A month is a long time in football…..

……except to those with a void for a soul.

Farrar Road – One month ago

Farrar Road – Today

I haven’t got the correct words to describe this. Let’s just say it’s symptomatic of contemporary British society.

And now for the continuing adventures of Penfold of the WPL……..

What has the ex-communications magnate and football club owner been up to now? Well, here’s something that’s hot off the presses!!!

“THE New Saints have made their final Welsh Premier League game of the season, at home to Bangor City, an all-ticket affair.

With City and TNS currently separated by just a point at the top of the table, there is every likelihood that the game – on Saturday April 21 – could be a repeat of last season’s title showdown at Farrar Road.

TNS have fixed the admission price for the game at £13, but a special early-bird ticket offer has been made available which offers away supporters a £2 discount on the admission price for Bangor’s last visit to Park Hall and a £7 reduction on the ticket for the season’s final game.

“There was some confusion over admission prices for away fans when we last hosted Bangor,” says TNS owner Mike Harris, “so we are please to offer them a discount this time around.”

Tickets can be ordered online from www.saints-alive.co.uk/shop or by postal application (details below) but must be purchased before February 4.

Cheques payable to TNS FC should be sent with a stamped addressed envelope to:
The New Saints FC
The Venue
Burma Road
Park Hall
Oswestry
SY11 4AS”

Look at this part again;

“TNS have fixed the admission price for the game at £13, but a special early-bird ticket offer has been made available which offers away supporters a £2 discount on the admission price for Bangor’s last visit to Park Hall and a £7 reduction on the ticket for the season’s final game.”

I read the first sentence and something inside my head fell on its side. For the last game of the season it will cost £13 to watch a Welsh Premier League match. Penfold of the WPL actually thinks that he can charge £13 to watch a Welsh Premier League match. THIRTEEN POUNDS, THIRTEEN FUCKING POUNDS. That’s three more pounds than a tenner, I could buy a couple of good world cinema DVDs for that!! I could pay for two people to go to see two films on Orange Wednesdays with that amount of money!!! I checked the figure, I checked the paragraphs four times in fact,  I hadn’t misread it and neither have you;  it still said £13.  They only charge five pounds usually but they want to charge thirteen fucking pounds for the visit of Bangor City.

I re-read the whole paragraph after the initial shock subsided. It was a totally confusing paragraph, the numbers threw me. Where did the £2 discount figure? How did the £7 discount come in to it? It wasn’t until  I clicked on the link to their shop and that the tickets cost £6 if you buy them early. You’d think that someone would proof-read stuff that appears on official club websites.

I think Penfold of the WPL works for DFS – He must like initials or something!!!.

- His tickets are actually worth £5.

- Before the last match he tried to tell us they were worth £8.

- Now he’s trying to tell us they’re worth £13.

- DON’T WORRY ABOUT THIS!!! If we buy early we can have a massive saving of £7!!! Yes, we’re getting something that’s worth £13 for £6!!!

The whole thing is a shoddy piece of marketing. On the most basic level it sounds fantastic. It sounds like the bighearted communications magnate is making a fantastic gesture. It appears that we’re getting something that’s worth £13 for £6. Just listen to the philanthropic heartthrob;

“There was some confusion over admission prices for away fans when we last hosted Bangor,” says TNS owner Mike Harris, “so we are please to offer them a discount this time around.”

I hate to go over old ground here but if they was any confusion last November it arose because TNS decided to charge Bangor City fans nearly twice as much as the home fans without any notice whatsoever, but let’s not allow the truth get in the way of another grasp for extra publicity. As I’ve already hinted, that’s another story anyway.

To return to the matter in hand, in reality we’re not getting something that’s worth £13 for £6, we’re getting something worth £5 for £6. Even with the discount he’s still making at least an extra £1 from each person that turns up.

Some people wonder why Penfold of the WPL  is disliked. If you say you don’t like him they call you bitter and jealous, they say you hold a grudge, they say you’re the irrational one around here. These people are idiots, do not trust them. Penfold of the WPL is not to be trusted. If people don’t want Penfold of the WPL to be criticised then these people should tell Penfold of the WPL to stop acting in this way.  To say ”Hey, that offer is presumptuous!!!!” doesn’t cover the  jaw-dropping gall from Penfold of the WPL , mind you jaw-dropping gall seems to be a default setting with him. Why does he assume that Bangor City and TNS will be the two clubs in first and second places on the last day? There was absolutely no need to make any sort of announcement about a match that’s 3 months away, let alone an announcement like this.

The Destruction of Farrar Road

I tried to resist the urge to visit Farrar Road but I couldn’t, I had to visit Farrar Road for the last time. 

After standing in the middle of destruction it’s hard to get your head around the idea that only 2 and a half weeks ago over 2,500 people were standing on the Farrar Road terraces. I know time waits for no man but I can’t help but feel that certain people sent the diggers in with indecent haste.

We’ve been made to feel like stragglers at last orders, the heartless landlord sweeping behind us as he kicks us out of our favourite place before we want to go. That’s the trouble with Thatcherite society; the people with the power to make things happen know the cost of everything  and the value of nothing.

Here’s what you call progress;

I’m being stalked by Big Sam

I’m sure that if I was a Blackburn fan I’d probably have warm feelings for Sam “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams” Allardyce. I’d remember the managerial genius of “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams” as it was a genius that brought us so many great times. The present difficulties would only reinforce this genius, there is an absence of mediocrity of mid- table safety in the Blackburn, Lancashire of today!!

If I was actually a Blackburn fan I’d like to think that I’d be one of the enlightened Blackburn fans that follows football in general but this wouldn’t help me as it  would mean that I’d know that “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams” was working his magic down at West Ham. Consequently, if I was actually an enlightened  Blackburn fan I’d be a very frustrated enlightened Blackburn fan.

I’d try to be hopeful but I know that I would constantly remember the good old days under “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams”. I’d remember how those were the days when mid-table mediocrity was a safety blanket, the days when I could meet the gaze of my postman, butcher and stockbroker.  I’d remember the time when BIG SAM the alchemist provided took the base ingredients of  two banks of four and long throw ins and produced a new golden era of mid-table mediocrity. Then I’d remember how the time of the great magician “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams” was cut short so horribly, then I’d be upset again.

If I were a frustrated enlightened Blackburn fan I’m sure that I would become so frustrated that I’d organise some kind of risible protest against something I couldn’t properly define. I’d even make a banner for it.

Fortunately I’m not the sort of enlightened Blackburn that protests for no discernible reason, I’m not a Blackburn fan at all actually. Like all right-thinking people  I detest Sam “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Big Sams” Allardyce. I remember his conceit;

“I’m not suited to Bolton or Blackburn, I would be more suited to Inter or Real Madrid,” Allardyce said. “It wouldn’t be a problem to me to go and manage those clubs because I would win the double or the league every time. Give me Manchester United or Chelsea and I would do the same, it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s not where I’m suited to, it’s just where I’ve been for most of the time.”  – I don’t care if the arsehole thinks he was being ironic.

I remember how he used the buzzwords of sports science to disguise agricultural football with the cloak of progressiveness. I remember how he treats football with contempt, how he fills his  interviews with  optimistic hopes of something good then asks his team to hoof it to the big man up.

Most of all I remember his moaning. “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams”  is quite simply one of the biggest moaning bastards in football. In case you’ve forgotten this just type in “Sam Allardyce” and “referees” and see how many hits you get. After you’ve done this you will realise that the names “Sam Allardyce” and “BIG SAM” are naked without an extra word or two. Words like; “Claims”, “Blasts”, “Hits Out”, “Furious”, “Lashes Out”, “Accuses”, “Fumes over”…

Football has produced so many glorious and joyful moments yet I still think of  “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams” but that’s the power of “BIG SAM -the biggest of all Sams”, he looms over the landscape of British football like a morose monolith. Fortunately when I’m about to  think of the grumbling fucker I start shaking and if I catch the shaking early enough it’s usually ok. After taking medication my brain usually reboots and I shudder back to life.

Because of the effect that  “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams”  has on my joie-de-vivre  I try to forget the morose monolith but the modern world doesn’t let me forget him. Last month West Ham decided to start sending personalised e-mails from the moaning get. Needless to say he spent most of the e-mails moaning, as if what he has to say matters. Have a look;

On the 12^thDecember “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams”  told me that…

“Saturday’s defeat at Reading was a day where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong………………We are still second but at this stage, and where we want to go this season, you don’t want to lose two on the trot. We have lost five overall now and we have to put it right next weekend

We lost at Reading because we have lost our cool. We had two players sent-off and it made life hugely difficult for ourselves. After we lost Joey O’Brien, we didn’t even defend the free-kick properly and they were able to score a soft goal.

If we had coped with that, we would have reorganised, put in two banks for four and tried to make it as difficult as we could for Reading to score against ten men. We would have said ‘let’s see the game out and take nil-nil’.

With eleven v eleven we were attacking and we would have every chance of getting that fifth win away from home in a row.

It looked like Freddie Piquionne was pulled down in the box as he went through but it is more about the chances we have missed. Freddie had a free header on the far post, there was a great header from James Tomkins that Papa Bouba Diop didn’t convert.

If we had scored, Reading would have found it difficult, but we went down to ten men, gifted them the goal and made it easy for them.

Players have to keep their cool whatever is happening. They know that if a team beats us it is going to be like they have won their biggest game of the season. It is a loss of control that I haven’t seen in my time at the club.

We have lost two to suspension and with Guy Demel’s injury after two minutes, it means we are short on numbers for Barnsley next week. The challenge is to come back…..” (Boo Hoo, football’s rubbish)

On 20^th December there was “a fantastic win against Barnsley in front of a sold-out stadium on Saturday”  but……

”We had injuries and suspensions before we started and when we did start, Abdoulaye Faye pulled up in the warm-up meaning we had to give Daniel Potts his debut at the age of 17……………..The squad situation went from bad to worse to desperate but we still won the game and won well. We should have scored more than Papa Bouba Diop’s header but the major decisions did not go our way………………It was a great debut from Pottsy, really very good defensively and in possession…………It is great to see a man of such young potential, a local boy who has had a massive trauma in his life with overcoming leukaemia. All credit to him as a 17-year-old for withstanding the pressure in such an important game.…….There were a lot of massive contributions from a squad that is being stretched to its very limit and we still managed to come up with a victory.” (Boo Hoo, Football’s rubbish)

On 28^th December Sam told me he was “happy overall”  but ……

“..not with the last four games. We have only taken four points which is nonsense compared to what we have done and it tells you we have to go and win three or four on the trot now………………..We have got to put a run of wins together to get back in touch with Southampton and not let the gap get too big.………. ……I have been pretty critical to a patched-up team which has been patched up for a long time now. We have got a 17-year-old at left-back away from home for the first time while George McCartney was playing centre-half. …………… The loss of four players to suspension for Derby on New Year’s Eve is a massive blow.” (Boo Hoo, woe is me – Have you stopped and thought why the players were suspended?) 

On the 3^rd of January Big Sam was “optimistic for 2012” but …..

“it was a shame that we could not get more goals than the one we did.” ……….……. In an ideal world, I will bring in two new players this month – a forward and a defender – because we only have five subs and we have to rotate the squad. Two quality players would be great. Maybe we will go for a wide player as well……………….We have already started the process of bidding but without any success at the moment, either permanent or loan deals. The co-owners Mr Sullivan and Mr Gold have pressed the button on a lot of potential deals already……………………..I can’t be more pleased with the way they have supported me. More goals is what we are after but we haven’t managed to clinch one yet………………. I am optimistic for 2012. My hope is we can get the players in the squad fit and have a full squad to choose from. That would give me the opportunity to pick the best eleven for each game rather than just who is available…….. (Boo Hoo, woe is me)

On January 9th  “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams” wanted me to “look forward‏” with hope but……

“……..Where we are in our position is to look at the squad and say ‘Are we going to take enough chances with the squad that we’ve got?’…………………We’ve already made offers for six or seven players that have been unsuccessful, but we’ll carry on trying as hard and as efficiently as we can to ensure that we acquire a new player if that’s at all possible………………………. But I will only buy a player who I think can make us better.” (Boo hoo, the world’s against me!!)

You can see the problem with “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams”’ ‘s take on football. He has a squad of 32 players to choose from, he’s a self-proclaimed managerial genius, he’s a wonderful tactician yet this is still not enough for success – see how he casually drop hints about needing extra players. The fact that he’s already got his excuses ready for a potential  lack of success highlights what a negative bastard he is. He reduces football to a series of grumbles. He’s the avatar of what’s wrong with football; the lack of calm acceptance.

In the Championship there are two automatic promotion places available and to any normal person if your club remain in one of those two places it will be good enough for promotion. This is not enough for “BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams”. I hope he doesn’t transmit negative waves over to the players as they’ll never get promoted

I presume that West Ham are still bombarding people with e-mails to get people interested in West Ham. I’m not sure how succesful they’ll be if they’re going to subject people to a  litany of moans

“BIG SAM – the biggest of all Sams”   doesn’t seem to get much enjoyment out of football, why does he bother? I’ll send him an e-mail to ask him why.

Building a ground the easy way

Here’s quick step by step guide to improving your club’s football ground problems!

Step 1

Pay 2 quid for a ready made new ground kit!

Step 2

Open the packet!

Step 3

Read Instructions and follow them to the letter!

Step 4

Watch the ground spring up!

Step 5

Marvel at the quick process!

Step 6

Admire what’s happened and wonder why more clubs don’t take this approach.

The Farrar End – 27/12/11

Bangor City 5 Prestatyn Town 3
Welsh Premier League
27/12/11

With a decade to prepare for this match I took the last few weeks in my stride. I didn’t feel as emotional as I thought I would be. I remembered that I’d be working in a new, damp-free, club shop on matchdays. I’d also have a longer walk to the new ground but that didn’t really matter did it?

Last night I gave Joel two tickets (for him and Rhian) for today’s match and the situation felt so normal. I’d grown so used to hearing the words “Farrar End” (I even helped to plan the events of the last day by helping to arrange the brass band) that the final day began to feel like just another important event organised by the supporters’ association. The words “Last Ever Day” had lost their significance, there was no poignancy. When I thought of the last day at Farrar Road there was scarcely a sad thought in my head, my mind was filled by stories, memories, jokes, goals and muddy boots instead. Rhian told me that she used to go with her dad and this added to my joy. I think the medical qualities of cider also helped my joie de vivre..

As I stood on the platform this morning I cursed my bag, it was heavy enough without the two packets of scarves that I’d stuffed inside them. Today was going to be a flag day, today we were going to give the old girl the send off she deserved. Then my hangover kicked in and  I worried that the rain would ruin my flags, why was everything so complicated? Why were flag days so bad for my back? My hangover and the potential of a sore shoulder occupied my mind on the train.

The fresh air was invigorating so I walked to Farrar Road without a care in the world; I knew I was early enough to set up the shop properly, I knew that I would cope with the expected massive crowd. I got the shop ready as normal and just knew that it was going to be busy (You get to know the little signs –  like loads of people walking around the ground when there are still two and half hours before kick off.) Mark gave me one of the 20 disposable cameras that would record the day (and  hopefully lead to  a fantastic collage)

Before the crowd arrived in earnest I decided to have a walk around the ground for the last time. I already knew that the roof had been removed from the Farrar End so I was expecting a big shock but when I saw the now roofless end I didn’t feel the shock I had been expecting. I decided to stand on the shelf at the back of the Farrar End for old times’ sake.

It was only when I was on the shelf that the significance of the day finally dawned on me. Today would be the last ever day that I would be standing here to watch a football match. After today these terraces would be silenced forever, it was quite an eerie sensation. I gazed at the historic ground, I tried to drink it all in for one last time. I drifted away on reverie. Oh what tales the walls of Farrar Road could tell us!!!

Without a crowd I was able to clearly gaze at the St. Paul’s End mural for one last time, I was about to drift away again when I noticed something untoward. Caernarfon fans had decided to deface Nige P’s hard work with crude Neolithic daubings, I noticed that they had tried to do the same on the pitch. You have to laugh at their pettiness really, thinking that their primitive cave drawings would have any effect upon today’s events!!!

Thanks to the very, very brisk trade I missed most of the planned events. I only caught glimpses of Chris’ brass band, the Samba parade and the parade of ex-players. While  I managed to gain a distinct sense that the atmosphere was building I forgot to add my flags to the flag day.

I made it out of the shop for kick off., then I had to go back in for the disposable camera for the BCFCSA art project. Unexpectedly Prestatyn’s players made a guard of honour for the Bangor lads. My God, how I’d misjudged Gibson!!! What a gesture. The Prestatyn fans were in the Santa spirit too.

While Farrar Road is certainly historical it also has crap sightlines when it’s busy. I couldn’t see the pitch from my place near Joel so I decided to move around to the side to take some pictures. This turned out to be an inspired substitution of position as I was able to see Les open the scoring.

I returned to my original spot near Joel to find that I still had a crappy view. Luckily Dylan Reggae was standing near by and we both agreed that the lack of a good view didn’t matter today as today was more than about one silly match. It was about having a laugh, reminiscing and celebrating an occasion in the company of good people. As if to underline this point with a red pen I saw Harry and Darren from Llandudno. The whole world was there!! Just after I saw those two fine gentlemen Sion scored Bangor’s second.

Unfortunately Gibson managed to score a rather good goal by dribbling the ball through our defence, which unfortunately this led to a bit of silliness behind the St. Paul’s goal as the santas went a bit mad. The scoreline remained 2-1 until half time.

Thanks to the vast crowds I was busy all half-time but this wasn’t a day to worry about missing anything. Besides I didn’t miss Dave Morley’s thunderbolt of a strike. This was truly a magical way to turn things back in our favour, it was a truly apt goal for such a historic day. We scored again as I made my way around the ground to take my normal place in  the St. Paul’s end. We were playing some truly great football today. Then Prestatyn scored again.

The score was now 4-2. Would Prestatyn and Gibson succeed in spoiling the party just like their message board idiots claimed they would? Thankfully this didn’t look likely when Dave Morley scored his second goal. Then it looked more likely when Prestatyn made the score 5-3. They couldn’t actually spoil the party could they? They didn’t spoil anything in the end.

It was such a fantastic game for a last game. I was worried about the opposite happening before today as emotion can weigh heavily on occasions like this. Fortunately today was a real celebration. I made my own sedate pitch invasion to join in with the festivities.

For the rest of my time in Farrar Road I stood against the Farrar End wall thinking, silently thinking, about what I’d seen today and what it all meant. I was going to miss this place.

Here’s a bit more of a flavour of today

Farrar Road, a eulogy

Before you read on think of the song ”Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow”. This famous tune will set the scene because it provides the basis of our new song……………..

“Oh the Caernarfon and Rhyl are tragic……

 

                                       …….but Bangor City are magic!!!!!!

 

We’re losing our spiritual home…..

 

                 ……..FARRAR ROAD, FARRAR ROAD, FARRAR ROAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

As with all the best songs our creation wrote itself in about 5 minutes. Now we had a lament for our impending loss……

 

                                    …….And so it came to pass that upon that particular Tuesday at the end of December in the year of lord Two Thousand and Eleven Bangor City did play their last ever match upon the hallowed turf of  Farrar Road, and lo there were many tears……….  

 

Even with a decade to prepare for last Tuesday the tears still arrived, no-one could believe that the final day had finally arrived, in fact someone would have been able to cut the disbelief with a blunt knife.

