Recreating the drama of the final day and feeling as though you were there to watch Blackpool and Birmingham go down and see Blackburn, Wolves and Wigan survive

Teetering on the edge, five teams yesterday battled for survival at the most exciting end of the Premier League, the bottom (no innuendo intended).

As usual Match Of The Day’s Alan Hansen struggled to contain his excitement and was reduced to listing adjectives to describe his emotional state and his ever agreeing glove puppet Alan Shearer spent most of the evening blindly repeating his mentors sentiments – “ditto”.

The final day of the season has this sort of effect though. It turns fans accustomed to the weekly drama and excitement of football into bewildered mounds of jelly.

Obviously the two Alan’s are seemingly in awe every week, as they struggle to break free of the grip that listing adjectives has over them, as they excitedly repeat what they see on the screen in front of them, but the last day only magnified their verbal fuckery.

The day can take complete hold of you as it pushes you in two distinct directions. Either everything is dropped to excitedly watch the scores of teams that for the previous nine months you’ve had very little interest in. Or it makes you try and avoid the scores all day to try and recreate the drama of the day in real-time.

This is what I did with a friend. Like a pothead smoking banana skins in a desperate attempt to recreate that craved high, I was a football fan seeking to replicate the drama of witnessing the action first-hand by watching it all unfold on the evening’s highlights reel.

This was met with scorn and derision from some friends who were baffled by my patience and willingness to spend the day without the radio and internet and only BBC2 for company, which for future note is blissfully sheltered from the day-to-day activities of the world and in particular sport (snooker discounting).

Nestled in documentaries and repeats of Angela Lansbury poking her nose into homicides in Murder She Wrote, I peeked into what retirement what must feel like, but without the need to dash to the toilet quite so often.

A necessary excursion outside was unusually fraught with dangers though. Fans walking around displaying tell-tale emotions from nearby White Hart Lane, overheard conversations or catching a score from a shop radio could all scupper my plans and flatten my evening’s entertainment.

A broken Virgin media box (their repair men are slower than Richard Dunne) meant I had to dig out the analogue aerial that had been gathering dust in the corner and we watched the highlights through a haze of brilliant white snow and occasionally flickering sound.

This didn’t matter though; despite on some aerial replays being unable to interpret what was actually happening, as the sought drama was readily supplied.

The pain, the panic, and excitement of it all was delivered with the action being replayed in manageable ten minute chunks, as the action cut from one game to the other and the ramifications of each vital goal were painfully felt.

An own goal and a crippling inability to score sent Blackpool and Birmingham respectively on their way and Wolves managed to lose at home and still survive, prompting the home support to joyously and bizarrely celebrate being outplayed by Blackburn.

The patience required to witness this though is excruciating and next year I might opt for the instant gratification of the Videprinter, in what will hopefully be another dramatic dogfight.

Tags: Birmingham City, Blackburn Rovers, Blackpool, Premier League, Wigan Athletic, Wolves