Strange Coincidences? Or Just The Luck Of The Draw?

It’s been a few days full of draws, some of them strange, some unlikely and some even downright ridiculous. And no, I’m not even talking about Deontay Wilder versus Tyson Fury.

It’s hard to believe that a contest in Los Angeles with two knockdowns, wildly conflicting judge’s scorecards and a bloke who’d lost ten stone in order to compete, still wasn’t the most edge-of-your-seat draw of the week but that honour goes to Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest, a few days earlier on Wednesday, who shared ten goals in a dilly-ding-dilly-dong thriller that Claudio Ranieri, and probably John Grisham for that matter, would have been proud of.

This contest has always been a strange one for me.

I always think that, somewhere in a parallel universe, I’m supporting one or the other. You see, my first foray, as a nine-year-old into football was the back end of the 1979-80 season, and I remember John Robertson curling Forest to European Cup glory in Madrid as if it were yesterday. Of course, this was so that ‘Old Big ‘Ed’ could regain the ‘Old Big Ears’ trophy so if I’d been the glory-hunting little s**t that I could well have been, then this would have been a natural way to go.

But I didn’t as I preferred to stay closer to home – although they are now, coincidentally, the club I live closet to (just a wind-assisted Clayton Ince goal-kick away – Google it) – and neither did I go with nearby Villa, who were about to follow their Midlands rivals by winning the 1981 league title, narrowly pipping Ipswich Town, and then the 1982 European Cup by beating Bayern Munich in Rotterdam.

I had every good reason to go that way too. I had family who were Villa season ticket holders. It would have been a logical and practical choice and afforded me a couple of wonderful summers at least. But the lure of my local team, within walking distance and with a bloke on the turnstile who’d often let me jump over for free, meant that I supported Walsall instead and had very few glorious summers; although there have been a lot of false dawns.

Back to the draws, and on Saturday night we had the draw that did no-one any favours, as Southampton raced into a two-goal lead against Manchester United only to be pegged back by half-time. It was the second draw in a row since Jose Mourinho said United needed to start winning, and the single point wasn’t enough to save Mark Hughes from another Premier League sacking after just eight months and Southampton – despite not wanting to be seen as a sacking club – from becoming just that.

Out of interest, I watched some of this game on a TV screen whilst in Holland – where Villa won Europe’s top prize – whilst attending a game at AZ Alkmaar, the team who Ipswich beat in the UEFA Cup Final to give them some consolation for narrowly losing the league championship race to Villa in ’81. They still didn’t like me mentioning the name but the experience itself was a great one – my first live look at Dutch football and I was total(ly) won over; on and off the pitch.

The next day, Jordan Pickford stopped this article from being a hundred words longer (you’ll thank him for it) by handing – literally – Liverpool a last-gasp derby win, and denying us another match of level pegging. It also, luckily for them, gave Talk Sport something to talk about all day by asking if he’s still good enough to be England’s number one.

Talking of international football, Sunday was a day for yet another draw, but this time of the balls-in-glass-bowl variety as the group draw for the qualifying campaign for Euro 2020 was made in Dublin.

I was still in Holland, at Almelo this time for a bit of Heracles (again, wow), and pre-match there were lunchtime gasps as they came out of the hat (bowl) with Germany, Republic of Ireland (more of that in a moment), Belarus and Estonia, where my colleague, Mark, is off to work his magic as I write, to add yet another strange twist to the series of coincidences that punctuate this article.

You see, although the Republic were drawn into the group of ‘Oh sh*t!’ for pot 3 teams, they were then bumped out of it just as quickly as it emerged that only two host nations can be in any one group and with the top two seeds hosting group and last-16 games, the next team out were…. only Northern Ireland; proving that it isn’t just Theresa May who can get her knickers into an awkward cross-border twist with their backstop solutions.

NI manager, Michael O’Neill called it, and this particular quirk in the process, ‘very cruel, the worst draw we could have got’. Although a draw away to Southampton might have run it close. It was also a lesson in how important this Nations League has suddenly become. The Northern Irish, knockout round losers to Wales in the Euro 2016 finals, were in the third pot because of their poor results and relegation in the new competition. The team who finished above them, Austria, got a much more favourable draw – compared to Germany and Holland, virtually a bye – in Group G.

The Republic, and new/temporary manager, Mick McCarthy were given – as BBC Sport described it – a ‘reprieve’ and palmed off to Group D where they’ll meet Switzerland and also Denmark for what must be the four thousandth time in the last year and a half.

England, for the record, go east with trips to the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Montenegro and newbie’s, Kosovo, in Group A of the qualifying section, and still have the possibility of winning the Nations League altogether and guaranteeing a place that way. Of course, there is yet another draw today to find out who we’ll play in June’s semi-final. The way things are going it’s bound to be Holland.

And that’s not even the most exciting draw we have on this wet Monday in December. Far from it, in fact. It’s also the day of the eagerly awaited draw for the third round of the 138th FA Cup, sponsored by someone or other. The one where, with luck of the draw, non-league teams and the elite (or their reserves at least) can get it on in January (ties will be played on the 4, 5, 6, 7, 15 and 16th of January).

Just to complete the unusual set of quirky parallels, as Mark and I were getting ready to watch football in Holland on Saturday, our beloved teams were playing each other in the cup’s second round (at the Banks’s Stadium, Walsall came from behind to draw with Sunderland) which means that when they put those sixty-four balls into the velvet bag tonight, they’ll be one (61 for those interested) with both our names on ahead of our replay at the Stadium of Light in just over a week’s time.

I bet the winners of it will play either Villa or Forest.

The games gone.

words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist