The Rockliffe Files - If Only
By Toby Higgins
December 13 2006
Ah, those were the days. When offside was offside, when a broken leg was the result of a 'good challenge', when players were numbered 1-11 and there was no such thing as a fourth official.
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Nowadays, you wonder what would happen if there was no fourth official. My guess would be carnage. That said, you never hear anyone say, "the fourth official had a good game today" or "thank God for the fourth official".
I'm not going back hundreds of years here. We knew what offside meant just a few short years ago, and even today the bone crunchers are the tackles deemed 'good'. OK, so maybe the Premiership has had names and permanent squad numbers on shirts for just over ten years and the fourth official has been patrolling touchlines up and down the country for a while. But the football from ten years ago is not the football we know today. Or is it?
The year is 1996. England was still recovering from Euro '96 fever, Gareth Southgate had resorted to wearing a brown paper bag over his head by joining forces with fellow England penalty failures Chris Waddle and Stuart Pearce to advertise Pizza Hut, while David Beckham had just scored the goal that will launch his career, and the DB phenomenon. Meanwhile, on lowly Teesside, we dared to dream.
1995 had been some year. We had regained our Premiership status, we played our football in a brand new stadium, and we had fallen in love with a Brazilian dance known as the Samba, thanks to the little fella from Sao Paulo.
But 1996 and 1997 promised so much more. Juninho was joined by his fellow countryman Emerson and a £7million white feather known as Fabrizio Ravanelli, as Boro launched their own brand of 'sexy football', a phrase coined by Ruud Gullit earlier that year. There was only one way the Boro were going, and that was up.
Or so we thought. Ravanelli's debut hat-trick against Liverpool only went to further the myth that Boro would be playing for a spot in the top five, rather than scrapping for their Premiership lives. It wasn't to be. The football was fluent, the goals, spectacular, and the stadium full, but we struggled to keep our sheet clean. And then, almost exactly ten years ago to the day, we failed to turn up at Ewood Park for a fixture against Blackburn Rovers. The infamous three point deduction that followed meant that instead of going to Milan and Madrid, we would be going to Bury and Barnsley.
Only one player from that season remains at the club today. Mark Schwarzer arrived as somewhat of an unknown quantity when he signed from Bradford, and while a broken leg meant he was only able to wrack up ten first team appearances in his first season, from then until now, he has remained the club first choice goalkeeper. Many have tried to take Schwarzer's gloves from him over the years, with Mark Crossley coming closest in the 2001/2002 season, but he was powerless to stop the big Aussie taking back his place between the sticks.
As the longest current serving member of the playing staff at the club, Schwarzer has pretty much seen it all, from relegation, to the UEFA Cup final, and everything in between. And he is concerned about relegation. "The big question is do you entertain and not get results and get relegated at the end of the season? We did it in 1996-1997", Schwarzer said this week.
"That was a hell of a team that entertained unbelievably and many people would say it was probably the best entertainment they had ever seen at Middlesbrough. But we were relegated. You have to find that balance and more often than not, it is not going to be as entertaining as you would like it to be".
The only problem I have with this is that we are not playing good football, nor are we taking three points. It's dull, boring, and it's driving people away. One win in eight is relegation form.
How far have we gone in ten years? All the way around and back again, would be my assessment.
While Schwarzer himself may have come in for some criticism in recent weeks, it's worth baring in mind that if it wasn't for him, this club wouldn't have had the success it has had in recent years. Some of his saves in the UEFA Cup games, particularly in Rome, and his penalty save from Robbie Fowler at the City of Manchester Stadium to put the club back into Europe, are certainly listed among the highlights.
At 34, Schwarzer's last full season as number one could be on the horizon. Mistakes are creeping into his game, and, having conceded two penalties in the last four games and let a tame shot sneak through his gloves for the second year running at White Hart Lane, the knives are being sharpened.
But I hope, for the team and the man's sake, that the section of 'fans' who love any excuse to boo, don't. Schwarzer has been a great servant, and a great goalkeeper. No player can go on forever, but it's worth remembering what a great keeper Schwarzer has been, and hopefully will continue to be for a few more seasons yet.
He looked back to his best on Saturday, as the game threatened to turn into Mark Schwarer v Wigan. Unfortunately, another defensive lapse cost us a third penalty in four games, and this time it was Henri Camara who made no mistake from the spot after Emmanuel Pogatetz caught Paul Scharner. For what could well be the third week in a row I'll stress the importance of concentration at the back - for every second of the ninety minutes. At the level we play at, school boy errors get punished every time.
Despite Yakubu's leveller after good work from the returning Mark Viduka and the impressive James Morrison, we had to settle for a point - a slightly lucky point, it must be said.
The one overriding concern though must be the attendance. I know that three weeks prior to Christmas most people will spend their Saturday afternoons shopping, but still, 23,638?
I know that not all fans can get to every game because of work commitments, or where they live, or because of money, and these are not the fans I'm aiming at, nor am I aiming at the fans who did go, but 23,638 is woeful for a Saturday three o'clock kick off, at a time when the team needs fans the most.
Who am I to lecture people about going to the games? I am a fan who cares, that's who. Clearly, there are more fair-weather fans out there than I thought. Maybe they are all still in Eindhoven, hell, we were all fast enough in going there.
I know a fan who spent all week working very long hours away from his home, his family and his friends, who got home late and knackered on Friday night, and then woke up on Saturday morning, drove two hours to the Riverside for the game and drove two hours back again afterwards. He was back at work at 5am Monday morning.
If only there were more fans like him.
Same time next week…
Up the Boro
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