If you can stomach it... | Vital Football

If you can stomach it...

NathanH_GFC

Vital 1st Team Regular
...Sky have been replaying the full 1999 Play Off final. I watched the first half hour last night and we are barely in the game, but not massively been threatened either. I won’t watch it beyond 88 mins or whatever it was, but I’ve never rewatched the entire game, I’m not sure I am actually ready for it, but I think 21 years is long enough.
 
Didn’t have the match live over here back in the day.

And I’ve still never seen any of the Man City goals. I’ve watched the game from about 70 mins to 85 mins and then stopped. Brilliant 2-0 win that was. And we got to the 2nd tier....... eventually.
 
These things happen for a reason...if we’d have gone up, we wouldn’t have had the FA Cup QF, Southall’s screamer or Sir Tommo.
 
I never saw the final few minutes of normal time in the first place. Left Wembley 2-0 up as had a flight to catch 😁 last words to friends as I left were “see you in the first division!” watched extra time in a pub. Only match I’ve ever left early. Never again! But we did see us in the first division, eventually.
 
To really feel hurt and cheated watch it with a stop watch and try to see where that bar steward Halsey got the 7 minutes of added time from.

Thing is, there may be quite a few younger footy fans who don`t really see seven minutes of added time as anything extraordinary. Mainly because these days, it isn`t. But as I recall, twenty years ago, even three or four minutes was a lot, as it had only recently become regular practice by referees.
 
I am now up to 65 minutes (watching in very small doses!), here is a summary:-
  • Saunders just mistimed a free header to put us 1-0 up
  • Pennock could have been sent off after a minute
  • Ashby with a blatant handball also in the first minute, should’ve been a pen
  • City dominated possession first half but doing fuck all
  • The game has gone soft - if we played like this now, the game would be abandoned after 20 minutes as we’d be down to five players!
  • MacDonald’s tackle yesterday wouldn’t have even been given as a foul.
 
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77 mins - SBT just wide from 50 yards after a bad Weaver clearance.

78 mins - heart in mouth, Dickov across goals, three players miss it!
 
I’ve stopped at 80 minutes as I need to be in the right frame of mind for the next bit. But the first 35 mins of the second half have been end to end, hardly any stoppages, a couple of subs which were very quick - definitely no stoppage time created from what has happened so far. Maybe our goal celebrations took longer than I remember?