We Salute...DARREN EADIE!

I am going to need to start by taking you back to Carrow Road in 1994, hop in the Delorean with me. I was 12 and wasn’t a regular at Carrow Road by any means, I had been to a handful of football games before but these all passed me by slightly because (unbeknownst to me) I needed glasses. So BG (Before Glasses) the games were mostly a green blur with yellow splodges that everybody got terribly excited about occasionally. However, QPR at home on 22^nd October was the first game I properly saw in glorious HD and 3D live infront of me. It definitely explained everyones excited noises from before. THIS was awesome.

 

 

I was sat directly infront of our left wing, so I had front row seats to witness the damage our 19 year old youth system graduate Darren Eadie inflicted on QPR, destroying them 4-2. He was our wing wizard at a time when Ryan Giggs was the poster boy for the relatively new Premier League. Eadie was Norfolk’s answer to him, floppy curls and all. For me, from that game onwards Darren Eadie was the player that all future footballing heroes would be judged against. He played on the left, the right and even upfront and when he’d get the ball the crowd would collectively inhale preparing ourselves for a blistering race down the wing or a jink around a fullback. His assist rate must have been phenomenal but he also had a natural eye for goal.

Alongside all this he was also clearly a good egg, he was fiercely loyal to the club. He stayed longer than we could ever have hoped he would. He had the talent to be a Premiership regular and was even called into the England Squad despite being a Football League player, at the time that was virtually unheard of. He stuck with us through some incredibly tough times, when the likes of Keith O’Neill and Andy Johnson were asking for transfers, Darren Eadie was a Norwich Legend from the very start. 

We loved him scoring against Ipswich, we loved his openly contested goalscoring competition with Neil Adams (which always seemed a bit unfair as Adams was on penalty duty and Eadie won most of the Penalties?), we loved that every kit looked 2 sizes too big for him, we loved that when the club seemed on longterm loan to the Endsleigh League Darren was one of the few jewels from our European Campaign that we hadn’t cashed in on or let go, we loved that he would always make time for fans when they bumped into him in the city.

He stuck with us for as long as he could. One day in December 1999 I came home from school and my mum, who knows next to nothing about football said she’d just heard that Darren Eadie had been sold and my jaw hit the floor, in fairness  the club had an offer that was too good to refuse. One that would guarantee we kept afloat for a period. He was moving to a good Leicester side with a great manager in Martin O’Neill, it was a move that nobody could argue with really. Everybody wished him well in Norfolk and Leicester fans all talk of him warmly. His career with them was blighted by injuries but they saw enough of him to know he was class act until he sadly had to retire early.

Ironically he was exactly what England needed at the time, a fast, abundantly talented left sided player and there’s no knowing what he could have achieved had his knee been able to keep up with his brilliant footballing brain.

But I'm putting all the what if's to one side because this is a salute to one of Carrow Roads very greatest footballers. He has been commendably open about his battle with depression following his footballing retirement , he’s an ambassador for the Princes Trust, raises money for Charity, presents on TV and is a regular pundit on Sky. During the Portman Road leg of the Play-Off Semi Final he was asked on air about the atmosphere and memorably replied “It’s great, it’s nice to see it full…for a change”…lad!

So Darren Eadie, we salute you. You bloody legend!

EXTRA
I was trying to explain to recent convert to the Canary cause how good Darren Eadie was by way of some video clips but there are bafflingly few around. Not one fan has made a highlights reel? Sooo I did one myself...enjoy!

 

What a Load of Old Kit

Even the hardest to please Canary fan had precious little to moan about this summer. The club's heading up to the promised land and we all have a renewed sense of realism about the task ahead. It's a hard league to stay in but we've got as good a chance as any of doing it.

So, some fans elected to moan about our lack of early new signings. I expect they were the kids who'd rush through the museum on schooltrips to get to the little shop at the exit "I don't wanna take my time, I just wanna BUY STUFF!" We were making bids and showing players around but it takes two to tango and from all accounts it was the parent clubs of the players we're after that were dragging their feet. Which can only be a good thing really, because if their current clubs were keen to get rid of them as quickly as possible then we'd have to wonder why.

BUT the big news, the number one scandal this summer was...our new kit. Which can't be a bad situation for the club to be in. If the biggest gripe a fanbase has is that the kit is blocky and awkward then you're probably getting quite a lot of the important stuff right. I'm not defending the design of the home kit but I'm no fashion expert either (ask anyone who's ever met me) so it could be all the rage for all I know...and yeah of course I bought it, it's my duty as a fan.

If pushed I'd say I'd prefer simple next time around. Norwich City kits are very much like bananas: "the yellower they are, the better!". This new kit doesn't look quite ripe to me. We should give it a year and hope it gets yellower. I will defend the away shirt all day long. But that "marmite", obsolete, yellow and green deckchair-inspired third kit? Jayzus! Oh and don't get me started on the goalkeepers kits, poor Ruddy and Rudd.

