Last Days of Tone : Sat Apr 30, 2022 4:24 pm
Pivotal game coming up but it feels to me like we’re in a bit of a weird interlude, after the exhilaration of a good run of form.The semi-final itself… the squad is looking a little bit stretched for the first time this year. We might win and we might not. If we do, then I’ll celebrate with or small glass of Chardonnay and a little bowl of foreboding. And the start the futile negotiations in my head with the indifferent Rugby League Fates, Agnes (goes by Aggie, likes a Bakewell) and Jonathan (JonNO). ‘If we could score at least one try…’ ‘Please no, not Saints and James Child…’, that sort of thing.
Every so often, unbidden, a ‘but you never know, anything can happen over 80 minutes…’ will bubble up through my consciousness to live briefly before being stomped on by a ‘you ******* do though, don’t you?’
If you’re posing it to yourself, is it still a rhetorical question? He asked himself an unpopulated forum.
So, my mind keep getting drawn to points in the more distant future, to the post-Smith era. Playing new coach Cluedo and looking at the list of Rovers players contracted to the end of 2024 and beyond, rather than focusing on the chance of the current team playing in a major final. It’s like the head coach’s grumpy statement of intent (to leave) is sat like a turd in the bog that we could flush, the toilet isn’t broken, but we daren’t because the silence seems so important and fragile. Was it a tantrum or a justified response to a provocation? Not knowing justifies my fence sitting, but really its about not saying anything that might slightly upset somebody who has a small chance of doing something that might make me happy, or at least prevent me being as sad as on 29th of August 2015. Being honest about my own intellectual and emotional dishonesty, it’ll feel a lot less tantrum-y to me if Rovers win the Cup or even just put up a decent show having reached the final. Whatever happens, at least it’ll feel like we can breathe without worrying it’ll wake any sleeping dogs.
