Hard for him but he always makes the best of these discussions.
April 3, 2008
Bubbles
The thing with Lawrie Sanchez, he really did believe in himself and in his vision. I imagine this must have worked quite well when he first got the job and began to decide which of his Northern Ireland heroes he’d bring along with him.
Imagine him talking to Steve Davis, Aaron Hughes, Chris Baird, and yeah, David Healy:
“We’ve done brilliantly, brilliantly for Northern Ireland. Now I’m getting money. I’ll bring the best players from my international team, supplement them with some outstanding players from elsewhere, and bang! Watch out Premiership!”
And they’d have been right with him. They *had* done really well for their country. And international football isn’t easy. With the right help at Fulham, well, the sky would’ve been the limit. All of these players would’ve jumped at the chance. A manager who had given them some of the best experiences of their career was now offering them a chance to play at the country’s highest level. What could be better?
In they all came, one by one but very much as a group. Hughes, first through the door, was injured before the season started but Zat Knight and Tony Warner led an amazing raid on Ashburton Grove to begin the season. David Healy scored in the first minute! Steve Davis nearly added a second. Oh, Lawrie’s plan was good alright. They’d made good choices. It was going to be alright. They had arrived as footballers.
At the end of that game Chris Baird, who’d had issues with Alexsandr Hleb all game, played his man onside and we lost a game it looked like we’d win. Oh well, it had been a good effort, a far better effort than people had expected. It’d all come good.
The Wednesday after that Healy scored again, lashing home a predator’s goal from close range against Bolton in a filthy night at the Cottage. Alexey Smertin’s deflected shot secured a win.
On the following Saturday the team came out flying against Middlesbrough, passing the ball around with verve and vision. Brian McBride scored and it felt like we were on our way to a big, big win. This was arguably the high point of the season for Sanchez’s men. The point at which hope and expectation were highest, and where fear and doubt were a their lowest. The team had performed creditably in the first two games and were ahead and playing well here. Then it began to unravel. McBride had slipped while scoring and didn’t get up again. Tony Warner, so impressive at Arsenal, let a nothing shot through his hands, and suddenly Boro were back in it. They went on to win with a soft, late goal.
After that we had the unfortunate but symptomatic defeat at Aston Villa, the gradual realisation that results weren’t going our way at all, the even more gradual realisation that the manager was losing the plot, and the glaringly obvious realisation that his Northern Ireland boys weren’t going to have the season they, or we, thought they’d have. Their Euro 2008 qualification campaign fell apart. Baird’s Fulham form carried over to his international matches and he lost his place in both lineups. Healy kept on scoring, but really this only served to emphasise what he *wasn’t* doing for Fulham. Davis showed promise and finally escaped to Glasgow, where he’s been a success. Hughes alone is out there on the front lines, fighting every week, but not obviously winning these fights.
It’s been a horrible season. In my mind I thought I was optimistic for a good chunk of it, but now I see how deluded that was. We haven’t recovered from the Boro game.
Life’s all about hoping that things will get better some time in the unseeable, indefinite future. Mid-life crises can happen when an individual realises that the future is only to be relied on for hopes for so long, and that now is what we are and probably what we will always be, and that it isn’t half as good as we thought it’d be. Hopes are generally there to be squashed. We couldn’t see this back then, back when McBride scored and more seemed certain. But that was as good as we were going to get. That was our lot. And now the season’s gone and run out on us, we haven’t done what we thought we’d do. We failed. Our expectations were high – aren’t they always? – but we failed.