At the end of the day they aren't great designs but football kits are very, VERY temporary these days and even the worst kits look great on a winning team. Cress sandwich anyone?

A Season Review...We're BACK!!!

This Season Review of mine, won’t be featured across 4 separate DVD releases like the clubs has been. Yes it was an epic season, but it wasn’t Lord of the bloody Rings. Having said that I insist that if the club can misspell its own name on the spine of the City 360 DVD then I can be excused any mistakes in here OK?

Now, I don’t want to be all “I told ya so!” about last season, because A) I’m like well cooler than that, and B) Literally EVERYBODY could see Neil Adams wasn’t the right fit for the job so I was hardly Nostradamus. The first half of the season was underwhelming, whenever we’d look like we’d found our feet in the league we’d trip again. One of Neil Adams’ strengths should have been his handling of the media having spent so long working in amongst them but then he’d speak about trying to win the league rather than trying to win the next game or he’d wind up opponents with dismissive sentiments about them in press conferences which they could use as motivation against us. His return was announced today and I'm sure he'll make a fine Loan Manager, but that won't stop it sounding like he's now working in a bank. Also in his defence, he beat Ipswich and that is worthy of applause and adulation. Being the Norwich City Manager is a big job with massive pressures and he never seemed terribly comfortable behind the wheel.

Sir Alex Neil was a leftfield appointment, and at the time of his appointment I wasn’t so much apprehensive as I was confused and disoriented. “Who the hell is he? He’s the manager of WHO?? But he has no experience in this League and he…” that was until I saw his first interview and all those nagging doubts were set aside because when it comes down to it he’s just a hugely impressive and reassuring bloke who talks with an assured calmness and steel. The reintroduction of Seb Bassong, the faith he showed in Lewis Grabban. he seems to make good players better, which is a precious commodity. He will go far, hopefully taking us with him. David McNally deserves massive credit for his appointment.

The rest of the season is a glorious blur. We looked like we were going to rocket up into the automatic places but then Boro derailed us on one of the most frustrating and angering games of football I’ve ever watched. They fluked an own goal and then sat back (literally sometimes) and timewasted for the rest of the match. It was anti-football. They rolled around the ground at the slightest touch because there was nothing the ref could do but stop the game if they grabbed their head, so they were all falling prey to mysteriously short lived injuries. The worst example was when their goalkeeper went down with cramp…their bloody goalkeeper! They celebrated after the game as if they’d assured themselves of Promotion, which our 2 main rivals for promotion might have viewed as premature because they were both now in superior positions. Incredible scenes. Embarrassing scenes. Season defining scenes? Nope!

It meant we were destined for the playoffs with a probable, increasingly inevitable MegaDerby against Ipswich. One of the most pleasing aspects of the season is that every single goal  mattered. Every save mattered. Every block mattered because a different result here or there and we’d never have gotten our dream Play-Off Semi-Final victory against Ipswich. What a dream it was. That home leg was something else. An incredible atmosphere with an unbelievable game of football to match it. It seems divisive to pick players out for praise but Wes Hoolahan was superb. He's a bizarrely maligned player of ours in some circles but he is an extraordinary player that we are lucky to have. Bringing Wessi here is pretty much the only good thing Glen Roeder did for this club (and even then he tried to play him as winger). Nathan Redmond’s form was a delight to see as well, he timed his emergence into a genuine game changer perfectly. The final whistle lead to euphoric scenes which Carrow Road hasn’t seen the like of before. Some people were on the pitch, then some more and then half of Norwich followed by some horses. Beating Ipswich and booking a day out in Wembley…absolutely perfect day of football. At the time it was probably the best game I've ever been to...but that lasted about a week.

I have been to Wembley and seen Norwich City lift silverware and secure promotion to the Premier League. It still seems so surreal. It was simply the best day of football EVER. I kept expecting there to be a sting in the tail but it never came. The ticket procurement was a slight worry but I was convinced I was going to get a ticket somehow. I managed to get one with some friends which we thought were going to be quite high up, but turned out to be amazing seats perfectly placed to the right of our goal. Wembley really know how to put on a game of football, I’d been a couple of times before but nothing prepared me for this game. The last game I saw was England v Scotland and the Play-Off Final battered it for atmosphere and excitement. Basically everything went right and we got the sweetest of revenge against Injury-prone Boro. Despite that, I truly hope they get promoted next year. Their fans were incredibly friendly and magnanimous in defeat, many of them wishing us well. Their fans deserve promotion and Boro have a great owner who loves the club like we do.

 

Delia was out there celebrating on the Wembley pitch and it reminded me how lucky we are to have her and her husband as owners. They're true fans and the sooner we organise a statue of Delia the better. Ideally of THAT moment at halftime against Man City all those years ago.

Last summer we were asked to leave the best party in town and since then we’ve fought off all the competition for the last ticket back in…so let’s get in there a bust a move!!