tom_widdows Posted March 16, 2014 Author Share Posted March 16, 2014 Brilliant, just brilliant! Milne was bouncing! So happy for Anderson, great for him to finally get a reward after all the years of service. '19 years, 120 minutes and a FUCKIN' penalty shoot out' Great hearing that and even more fun listening to Chick young squirming for the rest of the interview Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmo Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 YAAAAASSSSSS That was about as untraumatic as a penalty shoot out can get but I was still struggling to watch. YAAAAASSSSSSS! YAAAAAAAASSSSS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom_widdows Posted March 16, 2014 Author Share Posted March 16, 2014 Tom English Report There was Aberdeen joy, of course. Mountains of it. Ground-shaking joy. Joy spilling out of the grandstands. Joy on the faces of players and players' families, on the faces of wives and children as they made their way around Celtic Park at the end, waving madly at the massed ranks of invading Dons. Delirium dressed in red. But joy wasn't the only emotion. You have to wonder if it was even the dominant emotion. At the end, it was hard to know where to look - at the players on the pitch or the punters in the stands. Both were a memorable sight, utterly spent, as if they'd just emerged from an hour whizzing in the world's biggest tumble dryer. Their senses scrambled. Slapstick abounded, too. Stewart Milne, the Aberdeen chairman , said he'd had a splitting headache all day. At the end of extra-time, and before the tempest of the penalty shoot-out, he swallowed a tablet to ease the pounding and the pill got stuck in his throat. Cough, cough. Splutter, splutter. Imagine had Barry Robson, Aberdeen's first penalty taker, caught sight of Milne in that moment. When even the chairman is choking then you know you've got a problem. "I had to run off to get a glass of water," Milne said, live on BBC Radio Scotland in the aftermath. "And then we had the penalties." Only he didn't just say "…the penalties." There was a word between "the" and "penalties" that had his interviewer, dear old Chick Young, scrambling to apologise to the listeners, an f-bomb that spoke to a pressure valve being released. Those who know him best say that Milne doesn't normally swear. But this wasn't a normal day. It was a day of agricultural football and mind-bending tension, a boxing match where two opponents exhausted each other and their supporters not by the weight of their attacks but by their almost suffocating desire to win. Willo Flood summed it up. Didn't matter that the final was rubbish, he said, in his thick Dublin accent that even the most Dublin of Dubs find quirky. Didn't matter that Aberdeen had played miles below par or that they had put the heart sideways in each and every one of their supporters. Flood basked in the luxury of success. That was all that counted. Get over the line and get out of town. End of story. "How are you going to celebrate, Willo?" he was asked. "I think we'll all be comatose tonight," he said. Aberdeen players celebrating with the Scottish League Cup Aberdeen claimed the trophy but were run close by their opponents from the Highlands Quote of the season right there. The shootout saw Aberdeen at their coolest at precisely the time when the heat was at its greatest. It was a microcosm of the strides this team has made. Four spot-kicks and four emphatic finishes, three sending Dean Brill in the Inverness goal the wrong way and the final one, the Adam Rooney clincher, drilled high and handsome beyond the goalkeeper's net. Four out of four to match the six out of six in their brush with the bad old days in their first match in this competition against Alloa. If that fractious victory against Paul Hartley's old team was the first suggestion of changed days at Pittodrie then this day was final confirmation of it. Nineteen years without a trophy. History rewritten now. They say the first one is the hardest to win. Poor Inverness can tell you all about that. We will remember the shootout and the glory at the death, we will remember the madcap scenes and the terrific Aberdeen support long after the awfulness of the game is forgotten. But we should also remember how damn close John Hughes's team were to changing the narrative of the day. With three minutes left of normal time a roar went up from the Inverness end that would have curdled the blood of every Don at Celtic Park. When Andrew Considine wrestled Richie Foran in the Aberdeen box there was an expectation of a penalty. It happened down the end of the ground where the Inverness fans were housed. Under their noses. They could smell victory. Penalty! Goal! Final whistle! Inverness's glory. Aberdeen's pain. Again. The collective howl fell on deaf ears. Steven McLean waved play on. Foran screeched in protest but to no avail. Foran was right, McLean was wrong. It should have been a penalty. It should have been an opportunity for Inverness to go a goal up with time almost done. It should have been, but it wasn't. Football is a cruel, bloody game. So much of what Inverness did happened to work. This is a team that is still recovering from conceding five goals in back-to-back games, a side whose defence has been too vulnerable and its attack too blunt in recent times. They hadn't scored a goal in three matches coming into this final, so Hughes had some thinking to do. And he almost pulled it off. Hughes cranked up the intensity in the preamble, wailing about the myriad injustices perpetrated against his team, trumpeting about their no-mark status as the team that nobody wanted to win. The bogey men to Aberdeen's Cinderella story. This was all mind games, laced with