Three Yorkshiremen and a Palace fan

Yet another blatant Monty Python rip off… as we prepare for a visit to Barnsley, happen there’ll be a distinctively stereotypical regional flavour with flat hats, whippets, Yorkshire pudden, Michael Parkinson and probably a bland shopping centre with a Next and a River Island in it. Cue music from the Hovis advert…


FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Who'd have thought 20 year ago we'd all be sittin' here preparing to play a fancy pants London outfit like Crystal Palace?
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, in them days we was glad to have Trevor Aylott up front.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: An’ we thought he were great. Even though we used him during t’week as a pit pony.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: He were a luxury player.
PALACE FAN: We were happy in those days, though we were poor.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Because you were poor. My old Dad used to say to me: ‘A chairman with money can’t buy you happiness, son.’
PALACE FAN: He was right, he bought us Ade Akinbiyi… and John Macken.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: You were happier when you had nothin'. We used have this tiny old stand with great big holes in the roof.
PALACE FAN: We’ve still got an old stand with great big holes in the roof. We used to stand on an away end, all twenty-six of us, no future, half the defence was missing, Tony Mahoney up front and Steve Ketteridge in midfield, relegation staring us in the face and we were all huddled together in one corner cos there was no roof on the Holmesdale and Uncle Ron wanted to sell us a Top Score card.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky not to have a roof! We used to have to watch Bruce Dyer in t’acid rain!
PALACE FAN: We used to be told by the Chairman’s brother that we were historic jean wearing fans shivering on the concourses.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky to ‘ave concourses, we used ter play in t’corridor!
PALACE FAN: We had a goalkeeper called Kevin Miller… he was about as much use as a damp cloth…
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: We used to dream of buying Kevin Miller! He was Mister Palace to us. He used to keep goal in an old water tank on a rubbish tip and got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over him! And he ate the lot.
PALACE FAN: When I say we play in a ground, it’s really only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it’s still Selhurst Park to us.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.
PALACE FAN You were lucky to have a lake! There’s a hundred and fifty of us in the Arthur Wait wading through rivers of piss in the shoebox that passes for the toilets…
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: You’re lucky. We played for three years with Aylott up front and he couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, 14 hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
PALACE FAN: Luxury. We have to try to stay awake while Mark Kennedy waddles around in midfield, watch James Scowcroft get nowhere near scoring, pay forty quid to get into a match where the team never crosses the halfway line, read SE25 and Simon charges us three quid for a small bottle of warm lager, if we’re lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
PALACE FAN: Well, of course, we have it tough. We 'ave to get up at twelve o'clock at night to spend ten hours on the phone trying to get through to the Palace box office and work twenty-four hours a day to be able to afford to buy one ticket in the lower Holmesdale, we spend a lifetime’s wages on a crap plastic shirt which is covered in catches and bobbles after one wash and sit in an empty stadium where most of the people don’t turn up for fear of losing consciousness and when we get home Shefki Kuqi’s calling us the worst fans he’s ever seen…
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: And you try telling the young people of today that… they won't believe you.

Putting Palace first

Does Crystal Palace FC ‘owe’ anything to other clubs when selecting teams to ensure that competition remains fair?

In the next two matches, Palace who are safely mid-table, face Barnsley who are fighting relegation and Derby, who are hoping for automatic promotion, and manager Peter Taylor has told the official club website: ‘I'll be tempted to name a young side for Colchester, but not against Barnsley or Derby. We will be playing our strongest team out of fairness to the other clubs in our division… I’m sure people like Birmingham, Sunderland, Wolves and Preston will want us to play the strongest team.’

Aside from the question of whether Palace’s emerging youngsters would actually be a better choice than some of the old stagers who have been playing without distinction all season, fans have been arguing over whether Taylor should be considering other clubs’ interests above those of his own team.

Morally, the answer is yes, but it has been a good few years since clubs were last required by rule to field full-strength teams in the league and few of us believe that if circumstances were different other clubs would do the same for us.

Indeed, Palace supporters will recall a disinterested last day performance by Barnsley at Portsmouth in 2001, which would have sent us to the third tier had it not been for a very late Dougie Freedman goal at Stockport. Portsmouth themselves made very little effort to avoid defeat at West Brom in the final game of 2005, knowing that their defeat might help send rivals Southampton down from the Premiership… it did, but relegated Palace too.

But this is not about any kind of revenge. All season, Palace supporters have yearned to see some of their emerging academy talent break into the squad. With three matches left and nothing to play for, they regard this as the perfect moment to give exciting winger Dave Martin, pacy striker Lewis Grabban and even much-touted 16 year-old Victor Moses a bit of valuable league experience. Not so, it seems. Many Palace fans feel that Taylor’s apparent willingness to put the needs of Birmingham et al above that of his own club is the wrong decision.