Over the last few months there has been a justifiable display of heartfelt emotion; deep mourning , recrimination, accusation. Unfortunately none of it could alter the watertight development contract that the club was subject to. The development contract of Damocles cast a very long shadow and probably led ”casual observers” to wonder why Bangor’s fans were in a state, but then in my experience casual observers tend to stick their oars in, ahem, notice things. 

In the minds of “casual observers” “casual observers” are special people in local football circles because they think notice things that others don’t, consequently they will have noticed that Farrar Road was a bit of a ramshackle place. When it come to issuing opinions “casual observers” are anything but casual so we can take it as red that their observations will not have remained unexpressed.

If you’ve ever visited non-league circles you will have seen “casual observers” before, if you haven’t seen them before don’t worry, they’re very easy to spot. Just look for the group comparing notes with a knowing smile and measured tone of voice. If they’re nice people they’ll be comparing notes about the standard of pies they’ve received at various grounds.  If they’re nasty they’ll be comparing notes about the gossip they’ve heard.

If you actually try to converse with the nasty ones, and they deign to reply, you’ll find that they won’t have an allegiance; “Oh, I just like local football” will be their approach. Usually they will inadvertantly shatter your preconceived ideas about how you think your clubs’ season is going with a well-placed opinion. ”Jones isn’t playing very well this season is he?” If you converse with them for long enough they will try to ellicit your opinion so they can add it to their local football gossip databank. For your continued mental health I suggest that you ignore them. If you’re you’re an agent provacateur, like me, I’d suggest that you feed them some erroneous gossip for a bit of laugh.

Normally I don’t spare more than a passing thought for irritants. Normally I’m the dude that abides, people are just people after all. Essentially the “casual observers”, even the nasty ones, aren’t actually hurting anyone. However when I combine Farrar Road and “casual observers” I don’t feel as charitable towards them. I’ve stood close to a group of these anti-social pests on too many unfortunate occasions to feel that way, I know how these anti-social pests operate.

Consequently I can picture their fevered conversations about Farrar Road; they will have told people not to peer too closely at the historic ground lest they see that it’s a little frayed around the edges. They’ll have said that it’s a shame that Farrar Road has seen better days and it’s a shame there’s now air of dampness, mildew and weeds, they’ll say how it’s shameful the terraces are now a bit bumpy and uneven. They’ll have said that the approach to the ground flouts most health and safety legislation. They’ll tell you the club shop is damp and the toilets are basically a walled cesspit. They’ll have pointed towards the main stand, highlighted the bits that cannot be used any more, and then told people that the ground is on it’s last legs. They’ll say how glad they’ll have a new ground to visit.

It’s not just what they say, it’s how they say it, it’s the self-satisfied air they use. Unfortunately they are too self-satisfied to realise that everybody has already noticed what they’re talking about. Most people, even Bangor fans, will have noticed that Farrar Road has seen better days.

Unlike the “casual observers” a lot of people won’t have  restricted their view to the obvious evidence, we won’t need a soul transplant either but that’s another story. When the less visible aspects of Ffarrar Road are considered Farrar Road ceases to be a tip, it becomes an historic football venue.  The obvious surface blemishes can’t hide the 90 odd years of social history that was around us. It’s was a history that we felt, a history that we helped to create. With the direct help of the players Bangor’s fans have helped transform Farrar Road from a blank canvas……….

….into a historical masterpiece of such glorious vividness it reduces grown men to silence. Just because most of us haven’t actually witnessed the 90 odd years of history doesn’t mean we can’t feel the history, we can all still visualise it.

We can see the crowds of 3,000, 6,000, even 10,000, we can visualise the Napoli, Fredrikstad and Atletico matches. For us the old Welsh Cup Finals and semi-finals, the FA Trophy runs and the FA Cup runs all happened yesterday. We have justifiable pride in our achievements;  founder members of the Conference, Northern Premier League and even League of Wales, the only Welsh club not to have lost at Wembley,  the only Welsh club to have played in all 4 of UEFA’s club competitions.

We can close our eyes and still see the legends in blue upon the lush green turf, we can see them all; Iorys Griffiths, Jimmy Conde, Albert Jackson, Tony Broadhead, Paul Whelan, Viv Williams, John Mcllelend, Neville Powell, Ray Stubbs, Mark Palios, Marc Lloyd Williams, Phil Lunn, Paul Roberts, Owain Tudur-Jones…… All we needed to do was close our eyes.

Each story, each image, each memory was passed on in such detail that the history continued to live. Each memory spoke of a great connection to a place, every memory meant something to people. This is major problem with our move, now that the action has stopped, now that we’re cast out of our spiritual home, these memories will begin to lose their potency. The visualisation of historical events become difficult without the site.

The ground was a connection between an area, it’s people and history, without the ground these connections are lost. Living breathing social history suddenly becomes pictures in dusty books. “Casual observers” couldn’t see any of this no matter how hard they looked.

The fans weren’t just witnesses of history, they helped to create the history. Without fans the atmospheric ground could not have existed. At Farrar Road the fans didn’t stop at building an atmosphere , they actually helped to build the ground, they built history.  Fans helped build the High Street terracing and they helped to build the fencing UEFA demanded for the Atletico match in 1985;

It may be obvious thing to say that people cannot spend so much time in a place without feeling a connection but it’s true. Therefore the impeding loss of Farrar Road was obviously going to be felt keenly, as my friend Ian Gill says;

“It’s really been a character in my childhood. The back of our house looked over on the ground. Each morning I’d open the curtains and the first thing I’d see would be the goal at the Farrar end and the back of the stand. This was my back garden to all intents and purposes. This is where I would come and kick a ball after school and I’d come and watch the team training.

Bangor City’s president, the ex-FIFA refereee Gwyn Pierce Owen said this;

“It’s 65 years since I’ve been coming here to watch matches. There are many memories – good ones and unfortunate ones – but mostly good ones.

“I remember coming here with my father at the age of 12 when the place was packed and trying to find a place to watch the game. You couldn’t watch it from behind the barriers. It was that popular. We used to sit between the touchline and the barriers. I remember the public address man saying ‘would everyone sitting in the stand please move inwards to leave more room for people.’

Phil Stead has also noticed that there is something special  at Farrar Road;

It was 1995 when I first made a visit to the ground. A car-full of Cardiffians made the five hour drive to Bangor to watch the UEFA Cup defeat to Widzew Lodz. I was smitten. Here, in one of the most beautiful, remote parts of our country was a proper football ground. It had fans who cared just as much as we did, and the Bangor City support that night for a team that was outclassed stayed with me. It even influenced my decision to move my family to the area a decade later.

These were glory nights for a stadium that sits right at the centre of its community. Bangor citizens rightly have a pride in their club’s achievements that are tied inextracibly with their ground.

And here as well;

That’s what we want from our football – for once, the players are behaving like fans behave – it means as much to Les and Sion as it does to the Bangor faithful. That’s rare these days. After Cardiff City beat Leeds 4-0 at Elland Road recently, the players wandered about 5 yards towards the 1200 fans who had travelled for 5 hours on a Monday night and half-heartedly applauded.

But Bangor City are good at this. In fact, I can’t think of a club that has a closer relationship between team and its supporters.In this image below, the man in the brown coat is Bangor City Chairman Dilwyn Jones, a long-time fan himself. A moment before I had overheard the manager Nev Powell telling his team to go over to the fans “Go on – get over there, get right in amongst them”

Fans of other clubs have also seen something special in Farrar Road;

“For me, it represents a reminder of childhood holidays and a rare occasion when I actually made an accurate football prediction. I should really try to get back there one last time before it disappears for good……”

This one too;

“Farrar Road¹, Bangor’s footballing Mecca, is home to Bangor City Football Club. It was the scene of some magic moments, like Bobby Charlton’s last game ever and the visit of Athletico Madrid, and is the place where all Bangor’s devotees congregate to worship their heroes.

The ground’s capacity is approximately 5,000, of which 350 are seated, and the team it hosts have proved themselves capable of challenging for the Welsh League Cup (finalists in 1999-2000), Welsh Cup and the League of Wales. Farrar Road lies about five minutes’ walk from Bangor’s mainline railway station and does a mean line in pies.”

A Merthyr fan wrote this;

“Always enjoyed our visits to Farrar Road especially of course our Welsh Cup semi-final win on penalty kicks in 1987. A great old-fashioned stadium very much like our very own Penydarren Park. Good luck to them at their new stadium in Nantporth.”

These feelings are not just the sentimental cliches of idealistic fans, they are tangible, they are felt by the players too. Neville Powell, ex-player and present manager, said this;

“It’s been a special place for so many people and I’ve been lucky to be part of it. There’s been some really special times there and for me to go back and do it as a manager has been doubly special.

“Bangor’s been one of the top non-league clubs in the country for decades. The Farrar Road ground has meant so much to so many people – players, managers and fans. Visiting players always like playing there – it’s a proper football stadium that creates the atmosphere you want to be involved in.”

Owain Tudor Junes, the Welsh international and ex-Bangor captain said this;

“I have many different memories from being a young boy growing up seeing Nigel Adkins’ Bangor City side winning the league to initially playing with the reserves and moving on to the first-team under Peter Davenport.

“It was always a good place to play and certainly intimidating. Certainly teams didn’t like coming up to play against Bangor.”

Marc Lloyd Williams, or Jiws as he’s known to us, said this;

“What has made Farrar Road an iconic place over the years has been the faithful supporters that have continually given their all to the club and who have been fundamental in securing financial stability in recent years – the atmosphere they generate has been second to none.

There will be no ground like it ever to grace the WPL again, although I am confident the faithful Citizens will do their utmost to re-create the magnificent Farrar Road experience at their new home. I will always treasure the memories I had of playing there.”

Southampton’s manager Nigel Adkins won two consecutive league titles as Bangor’s goalkeeping player-manager,  he said this;

(Adkins and Bangor parted company in 1995)………. “However, there were no hard feelings on Adkins’ part and he remains a City fan to the present day.

“I’ve got nothing but happy memories of my time at Bangor,” he said. “We had some good players, played good football and were successful……….The fans at Bangor were amazing and made Farrar Road have a unique atmosphere all of its own.”

The TV presenter Ray Stubbs is an ex-Bangor City player and he sent me this tweet;

“………sad day but positive day in same breath I guess …. Best wishes to great club”

One of the best quote I’ve heard about Farrar Road was made by FC Midtjylland’s general manager in 2008, he described Farrar Road as a “place that smells of football”. This is the effect that Bangor City amd Farrar Road has on people.

I can’t explain exactly how much I will miss Farrar Road. I may not have been going there for as many years as the other hard-core fans (I’ve only been going for the last 18 and a half years) but I’ve still managed to feel that Farrar Road means something. And now for a bit of a personal tribute from me….

During the early 1990s BBC Wales used to broadcast a programme called  ”Wales on Saturday”.  Every week Alan Wilkins would tell us all about sport in Wales, he even told us about non-league football because the  programme had a weekly section about the Welsh non-league clubs, it then had section about the League of Wales after the league’s formation.

Thanks to this coverage Farrar Road reminded me of the grounds that featured in the less well known Roy of the Rovers stories. I think it was mainly the perimeter fences.  It was nice to see that there was a proper football ground in north Wales that was a bit closer than Wrexham. At this point in my life I never been to Farrar Road but due to the programme I’d gained a sense of of what Farrar Road was like, it also gave me a sense that I was missing something.

It may seem odd that took me so long to visit Farrar Road, especially with Bangor being so close to Llandudno. With the power of hindsight it certainly feels odd to me. You have to understand that when I was younger I felt that there was a gap between Llandudno and the rest of the world, I suppose that every young person must feel this about their town. Even though I knew that I was born Bangor the city felt quite far away, I wasn’t even sure where it was exactly. This sense of alienation is down to the A55. In my youth the A55 wasn’t the slick motorway that connects north Wales to civilisation that we enjoy today, it was a turtuous strip of tarmac that connected me to travel sickness and ruined bank holidays.

If I think back to the late 1980s/early 1990s I don’t remember much coverage of Bangor in the local media until the start of the League of Wales,  I certainly don’t remember too much coverage of Bangor in Llandudno’s papers – although I must qualify this statement by stating that I don’t remember being an avid reader of the local press. I don’t remember many people talking about them in school and my dad didn’t really mention local football either so I continued to live in ignorance of the soulful city. I knew that Bangor had beaten Napoli in the 1960s but not much more.

My desire to visit Farrar Road really began in Autumn 1993 when I went to Bangor University for an UCAS open day. I walked up the slope at the side of the University’s main arts building and I saw Farrar Road for the first time in the flesh. It looked like I’d imagine it; a proper football ground. I resolved there and then that I would go to Farrar Road at the next available opportunity.

I first went to Farrar Road in November 1993. I don’t remember too much about the match, I remember that that there was a bit of sun but that’s it.  There are two matches at Farrar Road that I remember vividly from my first season. A Wales v England non-league international that was played in a virtual blizzard and the historic 9-0 victory over Haverfordwest that took place on the same day as the 1994 FA Cup final. The vistory meant that Bangor only needed a draw in Porthmadog to win the league. I was there with the other 3,000 Bangor fans to see the victory, as the scar on my right hand will testify.

My next three notable games were two European matches and a Welsh Cup quarter final with Wrexham. All three matches involved bigger crowds than the usual  and it was great to see so many people come to Farrar Road. The Welsh Cup match felt like a proper match because it was end-to end stuff and there were loads of away fans, in fact there were so many away fans that the St.Paul’s end was filled by Wrexham fans.

The European matches were also great in their own ways. They were both played in warm sunshine and this always helps. The first one against Akranes was in the balance for a long time when Frank Motttram reduced the Icelandic sides’ lead. By the end of the match on that lovely warm evening it felt like Bangor had a chance to progress. We didn’t progress though. 

The next match against Widzew Lodz was marked by a large number of drunken Polish fans. One of them latched on to me and pestered me for the French shirt I happened to be wearing. In between the pulls of my shirts he entertained us by reading through my programme. When he reached the section that detailed Widzew’s European history he dismissed all their opponents (Liverpool, Man United, Juventus) with a swish of his foot and a swoosh from his mouth, as if he were actually dropkicking their meaningless hides. Widzew scored some fantastic goal that evening as I stood there in my reproduction Widzew shirt, (yes I swapped my shirt with the persistent Pole.)

These matches made me realise that Bangor City were a proper football club with proper fans, just like Phil found on his visit to the Widzew match. The three matches also showed that my Roy of the Rovers view of Farrar Road was correct. I could see that it was still a club with a fantastic history.

Since the Widzew match I have so many memories that it would be tedious to list them all, I’ll just give you the edited highlights instead;  Jiws scoring from the halfway line with a volley, nearly beating Wrexham in the the Premier Cup semi final a decade after the Welsh Cup match, the four year run of Welsh cup finals, the last gasp draw versus Llangefni that highlighted the team spirit Nev had instilled, a friendly victory over Aris in 1998 that gave me hope of European success, getting abused as a reserve match linesman.

I found more than highlights at Farrar Road, I don’t want to get too sentimental but I found love at Farrar Road. I don’t mean that soppy kind of valentine card love, it’s the love of the fabric of society, a love for my fellow man, a love of being a part of social history. When I think of Farrar Road I don’t think of the decrepid fabric of the structures. I think of the conversations, the emotions, the singing, the goals but most of all I think of the happiness I felt when I was there.

Unfortunately there are some people that won’t allow sentiment to get in the way of making a big fat profit.

I now own a bona fide piece of history

Oh yes I do!!

I’m not sure which piece of turf I own. I’m not sure if it was trodden upon by Paisley, Dalglish, Law, Best, Charlton or Fillol and I’m not sure whether Les, Sion, Brewie, Johnno or Nev ever trod upon this exact piece of turf either. I can’t say I care very much about any of that, I’ll just say that they all trod on my particular piece.

I may even go further and give my piece of turf a bit of historical significance. I may say that my piece was the piece that Craig Garside swivelled upon to score the league title winner against TNS in April. I may say that it was the piece from which Jimmy Carberry scored the all-important ninth goal against Haverfordwest in 1994 or I may say it was the piece of turf from which Ken Birch scored against Napoli. I may even say that it was the piece of turf that I was standing upon when I flagged a Deiniolen player offside as a hastily trained linesman. Thinking about it I’m going to say that it’s all of these at different times over the next few years.

Now all I have to do is remember to water and trim my piece of history.

And now………The Jet Set preview of 2012!!!

I predict the following……

The European Cup will be won by a team from the last 16.

Euro 2012 will be won by a country.

John Terry will still be an odious prick.

“Platini the curly nemesis” will find yet more ingenious ways to prevent me from watching my teams in Europe.

Some other stuff will happen as well.

At last, the Jet Set review of 2011

Not bad, much better than 2010

My last ever picture of Farrar Road

It’s not often you can say THIS is the last of anything, well this photo will literally be my last photo of Farrar Road.

Well unless I go back in the next few weeks for one last, long, lingering look

My pictures of Farrar Road

Here is a selection from the photos I’ve taken since I bought my first digital camera.

Teletext memories

When Teletext was still available there was a time when Bangor City were never off it!

26th April 2007

30th April 2007

8th May 2007

More from the Jet Set Archives

When Rhys Williams was still Welsh, just before he decided to be Australian again;

From the Jet Set Archives

Chris Gunter scores a penalty at Rhyl for Wales U17s

Gareth Bale sits on the bench for Wales U17s

I’ve found a couple more pictures

I found these lovely pics on the internet.

 

20 Things I love about football – Part Two

11. Fashion

I’ve always loved football-related fashion because it seemed to be the preferred style of the best dressed people.

For years I didn’t know the style was football-related because  like all north Walian teenagers I was ignorant of cultural nuances,  or to put it another way, I was a bit of a woollyback. If you had asked me I would not have been able  to precisely define, or even name, the style I liked. I only knew two things for definite about the style;  it’s general look – smart trainers and jeans –  and where to find it - on the streets of Liverpool and Manchester.

When I was a teenager we would often make family visits to Liverpool or Manchester. Whilst we were there I always seemed to notice that lads wore trainers from the cutting edge of style. Their footwear was light years away from what was available in Llandudno, their style felt unobtainable.

I already had a desire for sportswear before I went to the north western cities thanks to adverts like the one on the back of the Wales v Spain programme from 1985;

At that time my only interest in the Gazelles was my love of that particular shade of  green, there was no way I could know the cultural trends attached to the wearing of certain clothes.

Over the next few years I became  fascinated by the world of 1980s sportswear. The trips to the north west put certain ideas in my mind. I watched tennis on tv and I wanted the styles worn by Borg (as seen in old clips), Becker and Edberg.  I used to paw over the photospreads of players at home in Shoot! and Match because they were wearing similar styles as the tennis players. I wanted those styles!!!! The link with football meant I wanted the stuff all the more. Whenever I went to sports shops (at the time when sports shop were sport shops) I saw adverts and I wanted those shoes, I wanted those shirts!! 

Unfortunately the stuff still felt unobtainable and because I was such  a nice child I didn’t pressure my parents into trying to find stuff for me. I was still unaware that a footballing subculture was related to certain styles of clothing.

The French must share some of the burden for the development of my burning desire to own a certain style of sportswear. Whenever our school had French exchange students they wore such exotic adidas footwear I couldn’t help but want some. One of my friends had a copy of the monthly French football magazine Onze Mondial and this made my longing even greater.

In the back of the magazine there was an advert for a shop called “FOOT CENTRE”. This magical and mythical shop offered a range of football shirts and sportswear that I could only dream of. Thanks to the advert my dreams were colour pictures in front of my eyes. I fantasised about the stock that the shop contained. The objects appeared to be tantalisingly in reach, all I needed to do was fill out the order form. There were a couple of snags with this; a french order form is not like a British order form plus I needed to pay in francs. The objects of my desire were so close yet still so far away still.

