The Opinionator: Last Update on 28th March 2004

It has been a long time since I have wrote anything on here. In that time the Blues have been successful in bringing the County Antrim Shield back to Windsor and, despite a wee bit of a lull in the league form, have maintained our unbeaten league run and currently have an eight point league at the top of the table over Portadown who have a game in hand. The one low point though was the Irish Cup defeat against the Glens which was made even worse by the behaviour of a few morons in amongst the Linfield support who decided it would be smart to throw bottles.

 

Ok, let's get the bad one out of the way first. The Irish Cup match against the Glens was a disaster from every conceivable viewpoint. The performance by Linfield that day was undoubtedly our worse this season and we fully deserved to get beat one nil (even though their goal was a touch fortunate). Linfield manager David Jeffrey surprised many by having Glenn Ferguson as the only out and out striker and to be brutally honest the team simply never got going. This was made even worse towards the end of the game when some idiots targeted Glens ‘keeper Elliott Morris with bottles and the game was held up. There is no excusing whatsoever the behaviour of those that were involved in this. However stronger action from referee Davy Malcolm in dealing with Morris's continual time wasting may well have prevented this from happening. As I say, that in no way excuses how these people behaved but Morris got away with murder that day. Personally I do not blame him. He was doing everything he could to help his team, but he was well outside the laws of the game and a yellow card would have stopped it all and maybe even stopped the trouble. The other question that must be asked is how these morons got the bottles into the ground in the first place. If some reports are to be believed there was bottles being sold in the social club. If so the Linfield board need to take a long hard look at all that is going on in the social clubs. In short, none of this should ever have happened and I sincerely hope that, with the aid of CCTV and the television pictures these people are identified and never allowed to darken Windsor Park again.

 

On now to the Co Antrim Shield final. This was a comfortable 2-0 win for the Blues thanks to an own goal and a strike from Davy Larmour. Again, unfortunately, there was also some crowd trouble at this game. The powers that be, in their wisdom, decided to allow freedom of movement between different parts of the ground. Towards the end of the first half some Linfield supporters, drum and all, marched into the part of the ground occupied by Ards fans and the inevitable skirmishes happened. Again this was avoidable and there would have been no trouble at all if the gates linking the different parts of the ground had been locked. On a positive note, it was great to see Phil Charnock come on to the pitch at the end of the game to take part in the celebrations.

 

In the league we seem to have got back on track after dropping points away to Ballymena United and in the re-arranged league fixture at home to Ards, although a point from this game was quite an achievement when you consider we were 2-0 down with just eleven minutes left on the clock. Yet again, Mark Picking and Glenn Ferguson, came up with the goods and a goal from each was enough to earn the Blues a draw. We even had chances to grab all three points. What was also notable about this match was the performance of the referee. Even by Irish League standards it was very poor. He ruled out a perfectly good Ferguson goal when the score was 0-0 and the first Ards goal looked an absolute street offside. In recent weeks the Blues have got back to winning form with two excellent wins against Lisburn Distillery at Windsor and away to Limavady United. With just five games left to play we are sitting in a very strong position. Just let's hope and pray that we can finish the season off and bring the Gibson Cup back to its rightful home.

Until next time.

The Opinionator