The new season is underway, with the visit of Blackburn Rovers to The Hawthorns on Saturday, a carnival atmosphere, as is always the way on the opening days of any campaign, but followed a sad Friday, when the Albion faithful and the Former Players said goodbye to lifelong fan and friend of the Association Paul Roberts, who passed away three weeks ago at his Tipton home. He will be sadly missed by us all.
However, what better way to say farewell to Paul, and get the new campaign underway, was a home victory over the men from Lancashire, with new manager Ryan Mason making his ‘home League debut’ with a narrow 1-0 victory.
It was of course business as usual in the Richardson Suite with Joe Mayo, Gary Hackett, Mark Grew and Darryl Burgess on match-day duties in the East stand suites, both before and after the game, and a full-house Regis suite, with Chairman Ray Wilson, Secretary Geoff Snape and Treasurer Norman Westbury, joined by sixties ‘Toffees slayer’ Micky Fudge, and a host of guests from all quarters of the Albion family, including Allan Maull who has so much input into the Hawthorns memorial garden as well as curator duties at the National Football museum in Manchester. Match-days would not be complete with the very welcome cameo appearance of Andy Johnson on his way up to the commentary box, and the opportunity to catch up with the one and only Tony Brown still finding the energy to climb up to the gantry to do his bit for local BBC radio.
With three points in the bag, the team move on to Wrexham on Saturday to play the new boys in the division who will be looking to make their presence felt, followed by the visit of Portsmouth to The Hawthorns.