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MIDDLESBROUGH v BIRMINGHAM - BLAST FROM THE PAST II
Megaphone Man
I arrived early, dumped my car near a building site and then made my way on foot to the stadium. I walked through a gate and ahead of me the terrain opened out into a circle - but in front of the turnstiles stood three ranks of Bobbies. I walked up and had my bag searched by a fumbling nervous Special who after feeling my flag said "ok fine".
I went inside and put my stupid bet on and then went looking for a spot to hang my flag. I hung it near the disabled fans and said hello and shook hands with one of the lads in a wheelchair whom I knew from work. It was a sunny day, the game kicked off and we were very soon on the back foot after Dugarry had put them ahead. The Birmingham crowd were overjoyed that their old man had scored and so after that we had to listen to three sides of the stadium all singing "DU - DU - DUGARRY" each time the ball went out of play. The game got worse and worse for us and our players started to pick up cards in their frustration. Our support was awful meanwhile (800) and we were trying to sing in little spread out pockets so we were always outsung.
Once the Brum got their third goal we had to sit and listen to chants that got more and more abusive throughout the last ten minutes. A few of ours began to get annoyed when the police filmed our support but would not turn around to see the nearest Brummie fans making obscene gestures towards our mainly quiet and subdued crowd.
I went the following season on the coach from the Bluebell too. I was hoping for a revenge result, but the game was rained off and the gutting thing was that we had arrived early and didn't see any rain for the hour before the game. So we went to a pub and drank it dry and then came home.
Andrew Morgan
Birmingham City 2-0 Middlesbrough, 26/12/2004
The typical Christmas malaise dawned crisp and bright. The sun shone down through the Christmas awnings pasting romantic shadows on the glistening frost below whilst millions of people up and down the country stumbled groggily to the oven to prepare a hangover-busting bacon sandwich. Judging by the way the Boro played that day, I wouldn't be surprised if a few of our squad were in this cross-section of society.
This was the season that I went to something like fifteen out of nineteen possible League away games. Birmingham however was not one of them for a myriad of reasons. The trains on Boxing Day were crap and I was not even sure I could even get there or get home, plus they were cancelled left, right and bloody centre. I also had no money, my trip to Southampton two weeks earlier had taken a lot out of me and I did not really fancy paying £35, the League's highest price for an away ticket after Chelsea, to see Emile Heskey strut his sexy stuff. Plus funding Sullivan and Brady - no thanks, the game was on in the pub anyway.
So I ambled my way down with my uncle to watch the game in the Blue Bell in Yarm, a pub that used to have some atmosphere but one that has succumbed to the 'Changing Rooms' nonsense of bland is best, with pale wood and white walls. Bah! Sat with the other punters who had sobered up enough to start drinking again I cleverly tried to avoid eye contact with one of my neighbour's playing pool. I couldn't be bothered with the pleasantries.
I remember having a dodgy feeling about this game, but that could have been due to the under-cooked duck I had had the evening before. The atmosphere in the pub was not really electric, rather of drunken indifference, hangovers still hurting, heads still throbbing, the Boro playing shite. It was a recipe for disaster really. I meanwhile was reasonably fine and started shouting and swearing at the TV once the match started, much to the discomfort of my uncle. Still what was there to be happy about? We were barely in the game and we surrendered meekly. Viduka went off injured. Either that or he was bloody useless and had decided halfway through the game to take his arse for a wander somewhere. And this was the match where Boateng got crocked, leaving him out for three months.
It was a real let-down that game. After three or four months of scintillating football the realisation that the second half of the season may not be so good started to loom large. We had hammered Villa the previous week, albeit not in totally convincing circumstances and we had only just managed to draw against the Saints in the preceding fixture. Weaknesses were starting to be exposed in the side and Stewart Downing's game started to be read by the opposition as we suddenly slipped from being world-beaters to strugglers.
And it was this game that highlighted this, in painful circumstances as well, what with our talismanic midfielder incapacitated for ages. We went on to win two matches in the next three months, and one of those was a scrape against Notts County. It nearly blew our European qualification chances but thankfully it didn't. And it also meant the Boro's unenviable Christmas slump was still a rather tight dog collar around the yapping bitch of success. Thankfully this season we've had our malaise slightly earlier. With hope.
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