Damn you, Dowie

As the cliche goes there’s many a true word spoken in jest and Cook hit upon a painful truth that most supporters, particularly ones of lower league clubs, are never far from facing.

On Tuesday night, Brentford faced up to that cruelest of mistresses in the shape of a heartbreaking defeat to Birmingham City in the Carling Cup.

Due to an array of annoying circumstances I couldn’t make it to St Andrew’s for the big match and missed out on what will go down in Bees folklore as one of the great away trips.

Instead I had to be content with staying at home on the sofa and listening to the radio commentary.

I still find listening to Brentford matches on the radio, or seeing us play live on the telly, something of a novelty and, as disappointed as I was to miss out on going to the game, tracking it via Five Live, BBC London and Sky Sports was a strangely enthralling experience.

Perhaps a grown man should ask a few questions of himself when he starts dancing around his kitchen alone on a Tuesday night, but that is exactly what I found myself doing after Sam Wood gave us the lead.

Aside from the game itself, my personal highlight of the night was listening to our former gaffer Martin Allen’s brilliantly biased commentary on Five Live. It is just a shame his much vaunted PMA couldn’t help to get those ill fated penalties over the line.

The Brentford team, and our army of fans, were magnificent and we came so close to a famous victory. Of course, as we all know by now, we just couldn’t hold on to the lead and when the 120 minutes were up we found ourselves to be in possesion of the wrong ticket for the penalty shoot-out lottery.

I know we live in a blame culture and, while I don’t like it, I do subscribe to the theory that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, so I’m going to aim my blame for the Bees’ failure to see out the win at that gargoyle-faced pundit Iain Dowie.

As the seconds of normal time ticked away Dowie, who was reporting on the game for Sky Sports, confidently predicted Birmingham would not score an equaliser and, almost on cue, Kevin Phillips popped up to stick the ball in the net. Damn you Dowie, damn you.

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