By 7inchyouknowwho
May 19 2003

Part four of the Radio WM Saddlers special, which went out on the 23rd April 2003

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |

On the 23rd of May Neil Ravenscroft, a publisher on the site and Ian Hemmings who has also been involved with the site took the chance to feature in a Radio WM special summing up the Saddlers season.

Part 4 of WM recording 23/04/03

RW:           It’s Sportsnight on WM with me Richard Wilford, it’s a Walsall kind of end of season review along with our player of the year, but with me until 9pm our first panel of the evening, Ian, Matthew and Neil. They haven’t got me with the boredom bell yet, but you know they’re a bit shy these three, I’m gonna try and encourage them for the last ten minutes or so, Lets have another round of subjects drawn from our beautiful laminate golden oh..

Neil:           Excuse me, I thought we were just being fascinating!

RW:            No, no what your not doing is rowing amongst yourselves.  

Neil:           Oh we wouldn’t do a thing like that!!

RW:            I like a good tiff to be honest! Now, this season, this question relates to. Where we should have been because ok, you got safety on Easter Monday with that victory over Grimsby but should you have been waiting that long? Neil?

Neil:            No. I suspect CL will probably say exactly the same thing as well. If you look at points dropped, Crystal Palace at home lost 4-3, should have got at least a point probably should have won it I mean we should have been 5 up after twenty minutes, Kolinko had an absolute blinder that night. Preston at home we should have won, Rotherham at home when we pulled back to 3-3 it only looked like only one team would win and we lost. I reckon we are 10-12 points behind what we should have been.

RW:            And you look at that then and your seriously thinking top ten if you got those 10 or 12 points.

Neil:           You’re talking about being level with the likes of Rotherham and who else is up there at the moment, I forget where they’re all finishing now, but yeah, certainly we shouldn’t be in challenging for the play offs, but should have been mid table obscurity, we were all craving for at the start of the season.

Ian:             And that’s what we gotta try and emulate next season, is Rotherham.

RW:           Yeah, I cant believe Rotherham are where they are and yet they did Wolves a favour by coming from behind to beat Ipswich all be it if anybody who hasn’t seen Rotherham’s equaliser against Ipswich, it is one of the oddest goals you will ever see, coz for all the world it doesn’t look like the ball is gonna drop inside the goal but it does at the last second. Have you seen that goal?  It’s gone about fifty feet in the air from the edge of the area and just drops dead in the goal!

Neil:           It didn’t bounce of some part of Darren Byfields anatomy?

RW:            No. no, certainly the bit that’s no longer gold! Just looking at that, where should you be Matthew?

Matthew:     I have to agree, I mean there’s been several poor performances at home when we should have picked up three points and we should have been looking for mid table obscurity but we haven’t had that and we’ve had another tense end to the season, hopefully next season we will get our mid table finish that we yearn for!

RW:            Well there we go, there unanimous on that. Neil it’s your turn to..

Neil:            We might make the play offs! Everybody else will go broke!

RW:             They could do. There is a play-off question in there somewhere. It would ruin it if this was it! Arh, this might get a bit of debate, we might need to draw up a short list first of all, who’s the best striker ever?

Ian:              Interesting, I was really brought up on the David Kelly era, there’s a striker! There’s also Kevin Wilson from the times at Bescot.

Neil:            Certainly one of the more skilful ones yeah.

Ian:              And obviously Jorge at the moment for pure work rate and commitment to the cause.

Neil:             Not a natural goal scorer though.

Ian:               No not a natural goal scorer no, but bit like Rod Mcdonald not really a natural goal scorer but will work for the team. 

Neil:              True-his work rate is phenomenal.

Matthew:       Yeah, his work rate in every game, he just never lets up for the whole 90 minutes, he’s always running for the team. 

RW:              Jorge and Junior, not the natural combination that say, Kevin Wilson and Kyle Lightbourne were in, but Kevin certainly brought the best out in Kyle.

Neil:              Oh he certainly did and er brought us an awful lot of money for him in the end which was probably a lot more than he was worth but we won’t go into that,. Erm, I suppose I gotta look back being the elder statesman here, erm, best ever, pure skill wise was probably Alan Clarke, most effective was probably Alan Buckley or Tony Richards and I do go back that far!

RW:               Yeah, well Tony Richards had a fantastic record of course for the club and for people who aren’t old enough to have seen him play, what do you recollect of him?

Neil:               He was the only one stupid enough to put his head in front of a Colin Taylor cross is what I remember, I think he said that himself on more than one occasion. He was a typical old fashioned, all action centre forward. Not that big either, as in fact Gilbert Alsop wasn’t that big. Gilbert Alsop was only 5ft 8-5ft 9 I think, but phenomenal in the air for a quality of the striker.

