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For the best part of the last 30 years, supporting Latics has been a thankless task. It’s mostly been an endless kick in the crotch. We’ve been wading through a vast ocean of disappointment, frustration and heartbreak, and we’ve come away from most games questioning our life choices.
And then, every so often, there are glorious, life-affirming days like last Saturday, and you remember what we do this for.
We thought the day might pan out very differently when we saw that Monthe wasn’t in the squad. In his first interview, Sam Clucas said he’d played pretty much every outfield position except centre half. Mellon presumably heard that and thought ‘let’s get you a full house, son’. It didn’t quite work, we got over-run in the first quarter of an hour or so, and Tranmere took the lead in the 9th minute. Morris had acres of space to run into down their right wing and played in Jennings for a fairly easy finish.
Two things have stood out as being different this season. Firstly, we’ve got an experienced manager with tactical nous who can see what needs to be done to fix things. Secondly, the buzz words of the season have been ‘resilience’ and ‘mentality’. We don’t let our heads drop. We don’t fold. We don’t hide.
We changed our formation and got right back into the game. Defensive colossus Reagan Ogle was once again a big threat with his long throws, one of which set up Conlon for a great shot on the edge of the area that their keeper made a good save from. We should have taken the lead through what would have been a spectacular debut Olimpico goal for Clucas direct from an inswinging corner, but the referee – who was awful – thought “nah, that’s just outlandish, I’ll disallow that and decide later whether it was for a foul or whether the ball defied physics and went out of play”.
Norwood, restored, with comical predictability, to the starting line-up, should have headed us level from Conlon’s cross in another move that came from an Ogle long throw. Not to worry, the inevitable was coming. In the last 10 minutes of the first half, Lundstram (who was excellent once again) made a run down the right and crossed into the box. Clucas played the ball to Norwood with an utterly outrageous backheel that no National League player should consider attempting, and the Nando’s poster boy calmly passed it into the net. Disallow that one, fucker.
(According to the BBC, he didn’t celebrate out of respect to his former club. Has he just been showing respect to Tranmere all this time?)
From that point, there was only ever going to be one winner. We all thought Drummond had put us ahead early in the second half when he hit it into the side netting. Uchegbalum came on for the superb Clucas on 58 minutes, and my sweet Lord what an impact he immediately made. Conlon gave Jes the ball just outside the area, Kitching was screaming at him to give him the ball and threw up his hands in frustration when he didn’t, but fair play, he was the first to celebrate when his glorious looping (and apparently deflected) shot sailed into the goal.
A visibly delighted Jes said after the game that Mellon’s been telling him to play with a smile on his face. Mission very much accomplished.
It was such a great moment. I can’t stop watching this video. The noise, the unbridled joy…. It was beautiful.
Having said that there was only going to be one winner, I will freely admit that I spent the last 20 minutes looking through my fingers whimpering “oh God I can’t watch, please don’t fuck this up”. It was nervy, we had a LOT of defending to do, and my, did we step up. Despite our best player, our Manny mountain, being ill. Ogle in particular was a brick wall, at one point clearing it off the line. The relief when the final whistle went quickly turned to delirium, and the noise of the Tranmere fans booing Mellon when he came to applaud us was music to my fucking ears.
I love this photo, mainly because we’re in it (I’m in there, but I’m 5ft1 and hiding behind my 6ft3 husband.) There are two birthday boys on the front row. Andy, on the left in the blue coat, turned 50 on Thursday, and as you can see from his face, this was a far better present than I could have ever managed to give him. On the far left of the photo is our mate Matt, whose birthday was last Tuesday. He’s a little older than Andy, so we sat at the front so that he could sit down, and he spent the whole of the second half stood up, banging on the hoardings and shouting abuse at the players. What an absolute legend.
(Incidentally, the Rochdale tickets went on sale on Andy’s birthday, so I guess we’ll see how good a present that turns out to be.)