The sportswear was still an unobtainble ideal for two reasons; I didn’t know where to get from in Britain and I didn’t have the money to get anything. I couldn’t see a way to past this problem. Even by the time I was old enough to gather funds through legalised child labour I still had problems. I thought  I had gained an idea where I could get the stuff from ; Next doors’ catalogues!!! Unfotunately streetwise people didn’t shop with Great Universal. I was still a woollyback in a streetwise world.

Since growing up I have managed to find out the name for my cherished style; “the Casual look”. Through reading around the subject and talking to other people I’ve found out that the look that I saw on the streets of the north west was actually a slight development on the original Casual style from the early to mid 1980s.

I may have liked what I saw in the late ’80s but I grew to love the original style. Because I liked tennis in the 1980s the names Fila and Sergio Tacchini already had a certain resonance, they spoke of playboys at the tennis club in Monte Carlo, they spoke of  living the good life. The good resonance became even stronger my love of 1980s sportswear intertwined with my love of the casual style. 

There has been good news in the last few years; the 1980s and the casual look have become fashionable and thanks to the internet I finally have access to the look I’ve craved. As a consequence I have Llandudno’s largest collection of reproduction adidas trainers. I know that in a strict casual sense the reproduction sportswear is probably a bit of a cliche and therefore bit of a no-no but I’m not a casual. I just like the threads, now I rejoice that I can finally wear stuff that I’ve wanted for ages.

In case you’re wondering I don’t endorse all aspects of casual culture, I can do without the violence and right-wing tinges. I just like the threads. In my own stupid mind the casuals were a re-incarnation of the 1960s mods and I like that.

12. Witnessing you team getting Hammered

Watching your team win is all fine and dandy and watching your team hammer another has a certain charm but these outcomes don’t tell you much. They tell you that your team has scored more than the other team and the hammering tells you that the other team didn’t play very well but that’s it. Neither of those possible match outcomes teaches you anything about life, they don’t allow spiritual growth either.

On a superficial level watching your team hammer opponents appears to be very satisfying but this is pure illusion.  When your team starts to dish out a real hammering you may end up feeling  a little frustrated. You may find that your team is winning 4-0 one day and you may start to feel happy but, will you remain happy? The scoreline offer hopes of seeing a record score and you certainly won’t want the scoring won’t stop but you can’t control the situation, Invariably the scoring does stop. Consequently you have to deal with failure of those hopes. This is not a good feeling. 

The situation can become even worse if you manage see your team score the 5th or 6th goal. This may seem good on a superficial level but in these circumstances one person’s joy is another’s humiliation. What kind of person actually truly enjoys seeing people humiliated? Which human wants to see hurt in the opposition keepers’ eyes, or the resigned slouch of his shoulders, and then wish futher embarrassment upon him? Watching your team hammer another does no good for a fans’ spiritual side. You gain nothing from humiliating an opponent.

Watching your team suffer a hammering is the most beneficial result for your soul. This statement may sound odd to the lay person but who really care what they think? They usually know nothing. You benefit from a hammering in several ways;

Firstly your soul benefits from watching a humiliation; by witnessing a humiliation you have to deal with the humiliation. To succesfully deal with the so-called humiliation you have remain on a spiritual even keel. By remaining on an even keel you become a zen master. When you’re a zen master, nothing will ever faze you again, nothing in life and nothing on a football pitch. Your soul will remain balanced.

Secondly, it helps you to put  the events in football matches, and life, into some kind of perspective.

Lastly, if glory comes too easily it’s not a glory that’s not worth having. Witnessing humiliation is therefore a necessary stop on the road to glory. If your journey does not take in some form of humiliating defeat can you say you deserve to see the glory? Without a hammering I doubt that you would appreciate the glory when it comes.

There are other, less spiritual, up sides to witnessing a hammering. Any idiot can enjoy the time that your side dishes out a hammering and they often do. Unfortunately idiots invariably choose me as their Maypole to dance around. Hammerings draw gloating idiots like baying mobs draw morons, everybody wants the reflected glory.

It’s weird when people turn up and celebrate as if the result actually means something. Sometimes these people even go off their heads with joy and start gloating. How can you enjoy the moment properly with people like that around you? There is no kudos in excessively gloryfying momentary success.

If you’re after kudos there is some to be had  in uttering the immortal words; “Yeah very good, I see you’re enjoying our title win, but where were you when we lost 9-0 in the league cup?” Watch their unearned jollity crumble.

It takes someone special to not only witness a hammering, but grow from it. Plebians watch a hammering, the special few grow from the experience. In short I take the Lutheran point of view ; a little suffering is good for the soul

13. The spirit of Ultra Culture

The world of the Ultras is mis-understood. To a lot of people an Ultra is a hooligan, a fighter, a scumbag with a scarf around their faces to protect them from the police’s tear gas or a right-wing psychopath that showers black players with racial abuse. This is obviously a narrow view of ultras. Ultras, accoding to Wikipedia are;

“………a type of sports fans renowned for their fanatical support and elaborate displays. They are predominantly European followers of football teams. The behavioral tendency of ultras groups includes the use of flares (primarily in tifo choreography), vocal support in large groups and the displaying of banners at football stadiums, all of which are designed to create an atmosphere which encourages their own team and intimidates opposing players and supporters.”

When you see fantastic pyrotechnics and amazing displays at football matches this is the mark of the Ultras. The displays don’t just happen, they need organizing, so the Ultras organise. 

The giant banners that you see at matches don’t just happen either. A banner needs to be designed, then material needs to be bought, then the banner actually needs to be made. Ultras organise all this to help create the right display. The spirit of the Ultras is vital for football.

For example  take the card displays  that happen at British grounds  they don’t happen. they need physical  help and computers to make them happen. Without the spirit of the Ultras they wouldn’t happen.

The spirit of the Ultras influenced me to make flags for Bangor City,  I tried to introduce a little of Serie A into the Welsh Premier League by doing this and people seem to like them.  The spirit has influenced the good people at Port Talbot too. Football needs flags and banners, therefore football needs Ultras.

Without the spirit of the Ultras football would be blanded into another branch of the grey leisure industry.

14. The anticipation

Without this there is nothing.

You wouldn’t get out of bed with a smile upon your face, you wouldn’t walk down the street with a skip in your step, your thoughts wouldn’t be taken over by fantastic possibilities, you wouldn’t spend all week looking forward to Saturday. It’s easy enough to think of examples that shows the place of anticipation but it’s probably morte effective to ask what life would be without anticipation ……………….

Well I’ve had a thought about that, I don’t think I would like that version of the world.

Football constantly gives me a sense of anticipation.

15. The Adidas Tango 

The adidas Tango is simply best ball ever and I love it for this reason. I don’t mean I love it in that ironic “Weren’t the 1980s fantastic” kind of way (Thank you E4 and Top Man) and I don’t mean I love it in that laddish Four Fout Two kind of way either.  I mean it it in the old fashioned love of objects way. I think that the adidas Tango is the most beautiful ball ever created.

The curved  Tango shape moves a game more gracefully than any other ball. This is why I love the Tango, it makes football look better.

When I was younger I used to like watching  ”Race for the Championship”, the Video review of the 1983-’84 season. I remember a goal from a Norwich City v Notts County match more than anything else. Basically a Norwich player scored with a 20 yard shot that had a trajectory that  was parallel to the ground. It was quite a special goal anyway but the Tango made this goal look even better than it was.

On the action reply the ball seemed to spin through the air as it flew into the goal at great speed. The Tango shape appeared to give the ball a more beautiful trajectory. The goal looked even better because the ball span at the foot of the net.

When I was younger I wanted a Tango and luckliy I was given a rather good Tango for christmas one year. When I developed an interest in Subbuteo there was only one style of ball that I was going to have;

I liked the Tango so much I even had trainers with a Tango design;

The basic Tango design was so good they used a ball baring it in every World Cup and European Championships from 1978-2000. Of all the other examples I particularly liked the Azteca from Mexico ’86.  I have such cherished images of the Tango shape from World football I can’t help but be attracted to its image.

When adidas announced the Tango shape was due to make a return for Euro 2012 I couldn’t help but feel happy.

16. Segregation

I don’t like the point behind segregation but I like the effect it creates in stadium. I like to see a crowd where there are distinctive colour blocks as it’s a great sight. You can see the effect of colour in the following examples;

17. Getting Lost in Wikipedia

If you’ve never gone on a Wikipedia safari you should. I can’t recommend it highly enough as it’s amazing what you can find out during its course.

A Wikipedia safari is the easiest thing in the world to go on. All you need to is click on some of the blue hyperlinks when they take your fancy. It’s amazing where they will take you. After my latest safari I now know the following;

- West Germany played part of West Germany (The Sarrland) during  the 1954 world cup qualifiers.

- David Rocastles’ Cousin, Craig,  plays in the MLS, as does Konrad Warzycha,  the son  Ex-Everton player Robert Warzycha .

- Ex Liverpool and Newcastle goalkeeper Mike Hooper is now a Door Supervisor, that’s bouncer to you and me.

- In Puerto Rico there is both a River Plate and a Sevilla, in Baltimore (U.S.A of A) there’s another Crystal Palace.

- Ex-Everton shortarse Adrian Heath now manages the Orlando City Soccer Club.

- Roy Wegerle was voted NASL Rookie of the Year in 1984.

- The Brooklyn Bridegrooms and Boston Beaneaters were once professional clubs in America, as were the Harrison Alley Boys .

- 76 countries have qualified for at least one world cup and 27 countries have appeared at the European Championships.

- Rainer Bohnhof is the only player to have played in 3 European Championship finals.

- Catalonia, the Basque Country, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are members of the European Union of Futsal.

- The USSR and Wales made their World cup final debuts in the same year.

Why not try it for yourself, it’s bit of fun.

18. Looking at football photos

There’s nothing to this, you just look at photos and use your imagination. Try to imagine what it felt like to be around then, try to imagine what happened just before the picture was taken. Try to imagine what’s happening;

(A big  acknowledgement to Footy Sphere for finding some of these)

 

19. Playing in defence

Strikers may get all the glory but your football afficienado will know that the success of team is built on the sturdy foundations made by a sturdy defence. The fancy dans up front may be the pin ups  but without the steely defence they would not be able to flounce around with the ball.

If football is a house the defence is not only the foundations it’s also  the main load-baring wall because it takes the strains placed upon it and remain in place.  The defence is also mortar between the bricks of the house because the defence hold things together. The defence is also the bathroom and washing machine because it cleans everything up. The defence is also the spare key that’s attached to a string by the letterbox because i also rescutes hopeless situation. The defence is the key to football.

When you’re a defender you gladly accept the historic resposibility that is placed upon you. You wear your badge of homour with pride. When I played in defence I gained such a special satifaction from blocking shots, tackling people and disposessing others that I began to take on the persona of Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name”. I literally exuded authority and this led to the moniker ”The Wall”  from the denizens of  Llandudno’s cultural quarter.  

In one legendary match – a match that is still talked of in Llandudno’s not very easily pleased cultural quarter – I performed my defensive duties which such aplomb that the right winger swapped sides. This is the ultimate admission of failure from an attacking player and it was the first time that Llandudno had seen this event in the flesh. At the time I remember that this was particularly satisfying as the bigmouth fancied himself as a bit of a player.

Here’s how the legendary match panned out; for the first few times that I beat him to the ball he remained calm. Then I kept on beating him and the muttering started, there is no sweeter sound than this for a defender.  After the next few times he started swearing at his teamamtes, as if it was their fault he couldn’t beat me. He tried nudging me, he tried pushing me but that didn’t work, he tried  leaving his foot in and I laughed to myself. I’d got him in my pocket. Then he swapped sides, so I followed him and stopped him time after time. I felt an enormous sense of well-being at the end of the match.

Strikers have a tangible and self-glorifying sense of glory, defenders have a more self-efacing style of glory. We have a quite determination to keep the score at nil. We are proper players, we are proper men, we are complete men.

20. The official world cup films

I like the official world cup film because they provide a different view of the action. For example the Mexico ’70 film used cameras on the opposite side of the Azteca Stadium from the TV camera.

All of the world cup films are great  but Hero is my favourite. Here it is;

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6

PART 7

20 reasons why I love football, Part One

If you’re like me the moment that John Terry appears in our media you get lost in the moment. You are so busy wishing that  John Terry receives a lifetime ban the world passes you by. Luckily I chanced across the “500 Reasons to love Football” blog  yesterday and my misanthropic reverie was interrupted for once. 

I only read reasons 379-385 but it was enough to make me realise that sometimes I’m too much of a moaning get. In honour of the festive period I have decided to write about some of the things that I actually love about the so-called “slightly attractive game”.

1. Fanzines

I missed the emergence of the football fanzine. I missed the big bang of  DIY self-expression for the same reason that I missed a lot of music scenes; I was too young. I may have missed  the blossoming of youthful exuberance but I like to think that I experienced the golden age of fanzines, the time when this genre of literature reached full maturity. 

My first experience of  a fanzine was reading something that looked like a proper magazine. It was called When Saturday Comes. I liked the humour, I liked the style of writing and I liked the articles on foreign football. I really liked the fanzine directory in the back; even Colwyn Bay had a fanzine!!! It was called “Claret and Booze” in case you’re wondering.

The names in the directory was very evocative,  from Arsenal’s “The Gooner” to Bradford’s “City Gent”, from Sunderland’s “A Love Supreme” to Sheffield Wednesday’s “Battle of the Monster Trucks”. Then you had the fanzine with surely the best name ever; “Dial M for Merthyr”. After I read the fanzine directory I decided that I would buy fanzines whenever I could.

The  first proper fanzines I bought were a Liverpool one; “Through the Wind and Rain”, and a Welsh one, “Twlltin Pob…” ( Incidentally Twlltin Pob…was the first thing that I ever bought from Farrar Road.) I like their irreverence and their iconoclasm but I mainly liked the swearing. Thanks to my excellently well-mannered upbringing owning a magazine that contained swearing felt like a slightly dangerous act.

Every time I go to a new ground I always check if either set of  fans produce a fanzine, if they do I always try to find the vendors. Fanzines cut through the banalities of the anodyne official programme to provide a real taste of what football is like, like why Steve Bruce is a complete twat. It”s always good to know what other fans think and fanzines tell us what they think.

In the last year or so I’ve managed to pick up some old fanzines from Rhyl and Colwyn Bay and they have provided a very interesting snapshot of north Walian football in the early 1990s. It was also interesting to find out why their fans don’t like Bangor City. Colwyn Bay’s fans were pissed off about Bangor’s treachery when they joined the League of Wales whereas Rhyl’s fans were jealous that Bangor’s programme used to say that Bangor were the biggest non-league club in north Wales when we had the temerity to have this status.

Mind you I’ve read some crap fanzines in my time too - like the thing that purported to be a Birmingham City fanzine,  but looked more like a BNP  recruiting mag, I once read while waiting for a haircut.

Get out there and buy one!!!

2. 1980s shirts

(I couldn’t choose 1980s kits because the shorts were indecently short and the sock were just well socks.)

The 1980s was the last era where kits were simple clean designs. There was something stylish about 1980s shirts because designers were yet to add day-glo colours, symmetrical shapes and asymmetrical blobs. There was just something crisp about the design; the most ostentatious design was a pin stripe. Sometimes the shirt didn’t have a sponsor.

Look at these lovely examples;

Sadly the kit manufacturers haven’t always produced stylish kits since the 1980s. For example;

3. Seeing late, late goals.

There’s something magical about seeing a last minute goal.

I must clarify this statement, I’m not talking about any old last minute goal.  I’m not talking about watching the last minute goals that your team scores when they are already 4-0 up and I’m obviously not talking about watching the  last minute goal your team concedes either. Witnessing either of these types of last minute goal is not satisfying. The kind of last-minute goals that I’m referring to are the satisfying ones; when your team scores an equaliser or winner.

The feeling you feel when you see your team score an important last-minute goal is almost indescribable. The best way that I can describe it is as a feeling of massive emotional release. When I typed goal in the sentence that preceded the last one I inadvertently typed “gaol”, this was almost Freudian. An important last minute goal in your teams favour can sometimes feel like an unexpected reprieve from a punishment. (Obviously this is more figurative than literal). An important last minute goal is one of the rare time when all of your hopes come to fruition.

The funny thing about important late, late goals is that equalisers feel almost as good as winners, especially when you been behind by more than one goal, especially if your opponents have played like moral-free twats by subjecting you to 90  minutes of whinging, incessant claiming,  simulating and wasting time etc, etc.

Since Neville Powell became Bangor City manager in 2007 there have been many occasions when Bangor have scored important late, late goals; In November 2007 Bangor were losing 2-0 to Llangefni in the 88^th minute by the 93rd minute we had equalised. Last season Airbus suffered when karma caught up with them and we equalised in injury time. Last Season Jamie Reed scored two goals in injury time that meant Bangor City won 3-1. We have even scored late, late goals in Welsh Cup Finals; in the four consecutive Welsh Cup Finals I’ve seen one last-minute equaliser and one injury time winner.

I love late, late goals.

4. Trips to places you haven’t been to.

I should give thanks to football for allowing me to see lots of the world. Without football providing a reason to travel I’m not sure I would have been to Glasgow, Graz, Altrincham, Blackburn, Jutland, Brussels, Saint Etienne, Wigan or Helsinki. Without football I may not have seen as much of Wales either; I doubt I would have been to certain areas of Cardiff, Newport or Swansea and I probably wouldn’t have been to Caersws, Guilsfield, Carmarthen or Llanelli either.

Without football the trips would not have taken place, without these trips my life would not feel as rich. I wouldn’t have such an intimate knowledge of Britain’s public transport.  I would know less about the differing local cultures of Britain and Europe. I would not have sampled the culinary delights that various areas of Europe offer; the Lamb Oggie, the Piri-piri chicken Baguette, the Frankfurter, the Foie Gras sandwich. I would not have visited 100s of pubs and bars.  I wouldn’t have seen city and town centre are becoming homogenised with my own eyes either. 

Thank you football for giving me a taste of the “better life”!!!!

5. Trips abroad

Football trips abroad are quite special events. Football trips are better versions of so-called normal holidays; you can still do the normal holiday stuff like sight-seeing but you also have  a football match in the sun to watch.

When you add the carousing, the singing, the fancy dress clothing, the sunshine, the carousing, the memories, the food and the carousing a football trip simply becomes a magical experience. Anyone that’s been on a football trips would agree about this.

The joy begins before you even leave home. First you have the draw. This is when the anticipation begins; Who will we play? Where will go? I hope we go somewhere new!! If you’re a follower of a national team the anticipation is sometimes greater because the draw is made at least 18 months before the first match so you have ages to plan you expectations.

The anticipation goes up a notch when the exact travel plans are formulated. At this stage there will be excited conversations about plans…….. “Where did you get your flights from?” ……… “Where are you flying from?”………… ”Where are you staying?”……….. “On aye, Mark stayed there last time, he said it was quite nice!!!”…….

God forbid if you can’t go on the trip because this stage will begin grate after a bit.

In the weeks leading up to the trip you head will be filled by a thousand questions and a thousand hopes; How will it turn out? ….. Which sights will we see? ……. How drunk will the usual suspects get?…… Imagine how good it will be if we score!!! If you’re venturing into unknown territory the anticipation is even greater.

The football may be the reason that you’re going on a trip but it’s almost incidental to the trip. These trips are always great because you meet so many amazed people in your destination. A lot of people just won’t believe that you’ve gone all that way simply to watch a game of football.

