You may have heard that Fernando Torres missed an easy chance last Sunday. I think the BBC led with it on that night’s news, and if Torres were to seek refuge in the Amazon jungle he’d probably have an uncomfortable feeling that the natives were nudging each other.
Ok, so he’ll be disappointed with that, as Alan Shearer almost certainly said, but on a scale of 0 to 10, it only rated 6.7 compared to Sam Banya’s magnificent miss in our colours – a luminous balls-up that was cruelly denied immortality by the absence of TV cameras. One day there will be no one left alive to tell the tale, so it must be passed down the generations.
October 1999, our 4th qualifying round replay against Rothwell was in the closing minutes and we held a slender lead. Suddenly Rothwell were caught on the break, the keeper was outmanoeuvred and the ball was squared to Sam, three feet out in front of an open goal. He only had to make contact to put the tie beyond doubt. He made contact all right, but rather than into the unguarded net the ball skewed back over his head in a defensive clearance so brilliant, it merited an international call up.
Moments later the game was over so Sam’s miss didn’t change the outcome, but despite that it remains more memorable than all bar about three of the Poppies goals I’ve ever seen. Only perhaps Rocky Baptiste’s fantastic tap-in-that-went-out-for-a-throw outpoints it, and that doesn’t really count because it was for Havant & Waterlooville.
Amazingly, Sam didn’t retire immediately after the match. In fact he is still terrorising defences for Woodbridge Town 12 years later. It’s a measure of how desperate and/or amnesiac some fans are that for years after Sam moved on from Rockingham Road, his name would occasionally be floated as a remedy to our striking problems. Clearly by someone who wasn’t there that night against the Bones.
No comments:
Post a Comment