I hadn’t realised until blog contributor and new programme editor, Will Holdaway, pointed out, but our last game at Tranmere was in April 2022, after our relegation out of the Football League had been confirmed. Fans wore black in protest at how the club was dying under the previous regime. I had a ticket and travelled to Liverpool, but couldn’t face going to the match, and instead stayed over the water from Prenton Park, wandering round the pubs, hardly bothering to check the score. Andy went to the game and left at half-time.
The contrast last Saturday could not have been starker. They practically had to kick us out of the ground. We love Frank, and we told him so.
Frank interrupting Mellon’s post-match interview to say “I’ve never seen so much joy in two thousand people’s hearts today….they don’t wanna leave!” was the most heartwarming of content. Even Micky looked happy. I don’t remember us chanting “you’re fucking shit” – presumably at the Tranmere fans warming down – but it’s there, very audibly, on the video.
When we did finally leave the ground, we were, naturally, very keen to get to the pub and celebrate. We didn’t think they’d be letting away fans in the Prenton Park pub (we later found out that they were), so we planned to get a taxi back to Liverpool. To our pleasant surprise, there was a black cab free just outside. What a stroke of luck! Or so we thought.
The driver went through the tunnel at about 15mph – mopeds and buses whizzing past us – so that he could tell us all about the time he saw a UFO over Birkenhead Central station in 2004, and it was copper and you could see lights all around it and you could feel heat coming off it y’know like how you can feel heat coming off tarmac in the summer when it’s hot, and he watched it move over to Cammell Laird shipyard, and he spoke to two blokes who worked there and asked if they’d seen anything and one said no but it’s funny you should ask and the other one said “you can go to the police but they won’t do anything” (I’m not sure what exactly he thought the police should do) and someone else told him not to say anything about it to anyone, and yet here he was 20 years later telling us all about it in great detail and at great length.
It was funny at first, but when we’d been in the tunnel for far longer than necessary, I started to worry that we’d never see daylight again. I considered phoning the police, then realised we were underneath a fucking big river. I’ve never been so relieved to see my home city as I was when we emerged, but he wasn’t done. Having paid him, we realised we couldn’t get out and he’d locked the doors so he could tell us about the time he met an American air force pilot. We’d humoured him long enough, Andy told him to get the doors open and let us out. I strongly suspect it wasn’t his cab and he wasn’t a licenced taxi driver. I’m absolutely certain he took too much acid in the 90s and 00s.
Between the match, the terrifying ride in the mad bastard taxi, and the trains back to Manchester being a bit of a mess, we had very little choice but to go on a session in Liverpool, which culminated in us making a donation to Zoe’s Place (which, happily, has been saved) in order to go on the karaoke at McHale’s and sing Don’t You Want Me. All in all, a pretty phenomenal day out.
Apparently there was also a game on Wednesday. I don’t have anything to say about that.
Our reward for beating Tranmere is a trip to Leyton Orient, which is a great day out. Happily, it's been confirmed that it'll be 3pm on the Saturday. I can't wait. We're gonna sit on the front row again and Andy's going to see if he can get Richie Wellens to flick the V's at him and tell him to fuck off, like he did at the fans' match at Avro.
In any other week, the big reveal that Josh Stones had FINALLY re-signed for us on loan would have been the big story. This week, it was merely the candles on the icing on the cake. This team just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it? Sweep the decks. HMS Piss the League is about to set sail.
📸 Oldham Athletic
Whisper it, but things are on the up. We can go into this Christmas full of hope for the new year. Come and celebrate with us at our Quizmas Party at Billingtons. Dave is setting the questions, so, unlike Latics Mind, there's a possibility I might get the odd one right. There's currently a 4 for the price of 3 offer on tickets, so get your mates together and decide on your team name. You can't have Keep The Motherfucking Faith, Harriett's bagsied that.
Safe journey and have a great day if you're off to Barnet today. A win today would be HUGE. We're on our way, lads. We're on our way. KTMFF.
Written by Arlene Finnigan
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