When I think about it, it’s amazing to think how many people I’ve met, and  friends I’ve made, on football trips abroad. Not only do you meet great people but you also get to know more about people you already know because  you see another side to them. Even if you see people every Saturday you don’t know that much about them as you only generally see them in a couple of settings, the pub and the ground. When you’re abroad with the same people you see how people truly are because you see how they act in a different environment.  In my experience this has been a positive experience as it often leads to fantastic experiences.

This is all great and we haven’t even touched the idea of memories from trips, the laughs the stories are great, they are something to share for years to come.  For example my trip to Denmark in 2008 saw the following;

I thought that I’d found I shop that sold Kalashnikovs yet an hour later it wasn’t there; the exiled Cardiff fan in Aarhus that fixed the pub quiz for us to win; Huw P singing Karaoke; the fans’ match in Herning; the 60 Bangor fans constantly sang for the entire match; I nearly missed the plane hoe because I overslept, I arrived with five minutes check in to spare.

These memories may not sound very impressive but they will last forever. After the trip they will be easily shared at every opportunity to ensure a few laughs at an opportune moment. Football trips are magic!!

6. Conversations with people

I’m not talking about having conversations about football with people. There’s nothing worse than entering into a debate with people who believe they are football fans because they shout at television screens in pubs. 

I’m talking about here the conversations that you have with the people who go to matches with you. These conversations will cover everything; food, politics, football, music, films, holiday memories. You don’t even need football as a topic. Some of the most interesting conversation I’ve ever had have taken place at football matches. Watching football is one of the most social of leisure activities and being with good people is what being a football fan is all about.

7. Meeting people

A common interest in football has provided many friendships over the years. This method of making friends began in primary school and has remained ever since. 

As I said above football is a social activity, it’s bound to facilitate the making of  friendships, it’s bound to bring people together. It’s amazing who I’ve bumped into just because they happen to like football; Welsh musicians, soap actors, Sgorio journalists, authors of award winning blogs, actors, presenters of wildlife programmes on the television …….

I always find it amazing when I think about  how many people I’ve met because of football over the last few years. At Bangor I’ve met several hundred people because they simply wanted to come to Bangor. Some of them became regular fans because they loved the experience so much; a Canadian freelance photographer, a university lecturer in French and long distance Millwall fan from Yorkshire to name are only three example.

On the way to Bangor matches I’ve met Meic Stevens the musician, a bloke that goes to Tranmere games in the same car as Nigel from Half Man Half Biscuit and a Merthyr fan that liked my flags when he saw them on S4C.

I have met and befriended opposition fans.  There’s Nigel, Mark and  the rest of the gang at Port Talbot, plus the good people at Airbus. I have even met and befriended foreign fans; I’m still very much in touch with fans from Midtjylland like Hekler and Soren.

Then there’ s the internet. Thanks to twitter, new avenues of football friendship have opened up and this has led to meeting even more people. It only took a few quick tweets and I met Rob and Ian from 200 per cent in Chester’s ground. Over the last few months I’ve met Ianto and Rhodri at Carmarthen thanks to Twitter as well. Facebook is also good for this and this led me to hook up with Hekler and the boys from Midtjylland.

Message boards also have their place for developing friendships as there’s so much space to express your thoughts well. This led to the building of great relations between Bangor City and Port Talbot Town fans.

This blog has also led to good human contacts.  Some fine writers, like the people behind “The Two Unfortunates” and comrades like the Hibby Boys, Ricardo and the Portuguese lads have been in touch over the years. I may not have met all these people yet but it’s nice to think football has allowed people from various parts of the world to contact each other.

This is surely one of the better thing about football that it can allow people to make friends.

8. Danny Baker

Of all the presenters, panellists and pundits that opine on the subject of the beautiful game Danny Baker is the best. He’s the only person that I can think of that doesn’t resort to cliché when he’s talking about football.

In fact, Baker actively avoids clichés by preferring to talk about the incidentals around the game. Questions like; “What’s the oddest shape pitch you’ve ever played on” and “Can we makes a players out of all the body parts that players have injured?” fill his shows. This approach is a darn sight better than listen to than the crap Lovejoy, Spoony and the other twats come out with. He also made the best funny football out-takes video. His recovery from Cancer was some of the best news I’ve heard this year.

200 percent has an archive of Danny Baker (with Danny Kelly) material so you can here how good he is for yourself.

9. Discovering clips on You Tube

It’s a fantastic pleasure to discover things on you tube, whether that’s things you’ve forgotten about, things you haven’t discovered yet or just plain odd things. Some examples;

Remember, never overlook the clips in the sidebar when you’re viewing You Tube. Visual gold may lie in those clips!!!

10. Rediscovering old programmes and magazines

See this post.

Living in the grip of the hyperbolic followers of Gubba

I visited the BBC website yesterday and I noticed the following question; Was 2011 the most eventful year yet?

I clicked on the question because I wanted to see if 2011 was the most eventful year in the history of the Earth. The click led to this page. After reading its contents I was disappointed to find that 2011 wasn’t the most eventful year in the history of Earth. Some important and serious stuff happened – the death of dictators, earthquakes and a royal wedding – but this kind of stuff happens each year if you live in the right, or wrong, place. I really began to doubt the author’s claim when he put forward one of our chancellor’s six monthly budget announcements as one of the so-called important events in 2011. 

I began to think that everyone now views the world in the same way that Tony Gubba, the master of the misguided hyperbolic statement, views football matches.

When I was younger I lost count of the times that I heard him say something like  ”…with what will surely be a goal of the season contender” or “… conjured up one of the best saves ever” during his match report on Final Score. After he told us about the supreme skills he would always urge you not to miss Match of the Day. Needless to say I took Tony at his word so I’d tune in  to watch Match of The Day in the hope of being amazed by some exquisite skill of fantastic piece of aplomb. I’d always end up disappointed.

I’ll partly give him his dues, he had always seen something that was above average but it was never that fantastic. After he had cried wolf for the umpteenth time I realised he was a false prophet and stopped listening to him. I wondered how the balding fraudster could lead us all on.

The page that I found on the BBC website shows us that Tony’s outlook is becoming widespread. The author of the page on the BBC website seems just too certain of himself. I can’t understand how anyone can attempt to judge the historical significance of the time in which they’re living.

Sometimes you can tell that you are living in a historically important time. For example 1989 felt important at the time because of  the end of the Cold War. The Cold War conditioned peoples’ thinking so you knew that the world would be different when it ended.

The effect of events are hardly ever this clear cut. There was no way that people living in 1919 would have known that the Versailles treaty would help Hitler’s rise to power. People living in 1939 would not have known that they had just witnessed the start of a six year conflict that would result in the deaths of millions. These people would have lived through actual world changing events without realising they were living at such an important time. We also need to remember the effect of unintended events upon the course of history.

It says a lot about the rampant solipsism of our time that we believe that our time is the most important. This lack of an ability to see beyond our own experience blights the media. Every time there’s a top 10, top 50 or top 100 poll in anything and it’s always skewed towards the time that the poll was taken. 

The coverage of football is full of this crap. Whichever team does well / plays well for more than couple of seasons seems to be granted the title of one of the best ever by tossers like Andy Townsend. Likewise whichever player happens to mesmerise the viewing public for a few years is given a place in the pantheon of world football’s heroes.

Last week I experienced a symptom of this kind of thinking when I watched a programme called “Barcelona’s 50 Greatest Goals” on ITV4. This programme wasn’t about the best goals scored by Barcelona in their history, it was about the best goals scored by Barcelona in the champions league (not the European Cup, just the champions league).

Consequently we only saw goals scored after 1994. The title of the programme should have been  ”Barcelona’s 50 Greatest Goals as long as you limit your choice to the ITV Archive”. We need to compare things in order for things to be remembered, and so we don’t get carried away, but the media goes about this in the totally wrong way.

I do wish people would stop with the hyperbole. Some of us don’t need to be sold things all the time. Some of us know things already, please give us some credit for that.

Today I will will be mostly wearing…..

Today I will be mostly wearing a t-shirt that I designed;

VIVA BANGOR CITY!!!!!!!!!

Recalling lost times and losing time at the same time

If you’re like me you will not only enjoy reading old programmes, you will love reading old programmes. You will love reading old programmes so much that you won’t care if you lose hours doing it, you will think that you have spent your time wisely. You will have been amusing yourself AND studying social history because programmes are chock- full of interesting nuggets old so they provide a great flavour of the time they were printed.

If you have yet to make reading old programmes part of your lifestyle don’t worry, you can start at any time as the only thing you need is a load of old programmes.

There are many methods of finding old programmes, here are three of the simplest; 1. Buy them from shady looking blokes at a car boot sale. 2. Buy bargain bundles from shady looking blokes loitering outside Molineux. 3. Buy them from second-hand goods shops owned by shady looking blokes.

Unfortunately the old programme game is controlled by shady looking blokes. If you want to develop this hobby there are two ways to deal with the problem; 1. Console yourself that hobbies without a hint of danger are usually crap. 2. Avoid  the shady looking blokes by working in your local semi-pro club’s club shop (This also has the clear benefit of being the best way to gain programmes as people will invariably see you as the ideal target to foist old programmes upon).  When you’ve dealt with the problem of shady looking blokes and then gained access to programmes you can start!

In case you’re still wondering about which method to use in this hobby, this is how you use old programmes to conduct social history; read the programmes and then remember what life is like at the moment. Now you know how to start your hobby!!

I’ll give you an example of how it works - Earlier this year someone presented me with a programme for the 1969/’70 league match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford (cost; 4d). It only took a solitary paragraph to become aware just how differently they used to do things. Yes it can be that simple, one paragraph is all that’s needed to conduct social history.

The paragraph in question concerned the forthcoming Liverpool V Manchester United match. United not only told their supporters that the match was not all ticket match but they advised their supporters to use the Anfield Road end. Advised!!! Yes, that’s advised not ordered.

Nowadays British society seems to enjoy the fact that Liverpool v Man Utd is a hate-filled hype-fest.  Even if you combined Christmas, Easter, New Year’s Eve, May Day and Llandudno’s victorian extravaganza into one politically correctness gone mad non-denominational festival called “YESTIVAL”  this would be nothing when compared to United v Liverpool. In the 1960s, as you can see, the match was treated as just another. 

The paragraph also shows that football, although popular in the ’60s, was not the all-consuming behemoth it is now. At Man Utd v Liverpool matches in the 21st century you will remain ticketless unless you know Ryan Giggs or Stevie G or you’re Irish. In the 1960s you could just turn up and pay on the turnstile.

The paragraph also highlights the changing leisure patterns of the British people since the 1940s. The fact that there was an announcement indicates that the clubs were actually expecting people from Manchester to go to this match. This highlights the development of transport, higher earnings and greater free-time since the ”You never had it so good” 1950s. The announcement in the programme is enough to make you pine for the days when football fans were trusted, or was it “uncared for”? Look at the knowledge and understanding that can be gained from one simple paragraph!!

Societal changes can be seen through the simple comparison of programmes. Take two Liverpool v Chelsea programmes, one from 2003 (£3) and the other from 1966 (4d) 

In 2003 the programme says that Liverpool had “Fantastic fans” who were “World Famous” but that didn’t stop their Stadium Manager, a Mr. Ged Poynton, telling these fantastic fans that he didn’t like it when they stood up at matches;

 “All clubs have signed up to the Health and Safety Package………..Many fans find their enjoyment of the game wrecked when a small number of people choose to get on their feet for long periods……….Fans who persistently stand and ignore requests…. may ultimately not be renewed under the Ground Regulations.” And you can use the space under the seats to store club superstore carrier bags safely. However the fans with carrier bags had better watch out. On the same page as Mr.Poynton’s piece was a warning from the saintly Michael Owen; Beware pickpockets!! – “especially in crowded areas”.

The 1960s were obviously free of moral panics and hysteria of the 2000s, they were a more carefree tim. 37 years earlier the only thing that the Liverpool v Chelsea programme urged fans to do was ”wet your whistle with a Threllfalls”.

Other differences between then and now can be seen. Nowadays managers like Wenger and Ferguson will blame poor pitches for defeats  but managers in the 1960s would have no truck with such bullshit, the 1966 Liverpool v Chelsea programme tells us that Anfield would be hosting an Everton reserves  home match (yes, the hated enemy) and a police match (Liverpool City Police versus The Met within two days of each other. Shanks could have stopped these games but chose not to.

You can also see that people used  more polite and more circumspect language in the 1960s;  if you were “Extra Broad or Extra Small” you had no need to worry according to the advert for the “Outsize mans shop”. There was less hard sell as well; an advert offered train travel up to Glasgow by train (to watch Liverpool play in the Cup Winners’ Cup final) for only 70 Shillings return. The club didn’t make the advert sound like they were taking the opportunity to make a fast buck, they made it sound like a public information announcement.

It’s not just the 1960s programmes that show you a different Britain, 1980s programme also highlight differences as well. The 1980s were the heyday of my programme collecting days so I have lots of examples.

For example take an Aston Villa programme from 1980 (Villa V Brighton 35p). That programme made the 1980s feel like an era where football made a blatant attempts to woo businessmen. Villa told us that; 

”Business executives from around the world” would  ”have taken away very tasty impressions” due to the “…..Luxuriously appointed amenity in the new stand…..”. 

Businessmen have always played a part in professional football but the tone in the programme showed that Villa were open to new ways of attracting people using the new methods to do business in Thatcher’s Britain (Villa were probably hoping that the businessmen would bring some cash with them). You could quite plausibly argue that an appeal of this nature  highlights the move away from the discredited ideas of John Maynard Keynes towards the thrusting  monetarism of Thatcher.

Although you could claim that football started to reflect the more political climate we’re not talking about 2011 just yet, the Villa didn’t just cater for the international Jet Set they also tried to remember that  their club was still a family. If you wanted to join“…the big happy family that is working for Aston Villa, just give Peter Young a call.” I wonder if Peter’s still there? You don’t here this kind of talk now do you? You could say that the programme also highlighted the developing tension between the brave new Thatcherite world and the cosy old world.

Generally speaking there was a nice warm glow about 1980s football programmes that a fan from the 1960s would find recognisable. The outlook was still local, interviews or profiles were non-judgemental, and the adverts were quaint. In 1985 I found a shop near Anfield that sold mystery programme bundles for a pound. As a consequence I still possess many examples of the 1985-‘86 vintage. Here’s a small taste of that time.

From the Aston Villa V Newcastle programme of that season (50p) you would have learnt that Villa’s talent scouts had the North of England well-covered and that Mark Walters was engaged to Tracey, a Coventry girl, but had no immediate plans to marry. The approach was purely anodyne - clichéd Steak  ‘n’ chips, Diana Ross stuff - but the lack of intrusion did have a sort of charm when compared to the hectoring style of the present.

You could find all sorts of interesting curios in mid-1980s programmes. For example, badge collecting was a big scene in the 1980s. Wojtek Wisinski from Poland wanted to swap pin badges with some people from the decadent west and for some reason he chose Bolton (Bolton V Fulham, 1987, 60p), he promised to reply. Another Pole, Andrej Porzuczek chose Man City (City v Bury, 50p). The programmes also reminded me that pen pals were a big thing in the 1980s.

The backpage of a Leeds programme in 1986 (Leeds v Sheff. Utd, 50p) often contained an inter-generational line up featuring Terry Phelan, Denis Irwin and Peter Lorimer. At Crystal Palace (Palace v Charlton, 50p) Roger de Courcy and Nookie Bear were always keen to “visit” Selhurst Park when their “professional duties permit”. A Shrewsbury programme (Shrewsbury v Hull City, 50p) could even offer an academic enquiry into the effect of kit colour on performance.

When you look at the programmes through the eyes of today they could contain strange adverts.  Chester were supported by their local Nuclear installation at Capenhurst because this facility was “A factory enriching the future” that was “alongside a city rich in history”. I couldn’t help but wonder what the facility thought they would be  enriching the future with, maybe they foresaw a large leak of enriched uranium gas. (Chester V Scunthorpe, 40p)

If you were staying in the Ipswich area for a few days at that time you could get in touch with the Allthread Distributor Group for “..all your industrial threded fastener requirements” or nuts and bolts to the rest of us. (Ipswich v Birmingham, 50p)

Some of the adverts spookily predated later developments. Sandoms of Peckham (Palace v Charlton, 50p) beat Claims Direct by 20 years with this direct plea; “You Got Bovver? Phone a lawyer! This advert, for such base matters, was placed unfortunately next to the page of the club chaplain unfortunately, how would people concentrate on the spiritual message?  Maintaining concentration on spiritual matters was probably made more difficult by the tempting offer at the bottom of the page. Your wife could be the proud owner of  a “Ladies Leisure Suit” for less than 18 pounds if you were quick enough to buy one.

Everything cost less in 1985. You could also pick up a half-season ticket for the Holte End for £30.00, (a saving of £12 from paying at the turnstile) and a new Villa shirt for £13.99 (or £14.99 if you wanted one with a sponsor’s logo). (Aston Villa V Newcastle 50p). At Cardiff  it cost 10p for a child’s pass to the Family Section at Ninian Park, £3 for a Tonne of coal if you went to the right place and £30 to sponsor Tarki Micallef’s tracksuit. (Cardiff v Derby, 50p). If you wanted to get the coach to a Norwich home games it would only cost you £2 but you’d have to catch it from outside Swaffham Toilets. (Norwich v Barnsley, 50p)

During the 1980s it seems that supporters were far more trusted by clubs, it seems that they were considered to be a proper part of the club. I’m not sure the same feeling exists in 2011, at least not in the same way as back then.  There was also a good spirit between fans back then; at Ipswich three supporters’ clubs (Ipswich v Birmingham, 50p)   had raised several hundred pounds for the Bradford City Disaster Fund in 1985.  There was more of a community feel as well. In programmes of this era clubs would entice you into joining lotteries, scratchcards and  totes etc to raise money for the clubs. Fans evidently played an important part in raising revenue for the clubs. In today’s light this is an unbelievebly quaint idea. Imagine fans helping to raising money to help premier league clubs pay the bills!!!!! 

However it wasn’t all warm lager and sunshine in the mid 1980s programmes; the spectre of hooliganism was also present. Every club ran a coach service to games, alcohol-free and stewarded coaches. (How different from the unguarded 1960s).

By the 1980s most programmes began to carry the legend; ”official programme”. The addition of those two words begs the obvious question; who would want to go to the trouble of making an unofficial Walsall programme? An article in Walsall v Newport programme may suggest a reason for the addition of those two words. The article complained that there were “7 and a half” pages of adverts in the last programme, maybe underground fan groups wanted to produce an advert-free programme?

I can’t talk about the subject of looking at old programmes without mentioning Welsh international programmes.

It’s amazing how much the Welsh international programmes highlight both how things have changed and how they have remained the same. The opening message, always on the third page of the programme, has always been upbeat with it’s optimistic tone; “this could be the time”. In the 1970s & ’80s you start to sense that there’s a history of frustration of  ”nearlys” and ”not quites” if you look at enough programmes. In later years the programme’s message still tries to remain upbeat but the style has a hollowness, instead of hope it feels more like ”abject failure disguised in the language of hope”.

In 1973 (Wales v Scotland, 10p) Wales were one good result in Poland away from the World Cup. Wales didn’t qualify.

In 1975 we had a vital game in front of us for qualification (Wales v Austria, 1975, 15p).  Wales “qualified”.

