Welcome to Wolverhampton Wanderers, but for Jose Mourinho it’s all ‘me, me, me…’

Just as the Ashes series seems to hurtling along at unpredictable, breakneck speed comes a perhaps unwelcome sideshow. The return of the English football season. Who knows what will happen at Trent Bridge as the fourth Test gets underway? After fears of overkill the ding-dong to-ing and fro-ing of fortunes has been captivating viewing. But alas in England at least, the cricketing collision between the best of enemies is about to be knocked off the sporting centre stage by the reappearance of the winter game. Every year I say the football season comes round too quick and every year its re-emergence seems ever more rapid. Already we’ve had two supposed highbrow managers mouthing off like moody schoolkids at the end of the Community Shield at Wembley. Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger, of Arsenal, obviously don’t like each other. But Mourinho just seems more annoying than analytical as his post-match quips become increasingly tiresome. Already some pundits are tipping a two-horse title race between moneybags Manchester City and cashed-up Chelsea. Yawn. As Roxy Music once sang: “The Same Old Scene.” For me, the season offers little but dark forebodings about what is likely to happen to Blackburn Rovers in the Championship. My in-built pessimism seems to have solid grounds this time around as Rovers have been forced to endure a transfer embargo as part of not complying with Financial Fair Play, whose rules make as much sense to me as algebra used to. So a season barnstorming towards promotion is highly unlikely. In fact, given the circumstances, I will settle for mid-table security as I fear something potentially worse could be lurking around the corner. I may be subliminally jealous of us not being in the Premier League anymore but at least we are in a Division with fellow teams who are proper football clubs rather than franchises. I have yet to see groups of people walking around the Adelaide suburbs wearing Sheffield Wednesday or Nottingham Forest shirts. Unlike the plastic glory-grabbing sheep who have slavishly attached themselves to the relatively recent phenomena of Chelsea and Manchester City. Yet both these clubs were similarly bracketed with the rest of us in the years BC (Before Cash). As the season starts, Rovers renew acquaintances with grandly esteemed Wolverhampton Wanderers. The Old Golds of the West Midlands, like Rovers, were one of the founder members of the original Football League in 1888. That is a historical pedigree that Chelski and those clowns from the Kippax will never be able to lay claim to. Our paths have crossed regularly. For me, the FA Cup final of 1960 is a bit too early to have entered my memory banks. Maybe it’s just as well given the tales my dad used to tell me about the 3-0 drubbing inflicted on us in the so-called “Dustbin final.” Rovers’ performance was apparently so poor that the players were pelted with rubbish as they left the arena. A few years later I was all grown up as a nine-year-old in 1964-65 season and sat in the old Riverside stand with my dad as Rovers handed out a 4-1 rout with a young bloke called John Byrom just beginning to make a regular impact up front. There have been defeats as well. I remember John Richards racing away to punish us late in the season at Ewood as Wolves headed towards promotion from Division Two in 1976-77. Yet, earlier that campaign Rovers had managed a 2-1 win at Molineux to set the seal on a weekend of riotous student house parties in Birmingham which were heartily enjoyed by BRFC visitors from the north, Brian Haworth, Phil Poole, Steve ‘Nags’ Duckworth and Ian ‘Nev’ Drummond. In those faraway days house parties meant parties in student houses rather than folk dancing around disused warehouses poppin’ pills to the din of ‘thump thump’ music. As I recall, Byrom (again), now an old-timer returned from a decade’s service with Bolton Wanderers, nabbed both goals on the Saturday afternoon, the last set up by ex-Wolves icon, Dave Wagstaffe. When the goal went in, the whole Wolves crowd even applauded their hero Waggy. Nice touch. However, the away trips to Molineux hardly rate as memorable, craic-wise. There are a couple of humdrum pubs amid a concrete wasteland as you leave the train station. Then it’s a walk under a dark underpass which looks eerily reminiscent of some scenes from A Clockwork Orange. In the old hooligan days, it was a nervy stroll that would not be depicted on postcards. In August 2003, like this coming weekend, Wolves brought the season in at Ewood. Gabs and me grabbed a lift from London from former Sydney Morning Herald mate, football scribe Mike Cockerill, who was on duty in the UK and wanted to check out the debut of Aussie midfielder Brett Emerton. Mike chose his game well. Emerton scored as Graeme Souness’s team swept aside the newly-promoted Wolves 5-1. Gabs, me and Phil Poole (again) had to apply suncream as we watched from the Walkersteel stand. Gabs felt sorry for “poor little Wolves.” A phrase that has stuck. She has yet to embrace the vagaries of sport which means you have to enjoy the good times while they are there. A repeat of 2003 would be nice this weekend, as I check out the outcome from 12,000 miles away. So would an England triumph at Trent Bridge. Football has returned. But I just hope Mourinho keeps his trap shut so we can take in what’s happening elsewhere.