Cloudy in the morning, but quite oppressively warm and humid later in the afternoon - the sort of day when a tropical hail storm would not surprise. With that in mind, I took my wife's car and looked to arrive in time for Free Kick duty. In fact there was a rapid drop in temperature soon before kick off. There were a few issues in my mind before the game. Foremost, the fact that the Courier Wail did not have a solitary word about the game - and this on match day. I am definitely edging towards the conspiracy theorist's camp as I find it difficult to believe that such an omission must be simply anti-football. What else could be the explanation?
The second matter was that of a STRIKERS' fan, Roland Beaney, from England and who has no association with Brisbane, who had never seen us play and who has flown out to see us! This almost beggars belief and I would believe it when I see it.
The third issue is the fact that Sam Cozier's drum has caused a lot of disharmony in the BSSA and had now resulted in our already small support group being split. He was to move to the distant end of the grand stand and had been suggesting some contrived North End / South End interfan rivalry. I was feeling somewhat cynical that this would work out, but was hoping that it might. Sam had prepared a song book, but my previous experience with this concept (which I have tried myself a few times since way back in 1978 with Brisbane City) is that it just doesn't seem to work. Football chants seem to arise and be most successful when spontaneous or in the general category of "old favourites". Good examples for the Banana Army (which is NOT identical to the BSSA) have been the "Half a Yard too...." for OHY and I recall "Carpet Burns" doing well just before he transferred to Leeds.
Another small crowd for this important match. Important because it was time for the team to step up and show some dominance over a club reputedly struggling and below us on the table. Grierson and Laybutt were suspended and it was no joy to learn that Fernando was sidelined with an ankle injury. This was to be a very real test of the depth and quality of the squad. The news that Mr Breeze was to officiate was greeted around me with less than heart warming enthusiasm, but it turned out that this week the ref did not greatly influence our result. We did that all by ourselves. Roland was introduced to the crowd and the game kicked off.
Marconi were fielding their late signing Spiteri up front and it was he who found a big hole in the middle, picked up a standard trough ball and turned back across Kearton into the net at the 11th minute. It was all too easy and symptomatic of our fragile defence at present. Neither team was showing much, but Marconi seemed to have extra pace and were the more threatening, but we did have our chances and one effort from Traja comes to mind from long range that stretched Turnbull to a great save. Down 0-1 at half time, I think most of us felt we were at least in it.
It wasn't long before we were disabused of that hope and our lack of pace was again exposed as Perinich easily outran the STRIKERS' to make it 0-2. This generated a couple of tongue in cheek (I think) chants of "Kossie out" quickly followed by "We love you Kossie" after the ref awarded us a somewhat dubious penalty from his position near the halfway line which Traja easily converted. "We're going to win 3-2" we sang. Quite soon the lyrics were changed to "4-3" then "5-4" as it became glaringly obvious that we were well second best to the previously bottom team in the comp. Marconi scored more goals against us last night than they had the whole season to that point.
You might think one would have come home dispirited and down after such a night. Not so, because Sam's decision to move to the distant end of the stand worked well. Those that remained in the old spot quickly rekindled the old spark of camaraderie and spontaneity in the chanting and we enjoyed not only "We sing when we're losing", but "We lose when we're singing" and the old favourite "Queensland Government......" sung at times of boredom or frustration was heard for the first time this season. I fear it may not be the last! We rounded off the evening "We are bottom, bottom of the league" and, as someone remarked, perhaps we felt more at home in this struggling mode after the odd experience last season of being "there or there abouts" for so long. I wonder if we may get a mention in the Sunday Wail today?