… calling home our exiled friends abroad
That fled the snares of watchful tyranny,
Producing forth the cruel ministers
Of this dead butcher and his fiendlike queen,
On April 25th 1993, Kevin Keegan’s first full
season as Newcastle United manager was drawing to an end. His fabulously
attacking, open side were closing in on the First Division title and a
well-deserved promotion to the Premier League. The Magpies’ opponents on that
soaking wet Sunday lunchtime were local rivals sunderland; if the game had been
played in conditions conducive to proper football, it seems likely the home
side would have won by a cricket score. As it was, the points stayed on
Tyneside after a single goal victory, courtesy of an early free kick by Scott
Sellars, who bent the ball round the wall and in off the post at the Leazes end
in front of the demoralised and drenched away support. Perhaps the only
noticeable thing about the visiting side’s sluggish, insipid performance that
day was that most of the players appeared to have been suffering from ringworm,
which was the most plausible explanation for the fact that almost all of them
had had their heads shaved in the lead up to the game. Risibly, the truth was
actually that this trichological aberration had been at the instigation of then
sunderland manager Terry Butcher, who had sequestered his team away the night
before at Otterburn Army Barracks in the wilds of the Northumberland National
Park the night before, in an attempt to instil the idea that they were
commandoes on a dawn raid into the minds of his squad. This risible attempt at cod
psychology was so successful that sunderland had one shot on target all game
and continued to flirt precariously with relegation for the rest of the
campaign, avoiding the drop on the final day by a single point. Butcher, whose
pitiful version of tactics appeared to consist of crass populist post-match
cheering and singsongs in front of the away fans, a la Paolo Di Canio, rather
than any significant tactical intervention, was relieved of his duties in
November 1993 after a 3-1 home loss to Southend saw the Wearsiders fall to the
foot of the table.
On May 24th 2009, much to the vicarious glee of a
reported 83% of football fans, Newcastle United were relegated from the Premier
League after a spineless, woeful 1-0 loss away to Aston Villa. After a season
marked by unnecessary managerial change and atrocious decisions in the
boardroom, complacency and cowardice on the pitch and a riven support that
veered between rabid anger with the owners and mute disgust at the decline of
the club, this final day performance summed up everything that had gone wrong
in the whole season. All that was needed was one goal, but lethargic
underachievers unwilling to bother their arses played alongside timid plodders
who had no reason to be in the first time, while an impotent management team
seemed utterly unable to change anything or inspire the one last push required
and the top flight status won with such a flourish by Keegan’s charges 16 years
previous, was senselessly squandered. The result was a deserved relegation for
a team that ought, if the season had been properly managed, to have finished in
the top half of the table.
On May 25th 2014, Hibernian concluded the
Scottish season in traditional fashion, by being ritually humiliated in the
final game of the domestic senior campaign, losing the second leg of the SPL
promotion / relegation play-off 2-0 to Hamilton Academicals. This made the
score 2-2 on aggregate and Hibs went on to complete this sporting
self-immolation by losing 4-3 on penalties. As a Newcastle and Hibs fan, this
felt far worse than NUFC’s demotion in 2009, even if it was as equally
unnecessary and completely preventable, because unlike the Villa Park fiasco, I
was actually present to see this limp disintegration with my own eyes. It was
hideous from start to finish. Unspeakably so. Sadness and anger still exist in
equal measures and I feel far, far worse than I did 5 years ago.
Of course, with Hibs having opened the 2013/2014 home
campaign with an iconic 7-0 loss to Malmo in the Europa League qualifiers, dire
embarrassing routs at Easter Road are nothing new under the sun. In 2012, this
ritual end of season pummelling was courtesy of a 5-1 defeat to Hearts in the
Cup final. In 2013, a 3-0 loss to Celtic involved another fruitless trip to
Hampden. Presumably, in Terry Butcher’s world, losing 2-0 at home to Hamilton
Academicals in the SPL promotion and relegation play-off is a tangible form of
progress and a solid base on which to build, as the net number of goals
involved in the defeat is diminishing by one each year. Consequently, next
season there will undoubtedly be a single goal loss in the same promotion or
relegation play-off to endure, providing Hibs can manage to avoid defeats to
the likes of Alloa, Cowdenbeath and Dumbarton, never mind the supposed giants
in the league, in the shape of Rangers and Hearts and very handy outfits such
as Raith Rovers, who won at Easter Road in the Cup in the season just ending of
course and Falkirk. For completeness, the division will also include Livingston
and Queen of the South. Fir Park no more!
Pittodrie no more! Tannadice no more! Parkhead no more!
Let’s be brutally honest about this; relegation, which had
only been avoided in the first place because of the points deduction endured by
Hearts, is the only appropriate eventuality for any team that loses 2-0 at home
to a side from the division below, days after seemingly doing the hard work by
beating said lower league side away from home by the same score. The eventual
defeat on penalties was almost incidental; long before Kevin Thomson and Jason
Cummings, the former being his final touch of the ball as a Hibernian player,
had their spot kicks saved, the script had been written. Unlike the glorious
evening at Broadwood in 1997 that marked Darren Jackson’s last game as a Hibee,
when Hibs came back from the dead to see off Airdrie, only to predictably go
down without a whimper the following season, there was to be no get out of jail
card.
Ignoring the statistics, the actual pattern of the Hamilton
Academicals home game saw the away side deservedly win the prize of a place in
the top flight. From the minute Danny Haynes limped off after 8 minutes, the
timid performance of the team and dreadful tactics of Butcher played into the
visitors’ hands. Jason Scotland is almost 36; however the Hibs defence appeared
to believe he was South Lanarkshire’s answer to Lionel Messi. Ryan McGivern
didn’t kick the ball straight all day, so giving the ball away to the Accies
striker for the opening goal was a predictable error that set the tone for a
woeful 120 minutes. Williams ought to have saved the shot, but predictably he
didn’t and it squirmed in with barely 12 minutes on the clock. The only hope
was abandonment as the incessant downpours left puddles on the pitch. Sadly,
even the weather deserted us and by the time Hamilton prevailed, the glorious sunshine
that beat down on Leith hinted at pathetic play rather than pathetic fallacy.
