The football season is winding up and just like four years ago it’s seems the metatarsal is still in full swing. Rooney is the latest victim…an innocuous looking challenge in the game against Chelsea left him in agony and he’s apparently out for at least six weeks…not good. With Rooney we are a formidable team, without him we are decent at best…add to that the fact that Owen played his first game after his foot injury and apparently didn’t feel too good. All of sudden optimism is in short supply. Most gutted will be Wayne Rooney’s uncle who stood to win tens of thousands of pounds if Wayne played in the World Cup having made a bet years earlier.
With no English strikers looking like world beaters Beattie could be a shoo in for a place in the squad but in the last month or so performance levels at Everton have been worse than insipid. Saying that we managed to get an extremely creditable away win at ‘boro (although admittedly ‘boro were midway through a run of 3 games in 5 days). McFadden breaking clear to put a sublime lob dead-centre into the onrushing keeper’s goal on 89 minutes.
49 points puts us just in the bottom half of the table. It’d be good to finish in the top half….relegated West Brom await. It’s symbolic really...we’ve been through the mill this year, we didn’t know where the next point was coming from at one time (August & September were surreal when you think about it) and yet here we are lamenting the fact that we’ve not been putting in the effort for the last month. Strange. I’m not being a mediocrity apologist but it really is odd when you think back to this weird down-up-down-up-down season.
Anyway back to p*ss ups…We didn’t let the FA organise ours, rather we trusted our livers to Waterloo’s end of season bash. We’d pulled out the stops & phoned everyone we knew to stroll down to St Anthony’s mob handed. There was a barbeque (including hog-roast), an Irish band plus freely flowing beer to keep people happy plus a pretty good rugby game.
Henley Hawks showed their mettle and put in two early tries but, as my soon-to-be Father-in-law judged, they’d have needed a twenty point lead going into the second half against the wind and into the sun. This proved to be a pretty accurate prediction and the game finished 34-20 to Waterloo. O’Keefe and Tchakoute strapped their knees up and put in an appearance and J-Lo & Freeman did their stuff. Kerfoot & Palmer put in tries and the game was won. After the whistle everyone strolled onto the field to salute the players and the departing coaching team. Gill Burns (MBE) handed out the champagne and everyone was happy.
A few more beers in the clubhouse and the meaning of the word ‘club’ was becoming obvious. Everton will always be my team, renewing might have took an eternity but it’s done…at stages this season I’ve just ended up going to the game out of habit, it’d just be strange to not go to the match. It’s just what we do. ‘loo on the other hand is secondary to that but they’ve certainly struck a chord with us… I hope we’ll be able to keep up with them next season.