RW:                Just to throw into the mix. The best 20 game run a striker has ever had in my time knowing Walsall was Roger Boli. Unfortunately after 20 games he suddenly became a Rymans League player for some reason. I don’t know what went wrong there but the 20 games he had the start of the season was unbelievable.

Neil:             That incredible goal against Southend will live in the memory.

Ian:               The sublime volley!

Neil:              I don’t know what it was with him Jan’s side went to pieces after Christmas anyway and Roger went to pieces with them I think to a certain extent he suffered from the lack of surprise syndrome, teams the second time round had worked him out and funnily enough exactly the same thing happened the same season to Lee Hughes, who scored what, 25 goals before Christmas, and three afterwards or something like that.

Ian:              I also think a major problem with Boli drying, was the fact Andy Watson got injured and I thought Andy Watson did a lot of work for him and did a lot of ball work.

Neil:            Andy Watson brought a lot for him and I think Boli wanted away, I think he thought he was better.

RW:            Incidentally, before we finish on the subject of Walsall strikers, hats off to Andy Rammell whose three goals in two games over Easter weekend have all but saved Ray Graydon’s Bristol Rovers which is a really bizarre story given the way Andy Rammell left the club, so fantastic Andy Rammell there.

Neil:           Yeah we were all cheering.

RW:            How good was that? Let’s have one more topic before we hear a bit more action. Ian, with the lucky dip, it might be the last dip that our first group get, we’ve got another group of Saddlers fans after 9pm. Oh dear, we’ve already had that, hold it, either that’s gone back in, or I’ve written that down twice, I’ve had a little bit of déjà vu there, that’s terrible!

Matthew:     Can’t get the staff!

Neil:            Oh he’s laughing

RW:            This one’s brought a smile, oh here we go couldn’t get question tape ran out!!)

Ian:              You v’e gotta have that aim of saying yes we want to progress up three or four years down the line and be challenging for a play off place.

RW:             But do you believe that you can?

Ian:              Erm, I don’t know, I think it will take a lot more finance from Jeff and co to get it done, but if we can, with reduced prices now and get the support up, bring a b it more revenue into the club and hopefully fill the ground and then redevelop another stand so we can increase again and keep little by little building coz out of acorns big oaks grow!
Neil:            That’s a lovely thought.

RW:             Either of you two a believer?

Matthew:     Yeah  I think it stems down to finances really, giving the climate that football is in at the moment we’ve always got a chance because our prudent housekeeping but you just don’t know, over the future,  what its, what course of action its gonna take.

RW:              We’ll have a final word with the guys in a minute. On the text message we’ve actually got a wonderful example of how to ruin your own argument just with one very, very simple phrase. It’s a good point, now its come anonymously as well, it says, I cant believe people are voting for Junior, he’s lazy, overrated and if he put half as much effort in as Jorge then he’d have 20 plus goals, ok, that’s fine, but the message then ends one David Zdrilic! (all laugh)

RW:            I don’t need to say anymore do I! We’ve got another vote for Ian Roper as player of the season. Now Walsall’s FA Cup run provided some light relief all be it that the Saddler’s had the misfortune to be drawn against fellow first division sides in all three rounds they contested. BBC WM brought you the very best of the action.

RW:           Talking of going out of cups, Manchester  United are on there way out of the European cup/Champions League/ money laundering operation. Man U 1 Real Madrid 2 Ronaldo’s second goal of the game means Real Madrid lead by five goals to two on aggregate and such are the rules of the away goals thing, Utd now need to score four times in forty minutes if they are to make there way through to the next round which isn’t very optimistic to be perfectly honest. Now its just time to say goodbye to our first three panelists of this evening, Ian Hemmings, Matthew Gutteridge, and Neil Ravenscroft. Two games to go a potential 57 points we’d all accept that wouldn’t we fellas?

Ian:          Yeah, I’d like to see Colin bring in the likes of Kris Taylor, Craig Stanley into the squad and give them a taste of first division life and see if they are good enough next season.

Neil:        Yeah, been hearing a lot of good things about Kris Taylor in the reserves as well, so like to see him get his chance, but I think Colin would like to finish as high as possible so I think he might go for the points to be hones and er 57 points would be very nice!

Matthew:  I think if we can finish above the likes of Coventry and Derby that really says something at the start of the season if you said we were gonna finish above the likes of Coventry and Derby I think everyone would take it!

RW:          Well, we thought 18^th was gonna be hard to match it could be 17^th with a couple of wins maybe even 16^th. So I hope the three of you enjoyed coming in, I’ve certainly enjoyed your company for the last hour and hopefully we’ll see you again in the future, thanks to Ian, Matthew and Neil.