From the point Scotland scored onwards, with the near
sell-out crowd containing an appreciable number of fair-weather fans who
appeared to have turned up expecting to be entertained and ready to complain at
the slightest error, the game became as tense and unpleasant as any game I can
recall. Hibs offered nothing and Hamilton always seemed to be able to snatch another
goal, at least until Kevin Thomson appeared after 68 minutes. Suddenly, with
the appearance of someone who could actually pass the ball with a degree of
accuracy and a modicum of vision, it looked as if Hibs could actually grab an
equaliser. Sadly Butcher, whose cartoon histrionics on the bench failed to hide
the presence of a tactical incompetent and frightened paper tiger in the
manager’s role, decided to play it safe by taking off Heffernan for
Tudur-Jones. Here we were, playing 4-5-1 at home, trying to defend a 1-0 loss
to Hamilton Academicals. Predictably, drawing the opposition on drew one last
Hail Mary and, with 40 seconds of injury time left, they made it 2-0. That was
it; the phoney war of extra time, whereby Williams spent 30 minutes aimlessly
launching high balls while the tallest player on the pitch (Tudur-Jones) stood
nowhere near the general direction of centre forward, and the penalties were an
unnecessary codicil. The steady stream of deserters from the stand and the mute
acceptance of our fate at full time, certainly where I was sat in the West
Upper, showed that the fans knew the game was up long before the end.
I lost count of the number of conversations I heard on the
way out that included variations on the phrase “this has been coming for 3
years now.” This isn’t being wise after the event; it’s an understanding of the
fatal culture of incompetence and mismanagement that has been prevalent in
boardroom and dug-out at Easter Road for too long now. Sadly I wish I had the
confidence to state that things are going to change, but I don’t. I have no
belief that this relegation will prove to be the cleansing experience it was
for Newcastle in 2009/2010. I simply can’t see the current incumbents
rebuilding the squad to provide a realistic promotion challenge next year,
despite the positive outcomes of the last 2 demotions and attendant immediate
returns to the top flight.
I love going to Easter Road; it is one of the finest
football stadia in the world. Setting foot inside it, either stone cold sober after
the gloriously life-affirming, invigorating walk down from Waverley, or half
cut after several in The Guildford and a taxi down to the Iona for a few extra
scoops, makes my heart sing. The Hibernian football shirt is the most beautiful
in world football, without question. Sadly, on Sunday May 25th,
those shirts and that famous ground were disgraced by the players who wore
them, the management team who comprehensively failed to coach them to an
adequate standard and the board of directors who have overseen a disgusting
fall from grace by the team. In the absence of Hearts and Rangers, there is
simply no reason why Hibs should not be 5th in the table, behind
only Celtic, Aberdeen, Dundee United and Motherwell. The reason Hibs are not,
to my eyes, is the joint responsibility of Terry Butcher and the man who
appointed him, Rod Petrie.
Now I don’t get to see Hibs anywhere near often enough; this
was only my second game of the season, after the superb 3-0 trouncing of
Kilmarnock at the end of December (see http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/happy-easter.html).
However, I can state now that I was both deeply unhappy with the removal of Pat
Fenlon from the manager’s job, not just because I’m also a fan of Bohemian, and
even more alarmed by the appointment of Butcher, because I can remember what he
was like over twenty years ago when he ran the Mackems. In the same way, I knew
that Colin Calderwood would be a disaster as manager at Easter Road on the
basis of his previous record and input as NUFC assistant boss to Chris Hughton
(now he’d be a wonderful choice as boss!) and he was. It is my take on the
current situation that this ridiculous, preventable relegation was caused by an
idiot appointing another idiot. Petrie is to blame for giving Butcher the job
and Butcher is to blame for failing to get the players to perform adequately.
Following the win over Hearts on January 2nd, the
team won 1 and drew 4 of the remaining 18 league games, including a
season-ending run of 13 without a victory; that is simply unacceptable and, as
has been stated before, relegation form in any other season. It is simply
incomprehensible to me how a centre half, who captained his country, gained 90
international caps and appeared at 3 successive World Cups is utterly unable to
organise a team to defend a 2 goal lead over a lower division side, whose
attack is led by Jason Scotland…
So, where do we go from here? Well, 14 players have been
released, with others being told to accept a pay cut or a free transfer,
despite “football finance expert” David Glen of Price Waterhouse Cooper
claiming relegation will not unduly affect the club’s finances as Rod Petrie
“runs a tight ship.” The great news is that Petrie will remain in an overseer’s
role, with Leann Dempster arriving from Motherwell as Chief Executive and
Butcher will continue as manager. Fabulous eh? It’s easy to be wise after the
event, but Butcher should never have been appointed and Fenlon would never have
allowed the club to fall so low. But what can you do; walk away from supporting
a club I’ve followed for over 40 years? Not a chance!
I’m next in Scotland for the weekend on 15th and
16th August; Teenage Fanclub at Kelvingrove Bandstand on the Friday
night as part of my belated 50th birthday celebrations. There will
be a game watched on Saturday 16th, though which one is yet to be
decided. Ideally I’d like to be at Alloa or Dumbarton away, cheering on Hibs to
a thumping victory, but there’s a squad to be rebuilt before then. I’m just
frightened at the thought of Terry Butcher being allowed to do that…
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