Cats enter the cauldron
May 18 2009 by Paul Cunningham, The Journal
If last week's trip to Bolton was very much a modern-day football experience, Sunderland can expect a much more old-style match tonight. Stuart Rayner reports
BOLTON Wanderers and Portsmouth play similar styles of football. That, though, is where the similarities end.
When Sunderland’s 5,000 fans pitched up at the Reebok Stadium last week they were greeted by plenty of empty seats and some subdued home supporters. Bar the beat from an over-enthusiastic drummer, the only noises from the locals were boos directed at their lacklustre team and its unpopular manager. This was Premier League football 21st century-style – a shiny new(ish) stadium named after a sponsor, a green carpet to play on and spectators rather than supporters.
Things will be different at Portsmouth tonight. The Reebok might be football’s corporate, sanitised, family-friendly present, but Fratton Park is very much its past, its heritage. Granted, replacing the drum with a bell is neither traditional nor an improvement, but even with the satellite television cameras present, there will be no more than a handful of empty seats at the pokey, run-down old ground, and those in them are guaranteed to be more animated.
To go with their old-school atmosphere, Pompey have an old-school number nine. He might wear the obligatory coloured boots and have a WAG in tow, but on the field Peter Crouch is a 6ft 7in throwback to the days when centre-forwards were tall blokes who spent their Saturday afternoons heading balls out of the sky while burly centre-halves clattered them from behind.
