twenty years in the wilderness. For some reason lost in the mists of time a group of us had spent the previous night at Warwick University... all I can recall is that I got absolutely hammered (Full grant = £750; beer=13p a pint; acid 50p a tab - do the maths), the Student Union had a mixed toilet and one of the bars was 'Anarchists Only'. A welcome reminder of the Brambles Farm Hotel.
The next day, still buzzing, we made our way from Coventry to Birmingham by train. A classic 60s BR slam-door with compartments that smelled of piss and vomit. Ah, British Rail (manly tear appears in eye). Into New Street and then it all changed. Fights all around the station, real 70s skins in Dr Martens chasing each other around the city streets. A group of stoned long-haired students (two in fucking kaftans!) stuck out like the bunch of pricks they really were. How did we get to St Andrews? I don't know - all I remember is the complete hatred all of the way there.
Finally into the ground - incredible atmosphere - Boro end completely full - Cup Quarter Final. Back four hewn out of rock, Graeme growling in midfield, this was going to be the year. For ten minutes, it was. We were absolutely all over them. Then? Nothing! Boro defended the rest of the game, even after Bob Hatton scored for Brum, and didn't have another shot or attack all game (check your Opta if you don't believe me). Total fucking depression at the end of it. It still hurts thirty years on.
Gauntlet of hate to survive as we left and somehow we got to Birmingham University campus. The night was saved though - Full grant = £750; beer=13p a pint; acid 50p a tab - do the maths. So, ComeOnBoro!, fuck them on Saturday, get relegation behind us and I promise to finally put March 8th 1975 out of my mind...
The Oort Cloud
Middlesbrough 1-2 Birmingham City, 01/11/1980
November the first is world vegan day and "the day of the dead" in Mexico. On this day in 1980 Antigua and Barbuda gained independence from the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, whilst 'Woman in Love' by Barbara Streisand was number one on both sides of the Atlantic, Jenny McCarthy, Anthony Keidis and Larry Flynt were all celebrating birthdays.
This was only my eighth ever Boro match and the first time I had witnessed defeat. Strangely I had never thought it possible at the time - how foolish one can be when so young. I remember they had Frank Worthington playing for them, who scored the winner, the only man still playing with a haircut left over from the 70s. It was kind of a cross between a comb-over and a mullet - possible names could be cullet, or mull-over. Suffice to say it looked a fucking mess, and I still bear the emotional scars of such a bad haircut to this day.
Flash Harry Boro
Birmingham City 2-0 Middlesbrough, 20/12/1995
I suppose the most memorable Brum match was around 1995 in the League Cup at their gaff. I was only a young whippersnapper and decided that I'd attend this one with the auld fella and his cronies on a mini bus. It was a Tuesday night I think and it must have been winter because I remember that there were piles of snow around the side of the pitch.
Anyway we got into Brum for opening time and I had strict orders to take it steady otherwise I'd be fucked for the match. So we all had a good sup and the usual banter with the locals and the rather attractive busty barmaid, who our dad told I was still breastfeeding, asking whether she could help me out seeing as I was away from home.
With kick off approaching we decided to head to the game all completely hammered. We got to the ground and there wasn't any beer being served at all which was probably the norm then, but a couple of the blokes on our bus had helped themselves to copious bottles of vino which we soon used to wash down our pies. The match turned out to be shite. We got beat 1 or 2 nil with a bloke called Kevin Francis who I can only describe as a human giraffe on ice scoring and generally running us ragged.
My one defining memory from the game is Barry Fry running the length of the touchline to celebrate in front of us, the fat short arse cockney gerbil looking twat. So that was that, out of the Cup for another year and facing a long drive home we sloped away from the stadium. We got back to the mini bus after pelting pretty much every person/house/business/vehicle we went past with snow balls. All in good friendly drunken fun by the way, no hint of trouble at all.
So there we were at the van when one bloke's like "where's fuckin so and so he's meant to be driving us home" and everyone agrees that he hadn't been seen for some time. To cut a long story short we ended up smashing the window of the bus to get in, hotwiring it and partaking in a very drunken, very dangerous and very cold journey home with myself doing the gears, the auld fella steering and another bloke doing the pedals. How the fuck we got home in one piece is anyone's guess.
To this day I still don't know where our driver got to. He might still be there...
Good away game but more for the craic with the lads than anything that Boro served up on the pitch.
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