'Team Lisbie'

The best part of watching Valley Pass these days is the interviews with players from the Curbishley era before the day is spoilt by the performance of the current players.  On Tuesday at Wigan it will be Steve Brown.   Mind you apparently Curbs said off camera yesterday that he wondered if he was jinxing things.

Yesterday it was Super Kevin Lisbie and we saw a montage of his goals.   His third goal when he scored his hat trick against Liverpool was just superb, Deano threw the ball out to him and he went all the way up the pitch to score, evading the opposition.

I remember his first Premier League goal when he came on at Ipswich as a substitute and scored a superb goal to give us a 1-0 victory.   What I did not know was that he had to borrow Jon Fortune's boots.  Fortune was a size 11 and Lisbie was a size 9, a case of being too small for his boots.  Then there was his winning goal at Stamford Bridge.

Lisbie did say that he found it strange at first as an East London lad playing for a South London team.  Curbs made a remark about coming through the tunnel in the traffic.

He is still playing football alongside his four sons so it really is Team Lisbie.  He played for Cray Valley Paper Mills in the 2019 FA Vase final.    He is a coach at Leyton Orient.

Apparently players used to get a tap on the shoulder from Big Merv (Mervyn Day) before Curbs told them were on the bench on Saturday.

The downside to Lisbie was that he could miss tap ins, hence references to him as 'Missbie'.   I had taken a Canadian visitor to The Valley and he did just that.  I wasn't in my usual seat and the Bloke Beside Me said 'How much do I pay that guy?' to the amusement of the Canadian,