Chapter 1: Why do fans feel gutted after the Blackburn 1 Pompey 1 match?
Blackburn 1 Pompey 1 now if you look at the bald score line you know towards the end of the season we'll look at our results and we'll go yeah we got a point at Blackburn that's not bad going that'll do that helped us but at this moment in time two minutes after the final whistles gone we feel gutted we feel absolutely and utterly crestfallen and
we feel robbed did we rob ourselves or did did did they come and mug us it's a bit of both uh blair has a number of great strengths but he's not a left back i mean what was he doing there isn't that where swanson's supposed to be playing eliminating the threat from their forward right wing but It didn't work out that way. I'm not going to blame anybody for that.
I'm talking about their equalising goal, because I don't know if you've noticed, but when you watch a football match, the last 10 or 15 minutes, when the game is over and you're on your way home or whatever, the last 10 or 15 minutes loom far larger than the preceding hour and a bit. That's the way our memory works. And we experienced... the elation of possibly coming away with three points.
And it was wonderful to see Connor Ogilvie on the score sheet. He is such a soldier of ours. He is such a trooper of ours. He defended as a centre-half absolutely magnificently. He won so many big aerial combats and he is not the tallest guy on the pitch. When Regan Paul had to go off and we brought on the tallest man on the pitch, the wonderful Connor Shocknessy, the game changed slightly.
Seggs came on and he takes a nice corner. I'm not saying that Chaplin doesn't, but Seggs takes a nice corner. He fires it in and he would have been looking for Shocknessy's head. And if you watched Pompey play the love train thing for corners, they had initially Pack shielding
colby bishop but once shockness he came on pack and bishop were shielding shocknessy because he is our best bet for converting a corner into a headed goal and shocknessy also defended of course extremely well oh please may he stay fit dear goodness may he stay fit could be the difference yeah Even tried an overhead bicycle kick. Who does he think he is? Wayne Rooney? Why not?
You know, bicycle kick in their box. I think when the score was a one-all and we had a chance of maybe making it 2-1. Didn't ever really look like it. It's one-all a fair score. Who cares? It hurt. But let's do it anyway. Probably was about fair. The commentators that I was listening to, the Redoubtable Moon and Whittingham, aren't they good?
they were saying that Blackburn played the first half as though they were the away side. And that's what it looked like. They played five at the back. That meant that our wingers had very little space to operate in. I mean, Blackburn said that they set up, you know, with three at the back, you know, but that is cobblers. They had five at the back. They had a man wide on the left and on the right.
to handle our wingers. It's a compliment to our wingers. It's a compliment to how much respect the opposition, and on this occasion, Blackburn, have for Pompey, that they played the way that they did in the first half. Some commentators said they came out for the second half looking more meaningful, looking like they wanted it.
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Chapter 2: What were the strengths and weaknesses of the players during the game?
It was where the ball came suddenly onto his forehead rather than he saw it coming and was able to do what he wanted with it. I think he was aiming for their top. top left of the goal, the top right as we looked at it. I think he was aiming for the top right, but it just sort of went gently out of play for a goal kick.
So probably one for them, a chance for them, one and three quarters of a chance for us in the first half. But we had most of the game, but then not a lot of our passing was actually going anywhere. We were holding on to the ball. We were moving it around in our third.
We were working it forward into the middle third from time to time, but we ran into blind alleys, and so we had to bring it back into our third and bring it back and play it along our back line, our back four. Again, just going to have a slug of Peroni, bear with. Bear with. Colby Bishop, up front, on his own, totally on his own, was absolutely five-star.
By my estimate, and I wasn't taking notes, because you can't take notes whilst you're watching the game of football if you care about one of the teams, can you? Sad. But my guesstimate is that he won 60% to 70% of his headers against a centre-half who is a professional centre-half who's bigger than him and knows what he's doing, and Colby Bishop had him.
virtually had him not every time but pretty much every time on a couple of occasions i seem to recall maybe it's false memory syndrome i seem to recall him taking it on his chest and this is no mean feat this is a piece this is a professionalism that he has taking a long ball mainly from schmidt and doing something with it on occasions when he had to take it on his head he would get there and he would skim a flick on but there's nobody there
and Guy Whittingham was banging on about the fact that Ali he said ought to take a chance and when he sees the long ball coming for Colby Bishop then he gets in there
and he partners him he shadows him he looks for the flick on he hopes he gets lucky because it's hard for Bishop to actually direct a header from a long clearance because he's got so much attention being paid to him i.e rough and tumble you know push and shove from their centre half who's marking him that he can't really direct the ball but he can flick it on
And that's what Whittingham said that Ali should have been looking for. And he's right, actually. But Colby Bishop, absolutely five star leading the line. There were lots of players who played really well.
