SOBS: NORWICH

It's Tuesday, it's April, it must be Norwich for the Lads, who somehow stole a point from a game in which the first 45 were painful, the following 25 slightly less so, and the final bit almost acceptable. Wholesale changes meant a lack of our accustomed shape, and we gave the ball away everywhere - apart from in our box, thankfully. Norwich must be kicking themselves for failing to win... and probably missing. Other results mean that we're guaranteed at least two more games but if we play like that, there'll just be two. I think. Who knows - three clean sheets in the play-offs and we're up. Some post-match comments were that it was a worse performance than Coventry, and they sort of had a point - but so did the Lads, so it can't have been a valid one.

An uneventful train journey was spent discussing the permutations necessary to absolutely guarantee a play-off spot or (eeeeh!) second place, the Watson situation, and who'd replace Mundle. Once checked in to our seemingly "exclusive to Mackems" hotel and memorised the route to the room, we found our first port of call Home Fans Only, the miserable gets, so spent half as much money sitting outside Spoons after enduring the hilarious banter of the local youth. "Come on toon" they cried, and we got a hernia laughing. No we didn't. There was time for a visit to the Murderer's, soon to become the N#wcastle (chopped off) Arms before heading matchward.

Where, of course, lies the Coach and Horses, which was packed with Sunderland fans as the team news arrived...

Patterson

Hume O'Nien Mepham Hjelde

Aleksic Neil (c) Browne Rigg Watson

Mayenda

... and a bench of Moore, Isidor, Le Fee, Roberts, Jones, Middlemas, Lavery, Anderson, and Bainbridge.

Well, I thought there'd be changes but that's rotation for yer! Into the ground, where the steward told me my coat looked "a bit retro, a bit Bob Stokoe." I took that as a compliment, and that was as good as things got for the next hour.

In our natty white away strip, we lined up facing to the right of our impressive midweek away attendance's corner, and Norwich kicked off. Our much-vaunted "press" worked for a couple of minutes before pantomime villain Sainz, aka "the hockle", produced a dive worthy of Tom Daly. Not a word from the ref, though. Despite conceding possession on numerous occasions, the defence kept its shape while the rest of the team didn't. We had four central midfielders tripping over each other as we screamed for it to be got forward either down the middle to Mayenda or out left to Watson. I don't think either had more than scraps to work with, which was hardly surprising as the ball spent most of the half in our half.

Aleksic had a couple of chances to cross, with the first going straight out and the second going straight to the keeper, while Patto pulled off a couple of standard saves - although one shot from Sargent did take a dodgy bounce before Anthony clutched it to his chest. Other home efforts flew wide of the mark as we wondered where our disciplined shape had gone.

O'Nien and Watson were carded for stopping home breaks in the first half hour, and our first really (well, sort of) promising bit of play ended because a Canary was down injured. Patto pulled off another regulation save, two added minutes were announced, the whistle went, and we wondered how we weren't getting beat. There was a shout and wave from the home section as former Sunday morning teammate Gibbo (visiting family and nicking a ticket in the home end, I think) made himself known.

No changes, no surprise, as we noted that the majority of home fans in their safe standing area were sitting down. Strange people, these East Anglians.

We showed a wee bit more urgency, with the pull on Watson's shirt bringing a yellow - but that was only on halfway. O'Nien tried hitting diagonals to the right with about a 50% success rate, but we persisted in giving the ball away.

After Hjelde got a yellow, we actually started to look a bit more positive - with well over an hour gone, I would have hoped so- and Watson at last skinned his fullback a couple of times, the second setting up a shot that was saved. Two minutes later, he was off, along with Aleksic (who'd simply not got into the game) and Hjelde (bit of a suprise), replaced by Roberts, Le Fee, and Isidor. Hume came to left back - where he scores from - and Browne went to the right. Suddenly there was a bit of positivity - not too much, mind - as we played in Mayenda and his shot won a corner.

With ten to go, Jones replaced Rigg and got himself booked fairly quickly, we had a couple more corners, they punched the ball into our net, and Neil had a shot from distance saved. Le Fee produced a turn and pass worthy of a much better game, and there were three added minutes in which neither side scored.

You know what they say... good teams win even when they don't play well. How about teams that play badly but get a draw? The stats, bless them, show that we had nearly as many touches in the opposition box as Norwich, one less shot on target, and the same number of corners. That makes it sound like a decent game, but from our fans' point of view it wasn't, and from a Canary's perch it must have been exceedingly frustrating.

On the downside, we only showed our usual shape in the final fifteen minutes and a better side would surely have seen us off.

On the upside, there was another clean sheet, we didn't lose, and the aim of the play-offs was achieved. Saving the best for those games? I sincerely hope so. Imagine Le Fee at Wembley. Sorry, getting ahead of myself there. Apologies.

Anyhow, we're in those playoff things, so that's one target achieved. The end justified the means? Probably.

Man of the Match? Upfield of the defence, it was probably Browne. Given 90 minutes it'd probably have been Le Fee. Given what we got, Patto kept a clean sheet, but much of that was down to Hume's tackling, O'Nien"s O'Nien-ness and Hjelde being decent.

Mepham for me, though.