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When the players feel our lurve, tap into our force… anything is still possible.

4th March 2009 By Mick Dennis Leave a Comment

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My wife spent the last 20 minutes repeating: ?I can't watch…?

My son, who was prevented from attending by work, begged me to keep my mobile phone line to him open so that he could hear the Yellow Army singing. I shouted my voice into a hoarse croak.

Those who went to Loftus Road will recall the game for all time.

It demonstrated many things. It showed for instance, that Queen's Park Rangers, the self-styled richest club in the world, still have a small club mentality towards away fans.

Nothing has been spent on the shocking ?School End?. There are still randomly placed, potentially lethal barriers among the seats. The area behind the seats is still poorly lit and dangerously cramped. Only one, under-staffed, poorly stocked refreshment kiosk was open for the upper tier.

Do those things matter? Well, they prove an attitude and illustrate an ethos.

The attendance, a paltry 13,533, was a condemnation of the London club's alleged fans because, when you subtract our contribution, it means that only about 11,000 of them could be bothered to watch a team who harbour play-off hopes. That is a disgrace.

And it was the magnificent Norwich crowd that demonstrated the most important thing for our club. On a filthy night, at a shoddy ground, 120 traffic-clogged miles from Norwich, enough City fans paid inflated prices to forgive five seasons of disappointment and roar almost constant support.

Awesome.

Before the game, the chat was fatalistic, with a gallows humour about trips to places like Yeovil next season. We will make those journeys if that is where City are playing.

We are Norwich fans ? and not just if the team is in the top half of the Championship or above.

We showed that once the game started. The chanting was loud and constant. It cheered the soul and lifted the team.

It was no co-incidence that periods of pressure, and the goal itself, came when the team were kicking towards us. How could they not respond to fans urging them on with such passion?

The game showed other things as well. It confirmed that the team are lightweight in midfield, where our little chaps were brushed aside alarmingly often.

It demonstrated that Jon Otsemobor hasn't got the message that effort and concentration are not optional extras; they are first requisites.

It proved that, as at every stage of the season other than when Leroy Lita was toiling on our behalf, we are flaccid in attack. It displayed that Jonathan Grounds does not distribute the ball well when hurried.

But it showed as well that Shack and Doc can be immense. They started tentatively on the slippery pitch and were often exposed as QPR won too many midfield challenges and then launched hoof-ball attacks.

But, encouraged rather than heckled, the two men at the centre of our defence showed that they have hearts for the battle.

A key element was that City fans did not chide the Doc when he turned slower than a liner and stumbled in pursuit of fleet-footed opponents.

They did not give vent to their frustration when Shacks shinned a couple of clearances straight at those opponents. But the fans did make the old tin stand shake as they screamed appreciation when the two big men made big interceptions.

I've had my differences with contributors to Archant newspapers this season, and the readiness with which some have fermented discontent has done real damage to performances by the team and so might well have caused long-term harm to the club.

But the current Evening News campaign ? Get Behind the Canaries ? is absolutely spot on in tone and content, because the one resource Norwich City have that none of our relegation rivals can match is the extraordinary level of support.

It is not only QPR who have fair-weather fans who desert them far too readily.

The vast swathes of empty seats at The Valley, when Norwich filled the away end there in the FA Cup, was an indictment of a generation of supporters who only started turning up when Charlton were in the Premier League and have stayed away since.

Southampton's average attendance this season has been almost precisely half the capacity of their stadium. Watford couldn't even fill their ground when they were in the Premier League.

We have the numbers. We can make a difference. It is not over yet.

On the ball City.


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Filed Under: Column, Mick Dennis

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