Arsenal News » 2009 » November » 08
Rates of 40-1 were being quoted before the match for Billy “The Dog” McGraw’s prediction to be true, and a fair number of the 108,000 UNTOLD ARSENAL readers decided it was worth a flutter.
A fiver on Wolverhampton W. 1 Arsenal 4, with one of those £50 extra bids free if you’ve never had a bet with them before.
And what do you know?
It was another display of staggering brilliance spoilt only (and this is a very personal matter) by not being able to find a single pub in Cardiff that was showing the game.
I went into pub after pub where they might have 15 screens up, some quite small – set with the clear intention that when there were competing events on TV one little corner would be set out for the minority interest group.
But the stupid, pathetic, idiotic, twirpish nut-case landlords and their staff decided to put all 15 screens onto a rugby match. Of course rugby is the national sport in Wales, and I make no complaints about that. But there were several of us, meandering around in the pouring rain who would have spent quite a few pounds if we could have had one little corner watching one little screen. No sound needed, no atmosphere. Just us and a TV screen.
But no.
In the end I went back to where I was staying, changed out of my wet clothes, and put on Radio 5, while sending a message to the rolling news service on the Guardian. One guy helpfully sent back a note telling me of an Irish pub near the Castle – but by then I had changed, it was half time and that pub is on the other side of the city. But thanks mate. Appreciate it.
Watching Noddy and Big Ears on the Match in a Daze show it was another simple victory with the 3rd goal being something very special. Last time we played Wolverhampton W I went to the match and felt uncomfortable with the local support – and noticeable again that this time they decided to boo Eduardo’s message of world peace on his t-shirt. OK so they don’t speak the language, but booing something just because you don’t understand it is about half a step from racism, which is not very clever on Armistice Day.
Now the break for the MOMD (matches of meaningless drivel), which of course means it is time to take in Arsenal’s glorious past.
If you have never yet seen it, go and have a look at the Woolwich Arsenal web site. And after that order up your copy of the novel MAKING THE ARSENAL. Did you know this is the only club that actually has a blog that follows the day by day events of 100 years ago. Now that is what I call a sense of history.
And now, following a request that we give ratings, just like every other site in the multi-verse, here they are…
- Player ratings – everyone got 10.
- Crowd ratings – home crowd 2 out of 10, Arsenal 10 out of 10
- Commentator on Radio 5 ratings 7 out of 10 (spoilt by Jummy Armfield reminiscing about the Boer War)
- Match of the Day ratings – 8 out of ten – we came on second and they saw the value in the third goal
- Arsene Wenger’s coat ratings – 7 out of 10 – fairly standard
- Billy’s selection of the team ratings – 6 out of 10 – Billy earned us all a fortune by predicting the score but didn’t get the team right at all. 1-0 to the Wenger
- Wolverhampton’s ratings as an exotic centre of nightlife, fun, and suavity, minus several million out of 10.
- Cardiff’s rating for coping with a minority interest sport – minus the age of the universe out of 10.
Any other ratings you want to add? Please do. I haven’t read the other blogs on Arsenal this morning, but we could rate them. Or maybe the newspaper reports. Always happy to oblige. As in, “Coverage by the press that it is 20 years since Liverpool won the league” zero out of 10.
(c) Tony Attwood 2009.