[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

I'll be honest: my love of football - something which has, at times in my life, felt like the only thing keeping me sane - these days seems to bleed away at a constant rate.  Every time I hear a player say they're just "concentrating on their football" and "playing for the team" after being linked with every club from Manchester to Darfur, and spotted riding into a local strip club on a pissed hippo.  Every time I hear a commentator say "he's won his side a penalty there", as opposed to "he's cheated like an absolute helmet there."  Every time I hear a pundit blame the performance of the England team on foreign players in the Premier League, whilst ignoring the elite clubs whose pointless, predatory and ruinous acquisition of young English talent makes their youth systems look like a footballing equivalent of Fred West's basement.  Every time I see a player wearing gloves on a sunny day and not being immediately and indefinitely imprisoned.  Every time I see a minted ex-player peddling carefully-woven faux-nostalgia on behalf of Barclays (up yours, Alan Shearer) or Sky Sports (up yours, Thierry Henry).  Every time I see Tim Lovejoy doing anything, anywhere, ever.  A thousand papercuts which drain my passion and pride in a sport which once meant more than anything to me.

But this Saturday, for the first time in a long time, Albion are doing something which dresses those wounds and restores a bit of my faith in football.  There'll be no sponsors, no squad numbers and no names on shirts.  There'll be remembrance and celebration of a man who lived and breathed West Bromwich Albion.  There'll be the all-important launch of an organisation to support those who've been permanently scarred by the sport.  And with any luck, there may even be three points to take us towards survival, though I don't doubt that Leicester will be out to scupper that any way they can.

Saturday is a big match and an even bigger occasion.  Saturday is Astle Day.





Whatever happens on the pitch, I'm hoping for a memorable day.  Some might argue that our current crop of players aren't fit to wear the 1968 shirt; perhaps that's true, but we've seen and supported far worse in many of the years between.  Yes, we need a few 1968 performances out there which we didn't see against QPR, but a bit of 1968 support from the stands wouldn't go amiss either.  Let's give it everything we've got, in the name of the King.

Classic Match

West Bromwich Albion 3-0 Leicester City

Football League Championship: 2nd April 2010

Albion take well-deserved revenge on the Foxes for lumbering us with Joe Mattock.  Robert Koren's big Baggies swansong.