Wednesday, November 08, 2006
NO FIREWORKS, BUT CARRAGHER'S BURNING BRIGHT
Daily Post 06 November 2006
BONFIRE Night is an occasion when most of us admire the spectacular as the darkening autumn sky is filled with bright colours.
But if Liverpool's two-goal hero against Reading on Saturday Dirk Kuyt is the showman who gets to light the fireworks and impress the fawning crowd, then Jamie Carragher is the bloke who risks doing his back in by lugging all the wood to build the bonfire.
Anfield stalwart Carragher became the first Liverpool player to reach 300 league appearances for the club this century at the weekend but - as you'd expect - he didn't make much fuss about the landmark occasion.
His manager, Rafael Benitez, says that if he had another two or three Jamie Carraghers in the side then Liverpool would be virtually unbeatable.
The question is - if you did fill your line-up full of JC carbon copies (unfortunately I think they broke the granite mould when the original popped up in Bootle in 1978), who would get the goals?
You see, Carragher is such a consummate team player that he seldom indulges in that very selfish act for a defender of abandoning his post to surge forward and nick a goal, even if he did rattle a header into the back of the Aston Villa net at the Kop end in his first Premiership start almost a decade ago.
Saturday's matchday programme noted how apt it would be for Carragher to mark the occasion by getting on the scoresheet, seeing as it's nearly eight years now since he bagged one in the Premiership - and even that was in a 7-1 romp over Southampton in January 1999 - a game in which he was eventually substituted for Bjorn Kvarme.
Putting such giddy hopes aside, I suspect that keeping Liverpool's first clean sheet in the Premiership since September was far more important for him.
This factor was exemplified in second-half stoppage time when, with the score at 2-0 and the game already won, Carragher was the only outfield Liverpool player in his own half when his side earned themselves a corner kick in front of the Kop.
The nature of football will always mean that the deeds of prolific strikers and creative midfield maestros continue to receive the lion's share of the plaudits.
But as a keen student of the game - I've been told that he drives his good lady wife nuts with the number of matches he watches at home - Carragher is intelligent enough to realise that on the whole his role is neither eye-catching nor spectacular but ultimately no less crucial.
Fans love a dedicated professional who will "play for the jersey" and Carragher never gives anything less than his all when he pulls on the Liverpool shirt.
Like all great sons of the city, he's a musical man too, with Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire a favourite tune for both himself and his father and you could imagine him jumping through one if it was required to achieve victory for Benitez's side.
If Steven Gerrard is the heartbeat of this Liverpool team, then Carragher provides the stomach for the battle.
The visit of Steve Coppell's Reading to Anfield was far from being the most taxing of Carragher's 300 Liverpool outings to date.
As a defender, coming up against solitary striker Kevin Doyle it was a relatively quiet afternoon - although he did manage to get in at least one crucial intervention beyond the call of duty to block one of the visitors' attacks.
Victory over a Reading side who have now lost their last five games was achieved in a no-nonsense routine manner for Liverpool.
While it was unspectacular, it was certainly efficient.
Dare I say, it was probably just the way Carragher would have liked it on his special day.
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BONFIRE Night is an occasion when most of us admire the spectacular as the darkening autumn sky is filled with bright colours.
But if Liverpool's two-goal hero against Reading on Saturday Dirk Kuyt is the showman who gets to light the fireworks and impress the fawning crowd, then Jamie Carragher is the bloke who risks doing his back in by lugging all the wood to build the bonfire.
Anfield stalwart Carragher became the first Liverpool player to reach 300 league appearances for the club this century at the weekend but - as you'd expect - he didn't make much fuss about the landmark occasion.
His manager, Rafael Benitez, says that if he had another two or three Jamie Carraghers in the side then Liverpool would be virtually unbeatable.
The question is - if you did fill your line-up full of JC carbon copies (unfortunately I think they broke the granite mould when the original popped up in Bootle in 1978), who would get the goals?
You see, Carragher is such a consummate team player that he seldom indulges in that very selfish act for a defender of abandoning his post to surge forward and nick a goal, even if he did rattle a header into the back of the Aston Villa net at the Kop end in his first Premiership start almost a decade ago.
Saturday's matchday programme noted how apt it would be for Carragher to mark the occasion by getting on the scoresheet, seeing as it's nearly eight years now since he bagged one in the Premiership - and even that was in a 7-1 romp over Southampton in January 1999 - a game in which he was eventually substituted for Bjorn Kvarme.
Putting such giddy hopes aside, I suspect that keeping Liverpool's first clean sheet in the Premiership since September was far more important for him.
This factor was exemplified in second-half stoppage time when, with the score at 2-0 and the game already won, Carragher was the only outfield Liverpool player in his own half when his side earned themselves a corner kick in front of the Kop.
The nature of football will always mean that the deeds of prolific strikers and creative midfield maestros continue to receive the lion's share of the plaudits.
But as a keen student of the game - I've been told that he drives his good lady wife nuts with the number of matches he watches at home - Carragher is intelligent enough to realise that on the whole his role is neither eye-catching nor spectacular but ultimately no less crucial.
Fans love a dedicated professional who will "play for the jersey" and Carragher never gives anything less than his all when he pulls on the Liverpool shirt.
Like all great sons of the city, he's a musical man too, with Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire a favourite tune for both himself and his father and you could imagine him jumping through one if it was required to achieve victory for Benitez's side.
If Steven Gerrard is the heartbeat of this Liverpool team, then Carragher provides the stomach for the battle.
The visit of Steve Coppell's Reading to Anfield was far from being the most taxing of Carragher's 300 Liverpool outings to date.
As a defender, coming up against solitary striker Kevin Doyle it was a relatively quiet afternoon - although he did manage to get in at least one crucial intervention beyond the call of duty to block one of the visitors' attacks.
Victory over a Reading side who have now lost their last five games was achieved in a no-nonsense routine manner for Liverpool.
While it was unspectacular, it was certainly efficient.
Dare I say, it was probably just the way Carragher would have liked it on his special day.
Post a Comment
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