When I used to work at Talk Radio, before it became Talk Sport, I drove the desk for their football coverage (in layman's terms this means pressing all the buttons). At any live game that was covered we'd have three microphones. One for the commentator, one for the pundit and another which was used to pick up the atmosphere. So as the audio we were broadcasting sounded constant the producer would yell 'atmos down' if the crowd were making too much noise or 'atmos up' if it was quiet.
I thought about him twice today and imagined what his instructions would be. At the beginning of the game it would definitely have been 'atmos down!" I'm hard pressed to remember a better and more exuberant atmosphere than that in the build up to 3 o'clock. It was helped probably by the fact we've not had a home fixture on the first day for four years. Also the Radio Hornet music seemed to be very quiet today, and non-existent at half time, which meant it was far easier to get chants going before the game started. Donnie had brought plenty with them and were in good voice too. The sun was shining and hope springed eternal in that way that it always does on the opening day.
We lined up as we did last week against Parma with the obvious exception of Prisk, whose place was surprisingly taken by Jobi McAnuff. He's not featured at all in pre-season, suffering from an illness, but was considered match fit today. Tommy played in a more central role with Jobi out on the flank.
Right from the start the game was scrappy in a predictable opening day type way. Both teams looked too eager but neither wanted to give anything away. We seem to have abandoned most of the fancy moves Judas taught us, but I couldn't really tell you what we've replaced them with. Each side had a few chances before Danny Graham put us ahead following a free kick from the left which Tommy Smith got on the end of and his shot/come cross was turned in on the line. Good to see Danny on the scoresheet. He has already got a chant and I don't think it will be long before he's a bit of a hero. He's certainly settled in quicker than Priskin did.
Ten minutes later and Donnie were level. Doyley decided not to challenge Hayter to a header just outside the box. Okay, Lloyd was unlikely to win it but had he at least tried the outcome might have been different. Loach was slightly off his line and the ball dropped perfectly between him and the crossbar.
Scott Severin almost put us 2-1 before half time when Dodgy Sullivan had to deal with Jobi McAnuff one on one. The Scot had to shoot from a difficult angle and got it past Sullivan but alas, went just wide.
The half time entertainment was provided by Mark Falco doing Harry's 50/50 draw. Maybe he'd not drawn a raffle before but he made the mistake of pulling out three tickets whose numbers ran consecutively. I suppose you'd be pleased if you had those three tickets. I don't think they'll be asking him to do it again.
The second half was dull, tedious and insipid. The ref, who'd done okay in the first half, made some very odd decisions to show that the standard of officials hasn't changed a bit. However he did at least rule against Donnie when they claimed a shot that Loach stopped on the line had gone in.
Jobi came off for Hoskins but other than that Malky made no substitutions which was surprising considering we seemed to have no energy in the second half and the bench now has 7 on it instead of 5. How long before you are allowed 11 subs or even an infinite number?
It must have been very hot out there but it was frustrating how we didn't seem to have any urgency towards the end of the game. Donnie were clearly happy to settle for a point yet we didn't look like we wanted to try and exploit them sitting back at all. In fact, a couple of times we were so deep ourselves that we looked in danger of handing them an unlikely three points.
I thought of my Talk Radio producer again at the end. The atmosphere had died during the second half, so that the final whistle was greeted with the sort of polite applause you get at a village cricket ground. "Atmos Up, Atmos Up" he would've been shouting. The contrast between the fans reactions at the beginning and end couldn't have been more stark. Malky, I think you've still got quite a bit of work to do.
