Cafu and Biscuits

Norwich City 4-0 Leyton Orient

"Mickey Spillane was like Cafu tonight." I honestly heard that comment just after the final whistle at Carrow Road. It shows how desperate Norwich City fans are to watch a winning team, they are ready to get thoroughly carried away.

This was 0-0 after 75 minutes. Orient were down to ten men and holding out but patience was a virtue. Sub Chris Martin scored with a fine finish and within six minutes Grant Holt and Spillane had entered their contenders for goal of the game. Jamie Cureton, another sub, made it 4 - a pleasing moment as one of football's genuine nice guys, who hasn't had an easy couple seasons, got his first of the campaign.

At half-time I popped into a room just behind the BBC Radio Norfolk commentary position for the usual cup of coffee and a biscuit. I felt a tap on my right shoulder. I turned round and there was no-one there so I continued my conversation only to hear from behind me.

"You'd be a rubbish full back!"

Bill Punton, a Norwich winger in the late 50's and early 60's who now works as a non-league football pundit on our radio station was standing there beaming.

"You turned the wrong way, I'd have got past you easily." he continued in his chirpy Scottish accent.

I had not realised playing in the back four was such a 24-hour-a-day occupation. You cannot even stand near a plate of biscuits without a winger attempting to test your reactions - even one now entitled to a free bus pass.

I am not nothing like Cafu when it comes to defending digestives.

Pinching a Point (and Two Tickets)

Gillingham 1-1 Norwich City

Having taken over as BBC Radio Norfolk's Breakfast Show presenter I was coming into this game on the back of a week of 4am starts. It needed to be entertaining or I could have become the first ever commentator (I assume) to actually fall asleep during a game.

When I handed back to the studio at the end of the game I was actually quivering, not through fatigue, but the thrill of Darel Russell's 94th minute equaliser. The canaries played most of the game with ten men when Fraser Forster was sent off and Simeon Jackson slotted the resulting penalty past debutant 'keeper Declan Rudd. A man light, a teenager in goal and 1-0 down. Recent Norwich City experience has conditioned me to expect a 3 or 4 nil defeat in such circumstances but they fought back very, very well.

I wasn't alone, the fans on the temporary away stand at Priestfield - the sort of thing you might see on the 18th hole at The Open - went so crazy I was later told by a supporter there was some serious concern the structure may actually tip up.

My moment of realisation that I had become uncontrollably excited by a draw at Gillingham was shaken off by my feeling of good fortune when I saw the Norwich players being forced to take an ice bath in the open air as we waited for post-match interviews. They taking it in turns to be dipped in a paddling pool of freezing water. How can that be good for you?

There was one slightly hairy moment when I didn't think I was going to even get in. The press reception at Priestfield turned out to be an unmanned wooden desk. Someone had clearly abandoned their station but when it remained a staff-free zone after a few moments I began to get restless and a quick investigation revealed the necessary press passes were indeed just sitting there on the table. So I carefully reached over and sorted through them until I found the two BBC Radio Norfolk passes. Or that was the plan.

"Are you sure you should be doing that?" Gillingham coach Mark Robson (I didn't recognise him, but a quick scan of the kit sponsorship page of the programme later solved the mystery) had walked into the tiny reception to see some bloke with both feet off the floor leaning over a desk to help himself to two tickets. I was all ready to get all official with him and produce ID cards etc but thankfully Robson had a League One match to prepare for and actually was not that bothered at my brazen act of ticket thievery. As soon as a second member of Gills staff walked in, I was off the hook as some football style unfathomable but very loud male banter ensued between Robson and his colleague.

What Goes in the Tunnel.......

Norwich City 2-2 Charlton Athletic

People who don't like football will never experience that last-minute equaliser feeling. Norwich City fans did here thanks to Grant Holt.

There really isn't anything like an important last minute strike. Paul Lambert set off up the touchline, running half the length of the pitch when this most deserved of goals went in.

The canaries were 2-0 down to league leaders and unbeaten Charlton but Hoolahan and Holt scored in the final minute of each half. It was a spicy game, Charlton's Nicky Bailey was involved in an off-the-ball incident with Holt just before the break. The ref spoke to him but obviously hadn't seen anything as he didn't even book Bailey.

Even those most polite of football supporters in the Geoffrey Watling City Stand were up on their feet in anger at what happened. If ref Steve Tanner was a Carrow Road regular he would have known from the uprising of the ground's and perhaps even the game's most demure fans that something must have been amiss.

So an exciting afternoon watched by 24 thousand plus people - but it was what they didn't see that dominated my thoughts after the game.

I overheard a half-time conversation in the cue for a cup of tea about a scuffle between players as they went down the tunnel at the interval hot on the heels of that Bailey incident. Something clearly happened, Tanner told a reporter afterwards he saw 'two separate incidents' but we may never know what.

