You know when you think your mind’s playing tricks with you? It’s a wonderful feeling when you occasionally find that it isn’t; it’s even better when you realise that something you thought you might have exaggerated over the passage of time is actually even more fabulous than you thought it was.
Why am I prodded into such reveries? Saturday’s match against Woking prompts memories of our first meeting at The Racecourse, five years ago, and the greatest post-match quote of all time. It came, of course, from Dean Saunders. Just sit back and luxuriate in this. If you can’t see why it gets me excited you’ll have to take my word for it; it’s an in-joke. But trust me, the people who get it will love it:
“That’s another 15 chances we had today. That’s 55 chances we have had in the last four games. That has to be a world record.
Connoisseurs of Saunders’ post-match pronouncements will recognise this as a classic. His lack of grasp of number, his loose interpretation of what represents a chance, his vague acquaintance with truth: it’s all there! All it needs is a rough estimation of how many crosses we put in that beat the first man – it was usually a figure in the high seventies – and it would be complete.
I’m not knocking the man: quite the opposite. His post-match exaggeration was one of the most entertaining elements of the Saunders era. He did some very enjoyable press conferences. Seventy-three if I remember correctly.
