Golden Goal

Well, it's been a tough old start to the season; over 360 minutes of league football without a single goal from the men in blue and white. Going into today's match, Albion were the only professional football team in all of England to have not scored at all this season. And when Fulham took the lead in the first half and all of our attacks fizzled out, it looked like things would be getting even worse.

In typical Baggies fashion, we steadily improved as the match wore on, but still, all of our huffing and puffing couldn't ripple the onion bag. The clock ticked over into stoppage time, and we looked gloomily ahead to another full time whistle blowing on another toothless capitulation.

And then...

Brunt with the corner. Gareth McAuley running unchecked towards the six yard box. His forehead rising a foot above the static Brede Hangeland to meet the ball square on. Past Stockdale. Into the net.

It's always funny to hear the remarks made by some non football fans (often Americans) who deride footy for its perceived lack of scoring action, and enjoy pointing out how often teams score in their preferred sport. They seem to think that having their team achieve something worth cheering about every thirty seconds somehow makes it superior; in actual fact, all it does is remove the rarity value of scoring, thereby decreasing the enjoyment that the supporter can get from seeing it happen. Because I promise you, there is not a basketball or gridiron fan in the world who has ever celebrated their team getting off the mark as wildly and passionately as tens of thousands of Albion fans did this afternoon. We waited a long, long time for that moment. And it was worth every second.