Que sera

Watford v Ipswich (F.A. Cup 5^th Round)

Saturday 17^th February

“Will you be playing a team of substitutes?” the Ipswich fan asked on the Silverlink at Euston.

“Nah, I think we need the boost of a cup run.”

“We’ll be the first team to win the cup and get relegated,” an unmarked fan laughed.

Unable to move the banter on, I returned to my newspaper and Russell Brand’s response to the Observer writer who spent a large part of last week’s Watford-victory match report on the hypothesis that there could be an inverse correlation between the comedian and West Ham, the team he supports. You can’t argue with Brand’s assertion that “Most football fans will have at some time in their life bartered with an indifferent God over the outcome of a match”, but I wouldn’t be offering too much on the result of this one.

This is Ipswich’s cup-final for the season if they don’t win but for us it is an aside, however much we pretend otherwise in order not to belittle the competition. Staying up is more likely than winning the cup, but is this a distraction? If winning really is a habit, then maybe I was on the button with my response to the Tractor Boy opposite me, but we cannot know that until after Wednesday’s game, so I’ll postpone judgement for the abandoned rematch.

Joss opened the door and Trevor was making rounds of fry-up sandwiches. Kerry made me a cuppa and Sarah came in with Kasey. I warned all to beware my flu germs and supped away while the males ate the lion’s share of the meat and bread then Joss and I cycled along Ebury Way asking and answering “Como se llama tu madre?” and suchlike with an emphasis on pronunciation. We’ve set him the target of being second best in his class (there is a native speaker in there) although it was the lowest score on his report.

Locked up, got programmes, moved someone on (again) before taking usual seats a couple of minutes in. Four thousand loud blue fans filled the Vicarage Road stand and I was too croaky for sustained shouts. Ipswich had the best chance of a mediocre first-half, hitting the crossbar, before having one of their players sent off for apparently stamping on Shittu just before the break. And breaks are what we seem to be getting at the moment.

However mediocre we were (Cavalli didn’t look as impressive today as last week, though there were good tackles, Shittu was back and effective), Ipswich with ten men should not have threatened us but they did again several times in the second half though we had what looked like a goal headed out without being given. Still, it took until two minutes from normal time for Damien Francis to hit the target (two good chances earlier from a similar position had gone wide) and put the Golden Boys into the quarter-finals. Smith did the hard work and made a cross that Henderson dummied for Francis to pass into the corner of the net in front of us. It was the only piece of attractive Watford football of the 94 minutes and we started singing of the long overdue London stadium that could be our destiny/destination.

Would I rather have won this or the Wigan match? Both.