I thought that Connor Chapman, Chapley, I should say, I beg your pardon, had to, had, had to find himself getting hurried on occasions when he actually wanted half a second longer in order to consider mentally process and make a telling pass forward, uh, a defense splitting ball. That's what we're looking for from him as well as goals. And he had one shot. He had a chance to line it up. Uh,
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Chapter 3: How did Connor Ogilvie impact the match with his performance?
Andy Fairweather Lowe and Ian Botham, wasn't it? Anyway, lots of people played well. Marlon Pack is just, it's almost like he's in his prime, never mind about in his pomp. And Adams, oh! Oh, what a hero he's turning himself into. Look, it'll go down in folklore, his run along the pitch when he scored that equaliser at Fratton Park to salute the Fratton end. That remains a piece of legend.
And there's other stuff as well. His tackling, his combativeness, his humour. He took out one of their advertising hoardings. He took it out. it doesn't work anymore because they bundled him into touch traveling at their full speed 28 miles an hour whatever it is footballers run at when they're flat out the average footballer right flying into it at 28 miles he took it out it doesn't work anymore
And it seems that the Blackburn fans, once they knew that Adam was OK and he got to his feet and he himself was laughing about it, they seemed to take him to their hearts. So, you know, he's won the hearts of Bortsmouth. He's winning the hearts of Blackburn as well because of the guy that he obviously is.
And remember, as the commentators reminded us, he hadn't had anything to eat since the sun came up on the Saturday morning of this game. because of the worship that he offers to the God of his choice. And good luck to him for that. But if he can keep going like that on nearly so much as a boiled egg, what's he going to be able to do on a full English? Not that he's going to have a full English.
But you take my point. Adams has heroism written all over him. And Pompey fans, most football fans actually love that. I'm not going to pretend we're special in liking a player who is prepared to, you know, cut him and he bleeds blue or red or whatever the team's colours are. Such players are ten a penny, but such players who can do it with such realism...
as Adams can, are a lot more rare on the ground. And we've got one in him. Marlon Pack had another fantastic game. Ogilvy, I've mentioned. Shockness, he came on like he was eight foot tall. What a rock. Schmidt was very unlucky. He got a hand, a fat hand to their goal, but not fat enough. And so it squeezed goalwards and went in off the post.
But we ought to concede that Connor Ogilvie's goal took quite a heavy deflection. And if you look at it back from behind the shot, you can see that the keeper was moving in that direction and may well have got it covered if it had gone where Ogilvie was intending it and sent it. But it took a heel off a Blackburn player and it went over the keeper's head.
So you can probably say on as even on those two goals. When shocks came on for Reagan Paul, our first worry was that Paul might have an injury which could affect his rest of the season because he's a player not without an injury history.
But with Shox back in play, then if that happens, and if we just lose him for a game or two games, with Shox back doing what he can do, then that's not such a big blow. So we might have got a little bit unlucky, but also lucky. As far as those things go. And Schock's very nearly got a goal from the first corner that we had after he came on. Because he is so dominant in the box.
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Chapter 4: What tactical changes occurred in the second half of the game?
Because to my knowledge, Pompey have always, if they win the toss, chosen to defend the Fratton end in the first half. I can't ever remember us not... Can you? Can anybody? So is something going on? And if so, what? And should we know? And do we care? I do. You do. We should do. And we also care about the fact that we're going into a Saturday afternoon. I'm talking to you now at quarter to three.
Games will be kicking off in 15 minutes. Proper games of football. Proper games of proper professional football kicking off at three o'clock in the afternoon. That's what you're supposed to do.
So that it's semi-dark when you come out of the ground and you walk past the hamburgers and the hot dog joints and the fish and chip shops and the hot potato stands and get to the station and stand there knowing that you possibly got a hot pot or at least a cheese sandwich when you get home because you're going to need supper, not a late lunch.
It's all wrong and we'll come back to that another time. Meantime, let's look at it in the cold light of day. We went to Blackburn, a 10-hour round trip, and we got a point. We got a point. Blackburn won. Pompey won.