Drewe Does Crewe

Sometimes you set off for a game with a real feeling of optimism. Other times – well, let’s just say I’ve been to Gresty Road on three previous occasions and never seen us score, let alone win; Crewe took the decision yesterday to sack Gudjon Thordarson (who we once saw at a managers’ forum on the Isle of Man and who proved to be as charming and erudite in a foreign language as Stan Ternant wasn’t in his own...) and replace him with club legend and Jack Duckworth lookalike Dario Gradi and, perhaps most importantly, the referee is one Trevor Kettle. Rotherham fans have a history with Mr Kettle, though we’re not alone in that respect. When Mick Harford was manager we played Barnsley at Oakwell. In the course of the game, Kettle sent off two players during the game and a third after the final whistle and played over an extra minute of stoppage time above what had already been announced, in the course of which Barnsley equalised with a goal which didn’t cross the line – certainly not if the reaction of our keeper that day, the very lovely Neil Cutler, was anythig to go by. We’ve been reffed by him once since then, and won the game, but that was at home to Morecambe, which doesn’t do much for his reputation as a homer... So when I meet Jenny and Joy at Euston, I’m convinced this may well be a fruitless trip. Unlike me, Jenny was at Northampton in midweek – they’ve definitely taken over from Chesterfield as our bogey team, and our performance there was apparently full of uncharacteristic defensive lapses as well as an unstoppable own goal. We’re all hoping that was one of those matches where you get all the silly mistakes you’re going to make for a while out of the way at once.
Fifteen minutes away from Crewe, I get a call from Chris Kirkland to say that the Manchester contingent, aka him and Chris Burrows, have arrived and will be waiting for us on the platform. Meanwhile, my brother lets me know he’s going down to the pub to bag us a table.
This is one of the easiest trips you can make in terms of getting to the ground and a decent pub – turn left out of the station and you’re at Gresty Road within a couple of minutes; five minutes further in the same direction and you reach the British Lion, or as my brother calls it, the British Legion. Sure enough, when we get there, he’s claimed a table, though the pub isn’t particularly busy. It soon starts to fill up, though, and into their second pint of Beartown’s Bearskinful, the boys twig that someone is eating chips. As the pub doesn’t serve food, they check whether people are allowed to bring their own in; they are, so Chris K and Joy take our orders and head off to the rather good chip shop by the ground. ‘This is going to win pub of the year,’ says my brother, tucking into his sausage.
So by the time we leave the pub we’re all in a pretty good mood, despite the slight drizzle in the air, and this persists when the stewards are really helpful when we ask about displaying the flag. Shame the next ninety minutes is going to let us down...
And that certainly seems to be the case when Crewe score after about five minutes. Seems like the defensive lapses have carried over from the other night, as it’s all too easily for their nippy winger to get past Tonge and cross the ball for Steve Schumacher to score. Our equaliser is a little fortuitous; Kevin Ellison’s corner is probably assisted by the blustery wind as it evades everyone, including the Alex keeper, and nestles in the top corner. The Crewe fans seem particularly excited about having Gradi back because they’ve always felt they have some kind of monopoly on playing nice passing football, which they apparently lost when Thordarson took over. Certainly they can string passes together to the extent where the crowd is ‘Olé’-ing, but these moves usually break down without much in the way of an end product. And we’re responding with some decent stuff of our own, though there’s plenty of height in the Crewe team, notably in the shape of their two centre-backs and striker Calvin Zola, who Ronnie actually sold to Crewe when he was at Tranmere, which means the ball is in the air quite a lot of the time.
We get chatting to the bloke at the side of us, who points out how there was always talk of the need to improve the Main Stand at Millmoor, and how Crewe have one stand which is conspicuously better than the rest, but it hasn’t stopped them sliding back into the bottom tier. The converse of this is that they’ve spent much of half time announcing details of their Christmas functions, and having those better facilities enable you to bring in money on non-matchdays, something which can keep a club from sliding into financial difficulties. It’s ironic, as well, given that I’d spent part of the journey up discussing a Channel Five show about stadiums which had featured the Bradford disaster – and how we’d had to get rid of the old stand at Millmoor because it was made of wood and so could have been closed down at any time for safety reasons.
Crewe take the lead again early in the second half; Nick Fenton tries to slide the ball away from Calvin Zola, but it just bounces back to Zola for an easy finish past Don. Heads could drop, but they don’t. Nicky Law is giving Crewe some problems on the wing, but we can’t quite produce a decent opening, and then Crewe hand us one on a plate. Le Fondre takes the ball into the penalty area, but he’s going away from the goal as Harry Worley brings him down from behind. Trevor Kettle awards penalty to away team shocker! Alf dispatches it confidently, and it gives us the lift we needed.
However, what changes the game is a substitution – not always something you’ve been able to say about Ronnie in the past. Mark Robins was always willing to make changes, but what he’d have done here would be bring on Mickey Cummins to shore things up defensively and make sure we come away with a point. Instead, it’s our new best friend Drewe Broughton who’s stripping off several layers of clothing – but not to the extent where Chris Kirkland might have to distract me to protect my morals, fortunately. It’s what Brian, who we used to sit by in the abovementioned old Main Stand, would refer to as ‘bringing on a bit of height and beef’ – Tom Pope, who we bought from Crewe in the summer, has been trying that little bit too hard to prove they were wrong to let him go, and Mr Broughton brings more in the way of physical presence and is harder to knock off the ball. My brother points out after the game that you could see Crewe’s confidence, which is a little fragile after recent results, starting to drain away once Drewe came on. Jenny says Mr B is the sort of player Ronnie will like as they’re in a similar mould; I compare him to Alan Lee, though with less finesse (but a slightly better temperament).
Meanwhile, Crewe have taken off Zola, who must have taken a knock, as I can’t see why they’d sub him for tactical reasons, and brought on Danny Shelley, who appears to have one of my old haircuts. It suits him even less than it suited me...
It’s supersub Drewe who scores the winner – and what a winner it is. He gets the ball with his back to goal, turns and lobs it over the keeper. Cue delirium among the sizeable travelling contingent. We even have chances to extend the lead after that, but Dale Tonge passes when he could have shot, and then we try running the ball into the corner to eat up the three minutes of injury time, something we’ve never been particularly good at. We get away with it, though, and celebrate our first win of Ronnie’s second spell in charge. The consensus is that we probably didn’t deserve it, but then we didn’t deserve to only come away from Chelters with a point, so maybe the results have evened out.
The absent Clarkey has suggested we try the Crewe Arms Hotel after the game as the British Lion won’t be open, but the bar is shut, so, apart from Joy, who’s on an earlier train back, we head to the Brocklehurst on a nearby industrial estate. It’s packed with families making the most of an early evening meal deal, but according to my brother it serves a decent pint of Pedigree and is better than any of the nearby alternatives.
When Jenny and I get back into London, we go to King’s Cross to meet Ted, who’s coming back from Darlo. He wants to try the King Charles I, off Pentonville Road, as it serves Brodie’s (brewed in East London, fact fans) and is getting decent reviews. It’s a quirky little pub; the music is a little loud for us, but it is a Saturday night, after all, and the barman bonds with Ted over their taste in music. We’ll be back there. Funny how sometimes the least promising trips can turn out to be among the best days of the season...