Duncan Barkes

It meant we kept the ball.

When Schmidt did knock it long for variety to keep them on their toes, we didn't get it.

And often we didn't pick up their header.

So they would get their head on the ball first when the ball had travelled 60 yards.

And then they'd get their hands, or their feet rather, on the ball when it was headed forward by the Blackburn defence.

Boett scored the most fantastically textbook perfect winning goal.

And didn't he enjoy it?

And shouldn't he enjoy it?

Poor lad, the weight that he had doing nothing for a year.

because of an innocuous incident on the training ground with nobody around him and he stuck it out and he's beginning to show what a prospect he is let's remember that he's not only a good player he's a prospect for the future and that header was perfect I've looked at it again and again nobody clears a path for him he isn't being overly protected by the rest of the Pompey players which is what often happens

at a set-piece, at a corner, the rest of the players clear the way for the designated target man.

And it didn't look to me as though he was.

I think if anybody was, it would have been Matthews.

But it came to Boat.

He had a little bit of space around him, enough to make the jump and to steer the ball into the perfect spot, into the corner, down, level with where the goalkeeper's feet were.

You can't stop them.

The goalkeeper can't get down that quickly.

It was perfection.

But in some ways, the equaliser was even more perfect because it meant an assist for Murphy and that will do him the world of good because he's just sort of faded a little bit in the last few games, it seems to me.

Whether it's a confidence thing or whether the opposition have started to suss him out, they certainly give him a lot of space now.