Footballers do not discuss in public what goes on during that long walk back to the dressing room. It is their manor and nothing to do with the rest of us. I asked both Paul Lambert and Grant Holt what had happened in the post-match interviews. "I didn't see anything" was the general tone from both. The glint in their eyes suggested that may not have been the whole truth but that is what football people do.

MK Done

MK Dons 2-1 Norwich City

On the day of this game The Guardian newspaper was giving away a free copy of a classic Roy of the Rovers comic. The perfect pre-match reading to inspire you for some Monday night League One action.

I don't think I was the only one. Chris Martin fired Norwich into the lead after 16 seconds with the first shot of the game. Roy Race would have been proud of it. If you want to be pedantic about it, it was actually 17 seconds but the little yellow plastic stopwatch that we have relied upon for several seasons now had it at 16. That's good enough for me, whatever Sky Sports fancy equipment might have said.

The canaries were then battling against the odds as Adam Drury and Stephen Hughes, two key players limped off before half-time. Defender Michael Nelson completed the injury hat-trick early in the second half and it was about then the comic-book magic dust wore off.

In a similar situation Melchester Rovers would have held out for a heroic 1-0 victory. Norwich City didn't. A free-kick and then a controversial penalty conceded by Chris Martin himself consigned them to defeat.

Norwich City fans are rightly proud of their record of virtually selling out most home games but at Stadium:MK, as it's annoyingly called, there was evidence of some of the advantages of not selling all your tickets.

As the rain lashed down early in the second half the fans in the front few rows of the stand we were sitting in began to feel the full brunt of the weather. No Steve McClaren style brolly for them, they simply moved back five or six rows, giving themselves the pick of several empty and much drier seats.

A Dull Moment

Norwich City 0-0 Walsall

'There's never a dull moment at Carrow Road.' I have probably said that a hundred times this season, using it as the default way to react to record home defeats, manager sackings and outfield players going in goal so I probably needed this.

It was a poor game. Walsall have now drawn three successive games 0-0. I am not going to use that as a stick with which to beat them, they more than deserved this point. City did not really look like breaking them down.

I noticed one woman sitting near me spent most of the first half reading the matchday programme. It was that sort of game. The rush for the half-time pie queue started a little earlier and was a little busier than usual as the inevitability that this would end 0-0 set in.

Paul Lambert, midway through the first half, reacted to one mis-placed pass by ripping off his tracksuit top in a kind of 'I really mean business now' kind of way. I now know what our new manager wears under his black tracky top.

It's not a vest, it's not a t-shirt and it isn't even just his bare skin. He had another tracksuit top on, which looked to me exactly the same design as the one he had just taken off. No wonder he was warm.

Next time I feel the urge to splutter about there 'never being a dull moment.......' I am going to remember this game.

Painting the Window

Norwich City 1-0 Brentford

The Johnstone's Paint Trophy and the closure of the transfer window. What a day it promised to be.

Sky Sports News has become appointment viewing on deadline day. The football authorities spoiled their fun a little bit by making the window close at 5pm - depriving us of an extra seven hours of reporters standing outside telling us that David James' car was still parked up at the Portsmouth training ground.

SSN still managed to rise to the occasion by cutting to Big Ben just as it chimed five times. Despite the frothing transfer frenzy and the almost apocalyptic site of the nations most famous clock tower the world did not end at 5pm on Tuesday September 1st 2009 but Leon McKenzie did sign for Charlton.

As a fan and reporter you spend days like this desperately checking websites to make sure you're not missing anything. Would Gary Doherty leave Norwich? Would Wes Hoolahan leave Norwich? Would Norwich sign a new player? No, no and indeed no.

So it was onto the Johnstone's Paint Trophy for the canaries first ever match in the competition.You could choose to see it as another landmark as to how far Norwich had fallen or think of it as the best chance of a trip to Wembley and just make the most of it.

Carrow Road was surreal. The closed River End made it feel a little like a reserve game but the fans, as they always do, really did come through for the team. More than 12 and a half thousand turned up to see Chris Martin's goal.

To put that into perspective, the next highest attendance in the competition on the same night was just four and a half thousand at MK Dons and it was a bigger gate than last week's Sunderland tie in the Carling Cup.

It was a night of Carrow Road firsts. Not only the arrival of JPT action but defender Jens Berthel Askou managed to smash a clearance over the roof of the Jarrold Stand, the tallest at the ground.

I am now preparing to phone the press office at Norwich City and request they find out how high the Jarrold Stand actually is. They'll love being asked that. Mind you, the transfer window's closed for now so they won't have any speculation to deal with.