Green Grow The Rushes

Journeying deep into Northamptonshire is the nearest that the 21st century person can get to the pain of a medieval traveller, trudging from village to village trying to sell dried leaves and witnessing the rapid spread of plague. It was no surprise that in this fetid atmosphere ideas of salvation and rebirth were so enchanting, and so it proved yesterday as Wycombe fans paid final respects to the idea of The Project and said a warm hello to the beast that has replaced it: Brownie's Cubs.

Like some sort of gender-undefined Baden-Powell scout troop, Brownie's Cubs burst from the ground in the second half at Nene Park, a defiant answer to the shame of six straight defeats. In the buckling Irthlingborough sunshine, the eleven men in blue jumped the toadstool into play off contention and banished the past few weeks into an iron box that was thrown into the depths of the nearby canal system.

Ian Stonebridge, a man with the weight of the west country on his shoulders, was less Paul and more Kenny for once and the raging Moonman up front led the line like a released bear.

There's work to be done, that's for sure, but the idea of a play-off campaign is no longer so vile. With the skill and elegance shown yesterday, the era of Brownie's Cubs has begun. It could be delicious.

Not Even Jail

Friday nostalgia #5

I remember the time that me, Prost, Gumball and Ken the Rake were waiting for a taxi outside Adams Park, late one season, could have been 2001-02. We'd been turfed out of the Vere Suite, Scores was just a pipedream of a madman in those days, mention of plasma meant you were having another transfusion in Wycombe General.

Nobody fancied walking back into town or waiting for the bus that never comes, so a taxi had been summoned. Wasting time, we kicked an empty bottle of Sprite around, imitating our heroes: Bulman, Brady and Leach.

The taxi was traditionally late and so when it came speeding into the now-empty car park at high speed we were taken aback. This was no Mondeo or Cavalier but a full frontal white van and it seemed hell-bent on recreating the scene from Back to the Future when the Lybians come roaring in to shoot the Doc dead. None of us had dealt in plutonium that week but as it reached the far end of the car park and came hurtling towards us like a bullet, no-one could be absolutely sure that we weren't going to see machine gun fire.

It was the first excitement at the stadium in five months and it left us breathless. Not a year goes past when I don't think of the events of that afternoon.

A Day In The Life

Six on the spin and the little man said "roll over". Wycombe are plumbing new depths, there hasn't been a collapse like this since Norris McWhirter's heart gave out at Nazi rally while he was gleefully maintaining the world's longest erection.

This season, which began fluffy and light like a flying saucer, has now revealed the bitter sherbet inside and it is making everyone involved gag and wretch as foam pours from their horrified mouths.

The players don't like each other, the fans don't like each other, the directors don't like each other. This is a club built on antipathy and mistrust and now the results are merely reflecting that fact. All the talk of "togetherness" and "spirit" earlier in the campaign reeked of shimmering bullshit and now we are left with the mess.

Wycombe Wanderers have never recovered from whoring the ground name to the highest (sic) bidder in 2003 and the wretched decline ever since has been a direct result. Without a soul all you have a is a ghoul and WWFC are a ghoul club, meandering on the never-never and not paying its bills.

Debt mounts while the points tally does not, and all the while a ghostly silence from the club speaks volumes. Welcome to the occupation.

Show Your Bones

So the debate on whether Tommy Mooney is hero or villain for giving a Wycombe fan the generic five knuckle shuffle on Saturday rages on.

The view in the Meat Clinic is that The Raging Moonman was within his rights as the level of putrid gabbling from the terraces this season has been appalling. Wycombe have been chasing promotion since getting a draw with champions-elect Carlisle on the opening day of the season, yet the level of complaining from the vile Drone Army has been on a par with the dark days of 2003-04.

"Nothing's changed," as the tired catchphrase goes.

Then again, Mooney would have more of a case to flick the wrist if he had been in any sort of goalscoring form recently. He seems to have faded from the heights of December, and whether it is a fatigue question or a form one, it is something that Stoic John will have to address from his underground training facility three miles above the earth's surface.

Wycombe need roughly four points to seal a play-off place, maybe even fewer, so the next five games should be used as a phony war, a military practice zone ready for the two/three game ordeal in May. And if Mooney scores any sort of scrambled winner at the Millennium Stadium then he can give it the wanker in front of my own curious face; he'll have earned every simulated shake.

Let The Right One Slip In

Saturday evenings in the early 2000s were characterised by endless Wycombe defeats, a trademark Sanchez excuse, a firecracker let off in the Half Moon and the growing Beeks Out campaign, the one that led to the second Peterloo Massacre in Thame.

Things have changed recently but now the system seems to have reverted to type, with WWFC losing every week, culminating in the usual spring collapse which is now more predictable than Paula Radcliffe defecating down her own drug-tainted leg in the Limehouse marathon.

Make no bones about it, The Project ended permanently today at Moss Rose, shattered and broken and now nothing more than a curiosity, like a 1991 Wembley flat cap or a WWFC PLC Heritage Pledge. The team, (a collection of players the Meat Clinic now feels no affection or warmth for) have five more games in which to blow a play off place, and they look uniquely capable of doing so.

Prepare for a day of howling rage at Peterborough as Wycombe finish eighth or lower and the investment of summer 2005 is made to look more foolish than eating a swan curry.

They raised our hopes then they pissed them into the Cheshire hills. Thanks for nothing you overpaid charlatans.

Sinking Hearts

Tommy Dorsey
Jimi Hendrix
Bon Scott
Tennessee Williams
Michael Hutchence

The list of famous chokings goes on, and on, and on like a WWST funds drive. If you cup your ears to the northerly wind you can still hear them, yakking and spluttering as the evil choke drives home its macabre message.

Now that list can added to, in the form of Wycombe Wanderers FC, choking like a chubby girl from Pittsburgh, pushing a double doughnut into her flaky convex mouth.

"Did you see the collapse against Rovers?" Yeah, it was like seeing JFK go down all over again, with Junior Agogo up in the library and Trollope on the grassy Parker Knoll. When Charlie Unicorn's shot played arkanoid with the Hillbottom posts then you knew, just knew that the season was shattering into a thousand unkempt pieces.

In classic fashion, there has been a monstrous outburst of blame, recrimination and introspection. Honest John is blaming the Gasroom terrorists, the players are blaming the pitch, the pitch is blaming Kevin Betsy, the Woodlands are blaming the Windrush, the board are blaming Brian Kane's new medicine, the car park attendants are blaming the Loakes Park gates, the WWST are blaming Pete Lansley and Dave Peters is blaming himself.

But not everyone can be right, not this time.

Tell you what, six games left, why don't we wait and see what happens. We'll slide into the play-offs at worst and that could be a three-game salvo of justice or a two-game misery peril that will blight the summer like the bird flu that has turned all the poultry at the Meat Clinic into little more than bucket fodder.

But that's all in the future and the future is made of plastic and smells anodyne. Keep the faith.