BORO v WEST BROM BLAST ROM THE PAST

By Come On Boro.com
August 9 2006

So what can be said about West Brom? They used to be good, I think at the turn of the last century and for a little time in the late-sixties or something, but now are just a little bit rubbish, along with heavyweights such as Burnley, Oldham and Blackburn Olympic I guess.

Like Boro, they share a link with Bryan Robson- great player yet tactically-naïve manager. And they have a fanzine called Grorty Dick apparently, which sounds like a colloquial term for a particularly unpleasant genital wart problem.

Beyond that though, matches against the mediocre Midlanders do invoke a few memories amongst Boro fans. So we’ll start with Oort and Megaphone Man with their Ayresome Park reminiscences before moving on to our long trips south to the Hawthorns.

The Oort Cloud
Middlesbrough 2-1 WBA, 28/03/1981

Own goals, drugs, insanity, shootings, and cancer of the rectum.

The very early eighties were a strange time. The nation was quaintly unaware of the impending arrival of The A-Team, and it would be a couple of years before the teachings of Howling Mad Murdoch would change this young schoolboy’s life. Being too juvenile to truly enjoy the coke-fuelled decadence, shit music and embarrassing hair cuts, I was a season ticket holder in the 80/81 season. I don’t have many memories of that season as I was still in single figures at the time, and due to the plummeting cost of street drugs since then, the whole season occupies but a few, barely firing neurons.

History books tell us (well okay, football books) this was when West Brom were managed by Ron Atkinson (yes, the fat racist cunt) and had the likes of Bryan Robson, Remi Moses, Cyrille Regis and of course Brendan Batson who, on that day in March 1981, managed to head the ball into the top corner of his own goal from a cross, with absolutely nobody around him. An awesome finish any striker would be proud of- such a crazy own goal could never be forgotten. As the goal went in the huge cheer resonated with mocking laughter. Brendan’s every other touch was met with ironic bellows of “shoot”. Perhaps Brendan was getting Big Ron back for future discrepancies.

Mr Batson would go on to be awarded the CBE, work as an administrator for the PFA, and is now managing director at WBA. Big Ron would go on to have to sell the gristle around his nose to Fray Bentos in order to keep himself in orange skin dye, and eventually die a horrible, painful death due to cancer of the rectum.

We of course had the likes of David Armstrong, Craig Johnston, David Hodgson, Jim Platt, and, er, Billy Ashcroft, who probably didn’t play. Can’t remember the line-up I’m afraid, or who scored our second goal [it was Shearer, if anyone cares- ed]. If someone could post our line-up on the message board I’ll send you a scotch egg in the post.

We won 2-1, not bad against a team that finished fourth. We ended up an irrelevant 14th. At the end of that season Big Ron moved on to money greener, taking with him his inebriated apprentice Bryan Robson, who would eventually drink as a professional at the Riverside. For Boro, the next season would be met with awful, smelly relegation, which was the beginning of the end, of the beginning of the end of the beginning. And now it’s now. Oh yeah, and two days after this match someone shot Ronald Reagan. Hey that was the Eighties, man, stuff like that happened all the time, ya crazy fool!

Megaphone Man
Middlesbrough 1-0 WBA, 09/03/1982

I went with my Dad to a night match against THE WEST BROM on Tuesday March 9th 1982. We were in the East Stand right next to the away support. My main memory is that the West Brom lads were nutters, charging down the stand and then backing up and then charging back down again. They also had a chant that rung into me:

THE WEST BROM
clap clap clap
THE WEST BROM
clap clap clap

A lot of their fans wore donkey jackets and black hats with WBA on the backs of the jackets. I remember my Dad turning to me because I was, for the very first time, a bit wary of the away fans on my left shoulder. My Dad beamed a smile at me and asked me if I was alright and I replied that ‘yeh’ ‘I was alright’. I was a dangling twelve year old and I was not about to show fear to the West Brom gargoyles who were sticking their faces at the fence and shouting at us, chucking stuff at us, and generally being quite unkempt.

I am 100% certain that it was dark and the floodlights were on, and also Regis was playing for them. ‘Boro-Stat’ tells me that Hodgson scored for us, but I only remember standing up for the celebration, and a bloke in a white jumper who sported an early wedgie blonde streaked haircut, who remained standing and giving it the V’s to the West Brom fans for a long time after we scored.

I am squinting trying to remember which strip West Brom were playing in. I thought they had the green and t’other colour stripes on, but on speaking to my Dad who also cannot really remember the game, he said blue and white stripes. All in all, not a brilliant account, but it's my memory of THE WEST BROM at Boro. I do however, feel confident in announcing that the West Brom away team I watched were not playing in Pink, and that they had eleven men.

And so on to the away days and one particular game sticks in the memory…

Steve Goldby
WBA 1-2 Middlesbrough, 14/11/2004

My one and only trip to The Hawthorns was memorable for a variety of reasons, mainly because it was ex-Boro boss Bryan Robson's first game in charge of West Brom and as so often happens in football, he was up against his old club.

