Match Report 2002-2003

Saturday 29 March, 2003, Division One

Norwich City away

End of season fair-enough

Norwich had to win today to keep play off chances alive. It's a good thing, the must win game.

We went though the previous must wins that City have played. Remember having to beat Chesterfield at Valley Parade in 1996 to keep play off hopes alive? Mark Stallard and Carl Shutt having a running battle up and down the field with a guy called Nicky Law?

Remember the must win game against Charlton the season after when we needed a win to stand a fighting chance on the last day of the season. Charlton hit post and bar but we snuck a goal through Tommy Wright and ended up staying in the league.

The Mother of all must wins was of course at Wolves. A free kick, beating Gary Walsh as it arced away from the City wall and keeper only to come back off the post. If there is some force at work in the must winwe had it on those days and Norwich City had it today.

Norwich City amaze me. They are a monumentally average team and seem to get more and more run of the mill every time I see them. They lack invention or creativity. They leak goals and have no great attack plan but nevertheless they get to the play off final and within penalty kicks of the Premiership. The blueprint for Carrow Road success seems to match the famous pies provided by director Delia Smith: They should be good cause you have heard about them, but you are not sure why they are any better than anyone else.

Norwich City are perpetually the team of Jeremy Goss flicking in his second in Munich and getting bravely beaten by a Bergkamp inspired Inter Milan. That would see them fit into the Premiership, good luck to them, but on this and other showings they would be more our second year in the top flight than our first.

Not that we have a sniff of the Premiership for some years to come but in years to come sniff it we might. Danny Forrest showed that he might be stalking the fields of Highbury and Old Trafford one day with a controlled finish to the far corner as good as any. His natural cool and level head is far beyond his years and singles him out amongst the City striking talent of the last twenty years, Graeme Tomlinson accepted. What comes easily to Forrest would have been major achievement to Gareth Grant.

City's kids are fast becoming a Valley Parade cliche. They are the future of the club we are told, it is true they are, but they are more the present. Simon Francis out performs the majority of the senior professionals and frankly his effort and fresh faced enthusiasm has revitalised or put to shame many others in the squad. Ditto Mark Bower and when he is here, ditto Lewis Emanuel.

Add to the list Ben Muirhead. Muirhead looked the piece against Burnley and did impressive things today including an impressive looking tackle at the start of the second half that TV pictures showed got the ball but resulted in Mark Rivers scoring from the spot. More impressive was minutes later when Zema Abbey turned Mark Bower to lash into the top corner form thirty odd yards. It should have been in the stands but you know, must win.

City came back, in the finest tradition of the must win game Bantams or Canaries attacked at will and few thoughts were lost on defending. Danny Forrest went close to a second before Muirhead got a high ball and a high tackle in the box. A penalty for Claus Jorgensen to score his eighth goal in eight away games. It's a record of course but for Claus and Nicky Law it's a reminded to get the Dane's contract sorted out sooner rather than later.

A draw would have been the fair result perhaps but the Canaries needed more and got it when Gary Holt, that rarest of things namely a Jim Jefferies target who is still playing in the English First Division, took a free kick quickly and River hit home his second through the squirming gloves of Aidan Davison. Nicky Law thought Holt had taken the kick before the whistle and spared a chide for his back line that went to sleep to let Rivers shoot. It happened between Bower and Francis and perhaps that was just the manager's way of bringing the boys down to Earth.

Laurens Ten Hueval, looking ok on his debut, curled a free kick over in the last minute but must win did win and that was that.

Man of the Match

Danny Forrest

Took his goal so well.

Bradford City Team