By 1983 Wales were top of the group (Wales V Bulgaria, 50p), still had a “fine chance”.  6 months later we were ”one win from qualification” (Wales v Yugoslavia, 60p). Wales didn’t qualify.

In 1985 Wales “still had a good chance” of qualifying for Mexico (Wales v Spain, 80p). Wales didn’t qualify.

By 1999 a win against the ex-Soviet republic Belarus had “lifted the spirits of the nation” (Wales V Switzerland, £3). Wales didn’t qualify.

Yes Wales used to ride the wave of hope but now we can’t be bothered to hope. Not only are  you able to track the dwindling hopes of the national team you can notice curios too; Sectarian issues are nothing new in the Welsh support; Mike England bemoaned the north-south divide in the crowd as early as 1980 (Wales v England, 40p).

We can also notice differences over time.

In 1979 (Wales V Germany, 30p) Clive Thomas decided to proclaim “No” to Pro Refs”. He remained so resolute it was tempting to think that the Sweden V Brazil match in Argentina ’78 had never happened. If refs went professional Clive might  have to give up his job as a promotions executive with “one of the largest industrial cleaning firms in Europe” so he may have had ulterior motives for dismissing the idea out of hand. On the subject of adverts,  if any fans at the Germany match were after insurance they had prospect of “keen quotes” from T& J Lewis or if they wanted Hi-Fi equipment they could have gone to T.E. Roberts as it was ”All At Discount Prices!!!”.  

11 years on (Wales V Belgium £1) the FAW obviously weren’t arsed about the programmes; the opinion pieces and articles had  been virtually dropped and the only advert was  for the “Main Contractors for the Refurbishment of the Welsh Football Association Headquarters.” I’m not sure I would accept a recommendation from an organisation from that can’t even get their own name right. – The correct title of the Welsh F.A. is the  “Football Association of Wales” in case you’re interested.

At least we know this has now changed, the FAW now knows its own name.

To cut a long story short I recommend reading old programmes.

Simplicity is beauty

And to think that some people say that they can’t make nice kits nowadays, I say feast your eyes on the new Italian goalkeepers jersey;

There’s just enough of Dino Zoff and traditional Italian goalkeeping shirt collars about it to make me instantly want one.

It’s a pity I have three reasons for not getting one; when I think of the Italian national side I think of a bottle of urine landing close by, the wearer of this jersey likes to wear a dubious shirt number and t-shirts with dubious slogans and this jersey costs £50.

Yes ordinary, mass-produced football shirts now cost £50. Ye Gods!!

I’ve had a christmas card!!!

The Football Association of Wales have sent me Christmas card. As you lot are people too I suppose they meant to send one to you to but you just happened to be on the wrong mailing list.

Here’s the card!!!

As you can see it’s flexible enough for you to be included in the glad tidings as well!!!!

If you’re like me, you probably didn’t know Santa was Welsh either. I can’t work out if he either took advantage of the cheap kit deals at JJB (His elves must have embroidered the kit with the now obligatory match information) or he’s actually qualified to play for Wales.

I know the method of deciding the eligibility of players has changed but the FAW seem to be pushing their luck. I know Santa wasn’t born in Wales and I don’t think he has Welsh parents or grandparents, and as far as I know he didn’t go to school with Ryan Shawcross. The FAW are just asking for trouble with publicity like this if you ask me.

I don’t think Santa is international footballer material. Firstly there’s his physical condition, then there’s his headwear. If they banned snoods for health and safety reasons because they could enable player to be pulled back they surely wouldn’t allow Santa’s hat. You could almost guarantee that some n’er do well would attempt to pull it if Santa showboated the ball through his legs.

Flipping heck, I know Wales are short of players but the FAW can’t seriously be thinking of naming a rotund, and probably morbidly obese,  multi-national folk-figures in its international squads. Wales would be a laughing stock again.

Due to the fact I’m such a valued customer I don’t suppose I will be waiting too long for my West Ham-themed christmas card

The creation of folk devils is alive and well!!

In the last few day I have been reminded that moral panics begin with gossip, innuendo and unnecessary worrying.

It all started last Friday when a soon to be traumatised fan witnessed something truly horrific (and who am I to doubt the veracity of what he’s saying);

“I only go to Bangor for the odd evening match as I follow my local club on saturday. It is normally a good atmosphere but last night I want to point a couple of things out. Getting into the ground is a farce and be careful those attending on Dec 27th. One gate is ridiculous.Secondly Bangor City football club should offer an official appology to Bala Manager Colin Caton for the disgraceful abuse he received from a section of spectators in the stand directly behind his dugout during the 2nd half last night, and for absolutely no reason whatsoever. In fairness Bangor Stewards did move in and threaten to evict those guilty persons.The name of Bangor city football club gets smirched by a few idiots yet again.”

It was a bloody good job that this person was able to relay the news to everyone in north Wales via the Welsh Premier message board. People need to be warned of this latest heinous act. My god, in a fortnight Bangor City are due to play Prestatyn Town and you can only imagine the carnage!!!!! One Prestatyn fan was rightly worried and suggested the following solution;

“more importantly we need to ENSURE that these plebs are segregated at our ground after the abuse they gave Hunty, Gibbo and Dunty last season. I suggest they are herded up behind the Bastion road goal with a line of stewards directly in front of them. As soon as there is a hint of verbal abuse to any of our players or management team they are removed from the ground. They should not be allowed to swap ends or move from this location until the final whistle, whereupon they are escorted via the rear gate onto Bastion road!”

Hear, hear, we cannot treat recidivists like proper people can we? Yet another fan worried in this climate of fear;

“i’d say segregation for the 27th is a must.

not going to say that ‘Bangor fans are idiots’ or anything like that, because lets be honest, EVERY CLUB has its idiot supporters whose actions spoil it for the majority and often smear the name of their club.

lets generalise and say 5% (for example) of supporters at ALL CLUBS are idiots, this is only magnified at Bangor because their crowds are so much higher than other clubs”

I’m with the first worrier about Bangor City fans, I hate it when they go around smirching themselves.

On the other hand, what a steaming load of shite this all is. The first quote is from a witness of so-called vicious aggression yet I stood near the supposed location and didn’t hear anything vicious. The second and third posts seem to suggest that there is some kind of vicious rivalry  between Bangor City and Prestatyn Town. This is a load of crap.

Some Prestatyn fans might think there’s a rivalry but the feeling is not reciprocated – I can’t find a single Bangor fans that regards Prestatyn as a credible rival as Prestatyn is just too far away and quite frankly too small to bother with. The strongest anti-Prestayn feeling I’ve come across (I doubt you could actually call it a feeling as it’s so faint) is a mildly vague irritation that the position of the ground causes matches to feel a little breezy.

While some people have suggested segregation is needed between Bangor City fans and Prestatyn Town fans because of the inherent danger in that situation, reality presents a different picture.

Firstly, we’re talking about two clubs in the Welsh Premier League. Secondly, and more importantly,  there can’t possibly be a massive rivalry between the two clubs because the first teams of Prestatyn and Bangor have only played each on a competitive basis for the last three and a bit seasons (and for the first two of these seasons Rhyl were Prestayn’s big, local, rivals so we’re actually only talking about one season and a bit). A season and a bit is simply not long enough for a proper rivalry to develop. Especially when nothing untoward has happened in that time. 

Logically there shouldn’t be a rivalry between Prestatyn and Bangor and is this is borne out by reality, there is no rivalry. You simply can’t say there is a rivalry when Prestatyn haven’t been able to muster more than 30-40 noticeable fans for a match at Farrar Road.

If there is no real rivalry you may wonder why some people have called for segregation. This is where internet comes in!! Message boards are the magical place where abstract ideas are repeated so often they are reified into to a version of reality, even if the ideas are obviously complete crap.

The Welsh Premier message board, and twitter, have created an alternative reality in the minds of some people.  There were  personality clashes between individuals on the internet but that was all. Some people have taken these simple personality clashes to mean there is a deep rivalry between whole groups of people. This idea is simply idiotic, individuals never speak for groups as a whole. A few people not getting on should not to lead to more police turning up than usual.

I don’t know what these idiots are worrying because even if there was a rivalry, none of them would be in any danger anyway. The match on the 27th will be the last ever match at Farrar Road so each and every Bangor fan at the game will be more concerned with the fact that it’s the last ever game at Farrar Road rather than with the fact we’re playing Prestatyn. Apart from the potential 3 points to help with our title push, the game will be almost incidental.

I hate football fans, most of the time there’s simply no need to act in the way they do.

You just can’t enjoy football any more can you?

 There are times in my life when I just roll with it like Liam Gallagher circa 1995.

At these times I get in and simply hang my attitude by the door,  kick off my trainers and pull on my tracksuit bottoms. Then I sit down to admire the footy on my telly. It’s good to be a bloody bloke!!!

I sit there just enthralled by the tekkers, marvelling at the showboats, waiting for the chance to thrust my arms and make the football fans’ grimace of joy (© Cunts in the Advertising Industry). Then I can’t wait to tweet what I think .

Marvellous, it’s what footy is all about!!!!

THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE REALLY IS THE BEST FOOTBALL IN THE WORLD, I MEAN YOU JUST DON’T GET THISQUALITYINTHEWORLDCUPDOYOU?MESSI’SNEVERDONEINTHEWORLDCUPHASHE?YOUJUSTDON’TSEETEKKERSLIKEITINTHEWORLDCUPANDTHECHAMPIONSLEAGUE ISONEVERYYEARASWELLNOTEVERYFOURYEARSLIKETHEWORLDCUP……..

Recently when I’ve felt possessed by the spirit of banter my soul floats out of my body. It looks down calmly at first but then launches the foullest tirade of abuse that it’s possible to inflict upon a human being. When my soul returns I feel so discombobulated I need to sleep for 12 hours to recover.

As you can imagine I’m sick of this happening. I’m sick of getting involved in the whole sorry pantomime of the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE-LA LIGA – PREMIER LEAGUE, or the axis of bullshit” as I’ve started to call it. I’m glad when anything allows me to avoid the attention vortex of the “axis of bullshit” and allows my soul remain in its place. It’s a beautiful moment when I find stuff that reminds me just how morally bankrupt elite level football is.

Earlier today I came across this article about Inter’s expenditure on the Swiss Ramble blog. There were so many large numbers quoted in the article it may constitute porn for accountants. My favourite bit is the following paragraph;

“In fact, in the 16 years since Moratti took over, the club has accumulated losses of around €1.3 billion with the president personally putting in over €750 million. Moratti has been criticised by many Inter fans, but he can hardly be accused of not putting his money where his mouth is. Even if his decisions have not always been the best, the reality is that the president’s financial support has been an absolutely essential part of the club’s success”

Firstly,consider the situation where bloke puts that much money into a club and supporters still have a go. I hate football. Secondly consider the fact that this bloke put that much money in to a fucking football club. I hate football even more.

750 million euros. 750 fucking million fucking euros. For Fuck’s sake. That’s the value of trade between Spain and Angola. That’s the amount of money the World Bank lends to Poland. That’s 150 million Euros more than EDF is putting in to prolonging the lifespans of France’s Nuclear Reactors. That’s the amount the German government pays out in aid to its farmers over two years. That’s also amount of money that ONE person has put into a ONE football club to ensure they have a chance of momentary success.

Football makes me sick

Socrates. A small tribute

When Socrates recently died after a short illness one of THE names in world football history passed from this existence. As with Zico, Falcao, Junior and Eder the very mention of Socrates’ name puts you in mind of a certain image of 1980s football; skilful, stylish, smooth.  This is not just a cliché;

Socrates was held is such esteem by his old club, Corinthians, that the present players chose to remember him by displaying the international salute of solidarity, the raised fist;

This particular gesture of remembrance was an apt gesture for two reasons. Firstly Socrates was a lefty, he once said; “I have three idols – Che, Fidel and John Lennon.”  Secondly, Socrates had a wider impact on Brazillian society than just being a stylish midfielder in their national football team. He was also a key actor in Brazil’s move away from dictatorship. The Corithian Democracy movement that  he founded with teamates in order to achieve greater democracy within the club overgrew it’s original aims and gave the national democratisation movement an impetus.  When Corinthians wore the word ”Democracia” on the back of their black shirts Socrates described it as; “perhaps the most perfect moment I ever lived. And I’m sure it was for 95% of [my teammates] too.” 

I like Socrates because he’s the kind of footballer that transcends the transient glory of the pitch, but even without the political stuff it’s hard not to like Socrates. Whenever I hear his name I think of colourful pictures from my childhood;

When I looked at these pictures and read the uncomplicated prose of Shoot!, Match and the Ladybird World Cup books my imagination flew. I didn’t need television to admire Socrates - the only footage of Socrates playing I distinctly remember watching was his brief appearance in my favourite childhood film “Hero” (the official film of Mexico ’86)  . - all I needed was some pictures and my imagination. I imagine that this may seem odd to youngsters nowadays but that’s how we used to do things.

In my mind Socrates, and others, offered a fantastic view of an exotic world. They wore odd boots and their kit was made by an odd company that was available in odd colours. These players became heroes, they became untouchable images.

Socrates began as an untouchable image but the more I found out about him, and the more saw of him, the more I liked him. The mythical figure gained flesh as I discovered that he was the sort of hero football should have. Socrates was a man who did things with a certain style;

“His style of play was unmistakable: elegant and effortless almost to the point of nonchalance, and with a penchant for the back-heel that prompted Pelé to remark that Sócrates played better going backwards than most footballers going forward.”

How can you not love a player like this? Look at this goal, look at the way Socrates stylishly runs up the pitch;

Brian Glanville remembers his great effect;

“In the 1982 World Cup finals in Spain, Brazil opened against Russia in Seville, deploying a midfield of tremendous talent. Against the Russians, Sócrates was ubiquitous and outstanding, now in the firing line, now dropping deep to cover for the attacking left back, Júnior. After 75 minutes, he struck the equaliser with a fulminating right-footed shot and Brazil went on to win 2-1. In their next match, won 4-1 against a Scotland team which, like Russia, had actually taken the lead, Sócrates neatly set up Brazil’s fourth goal for his fellow midfielder, Falcão. In a second-round group match that his team, in Barcelona, was unlucky to lose to Italy, Sócrates scored another spectacular goal. Receiving a perfectly angled pass from Zico, he somehow found a gap between Italy’s goalkeeper, Dino Zoff, and the near post, a shot of tremendous power which found its billet. But Brazil, which needed only a draw to reach the semi-finals, lost 3-2 and went out in one of the most dramatic games in the history of the tournament.”

How could you not warm to football like this? Some of the iconoclasts that lurk on the When Saturday Comes message board don’t share this view of Socrates so they subjected him to revisionism;

“The Brazil 82 side is the most over romanticised team in history and to be honest Socrates was perhaps the most over romanticised player too.
He played in that team, although he was the most expendable of the midfielders. He was tall, good looking, he had the coolest name, he smoked, he was a rebel. All fine, I think admiration for his cool outsider status gets mixed up with his on field value. It’s no wonder that whenever people think of him, probably all they ever knew of him was that tournament. While Zico, Eder, Cerezo, Junior, Falcao et al are also remembered primarily for that summer in Spain, most of us could think of something else they did in their careers outside that tournament. Probably not the case with Socrates.

He was a You Tube player before You Tube existed to be honest. He had brilliant natural gifts, but achieved little on the field with them. He won next to nothing, three Sao Paulo state titles with Corinthians and a Rio one with Flamengo where he was little more than a wheezing accessory. He never got close to a Brazilian championship, well a single semi-final, nothing in the Libertadores, his European stint with Fiorentina displayed a lack of professionalism and pride in his work that would make Adriano blush.

His lack of athleticism and mobility, pride in his own fitness and performances, unwillingness to put in the work when recovering from injury. Actually there’s a lot of stories from his career which suggests he was a precocious and self centred individual and not necessarily a pleasure to play with, be managed by or be around.”

Although it probably feels good to be this knowledgeable about football, it’s certainly superficially impressive, I’m not sure that I want to be this analytical about football. I’m not sure I could get so miffed, or angry, that a supposedly great player was several points short of my ideal. As Anthony Wilson once said; “If it’s a choice between the facts and the legend, go for the legend”. Sometimes you just have to go for the legend because not every aspect of human existence is an equation to be solved.

Sometimes in football you just have to go for the legend. You have to forget that Puskas didn’t possess a right foot, or that Maradona was a cocaine addict, or that Michel Platini has a vendetta against you. Sometimes you just have to appreciate the evidence of your eyes. If you become too  analytical you may fail to see the beauty in a situation.

The fact that Socrates thought he was unsuited to professional football may provide ammunition to those that dispute his position as a hero. If you thought like this then you’d be reducing football to a simple muscular quarrel. I can’t give any credence to the idea that you dismiss a luxuriously talented player simply because he appears to be “lazy”. During the hustle and bustle of an  important game the approach of the louche player may lead to a goal with a subtle touch, flick or turn? Would people dismiss his contribution then? There needs to be room for the artists doing things at their pace.

Who cares if Socrates didn’t track back, or ran out of puff, he was capable of doing things that other players couldn’t do, or wouldn’t think of doing. Most skilful players are graceful not clumsy. For example look at the graceful way Socrates progresses down the field with the ball for the goal against Italy. Football artists often do their work with an economy of movement that’s not always perceptible to the eye that’s determined to be critical. We should cut them a bit of slack, especially when they reached the very top and still describe themselves like this;

“I am an anti-athlete. I cannot deny myself certain lapses from the strict regime of a sportsman. You have to take me as I am.”

Why should players submit to the authoritarian conventions of mechanised, professional football? More players should be like Socrates, he made football bend his way. He may not have achieved everything that he should have but he remained at the top of world football as a rounded individual, he was a man of moral stubbornness with sublime skills. He was a complete man. 

Socrates proved that there is more to life than being a pro by earning a medical degree at the same time as playing. How many players  continue with their education as well as playing at the top-level? Socrates should be the icon for footballer to emulate. If more players had this attitude football may more enjoyable, it would certainly be less stressful.

Last week Shane Williams retired from international rugby. Barry John mourned the idea that Shane Williams was the last player of his type. You could say the same sort of thing about Socrates, I wonder whether there will be another player like him in the future.

R.I.P. Gary Speed the gentleman

Even in numbness I thought I would try to write a tribute to Gary Speed.

I thought hard and really tried to write something but the words just wouldn’t come. Instead I decided to collect together what other people have said. It’s almost needless to say that everybody held Gary in the highest possible esteem;

BBC Wales’ Rob Phillips tweeted;

“Lost for suitable words on Gary Speed. Just privileged to have met him. True servant to all his clubs and country. Gave Wales hope. RIP.”

Raymond Verheijen tweeted;

“Gary Speed was a beautiful person & a top manager. Today I’ve lost a friend with who I shared a dream. My thoughts are with his wife & kids.”

Journalist Paul Hayward tweeted;

“Whenever I mentioned Gary Speed to Bobby Robson when I was ghosting his memoirs he would praise him unstoppably. He adored him.”

Xabi Alonso tweeted;

“RIP Gary Speed. My first PL game game was against him, he showed me in that game what is british football about.”

Ian Wright tweeted;

“Devastating to hear about Gary Speed’s death. Condolences to his family. Proper football man. With the face of an Hollywood actor. Peace.”

Rob Earnshaw tweeted;

“I feel so sad.We have lost our manager,leader and an extremely great person who’s inspired us all in the last year.Rest in Peace Gary Speed”

Michael Owen said;

“Everyone knew that Gary Speed was a gentleman… his footballing ability was without question but I would like to focus on him as a person”

Paul Jewell said;

“He was rare in football. It’s a jealous world, people are always having a go at you, or talking about someone but you never heard Gary Speed talking about anybody or anybody saying anything bad about him.

“When someone dies people always say nice things but genuinely, I don’t think there’s anyone in the game who had any edge with Speedo.

“It puts football into perspective. I’ve been pretty down about our results recently but when you hear about and think about how his family must be feeling today – and for the rest of their lives – it pales into insignificance.”

Massive Wales Gwilym Boore wrote this on Facebook;

“This was a man who convinced those who weren’t convinced, gave hope to those who’d given up, bought happiness to people who’d had a gutsful, and gave aspirations to those of us who’ve always supported Welsh football but didn’t see him as the answer. That, my friends, is a hell of a legacy.”

One Everton fan wrote;

 ”It was with great sadness and a massive sense of  shock I heard the news that Gary Speed had died today aged just 42.

No matter the circumstances it is a very sad loss at such a young age. If one word sums Gary Speed up, particularly Gary Speed Evertonian, it would be INTEGRITY.I don’t suppose there is a higher role than that of becoming the manager of your national side. On his appointment to the role of Welsh manager in December 2010 Speed said “It’s something that’s very difficult to turn down when your country comes calling. I’m a very proud man at this moment to be asked to be the manager of Wales.”

 The same pride shining through that statement as the pride you could see when he played for Everton. He only played 65 games for us scoring 17 goals but in that short period was appointed club captain. That was the measure of him. The measure of his 100% commitment to Everton.

His departure was shrouded in an air of mystery but ever the consummate professional and gentleman he  never revealed the exact circumstances surrounding Evertons need to sell him to Newcastle and the club’s need to stitch him up. In a tactic Everton appear to have mastered, the player became the fall guy and boyhood blue was made to appear a Judas. That Speed took disgusting reaction from a section of blues fully on the chin and still, unlike the others involved, put the club above his own personal image is the measure of the man.

Talking in 2008 Gary said “Playing for Everton was the fulfillment of a dream for me,” he said. “It is special to play for the team you supported as a boy, the team you watched from the terraces. It was a special feeling for me. Being captain was a tremendous honor too. I will always remember when Howard Kendall told me I would be captain. It is something that will live with me forever. That was a real highlight for me and also the only hat-trick I ever scored was for Everton and that is special.”

That was Gary Speed’s line and no matter the coaxing at Dinners and ex-player gatherings Gary Speed never had a bad word to say about Everton.

I’ll never hear a bad word said about Gary Speed.

Evertonian and Gentleman

May he Rest in Peace”

Leeds fan and magazine editor James Brown wrote this;

“One minute you’re running round a park training with 20 young footballers and the next you get back to your car and find texts and calls coming into your phone telling you a player you know and admire is dead. You drop the boys off home and then sit by the side of the road crying your eyes out. If ever there was a player you could point to as a role model it was Gary Speed. Maybe one of those kids I train, or the boys they play against, or any other kid running over muddy parks all over the country this morning will become as great a footballer and sportsman as Gary Speed. That’s what you hope for, but they’ll have to go some way to achieve that.

Right now twitter, sky sports and 5Live are over-run with the outpouring of grief for this admirable man. Many are assuming, in the vacuum of details and in the light of Stan Collymore’s open portrayal of his depression, that Speedo was depressed. But as far as I know that’s just speculation, whatever has lead Gary to take his life is probably more personal than illness.

Last night I was stood in the Leeds United manager’s office at Elland Road with Simon Grayson and my two closest Leeds United supporting friends. One of them is Gary’s friend and agent. All four of us have known Gary Speed to differing degrees. None of us could have predicted that 12 hours later Gary would be found dead at home by his wife, Louise. The manager’s area, reception, and players lounge at Elland Road are covered with pictures of the great players who made their names under Don Revie, Howard Wilkinson and David O’Leary. It wasn’t always that way, when Howard Wilkinson, arrived at the club at the end of the 1980s he insisted they take down the images of the Revie legends who were proving too great a team for subsequent groups of players to measure themselves against.

It was Wilkinson’s aim to create a new generation of players who would create a name for themselves. Gary Speed was a vital, vibrant part of the success Wilkinson steered the club to. Of all the pictures of the great Jack Charlton, free-kick expert Ian Harte, midfield dynamo David Batty, and the images of the British Forces soldiers in their Leeds kits the one I looked at longest yesterday was the group image of Howard Wilkinson’s squad celebrating their winning the old League Division One championship.

If Batty was the tenacity in that great midfield, Speed was the pace and the cutting edge, McAllister was the passer, Strachan pulled the strings, but it was Speedo streaking forward with the ball that was the youthful threat the team needed. With Batts, Speedo represented the present and also the future. His recent success after a wobbly start as the Welsh national football manager has given similar hope and optimism to a nation for whom footballing success has been sparse. He was instrumental in helping Leeds United recapture glory and there’s few who could argue that he hadn’t started something significant with his young Welsh team.

If Batty was the tenacity in that great midfield, Speed was the pace and the cutting edge

Back in the early 90s at Elland Road some fans would mock Speedo for growing his hair long, he could have come out in a pink afro for all I cared, so long as he made up the fourth place in the fantastic midfield line-up and carried the game to the opposition like he did. His friend Ryan Giggs might have had that added elan to his play that won him the extra-attention but Speed was pretty much the all-round midfielder, as reflected in the quality of clubs he played for and the men like Alex Ferguson and Fabio Capello who coveted him. When I think of Gary on the pitch I think of a player who works and runs constantly, who can score all sorts of goals.

Those who knew Gary Speed very well, his friends and colleagues in and out of football, are as shocked as the rest of us who simply admired him. But it didn’t matter if you played for Wales, Manchester United or were just a fan of football he would have time for you. He was an inspiration. Everyone who ever met him will tell you what a nice guy he was but that’s the word I would use Inspiration.

We are so often taught to respect our elders that it becomes strange when the footballers in the team you support are younger than you and you find yourself admiring them. Go on twitter or turn on the TV and you will see new and old quotes from the greatest British footballing talent of the last 25 years paying tribute. Sky will be telling you about his appearance records, transfer fees and fitness. I will leave them to deliver the stats and quote the tributes.

For me this is more personal. I’ve been where his family are right now. My mum took her own life in February 1992 and when Leeds won the League that year it was the first time I felt happy. Maybe that’s why I’m still sitting here in tears. Speed was part of something that’s bigger than just football results and performances. He contributed to something that made people feel their lives were better because of it. He was a good man who was good to people and you can’t really ask for any more than that. Most suicides leaving you feeling ‘it’s just not right’ but some deaths are sadly inevitable. Gary Speed’s wasn’t, his death is truly shocking and has rocked the world of football and beyond. He will be painfully missed by those that knew him, those that enjoyed what he gave to the world of sport and for those young kids legging it round the parks this morning hopefully his passing will prompt them to take some time to find out about him.

People like Gary are the reason I still play football, still travel hundreds of miles to watch my team, still get up in the rain and go and train ten year olds after 6 hours sleep. They are what is great about football. He played to the best of his ability and with enthusiasm. Gary Speed was a good man I admired. I can’t say any more than that.

RIP Gary Speed“

Daily Telegraph Journalist John  Ley wrote;

“The reasons will no doubt, be revealed in time, and whatever they are, now is not the time for finger pointing or accusations.

Now is the time to honour a great playing career and wonder what might have been for Wales.

If losing in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup was painful for the Principality, losing their football manager is a tragedy many will not be able to understand.

I got to know Gary when he joined the Wales senior squad, in 1990, and was fortunate enough to witness many of his appearances when he sparked in a midfield alongside the likes of Ian Rush, Mark Hughes, Ryan Giggs and Robbie Savage.

I got to like him as he was polite, fairly trusting of the media – not always common – and happy to have a chat.

I remember one night, in Cardiff after a Wales’ Player of the Year dinner, talking to him about his interest in writing and how he was considering, one day, moving into the world of sports journalism.

It was only an idea, but he did seem keen and, I am sure, had he decided to go down that route he would have made a success of it.

There were desperate times as Wales lunged from one defeat to another in the later years.

There were also fun times, like a night in the British Ambassadors’ home in Doha when Wales played Qatar and we all were invited to join a soirée.

He was happy, enjoying his job but also enjoying the fringe benefits of being an international player. He also beat me at pool later that night …

As a player, he was solid and though he had his critics when he moved into management, he was just beginning to make his mark with three straight victories following an impressive performance at Wembley where he saw Wales narrowly lose to England.

Raymond Verheijen, who Speed brought in to assist him, has experience all over the world but was persuaded to join Wales because, as he told me in Dublin back in February, “I see something special in Gary. He can be a great success.”

The last time I saw Speed was as at a press conference to announce that Aaron Ramsey was Wales’ new captain.

Afterwards I told him I thought it was a brave move, a good step and that Arsène Wenger would be pleased.

“Are you sure?” he said. “We’ll see.”

As it was Wenger wasn’t happy, but Ramsey has gone on to prosper for club and country.

My last conversation with Speed was about the fact that after 20 years I was no longer to be covering Wales due to a job change.

He was visibly surprised, wished me all the best for the future and with the words “If there’s anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to get in touch.”

If only I could do something for Gary Speed…”

Finally Gary from Blogdroed wrote this fantastic tribute;

“I can’t begin to describe how unreal it feels to be writing a tribute to Gary Speed this Sunday afternoon.

I felt sick to the pit of my stomach when I received a phone call from a friend this morning to ask if “the news” was true, the devastating news that Gary Speed had been found dead at the age of 42.

In the past year I have had the immense privilege of getting to know Gary Speed in a professional capacity as Sgorio’s international match reporter. I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a friend, but he had the uncanny ability of making you feel so comfortable in his company.

He was always smiling, always happy to chat and to crack a joke or two as we waited to start the interviews and … and this might sound a little bit strange … he always remembered your name, which speaks volumes about Gary Speed.

Several tears have been shed since I heard the news on Sunday morning about someone who seems to have been there for the majority of my football supporting life.

The first time I heard about Gary Speed was during my student days. I was studying in Bradford and the Yorkshire Evening Post were raving about this young Welshman who was at Leeds United.

A few friends and I went across to Elland Road to watch him play. He starred in the same midfield as Gordon Strachan and David Batty and was part of the Leeds United side that clinched promotion to the old First Division in 1989 before becoming champions the following season.

In 1990 I saw Speed in the red shirt of Wales for the first time as he came on as a substitute in a friendly match against Costa Rica at Ninian Park to win the first of his 85 caps.

It’s fair to say that the fans didn’t appreciate Speed during the early part of his international career, but by the time he was handed the captain’s armband by Bobby Gould he was one of the travelling faithfull’s heroes.

As a fan of the Welsh national team who travelled to every corner of Europe, one tends to bump into the players in some far-flung cities.

The old cliché says you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but I have to say I am eternally grateful that I met Gary Speed on several occasions.

I remember half a dozen or so of us sneaking into the team hotel in Baku, Azerbaijan – the first game after the famous victory over Italy – to try and meet a few of the players.

Speed was the first player to walk through the hotel lobby and was more than ready to stop for a chat and to take photos with a group of fans that so obviously didn’t belong in this expensive hotel!

A few years later, whilst in Belfast for a qualifying match against Northern Ireland, we bumped into Speed in a bar. He had come over with his father to watch the game.

That afternoon we sang his name and moidered him senseless about returning to play international football.

Despite the fact we had obviously been on ‘the black stuff’ for quite some time, Speed had plenty of time to chat to everybody, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone pose for so many photographs!

The same thing was true even after he’d been appointed national team manager.

Whilst standing in the tunnel before an international match preparing for Sgorio’s broadcasts, I have often spotted Speed chatting to the youngsters peering over the edge of the tunnel desperate for an autograph.

He would spend plenty of time signing programme after programme and posing for a photograph with a lucky young fan, but he also knew he had a job to do with the national side.

Following a shaky start to his managerial career, Speed was insistent that he had a vision and knew exactly what needed to be done.

And as 2011 draws to a close with Wales having achieved four wins from the last five games, he had given fresh hope to Welsh football fans who are amongst the most hard nosed and cynical fans in world football!

In Wembley during the game against England we heard a new chant from the Welsh fans: “Gary Speed, Gary Speed, yn mynd a ni i Gwpan y Byd” which translates as “Gary Speed, Gary Speed, is taking us to the World Cup”

Unfortunately Speed will not be around to see his work with the national team bear fruit.

I’d like to extend my sympathies and the sympathies of all the Sgorio team to the family and friends of Gary Speed at this difficult and very sad time. He was a gentleman and Wales and the Welsh people have lost a true hero today.

Rest in peace, Gary.”

There is absolutely nothing to add about the gentleman Gary Speed.

Rest In Peace Gary

R.I.P. Gary Speed

After hearing the numbing news I can’t think of adequate words to express anything.

The words of Bryn Law seem fitting;

“Today feels like the worst day of my life. Utter incomprehension. I’ve known Gary for over 20 years, the same age, two lads from North Wales. He was my friend and I can’t believe it. I can’t begin to imagine how his family feel.”

In Solidarity

Yesterday there was a General Strike in Portugal. The General Strike was the response of the Portuguese workers to the austerity cuts their government wants to carry out. The Portuguese government, like most western governments, wants to punish its people for the behaviour of  the amoral twats working in the corporate world, as one Portuguese worker put very well;

“Workers… are not responsible for what is happening”

A Portuguese Comrade asked me to make a flag in support of this General Strike so I gladly made one;

Even though the picture is dark and the letters were too dark (the flag is too thin and absorbed too much  paint) the gesture seemed to go down well;

“Uma forte saudação fraterna desde o Comité Editorial deste blog à rapaziada do “BCFC Jetset”!
A massive fraternal salute from this blog Editorial Committe to the “BCFC Jetset”!

KEEP ON KEEPIN’ON LADS!”

I felt it was important to show solidarity like this. It may have only been a flag, a gesture, but it’s important to take a stand and show your support at times like these. The fight in which the Portuguese workers are involved is the same fight that British workers are involved in. We all have the same enemy; the deregulated market economy and it’s supporters.

Most governments support the deregulated market economy by not challenging it. To judge from the words of people like Osborne and Cameron politicians don’t want to even think about challenging this economic system, they seem to think that the market system is the best way to ensure universal prosperity and democracy even though it does the opposite; it gives amoral people the right to make gross amounts of money by using the capitalist system as a casino. Despite the fact these politician are elected representatives we select they act against us by failing to regulate the market economy. Instead of regulating governments find it easier punish their populations by cutting public services.

The rich obviously couldn’t give a shit about society otherwise they wouldn’t be rich. There is so little pressure on the rich to do anything remotely socially responsible they keep what they want without a second thought. The worst thing is that our government lets them get away with it because they share the rich’s outlook on society. Mind you this isn’t a new situation Karl Marx wrote about the same stuff over 160 years ago.

Over 3 centuries have passed since the Enlightenment yet there still seems to be a gilded elite ruling over us because they feel they deserve to. The laxity of every government has helped create a world where the rich think they have a divine right to be rich. They are so out of touch with reality that they say this kind of shit with a straight face;

“……………..Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich was pressed during a court appearance recently on whether one of his partners was, in his opinion, rich.

“It’s hard for me to say whether someone is a wealthy person or not a wealthy person,” he said.

Lurking under the surface is the knowledge that “the rich” is a hostile term in this era. During the 2008 US presidential election, Republican John McCain declared he was not a rich man, despite owning several homes.”

I can’t work out how a person can become so cut off from humanity that they say they can’t tell how rich they are and then hope to get away with a statement like that. It’s no wonder the simple billionaire is constantly smiling at the camera. Speaking about amoral rich fuckers…….. Heather Graham lightly trod through the issue of pay differences this week. She treated the issue with a deftness that these challenging times require;

As a guest on Radio 4‘s Today show yesterday, Heather McGregor caused quite a stir, leaving presenter John Humphrys sounding surprised. For those who missed it, here is the wit and wisdom of McGregor, director of headhunters Taylor Bennett, not to mention author of the Financial Times’ Mrs Moneypenny column (in which she refers to her children as cost centres one, two and three).

On executive pay: “There isn’t such a thing as too much or too little.”

On the public complaining about high pay: “Anybody over the age of seven who says that things are not fair needs to have a reality check.”

On the Equal Pay Commission’s report: “Some of the suggestions are frankly barking mad, and one of them is to put an employee on the remuneration committee.”

When John Humphrys says that they do it in Germany: “Are we Germany? We might have been, 70 years ago, if it had gone the wrong way.”

 On worker representation on pay committees: “John, you have young children, you would not give your child a say on how much money you allocate yourself for clothes or for haircuts.”

 On the state of capitalism: “We do not operate workers’ cooperatives; if they want to work in a workers’ cooperative, everybody can move to Cuba.”

How the fuck can anyone seriously think that employees are child-like creatures whereas bosses are the all-knowing  deities.? It really should beggar belief but we’re living in a world where the rich are allowed to set their own values with impunity so this attitude doesn’t surprise.

The sad thing is that in our democracies if you try to put across a different point of view from the rich you are castigated. You are called children or you are told that your strike “….will cost jobs” and “cost the nation £500 million”. Your point is disregarded even though you are directly affected by government policies.

We should keep putting across the opposite message to show that there can be difference, that there can be change. Another world is possible.

By the way I’ve made the flag clearer for tomorrow’s match in Newtown.

Do footballers have fun? Part Two

The books featured in this part of the essay include;

“The Keeper of Dreams”  by Ronald Reng (KoD)

“My Father and other Working Class Pros”  by Gary Imlach

“Soccer at War: 1939-’45”  by Jack Rollin

“Woody & Nord” by Gareth Southgate and Andy Woodman (W & N)

“Only a Game?” by Eamon Dunphy  (O a G?)

“Kickups, Hiccups, Lockups“  by Mickey Thomas

”Kicking & Screaming”  by Rogan Taylor and Andrew Ward (K & S)

Some columns by the anonymous Footballer in Four Four Two magazine.

The Second World War should have seriously affected organised football but as Jack Rollin tells us in “Soccer and the War” there was a vibrant football scene during the conflict. Theoretically the total mobilisation of Britain should have ruined organised football as a spectacle – clubs had to form scratch teams to fulfil fixtures and players were forced to develop a “have boots will travel” attitude – but football wasn’t ruined. With life and death in everyone’s minds the privations presented by wartime football, in comparison to peacetime football, were trifling.

The problems didn’t seem to matter to anyone. The players didn’t mind as compared to the death and destruction they could face the upheaval associated with football must have been enjoyable. Young players didn’t mind as they would be given chances they wouldn’t normally been granted. The fans didn’t mind either as clubs could call up superstars that were stationed in a nearby garrison or airbase, and this was perhaps their only chance to see superstars in their clubs’ shirt.

Instead of ruining organised football the Second World War may have been the only time when organised football was as enjoyable as it was in the good old amateur days. It may have been the only time that playing professional football felt like the football matches you played as a child; playing for fun, playing without pressure. Football soon reverted to type after the Second World War and the problems for footballers soon returned.

