Blue Bottle!

It’s the battle of the ‘Blues’ at the Showgrounds tomorrow when the Linfield juggernaut comes to town and United must run them off the road in order to reach the Irish cup semi-final. This is the first meeting of the two clubs in the cup since United beat the Linfield Blues in the ’89 semi-final and went on to claim the ‘blue riband’ trophy of Irish football. That was in fact our third cup triumph in the eighties, second only to the Glens who won it six times. Disappointingly we haven’t triumphed since and in fact haven’t won a trophy since, but we believe this is our year. United have no reason to fear their opponents, who despite having six fulltime pros in their squad, are not the team of last season and we ran them pretty close in the County Antrim Shield final then. United manager Tommy Wright told Sky Blue Sport that he has a full panel to choose from and has more or less decided to run with a midfield of, Melaugh, Patrick, Aiden Watson and Stuarty King. The remainder of the team will be that which started the previous two games which means second top scorer Mark Picking will be vying for a place on the bench with, Scatesy, Fitzy, Lowery, Haveron, McConaghie and possibly Darren Murphy who has delayed his operation until the summer. We at ‘Sport believe the United manager, after careful consideration, will opt for Picking, Fitzy and the fit again Haveron as his subs, which gives him the best chance of covering any crisis as Haveron and Picking are both extremely versatile players. So it’s all systems go for United tomorrow, we’ll never have a better chance of progressing in the cup and with a big home crowd (all of us will be praying for that), we can turn over the cup holders. Linfield have stuttered a bit this season, already surrendering two of their four trophies from last term, but as we know they are at their most dangerous when their pride has been hurt, so we’ll have to be at our best if we want to advance to the semi-final. We at ‘Sport are hoping for a strong referee, someone not afraid to make decisions and who won’t be swayed by the ‘diving’ tactics of, Thomson, Dickson and McAreevy, unlike Mark Courtenay 2 weeks ago, never have we seen worse! So come on United, let’s shag those ‘Townies’, remember, ‘we’re the farmers and they’re the sheep’!