Alan Hansen is always saying that great teams find a way to win games even when they are playing badly.
He he.
Today’s extraordinary cup tie was a wonderful game of football, at once exciting, mortifying, and satisfying. Fulham started very well. Kettering couldn’t get out of their own half, Fulham would attach again, over and over. We scored when Simon Davies volleyed home a Dempsey cross, a fantastic technical strike that sent the waist high ball fizzing into the net. I began to daydream of scoring six or seven.
Somehow it was all too easy. Kettering weren’t at the races, Fulham kept the ball, switched flanks to exploit space, and kept on attacking. The Kettering keeper saved well from a Dempsey header that would have made it two. But surely another goal was not far away.
Indeed it wasn’t. Kettering attacked and a combination of a clumsy tackle and Old Mother Riley’s idiosyncratic refereeing resulted in a free-kick on the edge of our box. The Kettering player took an almighty whack at the ball, which flicked off Zoltan Gera and left Schwarzer unmoved.
1-1. Non-league side, remember?
It got worse. In the second half Kettering had a free-header on the six yard box that was sent into the crowd. Bloody hell. We didn’t look like scoring. The free flowing football of the first half was gone. Now there was a gigantic hole in the middle of our team as Gera, Andreasen and Etuhu failed to stamp their authority on our now thriving opponents. Gera got a bit between his teeth after this, but it merely resulted in him running around faster, not in anything tangibly good happening.
Finally Roy Hodgson brough on Danny Murphy, and at once things were under control. Murphy calmed things down, Davies became a constant menace, and before long the pair of them had made a goal, from Davies to Murphy to the net, via a deflection. Harsh on Kettering. It felt wrong to cheer somehow; we bloody well should have been winning.
Kettering didn’t lie down, and soon Mike Riley got himself an equaliser, awarding a penalty for not much at all. This was converted to make it 2-2. The small crowd erupted, the Fulham fans rolled their eyes. What on earth was going on?
Then we scored again. A deep cross seemed to freeze everyone but Bobby Zamora, who nodded it back across goal for Andy Johnson to convert from a yard out. Weird goal, but this was not a normal game, and here we were 3-2 up. We fully expected some kind of Kettering response, but Zamora added a fourth with a sublime turn and shot that settled the matter and hopefully gave him some confidence for the weeks ahead. Dempsey almost added a fifth with a crashing drive, and that was that.
Phew.
The Kettering goal in the second half. Not the busiest place…
Zoltan scents opportunities… but fouls his man
Kettering on the attack
Here come the mighty whites
Up for the Cup
The game opens up (as captured by my phone’s Night Vision feature)
More Night Vision thrills
Yep.
