PART IV: THE SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL
written by Steve Goldby

When St George played as Boro's number nine striker, he finished as top scorer on fifty one goals in one season, a feat that many great Boro teams have since tried to emulate. Meanwhile, Y.K. Chow perfected his special Boro cheese and presented Vlad and the team with a special range of parmos on a daily basis.

It was around this time that modern dietary and conditioning methods were coming into fashion within the game. This was as a result of a new breed of manager - usually French - pontificating about how unhealthy English food was and how it affected a player's performance in a negative way. Vlad thought that there might be something in this and put the players on special parmo diets, which unfortunately did not help results out on the pitch one little bit. As more and more parmos were consumed, so results deteriorated until Boro were on the downward slide in a big way.

At this point Boro had to win at Shrewsbury on the last day of the season to avoid going down. Vlad desperately needed a result and berated his men on the team coach. Y.K. Chow had not said a word since the party left Middlesbrough and spent the entire journey in silence with a very worried look on his face because he had forgotten to bring the half time parmos. Vlad was incensed by this neglectful act and started having a go at Y.K. Chow who offered to find suitable half time refreshment in Shrewsbury. As soon as they arrived at Gay Meadow, Y.K. Chow made haste for the nearest supermarket and returned to the ground laden with prime Aberdeen Angus choice cuts. Vlad was not happy at all and was now so enraged that he started to have a right old go at Y.K. Chow who retaliated with a few choice phrases of his own. Vlad moved to punch the Chinaman, Souness style, who stepped back and smacked the Romanian with one of the pieces of meat and caught him right across the chest. Instantly, Vlad fell to the floor, dead, killed by a steak in the heart.

Boro went on to win handsomely that day, the players feeling relieved at being set free from the tyranny of Vlad's reign. Never again would they have to worry about being publicly executed if they were caught offside too many times. A mere transfer to Darlington would be the new order of the day for poor performances. Y.K. Chow had also realised that eating cheese on the day of a match was causing Boro to lose. Never mind Hitler's invasion stopping us winning the league, three point deductions and things like that, Boro's previous failures have all been down to the wanton consumption of dairy product before matches. During the close season, St George set off on his pilgrimage to find The Holy Grail of Jesus Christ.



St George's mission to find the Holy Grail was laborious and came to a sticky end when he was executed in Wolverhampton for treachery. Nobody is really too sure why he was in the Black Country at the time, as nobody goes there unless it is for a match but recently, historians have uncovered relics such as red and white flags that have been attributed to George but these are more likely to be Boro banners from the day we were promoted at Molineux in 1992. George's skull was brought back to Teesside by pilgrims (Ayresome Angels) and attached to the North Stand crossbar where it still rests to this day.

Fast forward a few centuries and Middlesbrough had become engulfed with tales of witches curses on Ayresome Park and jinxes on our F.A.Cup runs. These tall tales had captivated the masses to such a degree that some people actually believed them. But these people were mainly writers for the Southern media. Unconvinced by these myths, Boro boss Jack Charlton asked a gypsy who was taking a leak outside the ground if he believed there was any truth in the stories. The gypsy, who was called Arthur King told Big Jack that all the old Ayresome curses would be lifted on the day that the iron was prised out of the stone.



Roaming freely on Middlehaven

Jack Charlton came the closest to finding the Holy Grail, despite the best attempts of Lennie Lawrence, so drawn by the quest that he actually now lives in the place that the relic was found. Jack's team were not allowed Boro cheese, or cheese of any variety before games and this undoubtedly contributed to their on field successes. But Jack's reign was not to be fulfilled and despite a valiant attempt to uncover the Holy Grail, he gave up the battle after a mere one hundred years of trying. The truth is that Jack was a keen farmer and lover of nature and needed more time to look after his cows. On his regular visits to The Riverside, he would often despair at the waste ground outside the stadium known as Middlehaven and having being informed of an ancient law that allowed freemen of the town to walk their livestock along Linthorpe Road and let them graze on the public fields, Jack applied to become a freeman of Middlesbrough, an application that was duly approved.

Meanwhile, Steve McClaren had become the latest in a long line of managers to have a go at retrieving The Holy Grail and during the winter of 2004, Boro were drawn to play Arsenal in the semi final of the Carling Cup. Could we prevail? Treacherous weather conditions had not only caused the cancellation of the original fixture but had also meant that Jack Charlton had to find somewhere else for his cows to graze. The Riverside pitch seemed like the best idea, what with it's undersoil heating and modern facilities, so when Arsenal turned up for the re-arranged game, they found the Boro goalmouth unaccessible due to it's occupation by Boro cows. Good job we weren't playing Jose Mourinho's Chelsea.

We all know what happened that night at The Riverside. At the end of the match, Gareth Southgate did the Dance of the Romanian Dead as Frank Quedrue drank the blood of Martin Keown from the skull of St George. And the Boro team set off for Cardiff, where all this had begun just over two thousand years ago.


Juninho with Jesus' drinking vessel

The Holy Grail was now in sight for Boro but the end game was not easy at all. It all turned out well in the end though but we have our old friend Jack Charlton to thank for that. Jack, being a man of many different persuasions, had cunningly turned himself into a Bolton fan for the day and had eaten loads of cheese before the match, thus condemning the Wanderers to defeat, something that Sam Allardyce has never stopped complaining about since.

But there is one part of the tale that has remained a well kept secret since it took place. Remember Arthur King, who advised Jack that the curses would be lifted when the iron was prised out of the stone? Well Jack had deliberated on this one for many years and the answer to the riddle came to him when he was in the Sky TV Carling Cup Final hospitality lounge, just before kick off. As soon as he clapped eyes on Bryan Robson, who was drinking a pint of Stones' Bitter, Jack knew that he had to act there and then. Remembering that Arthur King had been a little pissed when they had met, Jack realised in an instant what he had really meant and as he wrenched the Stones' from the hand of Bryan, Joseph Job tucked Boro's first goal away.

And that was never a two footed penalty by Zenden. Hardly anybody knows this but Bolo actually had the skull of St George stuffed down his shorts when he took his spot kick and the magical mystical forces of the fabled cranium willed the ball into the net.

Now you know why the Parmo shops of Middlesbrough do not open until the evenings and why Bryan Robson only drinks lager these days. So until the next cup final, keep eating the cheese. But not on match days...