To follow on from part one of this essay, I have noticed eleven further problems with a carrer as a footballer;

1) The constant threat of injury

Injuries are an inevitable problem when physical activities are based around competing groups. A mistimed tackle can cause a broken leg, a shot can cause broken fingers and misplaced enthusiasm can cause a mass punch up. The problem of injuries is obviously historical. For example Norah Bell tells us what happened to her husband Jack in the 1930s;

“When he finished at Luton, he injured his foot and couldn’t play properly anymore and they didn’t give a damn. If you finished football, you finished, and that was that…” (K & S)

Anne Savage said this of her husband;

“He couldn’t run anymore and he was told he’d have arthritis in that leg for the rest of his life as long as he lived, and that leg used to go black up to the knee and he had very bad sleepless nights with it…” (K & S)

They shoot horses don’t they? Violence-related injuries were still common in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s because the omnipresent “hard man” stalked the land. Bobby Keetch illustrates this era;

“I’ve got about eight stitches in my leg here, from a particularly savage encounter with Johnny Giles.“ (K & S)

Today our tolerance of violence is so low that players are sent off for sarcastically clapping and most of today’s “mass brawls” would fail the Trade Descriptions Act (They should be re-christened “Immature pushing and shoving”.) This environment means that players no longer become victims of full-frontal assaults.

While football is now softer and cuddlier this doesn’t mean mindless aggression has ended. I see it on a weekly basis and players like Ryan “Breaker of Welsh Legs” Shawcross are still allowed to play. Even though violence may not happen as often mouthy buggers are still with us so the potential for a short sharp return is always there.

Hard men, clumsy opponents and advertising hoardings are not always required to cause injuries any more as players can injure themselves. For example they may break metatarsals (a new bone discovered in 2002) by turning too sharply in their plastic coated boots. When you think about this situation being chopped by a hard man was preferable as there was certain brutal nobility to it. A player getting injured because they’re wearing ridiculous footwear isn’t what football should be about.

The threat of injury exists even before footballers set foot in a stadium. Footballers have a lot of spare time which means they will spend a lot of time at home. A home becomes hazardous to your health with inanimate objects like ironing boards, aftershave bottles and condiment jars lying around. Even driving high powered cars can result in strained ligaments.

2) The historic lack of glamour

Has there ever been any glamour in football? Even in the so-called “age of glamour” in the 1950s I wonder if there was much glamour. During that time a players’ existence wasn’t much different from the rest of the working population. As the true cliché states, they may have even caught the same buses and trams to matches. Players may have drawn an extra look from an adoring fan so they weren’t glamour-less but the extra look was all they drew.

In “the age of glamour” most players also had to take other jobs to help make ends. A particularly well-known example is the international superstar plumber Tom Finney. During this time  players were taught to know their place. Stanley Matthews recalled an experience when he was an international and claiming expenses;

“They gave you a little card and it says ‘from Stoke to London’. Well we had to put this down and Tommy Lawton put an extra sixpence on his travel fare , you see, and Mr Huband (the treasurer) also had the prices and he said, “Lawton, you’ve overcharged” so he crossed out the sixpence out”  (K & S)

Tom Finney also has a similar recollection;

“I got a very Curt note back; ‘Dear Finney, we’re returning your expenses sheet. Herewith enclosed a new one to make out and for your information the third-class fare from Preston to Liverpool is x shillings and you didn’t have any meal because you only travelled from Liverpool to us” (K & S)

There was no freedom of movement either thanks to the retain and transfer system as George Hardwick relates;

“At the end of every season it was the wail all round the dressing room; ‘I wonder what I’ll get next season?’’ I wonder what they‘ll offer me for next season?’ ‘Am I going to be retained or are they going to kick me out?’….. You were truly slaves” (K & S)

Stuart Imlach’s biography (written by his son) further highlights the situation faced by British players up to the 1960s; the Scottish FA also thought their player were paid slaves to be seen and not heard.  

While the relationship between players and clubs has changed considerably in the present epoch of plutocratic ownership the players are still kept at arm’s length.

3) The effect on your family

Stuart Imlach played in the era of change; from the serfdom of the 1950s to the relative freedom of the 1960s. However the freedom wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, it was certainly a better situation but this greater freedom may have led to other problems. A player could change clubs more easily but think about his family, how would they feel about moving around the country?

If you wanted the same level of pay, or constant first team football, you may have needed to move. You may have even felt the need to move several times. If you were injury prone like Stuart Imlach there was a distinct possibility that you would need to move to improve your situation. The clubs involved in a move could be at the opposite ends of the country, would this sort of move be fair on your family? Could you concentrate with a disgruntled family? The same worries and problems exist today.

We haven’t even mentioned how a family would be affected by having a family member in the public eye constantly either.

4) The bright lights of football fame don’t always shine brightly

Lars Leese highlights a few examples;

“And in the dressing room he was welcomed with a grunt by the kitman ‘What have we here, another new boy? More kit for me to wash?” Actually Lars wasn’t imagining that one …….. Welcome to the world of professional football” (K o D)

“………..At Leverkusen he threw himself at the strikers’ feet, just as he had been doing for years in amateur football, and saw with surprise that they didn’t just shoot, they waited until he was on the ground then casually lobbed it over him or dribbled around him. They called it ‘goalie-watching’” (K o D)

“The box of 3,000 Lars Leeses was on the passenger seat. “I’ve got autograph cards. How fantastic is that?” ……. And then he started writing. He wrote Lars Leese in a black art pen, very carefully, very formally. After 30 minutes he was writing only L. Leese, after an hour Leese, and later just Le___ with a long tail that could, with a little effort, be interpreted as se. He spent two evenings at the sitting room table. Now and then he would curse”  (K o D)

5) A footballer is surrounded by Alpha males

Most male football squads are like any other groups of males, they will indulge in exaggerated hyper-masculine behaviour to prove how great they are. This is mainly because most male groups are led by an Alpha male. He sets the tone and runs the show. He’ll be a narcissistic egomaniac with an attitude problem, or to be put it more mildly, he’ll be  a complete prick.  If you think about it most of the world’s bullshit flows from the actions of Alpha males. 

Would you actually want to spend your work life in the company of people acting in exaggerated Alpha ways?  If you weren’t an Alpha male but you found the attraction of professional football too tantalising to resist you’d have to develop two mental attitudes to survive.

Firstly, you’ll need the moral cowardice to hide within a group, as Andy Woodman tells us;

“At sixteen you don’t know a lot. I thought it best to accept responsibility for the goals that went past me……… (Then) Everything becomes your fault ………….. Of course the lads liked it when I owned up. How can you defend properly with a crap goalkeeper? “ (W & N)

Dunphy highlights this attitude too;

“28 August: The tendency after a defeat is to look for scapegoats ……….. In that sense Brownie, in our eyes, pays the penalty for being young……”       (O a G?)

This bullshit is something I remember from my own time in teams. Everybody looks to blame someone else. I’ve been called “a prick”, “a wanker” “fucking useless” at various times because I had the temerity to make a mistake.

Secondly, you’d have to become immune to the relentless and often vicious mickey taking, as Gareth Southgate tells us;

“Fashion had never crossed my mind …….. All the guys at Palace had their Adidas tracksuits and Lacoste jumpers …… they were cool south Londoners, I was a bumpkin from the country ………. One day I walked into the apprentices dressing room and Chris Powell was dancing across the floor a là Fred Astaire. Everyone was keeled over laughing and then I twigged why, Chris was wearing my grey Hush Puppies ……… Larking about with Dave Stephens I said something half smart to him. “Hark at Leo Gemelli” he said, referring to the brand name of my jumper . ………. “Hark at Leo Gemelli” was all Dave had to say and the boys were falling about laughing and banging the floor” (W & N)

Then there’s the joke played on Andy Woodman because he was released in 1994;

“The Club had supplied us with t-shirts with the word “Champions” printed on the front. (Palace had won the First Division title). On the back of mine one of the lads had used a felt pen to scribble: “For Sale. One Careful Owner. Offers considered”  (W & N)

As I know from experience this can cross into downright obnoxiousness. This obnoxiousness is highlighted by Four Four Two’s anonymous “Player”;

“Footballers can abuse their fame; …………. I saw girl one night …….. I told her my girlfriend was going away for a year and that we needed a career to look after the kids ………… I offered her £22,000 a year. I pulled her that night ………. Four days after she turned up at my front door. She told me she had quit her job ……… I lied and told her there’d been a problem with visas …….. I’m not a bad lad”

One mate shouted (at people in a queue at a club); “Fuck off paying Public” (As he got in for nothing frantically grasping the coattails of the sainted player)

One team-mate had cancer and he didn’t even escape. When he refused to come on a night out, another player said; “Why not. You’ve only got a month to live” ……..

“Do you love your new bird? He asked. “Yes” replied the player sheepishly. “Could she be the one for you?” “yeah” “So how do you feel that he’s shagged her, so has he, so has he!” He was crushed and cried in front of all of us”

I’ve never fully understood why this level of cruel humour is necessary to mould pro athletes into a team but then I’m not an alpha male. Could you stand working with immature morons?

6) The cold-heartedly blunt attitude of the professional

 This is how the some players dealt with Andy Woodman’s misfortunate release in 1994;

“We then had training and I could tell from their reactions that the lads already knew. Alan had told Gareth and Gareth had told the lads to go easy on me. I was unbelievably angry, I played a blinder in training and Eric Young, the centre back, who was a cold, blunt bastard but not a bad bloke, said to me: ‘Woody, too little, too late son. Too little too late’ As cool and callous as that. But he was right. The misery was only beginning…..” (W & N)

7) Unemployment is a perpetual risk

Imagine if you were an unemployed footballer; you’d obviously want to become an employed footballer again as soon as possible. You’d probably exhaust every avenue trying to get back into football. You’d probably try your old contacts, you might try your old teammates. You may even try a new agent.

If you tried to find a new agent you might find that there a load of crap agents out there; they might be the sort of people that offer to help you but don’t really care. Even if you found an enthusiastic agent you may have to go through the indignity of hawking yourself around clubs. This all happened to Lars Leese;

“Thus in February and March 2000 Waldorf Mannheim, 1860 Munich, Alemania Aachen, Rot-Weiss Essen, Kickers Stuttgart, Fortuna Cologne and FC St. Pauli all received faxes from Holgar Wacker (Leese’s agent)………….” (K o D)

Leese waited months for non-existent replies.

Apart from the genuine superstars nobody truly feels that their job is secure. A player only needs to have a couple of shaky games and the pressure starts to mounts. Doubts will be formed in peoples’ minds and the questions begin to form; “Can he really do it?”….. “Can he hack it?”……… “Is he up to it?” The precariousness of  football as a career is illustrated when  Leese posed one question before signing for Barnsley;

“So this contract is valid for both Premier League and First Division?” (K o D)

Even if you don’t suffer a career ending knee injury your career can still end very suddenly, as Leese found out;

“Professional footballer? It seemed like another life (his life only a year before). Now at half-past five in the morning he was standing in one of the business parks in Gelnhausen, selling sandwiches.” (K o D)

For the vast majority of footballer there is the real risk of this happening. The list of released players can be very large; 123 players were released by Premier League clubs last June.

Eight) The pressure placed on players

Mickey Thomas tells us what it’s like to play for Manchester United;

“My pressure was appearing in front of those fans. My pressure was getting and keeping my place in the team. My pressure was putting in the kind of performance those thousands expected every week. That was the pressure for me. They only saw Mickey Thomas the footballer. They didn’t see me as a fragile human being who couldn’t handle my footballing life.

They didn’t understand the problems I was going through mentally. Howe could they when the mask never slipped outwardly? Back inside Old Trafford I became adept at hiding my feelings. We would all sit around as a group, as a team . Different characters. Different Mind Sets. Some Strong. Some lacking confidence. Some, like me, unable to cope with the pressure.

We all had our problems. Some were bigger than others. Many couldn’t handle theirs. I was one individual who just couldn’t hack it in that particular phase of my often troubled life. Mentally I was distressed but no one knew. I kept myself to myself. I didn’t confides in anyone.

Everyone assumed I was Mickey, the happy-go-lucky, cheeky chappie. A cocky little guy without a care in the world who loved his job. Far from it. I had so many demons in my head and I couldn’t kick them out. It was literally doing my head in.”

Even George Best felt pressurised sometimes;

“When you’re flavour of the month they come to you…… I couldn’t hide, and I tried. That’s why I disappeared so many times. I kept packing in just to get away from it all, trying to find havens to disappear to, and I couldn’t” (K & S)

It doesn’t look like you can have a normal existence even with all your money. For example you can’t go out and just have a good time;

“Once they went dancing in the Barnsley nightclub, Hedonism. It was the last time. ……….. (Lars) Finally fled with her to the dance floor (away from questioning fans). Everyone else immediately stopped dancing. They stood around the couple in a circle ‘and stared at us though Frank Sinatra had shown up in the club’ Daniela recalled.” (K o D)

This example sounds like a scene from the nightclub scene in “This Sporting Life”. You may remember the trouble Steven Gerrard had on a normal night out once.

9) Footballers are judged by exacting standards

Footballers seem to exist under the highest possible level of scrutiny. The scrutiny is one of the main things that put me off the life of a footballer.

I don’t have a problem with the role of “role model” as it’s an easy role for anyone to accomplish – it basically involves not breaking the law and being polite. What I’m talking about the perceived public accountability of footballers. Footballers seem to have been allotted a major social role in contemporary British society, most of this role involves becoming a  lightning rod for criticism

If you were a “Footballer” you would occupy a role and perform a job that few people can adequately fulfil. To be a “Footballer” requires several things. You need a high degree of specialised skills. You need to make it through continual sifting progress that ensures only the best players make it. You need to make it through training by constantly prove that you’ve still got what it takes. Lastly, you need to work like a Trojan all the time.

Even though a “Footballer” has to pass through all those hoops in order to remain as a “footballer” some people still criticise them for being crap and lazy. Even though they are the best people suited to the job they are still criticised. The critics would have a point if the clubs let just anybody become a footballer but clubs don’t, they pick competent people through several sifting processess. If footballers weren’t able to make it through the stages of development they wouldn’t be footballers.

The fact criticism of players exists tells you that some people feel the job is easy. If the job was as easy as these people seem to claim there would be ten of thousands of professional clubs in Britain rather than about 130. Criticising footballers with impunity is rather unfair, as Dunphy puts rather well;

“The cheats or simple inadequates of other walks of life could come to the Den and apply to our work a set of judgemental criteria they wouldn’t dreamed applying on Monday morning” (O a G?)

It would be interesting to ask these critics how they would feel if their work was judged in the same way that they judge footballers, how would they feel if their work was pulled apart on live TV in front of millions? Would they like faceless nobodies to phone up radio stations in order to complain about them and the standard of their work? I sense these critics wouldn’t like it.

The situation is now worse than the one Dunphy describes as the criticism is now a lot stronger. The ridiculous pressure applied by some fans – A lot of fans seem to think that the game owes them success and glory –  must be horrible and I’d hate to work in this environment of criticism.

10) Players can become tools of the PR Industry

The spotlight on players is made worse by the commercial pressures exerted by sponsors. Footballers have been hoisted up society’s flag pole of attention as examples to us all, this allows sponsors to think they can take advantage of a footballers’ position by offering them endorsements.

It seems that both sides win out of this arrangement; the company gets some sporting stardust and the sportsman gets a lot of money. Yes, everybody looks like a winner in this situation. However  the sportsman only remains a winner until they transgress the spurious moral code dreamt up by the company. When the sportsman transgresses the scrap heap awaits, the sportsman no longer fits in with the company’s wholesome image. It’s like a footballers’ private life is in control of the sponsors and media.

The Public Relations industry’s bullshit has infected football by clouding the minds of football’s administrators. The people under the spell of PR bullshit have created a type of football where TV dictates to football, where companies dictate to clubs and where Bullshit PR teams have decided that player interviews are best brought to you by the good people over at Castrol, Red Bull and IBM.

The people spouting PR bullshit think they are bestowing glamour. They think that a company logo on a polo shirt collar is glamorous apparently. The pressure on players to become spokespeople for horrible companies by proxy is degrading.

11) The people making astronomical sums of money out of football are not the players

Billions in profit are made from football. The sport allows chairmen, shareholders, administrators, sportswear companies and the sponsors to make obscene profits. The simple act of 22 players playing a sport on a pitch allows this to happen. Everything else grew from this simple act; the grounds, the chairman, the administrators, the sponsors they have all come after the game.

Without the 22 players there would be nothing, no profit, no flash suits, no HD TV coverage, no third-party ownership of contracts. Yet the players only see a fraction of the money that’s the result of their labour. They’re kept down, prevented from mixing with the owners, made to feel their place by the gilded plutocrats.

 If you add these ten points together playing professional football simply isn’t a dream job, it seems more like a waking nightmare. 

Do footballers have fun? Part One

To continue with the subject that I wittered on about yesterday, change over time………..

If you asked someone to name their dream job it would not be a surprise if you heard them say ” footballer”. My dream job used to be  “footballer” but I haven’t felt like that since I was about 15. Slipping through the net a couple of decades ago certainly helped me deal with my dream ending, unlike Tim Lovejoy the celebrity bellend I have no regrets. Any residual desires ended when my illusions about professional football were shattered by some books about the subject. These books were the starting place for this article.

I was going to review the three football books I had found in a discount bookshop (The books were “The Keeper of Dreams” by Ronald Reng. “My Father and other Working Class Professionals” by Gary Imlach and “Soccer at War: 1939-’45” by Jack Rollin.) but the simple book review developed a life of its own and eventually became this two-part essay. This essay is partly a defence of footballers against incoherently angry phone-in callers, but it’s mostly a representation of my further disillusionment with certain aspects of football.

The erstwhile review developed for two reasons. The first reason was because I thought about the image of footballers. The media tries to bombard us with an image of glamour, glamour, glamour. They tell us that a footballer’s world is non-stop parties and premieres, marriages to WAGs and wheelbarrows for their wages.

This kind of life is a clichéd exaggeration from tabloid culture. As with most things written in tabloids that are not written by Paul Foot or John Pilger this cynically created image is mostly bollocks. When you apply this created image to the total number of professional footballers it can‘t be anything but bollocks. They might earn a lot more than the average wage but is the life of each footballer really that glamorous? I doubt it.

The three books cover three different eras but there are common themes within them. These common themes – Things like; dealing with January mud, psychotic opponents and having to bow and scrape before notable members of a local community – tell you that football hasn’t changed in certain fundamental respects. The common themes not only totally refute the clichéd tabloid image of footballers they make you wonder if there ever has ever been glamour in football.

The second reason the review developed was that I realised the common themes in the three books were present in some of the other football books I’ve read. Books like “Woody & Nord” by Gareth Southgate and Andy Woodman, “Only a Game?” by Eamon Dunphy, “Kickups, Hiccups, Lockups“ by Mickey Thomas, ”Kicking & Screaming” by Rogan Taylor and Andrew Ward. I threw in some columns written by the anonymous Footballer in Four Four Two magazine.

Altogether the reading material covered nearly every era of professional football in Britain so I was able to see that the relationship between footballers and their sport, and the character of football, hasn‘t changed very much over the years. As a result I began to feel a bit sorry for the position that footballers have always found themselves in.

So here goes the mutated book review………………

In the past I vaguely remember claiming that football should be fun. At the time I thought I was right because most people seemed to feel the same way; they always say that football is the most popular sport in the world.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing as it allows you to reflect. Consequently I may have been a little too hasty with my pronouncement. I actually need to go further than this banal statement; I’m not sure I find football enjoyable any more. In case you’re wondering I’m referring to the playing side.

Let’s consider why people play football. That’s not too difficult to work out; it’s the basic joy that playing sport provides. The joy comes in many forms; physical achievement, communal joy, keeping fit, having a laugh with your mates whilst keeping fit, being part of a flowing move, catching the ball perfectly, seeing the ball make the net ripple after you’ve had a shot, the joy of just being in the open air. Let’s call this “the spirit of football”.  When I say that I don’t find football enjoyable any more what I really mean is “I haven’t felt “the spirit of football” for a long time”.