The Boro lads took the piss out of him constantly with chants of ‘Drink all your beer, he's gonna drink all your beer…’ and similar.

The game itself was incredibly exciting and to me, summed up much of what was good and bad about last season.

Jimmy's opening goal [officially it was an o.g.- ed] was a carbon copy of the one he bagged at The Valley a month or so earlier and at 1-0 up, Boro went rubbish.

We let The Baggies back into it in the second half and they equalised early-on but Boro upped the ante and Bolo Zenden scored a carbon copy of his first goal against Lazio two weeks earlier to give Boro the lead again.

Then we went rubbish again and practically hung on for the remainder of the game. In the very last minute, Kanu made the miss of the millennium when he blasted the ball over from 0.000003 millimetres. It would have been easier to score.

Typical Robbo luck I thought, but we went home happy.

Andrew Morgan
WBA 1-2 Middlesbrough, 14/11/2004
There’s not really much to add to Steve’s report really (cue three page discussion) suffice to say that as this is the only West Brom fixture I’ve ever been to, I suppose I’d better write about it. My impressions of West Brom as a club started on the long journey south from York when I spent an enjoyable two hours chatting to an affable Baggies fan in a West Brom bobble-hat and perusing the football section of the Daily Mirror, reading the same articles about Man United eleven thousand times.

It was also the first time that I met regular away traveller Andy Craig, although the pathetic pub at Birmingham New Street station was not necessarily the most glamorous place to go on a first date. This was enforced in the pub itself when a man in a luminous jacket wearing a Birmingham City hat (they do like their hats there for some reason) started telling us that ‘we would do them fucking Baggies today’ and wishing us all the best- I guess that is the typical banter of the average Birmingham City supporter, I don’t know, I’ve never been.

The game itself was very much like Steve described. Think Wigan this season in a more contracted time-span (i.e. good, indifferent, good, indifferent as opposed to just good, indifferent) and you pretty much have it. The Baggies support was vociferous, a rarity for a Premier League home support in all honesty. But then it was Bryan Robson’s first game in charge- the saviour who would, ultimately, guide them to safety (who would have predicted that, aye?). Apart from that the game passed like a blur. I may have been drunk- I don’t really know.

I remember the goading of Robson but it was more banter than anything vicious- with cries of ‘Robbo, Robbo give us a wave’ being charitably obliged by the ex-Boro boss. This sent the away support into raptures and heralded one of the better atmospheres I experienced last season with both sets of fans enjoying a good old slanging match.

The game meanwhile was pedestrian at best and I spent most of the time looking at the T-Mobile hoarding in the far corner, which is probably why I have little memory of the game come to think of it. I know that the first goal resulted from a melee in the box that unluckily rebounded off a West Brom defender. I can’t even remember their equaliser- it was probably due to an Ehiogu error mind- suffice to say that I thought it was coming and thoroughly deserved. Even our second I can’t remember either but I think it was at the other end so that’s okay.

But then all this wasn’t the most memorable thing about the game- it was THAT Kanu miss- N-wank-o indeed! A cross came in from the West Brom right and we were caught napping, particularly in our marking. Three minutes earlier the Baggies had gone close to equalising and in the previous twenty they had applied considerable pressure on our goal. So when Kanu stole in at the back-post, unmarked, on the goal-line and with a gaping goal in front of him, we all thought it was 2-2.

Ninetieth minute and more points thrown away, I turned around and kicked my seat in frustration. It wasn’t until a few seconds later that I thought something was awry- the cheers were coming from our own fans rather than from the home support, who sat there in stunned silence amidst our masturbation goads. I looked down and saw the ball bouncing on top of the net and just laughed, joining in the hand-waving.

Well, what else could a decent away supporter do? Serves the bastard right for that ‘cheeky’ back-heel he scored in the 6-1 home rout against Arsenal we suffered a few seasons earlier. I had no sympathy. But I did have some for Robbo. His team deserved something that day but football is far from sentimental I thought as I vacated the stadium and headed towards the tram to the sounds of barracking from some Brom supporters who were behind a security fence like a pack of rabid baying hyenas.

Still a scraped win and a serenade on your way out. What more do you want from the Boro? A performance? Nah, that would be just too simple…

And finally a wander down the narrow alley of yesteryear to remember a player who played for both the Boro and the Baggies…

Harry Haverton

Did you know that Middlesbrough once sold a player for the British transfer record?

It's true. This was in the days when we hardly ever spent anything on players, so although we were sorry to see Millsy go, we were quite excited about who we might spend our new-found wealth on.

David Mills had been at Boro for years and maybe it was time for a change so in 1979 Ron Atkinson paid a reported fee of £500,000 for his services and made him Britain’s first half million pound footballer.

We never really saw any of the cash put back into the team. And Millsy didn’t have much luck at West Brom, spending most of his time in the treatment room and then suffering a bad car crash that almost ended his career.

He came back to Boro in the mid-Eighties but the team was on a downward slide by then and it never really happened for him second time round. He was a great player was Millsy. Wonder where he is now?

MIDDLESBROUGH v WEST BROM MATCH PROGRAMME - SPONSORED BY BRITISH GAS