Big One!

We've had the dress rehearsal, we had all the trimmings, like meaningless matches against the also rans, but now this Saturday at Windsor Park, its time for the' big one' against Glenavon in the Irish cup final. Our management team have ensured their charges are rested fully, but yet match fit and they should be raring to go come 14-30 on Saturday. I'm not going to hazard a guess about what players our manager, Spike, will select to start. He's proved that he is his own man and will pick the side that he has the confidence in, to get the job done. It may not be everybody's idea of our best starting line-up, but he knows what his players are capable of and he's not afraid to take a chance.

Last Saturday's game against Ards was our last league game in this season and I was one of many imploring Fergie, to pick a strong side. But he didn't, he only picked 5 recognisable players, but he was there coaching them from the sidelines and that summed up the man for me, he is a real pro. When we win the Irish cup on Saturday, he'll be playing down his part in our victory, just as he's done throughout this season and indeed throughout all his time at the Showgrounds. He'll have analysed our opponents, Glenavon and identified their strengths and weaknesses and he'll have devised a plan for coping with them, that gives our team the edge. He'll be reluctant to go and greet the fans, but hopefully he will relent.

There's been a lot hype on the internet with this match but BBC teletext has been bereft of any stories all week and you could be forgiven for thinking they're playing down this game as if it was unimportant. This is the biggest game in our football calendar and deserves to get the headlines, but the BBC is not promoting it at all. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I think if one of Belfast four teams were involved, they'd be articles promoting the game shown all week and if two of them were involved, Joel Taggart, would be annoyingly smug. But ticket sales are going very well, without teletext and in spite of the horlicks that the IFA cooked up, which meant we got our allocation of tickets only last Thursday.

This you'll be glad to hear, is my penultimate column, but as I'm on off on my holidays next Tuesday, you'll to have to wait at least a fortnight for my last diatribe this season. It was refreshing last Saturday to hear an appreciative crowd getting behind our youngsters and encouraging them, instead of deriding them. United will need the same support this Saturday and this could be the last match played at Windsor Park before it gets redeveloped, so lets raise the roof (not literally) and give the IFA something to think about. That if they had promoted the match and ensured our tickets got to us on  time ,we could maybe have filled a few more seats and rocked this stadium on its death throes. So come on Sky Blues, lets go shagging for the cup!!!!