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Chapter 1: What were the main issues in the first half against Swansea?
So, oh, Pompey won Swansea 2. What did you make of that? I mean, you know, sport is full of mystery. The final whistle's just gone. Sport is full of mysteries. There was a horse that was about 20 lengths clear of the Derby or the Grand National, I can't remember which, I know it was called Devon Loch. I think it belonged to the queen or the queen mother or something like that.
You know, that's neither here nor there. But about half a furlong from the finishing post. And, you know, the jockey could have got off. It was so far ahead and carried the horse over the line. But the horse suddenly did this curious thing.
unexplained unprecedented and never seen since belly flop he just belly flopped magnificent animal superb example of equine athleticism did a belly flop then and to this day and as henry v puts it until the end of time no one will know why that horse did that The greatest cricketer of all time was Don Bradman, who came out to bat in his last test, and he just needed one run.
He could score one run and be out, and that one run would mean that he would have a test batting average of 100. And nobody has come within 50% of that since. Nobody ever will. He was phenomenal. He pottered to the wicket, And was out, was it first ball? Why? No one knew then, no one knows now, no one ever will until the end of time. Andre Agassi, a tennis player you may have heard of.
I think he won all four slams. You know, Australia, France, USA and Wimbledon. I think he did. But he won Wimbledon wearing a wig, a massive wig. Because at the age of 26 or 27, he was going bald and embarrassed about it. He valued his pin-up image almost as much as his tennis ability. He was fantastic at tennis. But he wanted to be more than that.
wanted to be a rock star tennis player perhaps he was the first rock star tennis player but he was going bald so throughout the wimbledon that he won he wore a massive wig and it was a massive wig it wasn't like you know a little piece it was a whole head of fantastic you know uh
surfer beach boy blonde highlights wig huge and he kept it on with double-sided double-sided tape he kept this wig on for all the matches the round of 64 because he got a buy i think into the through the first 128 the round of 64 32 through the final and he won the final wearing a wig. He didn't want anybody to spot that his hairline was receding.
That, to me, and we never knew until just recently, is another sporting mystery. And I know I'm going round and round the houses, but I'm building up to this, and you know it's true, and I think you know where I'm going. One of the mysteries that all Pompey fans will take with them to the grave is what the heck... You know what I'd like to say, but I won't out of civility.
What the heck was that first half against Swansea supposed to be? We had ten men out there in blue shirts... And I think it's fair to say that not one of them would have got in the average pub side on a Sunday morning. Even if they were the only ones sober and available, they would have picked Dave who'd had eight pints and slept in the car on the way to the match. We all have our off days.
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Chapter 2: How does the performance of Don Bradman relate to sports mysteries?
So he did a bit of that. But what he couldn't do was stand on the ball midway in their half, look up, see Bishop in front of him, two wide men marginally in front of him, and decide to thread a pass here, or take somebody on, pull somebody deep, mesh them around, be a number 10, because that's not what Jacob Brown's all about. He is a forward who likes to find the back of the net.
And obviously, we've got to come to the turnaround in the second half, which is as big a mystery as Devon Locke and Don Bradman and Andre Agassi's wig, to me, ten times over. That's partly because the game is very raw. It only finished a couple of minutes ago.
And we've talked about the fact that in football, you tend to feel a little bit... You feel a greater emotion about the result and the performance than you do in the morning. But it can still take 48 hours before you're able to put it to bed. So let's do the second half.
Because we went in at half-time, 2-0 down, and there were people, and I was one of them, who were worried that we were going to end up 4-0, 5-0. If we didn't turn something round, that could very easily have happened. And in actual fact, in the second half, they should have scored a third. There's no two ways about that. They should have scored a third.
But they didn't, because their guy blew his chance. But it could have been three. And if it had been three, then it would possibly have gone to four and five. Because our chins were on our chest. We were crestfallen. We wanted to go home. I mean, that's just the players. Never mind about us, the crowd, the fans, the supporters. We wanted it to end. Bring an end to this misery.
And then something happened. And I'll tell you what I think happened. And you can argue. I hope you do. Football's all about a diversity of opinion. Caballero came alive. Caballero suddenly became the player that we hoped he was going to be. He was switched to the left. Ali came off. Chaplin came on. Chaplin looked nice and busy and tight and dangerous.
couldn't actually make the striking breakthrough but Caballero could twice in the first several minutes of the second half he killed two men with one touch whoa the ball came to him he sort of dummied before it reached him and then with two men closing him down because they always double up on the wide man Especially when you're 2-0 up away from home because you want to keep it like that.
They doubled up on him. He put the ball in between them and went through and left them for dead.
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Chapter 3: What are the notable anecdotes about Andre Agassi's Wimbledon win?
Two men. And he did that not once but twice. His tackling back was good. His speed was good. There was a third moment that he had where he was going wide off his fullback. And he had 30 yards ahead of him and they hadn't doubled up on this occasion. And he simply, carrying the ball, ran faster than the full-back.
And the full-back actually, when he got to the corner of his own penalty area and realised he'd been roasted, really roasted... kind of gave up in the way that, you know, 100-meter athletes, when they cross the finishing line about 20 yards afterwards, they sort of slow up and they kind of go, ah, well, I didn't want to win anyway. And that's how it was. So Caballero came on fire. And I think...
That realisation stuck with Marlon Pack because he started looking for Caballero every time he had the ball. His first thought was, Caballero is killing them on their right side of defence. We've got to give him the ball. And right-footed midfield players love to pass it to the left wing because that's just how it works. Think about it. So Caballero, I think,
whether John Massino thought that it was going to happen and that was the reason why he switched Caballero to the left. Who knows? He may or may not take credit for that. He tends not to take credit for good managerial tactical decisions, but it's possible that that was part of his thinking. The right back that Swansea had was not particularly quick. He was capable.
I think he got the second goal. Can't remember. A good footballer. I think he's played 100 times for them. He's nailed on first team choice right back. But Caballero had him for skill and speed. And that was a good move, putting Caballero on the left. And Caballero's successes seemed to rub off on the rest of the team, who started to think, yeah, we can do this. And then what a goal.
It was a great goal. It was a really good goal. In the context of a normal match, and by the way, that wasn't a normal match. Pompey 1, Swansea 2 was not a normal game. There was something odd about it. There was something, you know, of the X-Files about it. It was mysterious. It's just like I said right at the beginning, you know, sports sometimes delivers mysteries.
And our performance in the first half was... The word lamentable doesn't really come close. So we lost the first half and we could have been 3-0 down after 60 minutes easily. But we pulled that one back. The crowd did what they can do. which is to make the players realise that there's a point to be had here from this game if we go at it. And that infected the players.
I think the players probably saw it themselves anyway, so they didn't need necessarily the prompting of the frightened crowd, but it all helped. And we gave it a good go. We were putting balls into the box blind and they weren't falling for us. And that's partly a matter of lady luck.
But if they've got eight people in the box defending a hopeful cross, and we've only got four bodies in the box attacking a hopeful cross, then obviously we are going to lose far more possessions and potential possessions and potential goal scoring opportunities than we're going to win and create. And I don't know what you do about that. And I'm glad I'm not a football manager, aren't you?
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