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The Old One Eye View - Bryson Turned Screw & Ball Hammered Home!
The Old One Eye View - Bryson Turned Screw & Ball Hammered Home!
Tuesday, 17th Jan 2012 15:09 by Old One-Eye

The Rams made it 5 from 5 and climbed to within touching distance of the top 6. Old One-Eye was at Pride Park for RamZone to report on the win.

 

Derby County 1 vs. 0 Coventry City

14 January 2012 - Pride Park Stadium

Attendance:

24126 (965 people no-one wishes to speak to)

 

Referee:

Roger East (Wiltshire)

 

Old One Eye's Match Report: Ball Strike Gives Rams the Edge

Two short months ago, Derby County were shipping goals all over the place and in the middle of a horrible run of five successive league defeats.

“We score two, you score three” was the norm as lead after lead was squandered and victory was transformed into defeat through a mixture of bad luck and bad defending. The performance was irrelevant.

Fast forward to the present and The Rams are off on another run, but this time it is a sequence of victories. By and large they are being ground out through sheer effort and stout defending, but there is one huge difference between then and now – the colossal on-field presence of club captain Shaun Barker.

Today’s visitors were Coventry City - a side who have given The Rams more than their fair share of problems in the past and who have, on occasion, notched up the best part of a cricket score against a Derby side who folded faster than a poker player holding an off-suit 2-7.

Coventry, Sky Blue by tradition, once famously wore an all-brown kit during the 1970’s in an attempt to disguise themselves as the Baseball Ground pitch. It didn’t do them any good on that occasion as they were just ploughed in by the groundsman after the final whistle.

Today, they wore green, which probably explains why their final delivery into the box was as bad as any team’s this season. It’s difficult to pick out a team-mate if you can’t see one. Pride Park has grass on it.

Our whistle-blower on this occasion was Roger East, a man with a reputation for keeping his cards firmly in his pocket and trying to let the game flow – either that or he hasn’t quite come to terms yet with why he is there and what it is he is supposed to do. He did do one thing right recently though – he dismissed Leeds United’s Tom Lees at Elland Road, a decision which set Blackpool on the way to a hilarious 5-0 win at the home of The Dirties.

No mention of the city of Coventry is complete without mentioning their most famous son, the inimitable Jimmy Hill. Innovator, visionary, songwriter and part-time Queen Victoria impersonator, James William Hill was immortalised in bronze last year when a statue was unveiled at the Ricoh Arena during the summer. The sculptor later apologised for reducing the size of the chin out of all proportion to the rest of the statue, saying “Have you seen the price of bronze recently?”

Derby kicked off in the general direction of John Brayford’s mum seated in Row Q of the Toyota stand, and the opening exchanges amounted to little more than Coventry City passing the ball amongst themselves for a few moments before aiming a ball into the general vicinity of the ball boy seated close to the corner flag. Eventually, the ball did end up at the feet of Gary McSheffrey who drew a diving save out of Frank Fielding in the Derby net.

Little was seen of the home side in the opening quarter, and with Fielding being very much the busier keeper, concerns were raised for Coventry goalie Joe Murphy who looked to be in the early stages of hypothermia. The use of brandy-toting St Bernard dogs to rescue distressed footballers is frowned upon nowadays, so luckily for Murphy, Jamie Ward warmed his fingers with a rasping drive following good work by Theo Robinson.

The Coventry fans were in fine voice with various out-of-tune renditions of the Sky Blue Song, written by Jimmy Hill at the time when he was manager, before television and Monty Python was invented. Whether the song will last as long as his statue is a moot point, for the statue is indeed built to last.

It is interesting to ponder what archaeologists will make of it when it is rediscovered millennia down the road. Will the mighty chin be found to contain a secret chamber? Perhaps they will consider it the 21st century equivalent of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The resemblance, after all, is uncanny.

Derby forced their way into the game, largely through the industriousness of Craig Bryson and James Bailey, and they gradually turned the screw with a succession of corners which produced fleeting opportunities for Barker, Ward and Robinson. Finally, Callum Ball prodded one effort wide of the post.

