Match Report 2002-2003
Monday 21 April, 2003, Division One
Gillingham Away
The last of the summer
The cricket season started the other day, a sure sign that the end of football for three months is coming up, and it got off well for a change the superbly named M.J. Wood getting 157 across the long balmy afternoons of the previous week.
West Yorkshire's finest bard Simon Armitage probably was not thinking about Yorkshire's flying start to the season. He is a Huddersfield Town man and given their current plight and the 2-1 reversal at the weekend he probably was worried about all things blue and white. Armitage did write the finest few couplets on willow meeting leather in his book Kid: "Forget the long, smouldering afternoon. It is this moment when the ball scoots off the edge of the bat; upwards, backwards, falling seemingly beyond him yet he reaches and picks it out of its loop like an apple from a branch. The first of the season."
And so it was the moment when Claus Jorgensen lashed a ball that had it gone an inch the other way would have written his name into the football history books. Dixie Dean scored in nine consecutive away games, Claus Jorgensen, owing to the width of a post, scored in eight. It was City's only chance of note in a game won by a single goal by Gillingham's Paul Shaw but seemed more fitting that way.
Claus Jorgensen: The irreplaceable. Pulled like a rabbit from a hat by Nicky Law last season. Back in the days of administration BfB cried foul at the fact that we would not get to see Jorgensen's career develop. Now it looks like he will be at pastures new and, whisper it rumourmongers, pastures bluer with Ipswich Town said to be looking at our Dane. How will we replace him? We always do.
Such is football. Players come and unfortunately if it has to be this way with Jorgi and the deal on the table, they go. Stuart McCall went. Lee Sharpe went. Gareth Grant went. Robbie Blake went. All gone, none forgotten with their names chiselled into the stone tablets we carry in our heads reading Wolves or Wembley. Claus Jorgensen's name it writ large as the man who did more than most to make sure that the Bantams stayed in the division that meant staying in business.
An inch of a post and he would have his name recorded next to Dixie Dean but who cares about Dixie Dean when Wayne Rooney exists? All players are replaced, all teams are broken up, in football eras come and go and save the odd footnote the stories are internalised in clubs and fans. Best off kept that way and not exposed to the world in record books.
Here's to Claus Jorgensen and his eight goals in eight away games. File alongside Bobby Campbell punching John Fashanu and that Ref who let Burnley get two late goals because his watch had stopped.
Truly, the last of the summer.