It's a bit odd writing this post, more than a week after the game, but a few thoughts on the whole Wembley experience. Such was the schedule that if you blinked you missed it: fly Friday night, get to Heathrow on Saturday afternoon, game on Sunday afternoon and back to Heathrow on Monday morning for an early afternoon flight. By Monday evening, all that really existed in the memory was a stiff back from sitting upright for nine hours on a plane. If it wasn't for the facebook photo album and the various souvenirs, I'd struggle to believe I was actually there anyway.
It was very cold - which is a comical thing to admit to when you live where I do - but so it goes. It's the damp cold versus dry cold, or something. It was a bit weird to stand there and wait for the rest of the party to arrive in the light snow. Standing in a vast sea of Yorkshire accents was quite a weird thing when all you've heard is Canadians for five years. But the excitement of the fans was something to see, and the sheer numbers in which they travelled when the stadium was full was another illustration of the level of support they could call on if they managed to do a Swansea on the pitch and get themselves back much higher up the leagues. Because that's the way we're going to have to do it; through careful management and slow building of a style of play and a group of players. I think that's much more preferable to being bankrolled by some middle-eastern emirate, or by an eastern european who somehow managed to asset strip a nation of its heavy industries.
So, yes, on the pitch. There's not much else to be said; they didn't face a team like that in the competition. You can't do anything without the ball, and Swansea a) kept it and b) were gifted it back when we did get it. I read plenty of reports after the final in the media saying things along the lines of "Bradford should have got amongst them and chased and closed them down". That would have left even bigger gaps for Swansea to play the ball through; they were being pulled out of shape enough as it was under orders to sit back. Pressing higher up the pitch would have seen just as ugly a final scoreline. And as fit as our players undoubtedly are, the overriding memory of the game was just how more athletic and dynamic the Swansea players were anyway; chasing faster players than you won't end well. The penalty was the first foul we conceded because we just couldn't get anywhere near them, such was their speed and movement. The off the ball movement was confusing enough for me sat several miles up in the air, goodness knows what it's like to play against.
Ultimately, you just have to take it on the chin; the law of averages meant that facing a sixth team from a higher division meant this was on the cards at some point. The second goal was the killer; the first half was just like the opening half of the second leg at Villa Park. There, we escaped only 1-0 down and could regroup somewhat, and Villa's hilarious inability to defend set pieces meant the rest was history. Swansea made sure there was no repeat, first through a goal coming through two pairs of legs, and such a disciplined defensive performance they conceded almost nothing in the way of set pieces to exploit. End result: we couldn't exert any pressure at all. For a far more articulate view of the game than I can manage, I'll just link to this article from The Width Of A Post, which hits the nail on the head what I'll remember about the afternoon, years from now: the noise and colour of the support when the ship had already sunk and there were still over thirty minutes left to play. That, and Hanson bending over and putting his hands on his knees with fifteen minutes to go, looking over at the bench as if to ask "what else can I do? there's nobody else within thirty yards of me". So well done Swansea for a job well done, done the right way.
For the last two months of the season, they have to concentrate on what was always the primary objective: getting out of this division. As much as the powers-that-be say it wasn't the case, the facts remain that after beating Torquay in early December the team was a solid 4th of 24 in the table, and had seemingly finally - after years of trying - got to grips with avoiding being a scalp for a succession of recently promoted non-league sides. Of course, from beating Arsenal to losing the final, they won precisely two more games in nearly three months, because they were A Thing again, ending up in the bottom half of the table. Back to being a scalp for the usual suspects again. On a glass-half-full note, in the three games since Wembley they are unbeaten and have put in three good performances. There's a lot of ground to make up, but remember their last trip to Wembley, seventeen years previously: 9 wins in their last 13 games, before squeaking into the playoffs on the last day on that bizarre afternoon in Hull, police horses and all. The events that followed in Blackpool and London ended up in folklore. What price a repeat?
