February 2, 2010

#3: Happy Days Are Here Again!

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The third Square Ball Podcast, recorded 2 February 2010, arrived in a noticeably better mood. The podcast curse — Leeds hadn’t won a single game since the show launched — was broken with a 2-0 home victory over Colchester, and the hosts had collectively decided to respond by recording a “happy edition.” Dan Moylan, Michael Normanton, Daniel Chapman (Moscowhite), and Paul O’Dowd (Oddy) opened with a Top 40 iTunes chart update before diving into a fortnight that had, by any measure, delivered.

White Watching covered four matches. The JPT Northern Final first leg loss to Carlisle was quietly filed and moved on from. The Spurs FA Cup fourth round draw — 2-2 at White Hart Lane, Beckford scoring in the 96th minute — was the centrepiece. The opening 20 minutes had been a rearguard action; Ankergren making the saves that kept it at 0-0 long enough for the game to turn. The missed penalty, when Beckford stepped up and did something slightly uncertain with his face and his foot before the ball went in, was discussed with considerable interest. One host watched the second half on a delayed Sky+ recording, receiving a flurry of incoherent texts just before Beckford took the spot-kick, and spent 90 seconds not knowing what had happened. “It was the worst 90 seconds of my life.” Swindon away, three days later, had been exactly what everyone feared: same team selection, visibly tired, 0-1, and over before it started. The Colchester win — 2-0, Beckford scoring both (neither a classic, one practically off his backside) — was greeted with relief more than celebration. “That’s the sort of dull win we’ve been doing all season and we need to get back to doing it.”

Casper Ankergren was named player of the fortnight by some distance. His performance at White Hart Lane had been outstanding, and the prospect of Higgs returning seemed much less pressing than it had a few weeks earlier.

In the talking points, the transfer window had delivered. Gary McSheffrey joined on loan from Coventry and immediately improved training ground standards, with Beckford apparently responding by actually passing to people. Shane Lowry came in at left back, solving a problem that had been quietly undermining the team for months. Max Gradel was made permanent. Paul Huntington went to Stockport; David Prutton departed permanently to Colchester, his farewell letter read aloud in full. “It’s been one of the privileges of my life so far to have played for such a world-renowned, highly respected football club.” The hosts were genuinely touched, while acknowledging the Colchester fans reading the same letter were going to have a complicated response.

Ken Bates’s Evening Standard quote — that a football club is “a property business that doesn’t trade 340 days a year” — was picked apart against the Arsenal model. Harry Kewell’s agent received brief but thorough condemnation. There was a campaign to get Leeds Leeds Leeds to number one in the charts if promotion was secured.

The feature section went somewhere genuinely warm: the hosts’ happiest memories as Leeds fans. Paul O’Dowd (Oddy) described the build-up to the 2008 Wembley playoff final — 50,000 people in yellow across London — rather than the match itself. Moscowhite recalled reading, on a campsite at the solar eclipse in 1999, that Michael Bridges had scored a hat-trick at Southampton. Michael Normanton went for the 4-3 Derby comeback at Elland Road. Dan chose Sheffield United away in April 1992 — the Brian Gayle own goal, the front of the terrace, the one time he has genuinely felt Leeds were invincible. “That’s never been recreated — that feeling.”