Nogger's Blog

04/11/11 -- As some of you will doubtless know I am for my sins an Everton supporter, so as you will guess I'm not exactly in it for the glory. Well the current Greek tragedy reminds me of a match I went to once.

It was probably late 80's in the cup, which one I can't remember, it certainly wasn't the FA Cup it was one of the lesser ones. Back in those days there was the SIMOD Cup, the Inter-toto Cup, the Pop Down The Shops For A Pint Of Milk Cup, there were all sorts of them.

Well we were away at Oldham, Boundry Park, plastic pitch, midweek, probably November or December, open stand, lashing it down with rain and I mean lashing. We were behind what turned out to be the goal Everton were defending in the second half. It was 1-1 I think with about 10 or 15 minutes to go. We were all soaked and thoroughly miserable. And extra time was looming.

Then something happened that had never happened before, Oldham were starting an attack down the left and we all started cheering, willing the winger to whip in a teasing cross that their striker would rise like a salmon to meet and send a perfect header crashing past Big Nev in goal. Come on, stick it in. And he did, and we all started clapping. OK we didn't go exactly wild, but I've never seen an opposition goal greeted with such a sense of "great, well done Oldham, Everton don't you dare run down the other end and equalise, can we all please go home now."

And that is exactly how I feel about the European debt crisis, Papandreou, Merkel, Sarkozy, Berlusconi (it's starting to sound like a decent midfield that, the latter arrived from Lazio in some mysterious deal that no doubt lined the pockets of him & his agent even though he couldn't hit a barn door with a banjo) and the whole bloody lot of them. Sod off.