And there's you, a little black cloud in a dress

Ron Waller

Dagenham & Redbridge 2 Wycombe Wanderers 2

Much has been made of the re-launch of SMBU. Will the site improve? Will the summer signings gel? Will the glory years of the Dwarf Firm and the MIDI files return? Tough questions, from tough men, with tough skin. But fire must be fought with yet more fire, and we didn’t make the trip to Dagenham without first organising an expert summariser for the game.

The day didn’t start well though. The Barking pub we arranged to meet him in obviously didn’t appeal. We sat for hours, waiting patiently, but to no avail. We had to face this one without him.

The first half served up crudités of turd for Wycombe fans. A perplexing team selection by Paul Lambert was apparently based upon Dagenham’s reputation as a long ball, physical side. A reputation of course, that doesn’t exist, apart from to people whose understanding of football begins and ends with “John Still’s a big bloke with a bald head. His team must be direct and aggressive.” A Daggers goal was gifted. Scott Shearer spilled the ball like a three-fingered barman mixing Manhattans while answering the phone. Stocky Sam Sloma tidily deposited the ball in the Wycombe net on the rebound, signally the start of several quarrels dotted across the away end. “Get Young on,” screamed one fan. “Get off Shearer’s back,” yelled another. Violence was threatened and colourful language exchanged. Nothing happened though; a man in a blue jacket quelled the tension like a Downley Kofi Annan.

But you knew it was on its way. 1-0 down at half time and boos rang out from around 80 of the away followers. It’s difficult to see their point. Lambert has picked the wrong side, Wycombe are playing badly, Dagenham haven’t got a big screen, but really, booing? Booing? Betty Boo? Boogaloo? The booing asks questions. Why are people so upset after one and a half league games? Why do people watch Wycombe? What is this all about? Is it the shame? Is it the thought of returning to the office or the playground on Monday morning and having to admit that you support Wycombe, and they’re not always that great? What is it about Wycombe fans that stops them from saying, “This is who we are, this is what we’ve got, and we’ll get behind it for 90 minutes a week?” Why do so many Wycombe fans accept years of financial mismanagement of the club with a cheery shrug, yet turn into bloodthirsty lunatics when a 24-year-old footballer mislays a pass? For many Wycombe fans, it seems, there is no patience, no understanding but most of all, no pride in travelling away to support the team. Just high expectations, and stroppy frustrations. If this is rain, let it fall on me and drown me.

That said, the Wycombe defending for the second Dagenham goal is absolutely fucking dreadful. 2-0 down in 51 minutes is not what the Doctor ordered. An audible gulp is heard from the Wycombe bench as Lambert swallows his pride and dumps a dose of much needed width on the pitch in the form of Bullock and Sergio. Slowly but surely Wycombe start to play, and the yelps of Martin Bullock are thankfully heard at the far post, as he twists and turns and delivers and Matt Bloomfield guides his header home.

Five minutes of injury time are found from nowhere. Sergio fails to control a ball for the first time in the game. His uncharacteristically shitty touch leads to a suicide lunge from the Dagenham defender, and a nailed on penalty. Jermaine Easter slots it home with the casual indifference of a man picking his bogeys in a traffic jam. The away support goes mad, of course, and those booing earlier spectacularly miss the point. Of everything. Things don’t always go well. Things aren’t always great. But undeserved points and last minute equalisers are what makes it all worthwhile. The impatience and petulance of the half time boos sully that joy, that utter jubilation that our team have got something out of a game that in the first half looked dead and buried. The same people that trumpet their own importance as the 12th man every week, that the team couldn’t do without, are the very same ones that blew the team down the tunnel at half-time with a gust of spiteful hot air. I don’t see how that works. We’ve got all week to pick the bones of some pretty odd team selection, and some dire looking defending, but for now, I want to puff my chest out, and appreciate we showed some balls.

Finally boarding the District line at Dagenham East, the SMBU special correspondent arrives. Two weeks ago we contacted him wanting a local opinion on the match. A contract was signed. But as he sat in that carriage and placed a clear plastic bag containing his belongings, it was apparent things had gone wrong. Blood splattered on his shirt, face and trousers. Handcuff marks were red raw on his wrists. His post-match report makes no sense and it is clear that the twenty pounds SMBU contract has gone up his nose. Hundreds of thousands of words spill forth – tales of Dagenham police station, a beating from police in Valencia, a battering from police in East Ham, a drubbing from police in Plaistow. Why is McClaren picking Beckham, he asks as his Spain ’82 haircut is constantly greased back. This is not what we paid for. We wanted insightful post match analysis. We got the rantings of a madman. Our media team have captured his report on the brand new pay-per-view section of the site, SMBU WORLD, due to be launched later this week. This is not one for the big screen.

If you wanna hang out, you’ve got to take her out.

20.08.2007. 23:11

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