One way to spend your birthday.

Glynis Wright could have been elsewhere yesterday as it was her birthday. But with no game for West Bromwich, she felt duty bound to come to Edgar Street. What dedication!

Below is an extract from her diary:

Today, though, it was down to Edgar Street once more - my other half doesn't half take me to some stylish places for my birthday - and spending the afternoon watching The Bulls put York City to the sword. No Crichton in goal this time, sadly, as he's since announced his intentions of hanging up his boots for good - spoilsport! - but despite that small handicap, we still received our full ration of entertainment, not least of which was the bloody scoreboard there telling the entire ground I was one year nearer my pension, both before the game, and during it. Just as well not many people knew me there, then, wasn't it?

As far as the game went, I reckon Hereford were a tad lucky insofar as they managed to get a penalty, a bit of a dodgy specimen, at that, within two minutes of the start. That was put away in short order, much to the delight of the groundlings in the Meadow End, and that should have been the cue for a stomping home win, but York, who had in their ranks a certain Kevin Donovan and Paul Groves, seemed to have other ideas. It was their sheer determination, plus the fact that The Bulls were making a complete and utter pig's ear out of simple things like shifting out of defence, then keeping the bloody ball, that left the event so delicately poised. Another Albion connection when ex-Baggie Tam Mkandawire got their second; not long after that, Tucka Trewick, their ex-Albion first-team coach, realising things were still looking wobbly for The Bulls, brought on their 'secret weapon', pint-sized (only an inch taller than me) loan signing Leroy Williams, from Walsall.



How best to describe the lad? Not easy; when you watch him in action, that old Black Country phrase my late mother was partial to using on such auspicious occasions - " 'Ee's fatter than a cowin' tunky-pig, 'ee is!" - does tend to spring to mind, I'm afraid. But I'm probably doing the lad a grave injustice by saying that, because closer scrutiny then revealed much of the lad's considerable bulk to be of muscular origin only. And there was his playing style, which was most certainly not the end-product of any junior pro coaching session I've witnessed recently. No, Leroy's 'secret weapon' was his astonishing ability to just nestle peacefully on defenders' shoulders, quietly bide his time, wait for the ball to drop near, then by a simple shrugging of his own shoulders, allied to a complicated-looking bit of pivotal work and a low centre of gravity, completely and utterly 'turning' the poor sod completely inside-out, more often than not, then leaving the players concerned, cynical and twisted has-been ex-pros, usually, open-mouthed and totally bereft of speech.



Lovely to watch, of course, and all done in a manner that owed stacks to the gait of a maddened bullock suddenly cornered in the rear of a bone-china emporium, then suddenly glimpsing a way out - an explosively-built, sinew-stretching mahogany ball of adrenalin-assisted muscularity, and when sufficiently riled, about as easy to stop as a fully-loaded Sherman Tank. A Bull behaving like a bull, if you like, and as exciting as hell to watch. He certainly kick-started Hereford's game in the second half, all right, and poor Grovesey, totally unable to counter what the upstart was doing to him, looked way out of his depth by comparison. An exciting prospect indeed, is Leroy - if he gets proper coaching, that is. The trouble with his style lies in the direction of his glaring limitations elsewhere. A good one-shot party-piece can certainly be an asset at that level, but if you do harbour serious ambitions of progressing in the game, there's a lot more you need about you to get the big clubs in there pitching. But he's young, isn't he? Watch this space, I say.

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