Slipperduke
The Camden Cad
Having successfully unjinxed Nicklas Bendtner last week by lampooning his form in front of goal, I wanted to use this week's column to state, quite categorically, that there is not a force on earth that can save Southend United from relegation and financial oblivion. Got that? Hopeless cause. Ha ha! Now we just sit and wait...
In the meantime though, I watched the efforts of another desperate club from the south-east on Saturday when West Ham visited Stamford Bridge. Now, the 'John Terry Affair' has been manna from heaven for terrace wits and I had high hopes. Last weekend, Stoke City set the bar high with, 'John Terry? Are You My Dad?', a song so filled with pathos that you could probably build an entire musical around it, complete with a chorus-line of tracksuited, gimlet-eyed street urchins clutching paternity test results in their mittens, begging our faux-hawked lead to acknowledge them as he passes by in his sports car. Thus, the pressure was on for the travelling Hammers to match their genius, but as they so often do on the field, they fell well short off it. Ten minutes of, 'John Terry, You're (A Bad Word) does not an Andrew Lloyd-Webber hit make.
It was disappointing because I know that they are capable of so much more. I recall covering the same fixture three seasons ago and being blown away by a vindictive burst of 'Your Dad's Not Proud Of You', directed with extreme prejudice at an unsuspecting Frank Lampard. The England midfielder did his best to shrug it off, but it must have affected him. Did it lead to an awkward conversation at Sunday Dinner? 'To be honest Son, most of your goals are deflections, aren't they?'
As a Southend fan, who are soooo going down remember, I don't have much love for West Ham, but I do admire the venom of their fans. They actually had a b-side to that Lampard chant that went, "We Hope You Die, You (Bad Word). But, in the same way that they're not too good to go down, they're not too bad to lose their icy crown of evil to Stoke either. There are certain things one expects in English football and I, for one, will not put up with a world where there are more inventively sadistic fans than the Hammers.
In the meantime though, I watched the efforts of another desperate club from the south-east on Saturday when West Ham visited Stamford Bridge. Now, the 'John Terry Affair' has been manna from heaven for terrace wits and I had high hopes. Last weekend, Stoke City set the bar high with, 'John Terry? Are You My Dad?', a song so filled with pathos that you could probably build an entire musical around it, complete with a chorus-line of tracksuited, gimlet-eyed street urchins clutching paternity test results in their mittens, begging our faux-hawked lead to acknowledge them as he passes by in his sports car. Thus, the pressure was on for the travelling Hammers to match their genius, but as they so often do on the field, they fell well short off it. Ten minutes of, 'John Terry, You're (A Bad Word) does not an Andrew Lloyd-Webber hit make.
It was disappointing because I know that they are capable of so much more. I recall covering the same fixture three seasons ago and being blown away by a vindictive burst of 'Your Dad's Not Proud Of You', directed with extreme prejudice at an unsuspecting Frank Lampard. The England midfielder did his best to shrug it off, but it must have affected him. Did it lead to an awkward conversation at Sunday Dinner? 'To be honest Son, most of your goals are deflections, aren't they?'
As a Southend fan, who are soooo going down remember, I don't have much love for West Ham, but I do admire the venom of their fans. They actually had a b-side to that Lampard chant that went, "We Hope You Die, You (Bad Word). But, in the same way that they're not too good to go down, they're not too bad to lose their icy crown of evil to Stoke either. There are certain things one expects in English football and I, for one, will not put up with a world where there are more inventively sadistic fans than the Hammers.
