Every day I wake up I thank the Lord for Barnsley Football Club…

By: Martyn | September 17th, 2008

Those of you put-out by the title of this post… I really don’t mean to gloat or sound obnoxiously disrespectful. After all, I support a team that was in the dire and dreaded Division Three/Fourth Division/League Two for the majority of my formative years – the Primary and Secondary school days! The former were spent trying to justify the brilliance of Nathan Blake (or any other player my dad would be singing the praises of in the car home from Ninian Park: My immature attention span was at its prime and the acute football-loving mind wasn’t yet fully developed, needless to say!) to beleaguered and starry-eyed Newcastle United/Blackburn Rovers/Manchester United supporting alumni, the latter eventually culminated in going to watch the quite scintillating and victorious QPR play/off final game at this city’s very own architecturally hideous but brilliantly-located-especially-when-you-take-into-account-what-a-ghost-town-the-area-of-Wembley-is Millennium Stadium, accompanied by hordes of the aforementioned former Magpies/Rovers/Red Devils! Nevertheless, with our perennial troublesome financial situations there’s always the fear that the bubble may burst and we’ll be back down to the Football League’s penultimate division as a service station stop on the way to renewing acquaintances with Rochdale and Shrewsbury Town quicker than you can say “Leo Fortune-West hat-trick away at York City that finally spawned the phoenix from the ashes!”

Anyhow, I heavily digress. Teams like the Tykes – who spent a brief spell in the Premier League around a decade ago – are a football club that I should respect, be proud of, and support in times of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The thing is… we just love beating them so damn regularly! We’ve now won 5 of the last 6 meetings between the two sides, drawing the other encounter. Beating the Yorkshire outfit with current manager and Swansea-born Simon Davey at the helm makes things even sweeter too. Profuse apologies Barnsley fans: I’ve tipped you for relegation this season and I’ve gloated about the constant dish of demise we serve you. But honestly… it’s nowt personal!

I didn’t attend last night’s games – yeah, yeah, fairweather etc – primarily because I’ve elected to take in the weekend’s away game against Derby County and a certain Carling Cup game at the Liberty Stadium (an apt insulting name for this ground is still to be created by us City fans, but coinage of one is surely imminent) in 6 days time. Instead I made sure I was Mr Anti-Social in the living room with my housemates as although my eyes were on the Marseille-Liverpool Champions League game our living room TV played host to, conversation was off the menu as my headphones were nestled just above my earlobes so I could take in the coverage of our 1-0 victory provided by BBC Radio Wales. The persistent cutting out, the drab tones of the commentator and that Barnsley fan effin’ n’ blindin’ throughout the game failed to mask what was a thoroughly marvelous victory with a goal scored by a man rapidly gathering what might be described as very good form – Peter Whittingham. Sure, Dave Jones was indeed correct to reflect that we could have made ourselves a lot more comfortable than inflicting merely one unstoppable ball in Luke Steele’s direction. But so many times in recent seasons we’ve dropped two points by failing to cut out the one decent chance the opposition carves out all match. Correspondingly, it shows how much we’ve now matured and grown as a team that an unbeaten record really is there to be preserved rather than squandered. The play/off’s are no longer a distinct possibility, they are a very-near reality! With all this in mind therefore, I believe such an unglamorous single-goal victory in Yorkshire on a mild September evening can be justified and prefaced with more extravagant and sexier adjectives than some may deem necessary. We’ll soon be ordering dessert in Beefeater, but next season it may well at last be time to dine at The Ivy!