A guy I work with is the son of a former Premiership ref. His Dad supports a big club up in the North. A recent conversation with him went something like this...
'Did your Dad declare his love of his team when he became a ref?'
'No.'
'And so he refereed this team?'
'Yes'.
'Did he go easy on them when he got them?'
'Yeah!'
Not that this conversation in any way referred to Mr.K W Wright who was in charge of todays game, but I think the only conclusion one can draw from his abysmal biased handling of the second half was that he's a closet Preston fan.
I reckon Preston must have got 9 decisions in every 10. Five minutes injury time. Are you sure? Tommy Smith lunged at as he races down the wing less than a metre from the linesman and probably less than 10 from the ref and nothing given. Even some of the fouls we did get given merited more of a GBH charge than just a free kick. But Mr Wright only saw fit to get out his book once for the men in white when the fantastically named St.Ledger tried to impede us taking a throw.
He, and the linesman at the Rous end, really tried their hardest to beat Attwell and Bannister as worst officials of the season. They didn't quite succeed but came as impressively close as you could to the title without awarding a ridiculous ghost goal.
So, for the second home Saturday in a row our display was all the more impressive for the fact we were playing 13 men rather than just 11.
We started the game with our impression of a team that doesn't know each other and allowed Preston a soft goal where the defending was woeful. Young Mariappa felt it was so bad he even seemed to have a go at captain DeMerit. Maybe this was unwise because Mariappa then went on to have one of his worst displays of his career which must have warmed the cockles of Lloyd Doyley's heart.
Jon Harley got us back into the game, playing so much better in midfield than when he covers at the back. Tommy Smith then made it 2-1 and it looked like we were in for a goal-fest with neither teams defences or goalkeepers looking particularly robust.
But surprisingly thats where it stayed. However that shouldn't detract from excellent displays from Hoskins who set up both goals and will be difficult to leave out of the side when Raziak is back, and Priskin who had his best game in a yellow shirt. He played as if he thought he was playing for Hungary and was very unfortunate not to end up on the scoresheet. The fact the Rookey sang his song spoke volumes. Maybe Hoskins is the partner Priskin's been looking for these past three seasons.
Williamson had another good game and O'Toole was immense as ever. I think we play far better without Eustace playing his Gavin Mahon type of role in the middle of the park. It was good to see Darren Ward back in the heart of the defence and I'd rather we kept him than Bromby. I'd forgotten quite how enormous Darren was or how much fun his fouls are (especially when he tried to wrestle a Preston player to the ground).
I don't normally take any interest in Harry's 50/50 half time draw but I did like Richard Short saying to Harry about 'having his magic fingers in a box'. Harry's response seemed to be the mascots version of 'wa-hey' to which Richard said 'ahh, those were the days'. And I thought we were meant to be a family club.
Up one place to 20th seems a bit of a mean reward for the afternoon's efforts but another win and we could climb significantly given that three points now only separate us and QPR (ha!) in 11th.
