Michael Keane. What d’you reckon to our summer signing then?

I have to admit that until yesterday afternoon there were only a couple of things I knew about him. One, that he has been openly critical of his former manager, the saintly Craig Brown. Two, that he is portly. Neither feature endeared the young Irishman to me. And yet I now rate him One of My Favourite Players. And I think I can pin down precisely when this transformation in my perception took place. It was after 88 minutes of yesterday’s match at Oakwell. Keane controlled a difficult dropping ball, taming it with elegant finesse, sliding it on his instep as one would roll a Chateau Petrus ’61 around one’s tongue, before leaning back and caressing a quite magnificent left-foot shot far beyond the flat-footed Colgan in the home goal. The net blossomed, the match was won, and the 4,500 travelling Tigers before whom this moment of inspiration was served up crashed into wild exultation, boundless jubiliation, fierce elation.

Smashin’ fellow, this Keane.

From the start, then, on a balmy and heavily-policed afternoon in South Yorkshire. The only switch from last Saturday’s winning line-up saw Wilbraham preferred to Alssop, who slipped to the bench to join, among others, the bustling hero-in-waiting Keane. So we carded:

Myhill
Joseph Cort Delaney Dawson
Green Junior Ashbee Elliott
Wilbraham Barmby

Barnsley opened the livelier, and a melee in the box allowed Myhill to display his athleticism as he managed to heel a dangerous effort to safety. Up the other end, Wilbraham finds space but heads wide. Five minutes gone, decent atmosphere, good game in prospect …. whereupon we collectively collapsed and offered our most flawed half-an-hour’s football for a very long time. Sure, Barnsley moved the ball around with impressive fluidity. They looked a well-balanced and able bunch of players. But we should be better than this. You’d have to go back as far as the vile game away to Bristol Rovers before Christmas last season to remember us so lacking both poise and grit. Our defence seemed to me to be playing too deep, the midfield was dominated by the home side, Green and Elliott looked peripheral, Barmby received minimal service and Wilbraham wandered about in a thoroughly ineffective manner.

The home side had taken a deserved lead during this wretched spell. It might seem a surprise that a budding Premiership player of the calibre of Michael Chopra would soil his hands and feet by moving on loan from Newcastle to an unfashionable club like this, but I can’t deny I’m partial to a Barnsley Chopra from time to time – especially when, as yesterday, he looks lost amid the frenetic fervour of a lower Division Yorkshire derby. The damage to the scoreline was done by a much more familiar and humdrum foe, bald Barry Conlon. Simple stuff, I’m afraid. A corner, a free header, a goal.

We improved a shade in the later stages of the half. Barmby was the source of our few moments of invention, most conspicuously when he flicked the ball up and over his head, to the utter bemusement of his red-shirted and red-faced marker, before squaring the ball intelligently to Wilbraham. His partner hesitated as if wholly shorn of self-confidence and the defence had plenty of time to block the shot when it was finally loosed. But half-time arrived with not a Tiger to be seen who would have denied that we were one down for good reason. The good reason being that we were second best all over the pitch.

Oakwell, by the way, is unrecognizably superior to its previous incarnation. If you were charitable, you might have described the old ground as full of earthy character and honest toil. If you’d had to endure hail and sleet on its barren expanses, you’d have condemned it as a midden of the vilest stamp, a bricks and rotting mortar exhibition of the contempt with which the paying football fan was treated for most of the 20th Century. It’s got decent stands on all four sides now, all a bit different – no identikit crate this – and the view from the away end is excellent. I don’t believe grounds need to be all-seater. I think safe standing remains possible, and I think the choice should be available. But, whatever the rights and wrongs of that particular argument, Oakwell is one ground that nowadays offers the paying customer much better than it ever used to.

And we graced it yesterday, make no mistake. This was a Tiger turnout that in size and volume brought to mind some of the epic excursions into the West Riding of the 1970s. Frankly I have misgivings about the re-appearance among our support of many older faces who saw fit to absent themselves from the Hull City cause through the 1990s. But I suppose it’s the same everywhere – success has many parents, failure is always an orphan – and the loud and proud backing our team received yesterday must have helped in securing the points.

Into the second half, and Barnsley enjoy a decent opportunity early on as Myhill watches a shot fly just wide of his left-hand post. Then Joseph is put under pressure – a cross, a shot, just too high. Still, we have come out after the break showing a bit more vigour. The defence is trying to push further up the pitch; Junior and Ash in central midfield are gradually muscling their way into the game, and both Elliott and Green have been encouraged to offer more help inside. Things are getting better. An Elliott run results in a shot, a save, a corner. Delaney slams in a powerful drive which is well held by Colgan.

Mr Taylor opts for a double substitution, France for Joseph, Keane for Green. And we score within a minute. It might be a shade generous to our manager to praise his substitutional genius, because I don’t think either newcomer had any direct involvement in the goal, but his move had at least freshened up our line-up and, quite plausibly, disturbed the Barn concentration. A Dawson corner travels to Elliott, about 8 or so yards out near the back post, and he is able to head firmly downwards and watch the ball bounce up off the turf and into the net. The absence of a defender on the back post was a surprise to me and, I think, to Colgan too, but it’s 1-1, and the Tiger decibel level, pretty healthy even in our earlier moments of submission, is cranked up a few more notches.

It’s now an open game, a lively game. We’d be happy with a point but either side could nick it. The home fans think they have on 75 when a slick move cuts open our defence allowing one of theirs to lift his shot beyond the advancing Myhill, but the clamour of an impending goal implodes as the ball slides wide. Allsop is now on for us, surprisingly replacing Barmby rather than Wilbraham, but by the time the 88th minute is reached a point looks the summit of our ambitions, and a perfectly welcome harvest from an afternoon on which we have been far below our best.

And then Michael Keane strikes.