The cruellest way to lose?

2 Responses to The cruellest way to lose?

1. Dai Woosnam says:

   March 27, 2024 at 12:06 pm

   Paul, compadre,
   Nightmare evening.
   One Robert Page is enough for me… but seeing his twin brother managing the Poles got me asking the wife to put an ice pack on my forehead.
   Having watched Page spending time in earnest conversation with James in the moments just before the penalty shoot out, I figured that it did not augur well… he seemed to be convincing him that he could do it. (Too late for that, I thought.) But not for nothing did Page make him #5… in the hope that a fifth penalty would not be needed.

   As for your thought Paul that Rambo would have been a better penalty taker for such a pressure penalty, please make sure you only whisper it within a mile of Ibrox Stadium…!!

   The Rangers’ fans are still sticking pins into wax effigies of him after such a lame penalty handed Eintracht Frankfurt the 2021/22 UEFA Europa League trophy. And reading their fans forum at the time, they were hopping mad not that he missed, so much as his apparent insouciance at missing. At least – as the excellent referee blew the final whistle – DJ had the sense to look like he’d been a victim of a gay incubus whist in a vivid fevered dream about being in a vital penalty shoot-out at the CCS.

   Paul… you mentioning that Bodin penalty miss in 1993 – in a game I recall more for the wicked fatal marine distress flare fired from about 30 yards to my left – reminds me of a lighter moment.
   About a fortnight later, he scored a penalty for Swindon against some team or other, and commented (not verbatim, but words to this effect)… ‘at least that has got the demons out of my system’.
   He had a nice line in black humour, did our Mr Bodin.
   TTFN,
   Dai.
2. The other Bob Wilson says:

   March 29, 2024 at 7:34 am

   Sorry Dai, but Rangers are up there with Leeds and Chelsea in my league table of most disliked teams. My preference for Celtic is entirely down to the 1967 European Cup Final and so I didn’t dislike Rangers per se, but a story I heard, which may well be untrue, that the pegs in the home dressing room at Ibrox were higher up the wall than normal because “only big men played for Rangers” really jarred with me as someone who has always thought that the truly outstanding (i.e. top thee or four) footballers I’ve ever seen were under six foot tall. I know the story is supposed to mean that you needed to be a big man mentally as well as physically, but it just made me associate Rangers with a more physical and power based style of play – to be fair to the modern day Rangers sides, if that ever was true about the club, it probably isn’t now.
   So, I cannot hold Aaron Ramsey missing that penalty in the shoot out for Rangers against him (in fact, he went up in my estimation a bit for missing it) – being serious, I think it’s the only one he’s missed in recent years.
   As for Paul Bodin, I don’t think there would have been many dreading him taking that penalty beforehand as his record from the spot up to then made him the natural candidate to take it (strange, although I can remember Ian Rush taking, and scoring, penalties in shoot outs, I can’t remember seeing him take one for club or country during a game) – it says something for Bodin’s character that he kept on taking penalties after the miss which defined his career at international, and possibly club, level.
   On the other hand, I’m sure I wasn’t the only Welsh person who had a bad feeling about Dan James taking one of the five penalties, but then I felt the same before Ben Davies, Harry Wilson and Neco Williams took theirs – the only one I felt confident about was Keiffer Moore and he came closer to missing than the other three did!

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