AROUnD THE
GROUnDSIAn HOLLOWAY
Christmas might come in December on planet Earth, but May is where the EFL’s big annual festivities are at –
a gorging seasonal bash of excitement, ecstasy and oh-so-much agony. FFT’s columnist needs no reminding...T
here’s only one word that comes
to mind when I think about the
play-offs: exhilarating. Everything
about them is tremendous, but
it begins with that awful fear –
of not getting to the final... or getting
there at all. It’s horrendous. Whatever
result you’ve had in the first leg, you’ve
still got to prepare your lads and say,
“Look, it ain’t done yet.”
I’ve experienced the play-offs on six
occasions in my life and felt it all. I was
a player when they were introduced in
1987, and I didn’t like them – I didn’t
think they were fair. It didn’t help that
I lost my first three, starting against
Port Vale in ’89. Later, as player-boss
of Bristol Rovers, I was injured for our
semi-final against Northampton in ’98- we were 3-1 up against them, then
lost 3-0 in the second leg. That was
absolutely horrendous; everything was
happening around me and I couldn’t
do a thing about it. God rest his soul,
but our chairman Geoff Dunford had
already booked a coach to Wembley.
In those early days, I think my lads
read my mood around the play-off
matches – and they read it as worried.
That didn’t help them. As I got older,
I learned to keep those emotions in
check and just make everybody focus
on the process. Everyone knows they’re
huge occasions, but somehow you have to try to bring everything back to normal.
Players and their families want tickets, so I always told them to get them sorted
in the first week – after that there would be no more orders. We focused on the
games. Sadly, there was a bit more heartbreak to come before I tasted triumph –
at QPR, we lost the 2003 play-off final to Cardiff... in Cardiff. Nothing seemed very
fair by that point.
But maybe all that pain was worth it for seven years later with Blackpool, when
we reached the Premier League. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen any team of
mine play better than in those semi-finals against Nottingham Forest. We went
1-0 down at our place but scored a scruffy equaliser, and after that I was in the
zone. I was calm. Forest were man-marking Charlie Adam, so at half-time I told
him to go where he couldn’t receive the ball for a little while – because Forest were
stopping our play by the first phase
and it was hurting us. He needed to
let DJ Campbell make some runs and
sacrifice himself, then attack the box.
And blow me down, we got a penalty
from that scenario. If I’d been caught
up in the emotion of that game, then
maybe I wouldn’t have spotted that.
Billy Davies did us a favour too, mind- he’d come out with a big statement
saying “no one beats us at home”,
forgetting that we’d been the last
team to do it. My lads hated him by
the time they got to the second leg –
I had to calm them down! I have to
say, after we won, a whole stand of
Forest fans stayed and applauded us.
I had so much respect for that.
The final against Cardiff was pure
relief... but only after the chaos of
a first half where all five goals went
in. When someone told me there
were five minutes to go, I didn’t want
to know. They were the longest five
minutes of my life. When the final
whistle went, I couldn’t believe it.
I was in the Championship play-off
final for three of the four years from
2010 – Blackpool lost to West Ham
in 2012, before I went to Wembley
again with Crystal Palace. First, we
had to take on Brighton in the semis.
The timing wasn’t ideal – I’d been
trying to change the playing style but the players hadn’t liked it and results weren’t
great, so we went back to basics. After a 0-0 draw at Selhurst Park, we arrived in
Brighton to find that someone had defecated in our changing room and smeared
it everywhere. I’ll never know who it was. I sent my lads outside, met the chairman
and told him that someone had let his club down. But we just used it as motivation - Wilfried Zaha was absolutely disgusted, but he scored the two goals that won us
the game. Again, it was one of those matches where I was calm and completely
unemotional, and things happened tactically exactly like we’d planned.
After the final against Watford, there was no champagne on the coach – I always
felt it was a bad omen. Instead, I gave the lads some cash and we stopped to get
beers. I can’t remember what music was playing, but we had the doors open while
I danced up and down the streets of London with our trophy. Only in the play-offs...
88 June 2022 FourFourTwo“EVERYOnE KnOWS THE PLAY-OFFS
ARE HUGE OCCASIOnS – YOU HAVE TO
TRY TO BRInG EVERYTHInG BACK TO
n ORMAL AnD FOCUS On THE PROCESS”
WHAT’S OCCURRInG