some truth. It was a psychological ploy designed to remind the Dons of the horrendous pressure they were under and what a spectacular failure it would be if they were to lose in front of so many of their own people. Hughes sent out his team to contain and frustrate, to stay in the game long enough for Aberdeen to fret and be spooked by the possibility of defeat. It nearly came off. Had the penalty shout been heard and the spot-kick put away it would have been Scottish football's own version of the rope-a-dope. And the Red Army would have returned home like mice not lions. Instead, they went roaring back up the motorway to a place reborn by Derek McInnes and a new breed of player who stood up when it mattered. The final might have disappointed, but the drama that happened around the football was unforgettable. Need to see this penalty shout. Chick Young was certainly ranting about it in the radio commentary Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dickofthedons Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 Its all ifs and buts, if you're gonna bring up that penalty incident then you have to mention Rooneys too. Need to see them both again but the BBC website says Caley were lucky to get away with it. So if he's playing that game its 0-0, in the first half and us with a chance to go 1-0 up. But thats not how it works, it will give the twat Hughes a reason to moan though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandaldinho Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 Both should have been penalties, and Foran was lucky to still be on the park. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mentorred Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 brilliant just brilliant. Watched on Red Tv. Nerves were shot by the. End. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mini59dons Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 MAGIC!!! Decent Bounce in the Casino in Perth too!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kowalski Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Great to finally get a trophy, it's been 19 long years! Great atmosphere in the ground, with the Caley fans playing their part in that. Amazing to see so many Dandies in one place. However, it was a poor game and a poor performance. I wonder if the occasion got to some of the players (Jack?)? I also thought some of our decision making was poor, particularly at free kicks (e.g. Robson taking free kicks that should have been taken by a right footer). We missed Pawlett, and Hayes going off injured was a blow, as we seemed unable to use much width and played very narrow. Great day out thought. But I do wonder what visitors to the Commonwealth Games are going to make of the pubs near Parkhead! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superstar Tradesman Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 I'm an emotional wreck today. Any news on Hayes injury? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotfree Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Gives me shivers every time I watch it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldie03 Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Wow that has just made me cry - looks absolutely incredible I wasn't happy at the time cause i couldn't really see the team coming out but seeing that it was definitely worth it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyrant Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 I was a 10 year old loon when I saw my first and for a long time, only Dons cup triumph and I never imagined it would be 19 years before I saw another! I'm happy for all Dons fans today. Especially for those (and there will be many) who've never seen us lift a cup before. But most of all I'm pleased for Russell Anderson. A man who, in my opinion, has been a target for unfair criticism for a lot of his career and who, for the last few months, has been absolutely fucking colossal for us and has shown form every bit as good as his best from before his move to Sunderland. There's no more a deserving captain of finally lifting a cup with his[i/] team than Russell. Hero. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfromsleep Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Oh ma heid, now to drive back to aberdeen for work Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotfree Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Proud to be a dandy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jute Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Still buzzing at work this morning. Glad I left pub at back of 12 though as might be struggling this morning otherwise. I suspect there are some sore heads this morning. Now to push on secure 2nd and get the Scottish Cup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfromsleep Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Still buzzing at work this morning. Glad I left pub at back of 12 though as might be struggling this morning otherwise. I suspect there are some sore heads this morning. Now to push on secure 2nd and get the Scottish Cup. You were a figure of calmness until 3-1 in the shootout, I could barely look! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stewart Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Can't stop listening to the wigless one's interview. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KGB Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Can't stop listening to the wigless one's interview. A classic and all the better in that it made Chick squirm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
️ Come on you Reds! ️
️ Come on you Reds! ️
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.