Football may be a broad church offering ample house room to numerous philosophies and belief systems but it does not always invoke a spirit of tolerance. Tomorrow'sgame at the Hawthorns between West Bromwich Albion and Stoke City is duly seen as very much a clash of the game's high-minded purist set and the fundamentalist evangelicals.
Although Tony Pulis insists his tactics are "misunderstood" and maintains that his Stoke side are not quite the long-ball team of popular perception, they remain a polar opposite of Tony Mowbray's sweet- passing West Bromwich. Despite Albion's position at the foot of the Premier League, Baggies fans remain proud of their team and sniffily view Stoke, themselves hovering just above the relegation zone, as Neanderthals.
"People have got us wrong, we're not as direct as they say we are," insisted Pulis. "I don't think we've played as ugly as some people have made out."
He has, nonetheless, fashioned a team of imposingly tall athletes who tend to get the ball forward as quickly as possible and excel at making the most of set pieces, utilising Rory Delap's long throws wherever possible. While the gifted Ricardo Fuller is capable of imbuing Stoke's game with the sort of quality that defies that long ball stereotyping and Matthew Etherington's dribbling still bears the hallmarks of his Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United heritage, no one could argue they are English football's answer to Barcelona.
Baggies fans routinely talk of Stoke's aerial assaults as "medieval cannon-fire" and following Pulis's 1–0 victory over Mowbray's men at the Britannia Stadium earlier this season, the subsequent West Bromwich programme carried an extraordinary summation of the encounter.
Excerpts included: "When you go out at Anfield the players come out of the tunnel beneath a sign that says 'This is Anfield'. Presumably there is one at the Britannia that reads 'Abandon all football ye who enter here'.
"If you're under six feet tall you can't get in their dressing room. It's football as played by the Terracotta Army, a land of the giants where you're as well to stick your boots on your head as on your feet.
"At the top of Stoke's team-sheet is the legend 'We are Premier League'. Ugly, ungrammatical and, may the Lord be praised, untrue. Because if Stoke are Premier League give me Pro-Celebrity bat- drenching any day of the week.
"Stoke play their way, they are perfectly entitled to do so, just as the rest of us are entitled to an opinion on it. Ours is brave football, heroic football, football that gives people entertainment, ignites dreams and offers value for money, an absolute moral imperative. Albion football is football with principles, a belief system, a style you can be proud of, win, lose or draw.
"No surrender. On with the charge of the right brigade."
It was pretty strong stuff for an official match programme but, whatever his private views on Mowbray's value system, Pulis is not about to fan the flames. "Tony has some good players and his team play some good football. He has got to do what he has to do but my only concern is Stoke," he stressed. "I'm not really concerned about what people say about us. I only worry about things I can affect. The game at West Brom is just one of what are going to be eight cup finals for us."
Should Stoke survive it will represent a massive achievement on the former Bournemouth and Gillingham manager's part. "Everybody was writing us off as soon as we were promoted," Pulis reflected. "We're a very unfashionable club but our supporters are absolutely magnificent, my players are honest, committed and together and the fact that we're still in with a fighting chance of staying up is simply fantastic."
A grounded character who generously lent his support to a Prince's Trust football event last week, he attributes this to old-fashioned team bonding. Tellingly, following a draw at St James' Park earlier this season, Stoke's former Newcastle defender, Abdoulaye Faye, stressed how he felt far more part of "a family" under Pulis than he ever did on Tyneside.
"The great thing is that our lads all socialise together, they have group nights out and we involve everybody in everything," explained Stoke's manager. "That togetherness really shows when we're competing on the pitch. Our spirit is one of our biggest strengths – and a big reason why we can stay up."
The Premier League, PFA and Football Foundation are funding partners with the Prince's Trust, and Tony Pulis was representing the League Managers' Association
