WHY GO to Florida for your thrills and spills?

CleggieWorld, The Theme Park run by Steve Claridge, is now open - and who knows where this crazy adventure will end?

The ticker line reads...Pompey fight back from two goals down to beat Crystal Palace...but that disguises an afternoon of fun and frolics from Claridge and The Nutty Boys in the erstwhile home of The Crazy Gang.

In the best traditions of Walt Disney, this win would have combined fun and education with Clairdge learning a lot on this voyage of discovery.

One thing he will know is that the bubble will burst eventually, the breaks that Pompey are enjoying will go against them and when that happens it will provide another educational examination for Pompey's fledgling boss.

A refereeing break in first-half injury time, a partially enforced tactical change which proved inspirational, a blind opposition manager and a mis-hit shot which turned into a match-winner are the green-tinged rubs Pompey enjoyed, but it's also true that you make your own luck in football and this was by no stretch a spawny win.

Luck is only good is you grab it and take advantage of it, and Pompey held on with a miser's grasp to the crumbs offered them.

Palace were in the pound seats at 2-0 both goals from Arsenal reject Tommy Black, a player who sums up English football's problems.

Unable to get a sniff because of the world-class stars blocking his path at Highbury, Black possesses feet quicker than Fred Astaire's.

A little soft-shoe shuffle bought him the yard of space to curl Palace's first in from 20 yards, and he glided in to tap into an empty net after Pompey's central defenders were criminally guilty of allowing Mikael For-ssell's hopeful ball to drift across goal.

Palace wasted other chances in a first half which Claridge admitted Pompey weren't at the races until the closing seconds when Aleksandrs Kolinko dropped a cross under the sort of pressure from Lee Bradbury that some refs might have called a foul.

But Paul Durkin saw fair and, as Claridge tapped in, Pompey went in with their tails wagging instead of tucked between their legs.

In contrast, Palace shrank mentally like paranoics and, with Darren Moore's back still sore, Pompey made a crucial change.

Ceri Hughes was stationed on the left flank and Scott Hiley installed as sweeper in a central defensive trio.

At the risk of sounding sacriligious to those who boom Bruno's name out, Pompey looked so much more balanced.

For starters, Hiley's distribution from the back bears a hallmark quality of a Premiership player, and that was vital to Pompey's game-plan.

Their five-man midfield with Hughes and Panopoulos in danger of committing date-rape with the touchlines, stretched Palace out like a Spanish Inquisition victim on the rack, and for 20 vital minutes after the interval, Palace boss Alan Smith didn't spot it.

In that time, Hughes dropped an accurate cross into the dead space occupied by Tommy Thogersen, and Pompey again found the extra man on the left in the shape of Nigel Quashie, whose deep cross was met by the same Panopoulos on the back stick that an hour earlier had headed Clinton Morrison's shot off the same goal-line.

Had Panopoulos struck his volley truly, Kolinko would prob-ably have beaten it away, but he topped his shot into the turf and the bounce completely bamboozled the keeper.

There was about as much fight left in Palace as in Andrei Golota while the Pompey thrill-seekers set off in search of their next white-knuckle adventure.