Do the chicken payback

We said we were due to give someone a hammering, didn’t we? We said that we should be beating teams like Tamworth comfortably at home, didn’t we? That’s just what Oldham do now. They just win games of football. Sometimes, rather emphatically.

We all wanted to make the gulf in class show last Saturday, and God bless ‘em, Tamworth really played their part in that. The defending for our first goal was so sloppy – one of their players basically gave Kitching the ball, he fed it through to Stones in the box, and young Joshua picked up his partnership with James Norwood where they left off, squaring the ball for him to tap it in. Easy.

Sutton was in for the injured Raglan last Saturday, and he didn’t let us down. He was sharp defensively and looked confident going forward. After great work by the yet again superb Lundstram (he really has been like a new signing this season, hasn’t he?), it was Sutton who, ahem, ‘drew the foul’ to win us a penalty. There wasn’t any debate about who was taking it, and Norwood made no mistake from the spot.

Mellon had the opportunity to do one of the funniest things ever and sub Norwood before he could get his hat-trick, so that he could storm off and post a selfie at Elk Mill in his full kit eating Fanta Wings at 3.59pm. Mellon is, however, more focused on winning football matches than he is on making us laugh. Typical dour Scot.

I did volunteer to go for the half-time drinks, and I did text Andy to say sorry when he missed the third goal. Clucas’ faintly obscene dummy set up Caprice to run onto the ball in acres of space down the right, and he crossed the ball in for Norwood to bundle it in at the near post with a Fondop-esque header. The keeper could only be aggrieved at himself for being so half-hearted in coming for the ball. Game over and match ball secured before half-time.

And still Norwood didn’t celebrate. Our mate Damian reckons it’s because he’s on a hefty goal bonus, and he feels bad about taking money off Frank. Or maybe he’s still showing respect to Tranmere. I dunno.

Norwood himself didn’t seem to be aware in the post-match interview that he’d scored a perfect hat-trick. I wasn’t at the time, I thought the first two were both with his right foot, but obviously not. In any case, it’s not a perfect hat-trick if one of the goals is a penalty. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

Tamworth were taking a standing count at this point, and we didn’t sit back in the second half. 5 minutes in, Stones was booked for having been fouled/being ginger/making Tamworth look bad (these are all as plausible as whatever the fuck the ref wrote in his notebook). At 3-0 up, and with some big games coming up, there was no point risking him, and he came off for Fondop shortly after.

A few minutes later, Norwood passed to God’s number 9 in front of goal when he was perfectly entitled to have a shot himself. The general consensus seems to be that the pass was ‘a tad heavy’, but it looked fine to me at the time, it looked like Mikey just stumbled. I’d be interested to hear Norwood’s version of events.

Given that we were arguably even more dominant in the second half than the first, it was almost a disappointment that we only added one goal to our tally, but what a goal it was. Defensive colossus Reagan Ogle was moved to the centre of the back 3 to deputise for Raglan, but still had the freedom to get forward. He made a marauding run down the middle and played it out wide to Caprice. He passed it to Kay, who ran like a man possessed across the edge of the box before burying the ball into the bottom corner from 25 yards. I must admit, I did not know that he had that in him. Bravo, sir.

Of course, not everyone was quite so happy for him.

In a last throw off the dice, Tamworth brought on Tonks, famous for his long throw against Huddersfield. Against us, they were no threat, and every one of them went straight into Hudson’s hands.

Norwood was positively chirpy after the game (and yes, he did stay and do the interview and pick up his MOTM award and sign autographs and pose for selfies and kiss babies). He is, as we all expected, delighted to have Stones back, and said they’d had a laugh and said “let’s pick up where we left off”. He’s also pleased to be reunited with Clucas, who he described as being “mentally on the same wavelength” as him (and let’s be honest, it was painfully obvious last season that our midfielders were not). He was also refreshingly honest about his patchy form this season, saying “I looked like I’d won a competition to play at Barnet”.

For his part, Clucas was keen to big up his old mate: “You can say what you want about everything else, and his off the pitch stuff, and attributes, but he’s a goalscorer and he always has been”. Preach, brother.

Four goals, an emphatic victory, and our journey from home to fans’ bar to Rocky back to fans’ bar and back home was about three quarters of a mile. Spare a thought for our friend and fellow Latic, Mark, who made an epic journey from Tallinn to Gabala (no me neither), which involved hitchhiking from Baku with a group of farmers he’d never met before, to watch Azerbaijan and Estonia draw 0-0. Hope you get to see a lot more goals when you come home for Christmas, mate.

It feels like a tide has turned, doesn’t it? Enjoy it. Allow yourself to feel optimistic. Good things are happening. I know we’ve been wrong about this before, but it really does feel different this time. This might – MIGHT – finally be our season. Come and celebrate at our Quizmas party at Billingtons on Sunday December 15th. Tickets are now only £10. No food, but it’s round the corner from the Egyptian Room and the Molino Lounge. Make a day of it.

At the time of writing, the 409 derby at Spotland is still due to take place today at 12:30pm. I’m not confident it’ll go ahead, having ice-skated to the club shop to buy my Christmas jumper yesterday. If it does, Rochdale fans have asked people to join in with a minute’s applause in the 64th minute in tribute to one of their own, Jeff, who recently passed away 2 days after his 64th birthday. I know that you’ll all give a fellow football fan and his family the respect they deserve.

If the game does get called off, let’s all go into Oldham town centre, where there is apparently going to be a polar bear called Bjorn. Not a real one, surely? I hope not. We’ve all seen Cocaine Bear.

Things are looking up, comrades. Beating Rochdale is always enjoyable, but a win today would mean more than bragging rights. And we’ve got an extra two and a half hours drinking time afterwards! Bring on Storm Bert. KTMFF.

Written by Arlene Finnigan. Photos © Oldham Athletic.