Clive Platt led the line well for the visitors during the first half, winning headers against Barker or Jason Shackell time and time again. Luckily for Derby, there was no-one to profit from his flicks. Coventry must wish for a player as prolific as Jimmy Hill was the day he played for Fulham at Doncaster back in the 1950’s when Old One-Eye was a young man and had two. Eyes, that is.

The achievement of scoring three goals in a game is called a hat-trick, but scoring five goals a game is called a ‘Jimmy’, after the great man himself.

That day, when he rocked Doncaster to its very core, he registered the first-ever ‘Perfect Jimmy*’. History does not recall precisely who coined the phrase, other than the fact that it was an itinerant Scotsman who spent most of the game fighting with himself and berating the Doncaster Rovers barman for not selling ‘Heavy’. As the great man registered his fifth, the cry of “…one with the heed, Jimmy” was heard and the term was born - but more of that later.

Er, where was I? Oh yes, the match. Anyway, not much else happened during a largely uneventful first half other than the referee taking the name of Gary Deegan for the most innocuous of challenges on Brayford.

The Coventry fans, perhaps sensing that they were on for a smaller thrashing than usual, sang their song again in exultation of their erstwhile leader, no doubt it has religious implications – perhaps in the West Midlands the chin is the window on the soul.

At the same time, the visiting fans vented their frustrations over the recent sale of striker Lukas Jutkiewicz to Middlesbrough in the direction of their non-investing SISU owners. Rams fans will recall that bunch were sniffing around Pride Park a few years ago – to what extent we ‘dodged a bullet’ is open to debate at this point, given similar misgivings about perceived ‘lack of ambition’ in Derby’s own boardroom.

Old One-Eye’s Coventry contact told him that SISU “…do not care about football – they are only in it for what they can take out - I have it on good authority that they are planning on closing the ground, hollowing out the chin and re-opening it as a 120 bedroom hotel called The Coventry Hillton”. Proponents of similar Pride Plaza shenanigans, be warned – we’re watching you.

Derby emerged from the tunnel for the second half as though they were a different team – a good one, for a change, and for the first five minutes lay siege to the Coventry goal. First Richard Keogh bravely got in the way of a Paul Green effort, then Ball and Shackell both went close in quick succession. At the other end, Carl Baker fired wide but it was McSheffrey who was proving to be more than a handful on occasion as Coventry enjoyed their best spell of the game, playing with an assuredness which belied their lowly league position.

After Ward had just missed with a free kick and Robinson disappointingly fired over for Derby, Coventry manager Andy Thorn brought on Jordan Clarke for James McPake who had been decidedly second best against Ball. Within two minutes, the visitors’ season was summed up in a nutshell.

McSheffrey got on the end of a cross from Baker, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred his glancing header would have brought its reward. On this occasion though, Derby keeper Fielding produced an extraordinary reflex save to turn the effort aside.

The Rams stormed down the other end and following good work on the right from Brayford and Green, an exquisite pass put Bryson clear. His inviting pass was met by Callum Ball who didn’t even have to break his stride, and the youngster’s first-time effort buried itself in the far corner of the net. The Academy graduate is fast becoming a fans’ favourite, and the goal was his third in a month at Pride Park.

Coventry’s final throw of the dice was the introduction of Freddie Eastwood, at one time rumoured to be a target of The Rams before people realised that he would in fact command a fee, but as far as his fifteen minutes on the pitch were concerned, ‘anonymous’ sums it up. There was one moment of alarm late on when Cyrus Christie beat three men in a mazy run before firing wide, but by and large Derby were good value for their win.

*footnote:

The ‘Perfect Jimmy’ requires the player to score the following:

- One goal with the left foot

- One goal with the right foot

- One goal with the head

- One goal with the chin

and One goal where the player does not actually make contact but the ball is  simply willed into the net with the sheer power and forcefulness of the player’s ego.

It helps to have a silly beard.

 

Old One-Eye's Man of the Match:

Craig Bryson – his effort over 90 minutes was simply phenomenal.

 

Old One-Eye's Rams Player Ratings:

 Fielding(7), Brayford(6), Barker(8),Shackell(7), Roberts(7); Green(6) Bailey(7), Bryson(8*), Ward(7), Robinson(7), Ball(8) (Buxton, 90).

Unused Subs: Legzdins, B Davies, Hendrick, Bennett

 

Photo: Action Images



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