Two thought processes led to me disliking football. One of the processes began roughly 18 months ago amongst the boring details of the nagging aches that plague my sleep. A Tuesday just wasn’t a Tuesday without a dull throbbing ache.

The process of disillusionment accelerated thanks to my position; goalkeeper. This vantage point allowed me time and space to see the full gamut of human behaviour. Mondays (excluding bank holidays of course) have become an exhausting procession of twats and their inexcusable behaviour; it’s was a cavalcade of simpletons, show boaters and loudmouth gobshites. It was so different in my day; you could actually chat with opponents as you left the pitch together but Llandudno in the 1990s is an entirely different continent.

The worst thing I’ve noticed in Llandudno’s minor, minor league is the rise in aggression. I don’t remember that level aggression being there a few years ago. Obviously there were some hotheads but generally people seemed calmer. People used to take defeat, or even being tackled, as part of the game. Now it seems that a lot of Llandudno’s players can’t accept the simple facts of football and so they lash out. Someone I know explains this problem really well; there is now a gap between some people’s perception of their technique and the actual level of their technique. These people fill the gap with aggression.

These fuckers, these twats, these malodorous recidivists, have ruined my favourite physical activity. An anthropologist would have a field day studying their display, the loudness, the cockiness, the loud cockiness, the posing in the style of the anointed rulers of civilisation. They strut around as if they’ve earned the right to speak in public, sneering at those living by more civilised values.

Consequently, if ever I spare a moment’s thought about Mondays my sap rises like larva. I’ve reached my very elastic limit and I can stand the sneers of the Philistines no longer. Football has allowed their base values to flourish. I hate football

The second process happened through reading numerous books about football. Thanks to the reading matter I started to wonder whether I really liked football any more. I wondered if I should be encouraging something that put so much pressure to perform on some of my fellow human beings. I wondered whether I should be putting pressure on them just because they were wearing polyester in a colour that I like. I began to wonder whether professional footballers are also disillusioned. I wondered if they also missed “the spirit of football”. I didn’t like football as much.

Footballers are thought to have dream job but there seems to be precious little joy, aside from a thin veneer, in the autobiographies I’ve read. Even with all their money (Even before the mega-wealth of the moment, footballers have always been relatively well-off in comparison to the rest of the working population) and fame I’m not sure I would like to be a player as their general work environment doesn’t seem very appealing.

Let’s consider the idea that football is somehow glamorous. The kind of glamour associated with football is not real glamour in the traditional sense. There isn’t much glamour in the Christmas morning training sessions.

Footballers are people. In fact they are just like the people who fawn over them the only difference is that footballers have better balance. They have foibles, they have bad days, they may have problems with their neighbours. Why would someone automatically become more glamorous because they sweat on TV for a living? The glamour that’s attached to football a hollow and shallow version of glamour. It’s the kind that requires a sponsor to exist, it’s not the glamour of Hollywood or the Pyramid Stage.

The idea of glamour in general has taken a bit of a nose dive in recent years. Film stars used to be glamorous but that was due to their image on the screen. People like Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich exuded glamour, they may have had their peccadilloes but we manage to remember their work more than their “little problems”. As for today’s film stars, Mel Gibson doesn’t seem to work much now. The main reason for the faded glamour is the media. They may have had muckrakers but they didn’t have Perez Hilton.

As for football it’s just the same. The last time there was truly glamour was the 1950s, with hushed reverence for Puskas, Di Stefano and company but then glamour was allowed to develop at this time. The lack of exposure allowed a mythical image to develop. The thing about the creation of cynical glamour of today is that it can be dispensed with if there are tabloid front pages to fill. Ironically these are the same tabloids that are complicit in the cynical creation of glamorous footballers, footballers that are kindly brought to you by Gilette, Nike and McDonalds……….

This cynically created glamour is utterly shallow and it bares no relation to the reality of football. Unfortunately reality is not the image that footballers are judged by. Even though footballers generally earn above average wages this is rather unfair, why should they be judged on something that’s not of their making?

After studying the reading material I wonder if there was ever was a time in which you could say football has been truly glamorous. As general rule footballers seem more concerned about worries than parties. Their pressure-filled work environment isn’t very healthy and it certainly isn’t glamorous. You don’t need to read books to realise the tabloid glamour version of football isn’t really that truthful. The vast majority of pro footballers do not exist in the constant glare of glamour and publicity. Have you ever seen the tabloid exclusives featuring Brad Friedel and Darren Fletcher?

Eamon Dunphy’s famous “Only a Game?” shows us a side of football that is a million miles from  glamour. The book paints a picture of football as a constant stream of worries; getting in the team, staying in the team, a suspicion of team-mates who seem to be fakers, malingerers or show-offs, the need to fit in with you team mates even if they are objectionable bastards.

As Brian Glanville put it in the intro “The pro footballer’s endemic paranoia….“  A footballers’ world is a world where there’s no loyalty to a team per se because the team only worries about you when you’re useful to them. They don’t care when you’re not in the team. It’s world where your only real loyalty is towards your bank account. There’s no glamour.

Dunphy dedicates his book to “The Good Pro”. This player is “a trier….. Accepts responsibility ………. Often rescue you ……… makes himself available for the ball all the time …… He will make that run, get that vital touch in the box, go for a return pass instead of holding back …….. Never on the missing list”  You sense that there aren’t enough “Good Pros” in the game for Dunphy.

Dunphy frets about moral issues “Ethics matter everywhere, but in sport they matter more than anywhere else …….. (Sport is) a place where virtue is rewarded and cheating exposed” Again you get the sense that not all footballers, or people, have these values for Dunphy. You can see that worries are never far from the surface.

Here’s a brief taste of the book’s contents to illustrate a less than glamorous job;

25 July; “People are always happy to come back…… You don’t really think about the season today”

26 July: “The first day is always hard but it is not the hardest ……….. And you are really knackered”

27 July; “But this lad was completely unabashed; “I’ve only come here for first team football” he said ………. Oh well we’d better watch out, then. Because he meant it.

3 August; “One is conscious of little things – the apprentices begin to seem absurdly young, you call them ‘son’ now, it doesn’t seem so long since older players addressed you in the same way……………… You begin to wonder what is coming from the friend’s Provident fund, about a testimonial……… about retirement ……….. How much longer will you spend your summers in this idyllic way, dreaming of glory? ………. It’s a shock to realise how rapid the descent is from pinnacle to valley”

13 August; “We always feel quite hard done by at Millwall over close-season tours. Orient went to the Bahamas; even Hendon went to Spain; and we come to Bournemouth!”

14 August; “You could see him measuring himself against us, seeing if he was still as fit as he had been. Seeing if he still had it”

24 August; “Tomorrow is the first game. I am confident. Not certain, for that is impossible ……….. For nine months our lives are committed to the business of winning games.”

31 August: “When they sign a new player who plays in your position it is not funny. Everyone is delighted they’ve signed a new player, but you know it is you who is going to be left out…….”

18 September: “We’re on our way. Only four points behind the top side now, two wins in a row setting us up…..”

1 October: “……… and I looked around ……… ‘I’m Dropped’ ……… No! But I am ……… I could not believe it. I could not think for a minute ………….”

2 October: “Being dropped is something everyone in the game has to face. Manchester United dropped Bobby Charlton once. How do you face it? Yesterday I came home and I just cried. But it’s eating into you the whole time. You can’t think about anything else for one minute. You go home and you are restless, edgy………”

27 October: “Today we got found out. The chickens came home to roost……”

29 October: “A failed football club in October. A depressing place. Already with seven months to go, the morning becomes a dread”

3 November: “Going as twelfth or thirteenth man is a drag. The thirteenth man is the one who normally gets the worst of it. You are in effect skip-boy”

7 November : “Back in the bloody Midweek League again. It’s an unbelievable sensation going to play at Orient on a Wednesday Afternoon in November. There is no one there, absolutely nothing at stake, except your own pride. You don’t feel like it at all”

15 November: “……But he has got absolutely no chance of making it. He really is the butt of everything”

20 November; “Playing in the Midweek League football is futile enough at the best of times. But playing Midweek League football at the Valley really tells you how futile the whole thing is. The biggest ground in London and there was no-one there. No one at all….”

27 November: “I got very worried because it suddenly dawned on me that I am living in a Millwall house, and that this house, which I regard as my own, isn’t mine at all”

Within the pages of “Only a Game?” you are treated to the whole of football life; Ups and downs, winning runs and failures. Even though it was written nearly 40 years ago it still resonates because it could be any season. The pre-season is full of hope before autumn becomes the graveyard of those plans.

The worries Dunphy articulated are still universal  - you can be dropped, your teammates may be tossers and you may worry that your hopes will remain unfulfilled – so if football was unglamorous then it remains unglamorous today. The training depicted in the book seems tough and even though football has become more scientific, with plush new training facilities and Sam Allardyce’s Sport Lab, one basic point still motivates training; you need an awful lot of strenuous physical activity.

Even though “Only a Game?” highlights a lack of glamour this doesn’t turn football into horrible career by itself – most of a film star’s jet set life is spent in draughty studios but this doesn’t make the Hollywood unglamorous – it merely disproves the tabloid glamour. Having said that the book makes you question whether the footballers life is all it’s cracked up to be. A footballers’ job is certainly not a dream job.

Tomorrow we’ll turn to the other pitfalls of a career in professional football.

The inexorable march of time leading to a major case of “À la recherche du temps perdu”

A couple of months ago I reached the age of 35. Our society, for some unfathomable reason, regards 40  as the symbolic age for the demographic 34-45 so this milestone is unremarkable for most people. Three months ago turning 35 wasn’t an unremarkable event for me.

For about a decade and a half  the monolithic age of 35 loomed from the distant horizon. I thought it was going to be THE lane change of my life, the point where the hopes of the fast line turn in to the regrets of the slow lane and the miseries of the hard shoulder. I fully expected that my 35th birthday was going to be a dispiriting experience because the milestone had become a millstone.

My fixation with the age of 35 is the result of being a childhood football fan. When I was younger, people – the media and Llandudno’s loud know-it-alls – made me believe that 35 is the age at which footballers are legally too old to be considered proper footballers, or even proper people.

When the know-it-alls saw an “older” player they would usually say something like; “He’s too old!!” or “Send him to the knackers’ yard!!!” or “Oh My God!!!! Is he still playing!!!” They would  issue warnings to players approaching 30; “Where will he be when he loses his pace?!?” The know-it-alls made it sound like there was some kind of footballers’ Logan’s Run. This apparent distinction between footballers was seriously important to the know-it-alls so it became important idea for me too, like them I was a big football fan that wanted to fit in. I thought if this is the case for footballers then this must be the case for everybody else as well.

Panini’s addictive sticker albums and Jack Rollins’ essential dinky football annuals (not the Rothmans books) reinforced my fixation with footballers’ ages by providing a ready supply of facts and figures for comparison. Staring at the stickers (and empty spaces) meant absorbing the information that lay around the stickers (or spaces).

My exposure to an unexpurgated stream of facts put information into the deepest corners of my memory. Some facts were deposited so deeply they are resistant to memory lapses. For example I can still tell you three facts – Kevin Ratcliffe was born in Mancot, Gary Bailey was born in South Africa and by 1989 Ian Rush was still in his twenties - and know that I am correct. The facts were so ingrained that by my University days the following inconsequential incident happened;

….A group of us walked past Chester Street  in Wolverhampton when one of my mates looked at the street sign and spoke to me;

Him - “Do you know what I think of when I see that sign?”

Me – “Yes, it’s missing the word ‘le’ ”

H – “That’s unbelievable, that’s exactly what I was going to say”

M – “Yeah, Chester-le-Street is where Bryan Robson comes from”

H – “Bloody Hell you collected football stickers as well”

Thankfully after  years of not caring about knowing stuff like this I have managed to forget most of the football facts that I used to cherish knowing (This is not a problem, with wikipedia you don’t need to make an effort to remember facts any more.). While I’ve forgotten facts I couldn’t forget my milestone, I couldn’t forget the dread of reaching the milestone, each day brought the day of destiny closer….

Then, the tragic day happened. I arose on that early September morning, a morning that felt like any other early September morning, and  realised something; I didn’t fell any different from the day before. All that dread, all that worry, all that angst, it was all for nothing.  Were the know-it-alls wrong? Surely not.

Now that a couple of months has passed I can say that life with the dreaded milestone is not how I imagined. It feels a little startling to think that so much life has already passed through my mind but I don’t feel washed up. I don’t feel like I’ve lost my pace. I can’t say I’ve noticed actually losing anything.

From one direction it looks like the know-it-alls were wrong because I can’t say I feel that much different from the time I was 18. I know that I look different from how I used to but I never noticed the changes happen, I just ploughed my furrow and got on with it.  I do feel that I have gained a valuable outlook on life though; the prerogative to look down on excitable idiots.

I can’t say that this is the whole story of being 35 years of age, it’s not all sunshine and roses. I may not have noticed the passage of time but who does? Nobody lives life second by second. Consequnetly when you pause for a second to consider life’s question you may feel your age. I certainly have started to feel my age thanks to a few recent thoughts. 

Consider the phrase; “Jack Wilshire is a good young player.” The phrase “(Insert name here) is a good young player” is something that I’ve heard all my supporting life; Ryan Giggs, Steven Gerrard and Gazza were all “good young players” at one time in my life. However when I say “Jack Wilshire is a great young player” at this point in my life I’m talking  about a young man that’s almost half my age. You know you’re getting old when the “good young players” are nearly half your age.

Now consider “older footballers”. I have started to realise that the so-called old players, players that have been in my football consciousness during three decades, are not actually that old. Consider Jamie Carragher. Thanks to the media I think he’s an ancient player that’s  been around forever, well he’s been playing for Liverpool since 1997 for crying out loud. Jamie Carragher is actually younger than me. You know you’re getting old when the players you think are old are actually younger than you.

Perception is an odd thing. I don’t class myself as “old”; I never feel “old” and I don’t think that I look “old” when I look in the mirror, yet I feel that some players are “old” (in other words, older than me). With my mind preoccupied by the passing of time I found this viewpoint a little bit odd as I realised that I’m probably older than most premier league players. I’m sure that if I stood next to Jamie Carragher I would probably look a lot older than him. It’s even more odd that with wikipedia at my fingertips I still think some footballers are “old”.

If I think about this idea in greater detail I can’t actually think of many premier league players that are older than me. I double-checked this idea and I was right;  Out of roughly 700 players attached to Premier League squads there only 18 players older than me;

Shay Given, Andy Marshall, Michel Salgado, Kevin Davies, Jussi Jaaskelainen, Hilario, Marcus Hahnemann, Mark Schwarzer, Ryan Giggs, Steve Harper, Radek Cerny, Rory Delap, Carlo Nash, Thomas Sorenson, Carlo Cudicini, Brad Friedel, Mike Pollitt, Jody Craddock

There are a further 7 that would have been in my year at school;

Manuel Almunia, Robbie Blake, Phil Neville, Danny Murphy, Heidur Helgusson, Salif Diao, William Gallas.

You know you’re getting old when there are so few players of your age playing football. Did you notice how many reserve goalkeepers there are in the list? That’s my level now. I’m in the same group as football’s hidden men, ever-ready…… decrepid…….inactive………..unloved. I’m in the same age bracket as the players that have had better days, the players with dodgy knees, creaking backs and more scar tissue than Rambo, the players that they turn to in an emergency when there’s no other alternative. Jesus, I’ve never felt so old.

Incidentally, when my happiness was already on a downward spiral I noticed that Shaun Derry, one of the oldest looking players in the premier league, is actually over a year younger than me. You know you’re getting old when the oldest looking player in British football is more than a year younger than you. Bloody hell, how old must I look to people?

There was a time when all the players in the Premier League were older than me, then a lot of players were the same sort of age as me. Now there are hardly any my age. It looks like the know-it-alls were right about footballers when they reach the age of 35.

I don’t want to lament the fact I’ve reached 35. I don’t want to lament the lost years and the extinguished hopes. I don’t want to lament the fact that now I’m certain that I’ll never make it as a professional footballer, especially as Jimmy Saville is no longer with us. I don’t want to lament this because I’m not so sure that I’d like to have been a professional footballer. The money would have been nice cushion but the nature of their job and the world they inhabit is distinctly off-putting. Besides, they don’t have as much fun as fans. More about this tomorrow…….

You never notice quiet morons do you?

It’s funny how stories are connected by a third party. For example two issues on which I wrote recent posts (the racist abuse of Stan Collymore  and the misappropriation and misinterpretation of the poppy.) became connected the other day thanks to the plague of stupidity infecting twitter.

Earlier this week Stan Collymore made the following reasonable point on his twitter feed;

“The FA. Brought out The PM & William to support the poppy. Brought out a temp typing a one line statement to denounce racism Enough said.”

Here’s what some pricks wrote in response;

Connor McQueenie – “safe to say you’re a knob. Comparing something that rarely happens with respecting soldiers past and present. #prick.

jon rekert – “why can’t the all knowing Stan educate us? I repeat, what part of black idiot do you find offensive/racist?

Peter James – “this issue is small in comparison to our fallen heroes, stans being ridiculous”

jay logan – “people are getting carried away. Racism is not a massive issue in football. #didntbangonlikethiswhenplaying.

There was a clear winner in the “Incoherent” category;

Liam O’Connor – “comparing a problem like racism to people dying to protect our country is a disgrace – its words and wrong, but not death!”

There was a clear winner in the “Disgusting Stupidity” category;

Akins1878 – “ur a joke u boy. if u werent a weird mixed race muppet u wudnt be bothered aba racism. more imprtant than ww2? get a grip”

As an aside here, I’ve tried to think about the phrase “Get a Grip” a lot but I still can’t understand what the fuck it means. When people insist that you “Get a grip” what exactly are you supposed to get a grip of? Do they mean literally or metaphorically? Are they taking about a door handle, or the edge of a seat, or table? Are they talking about their stupidity? Are they talking about their throat?

You just can’t beat cunts like this can you? They think that by ending their views with something so very pithy they will win an argument. They appear to think that their view is humanity’s definitive view on a subject. Remarks like this are just Pavlovian responses because they can’t be bothered, or simply can’t, explain their ideas clearly enough. It becomes evident that they can’t explain themselves properly as soon as you question them; they’ll just insult you.

The responses Collymore received can be taken as another shocking indictment of Modern Britain, as Phillipe Auclair tweeted,

“I hope someone is collecting the tweets received by @StanCollymore. Fascinating stuff for future social historians. Pretty scary for us now”

It’s perfectly reasonable to make a connection between anti-racism and the remembrance of past events, the people lambasting Collymore simply haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about, they’re just plain wrong. Both anti-racism and remembrance should have a central place in modern British society. The poppy and anti-racism are inextricably connected because the second world war involved the defeat of a racist and xenophobic ideology.

The morons lambasting Collymore should consider why the first legal document in history to mention basic human rights, the United Nations’ Universal declaration of Human Rights, was written in 1945. By writing the document the world was expressing their revulsion of the Nazi’s racially based atrocities.

The responses to Collymore’s statement reinforce everything that I wrote in those two posts. Some people unable to think before speaking and the right wing press have successfully connected the symbol poppy to a sense of British triumphalism in a way that by-passes rational thought.

Le mot juste

With his usual impeccable timing Sepp Blatter decided to make a bold statement  yesterday.

“There is no racism [on the field], but maybe there is a word or gesture that is not correct,” Blatter told CNN. “The one affected by this should say this is a game and shake hands.”

Yesterday was the same day that a notable player playing in England was charged with making racist remarks.  I’m glad to see that the noble handshake can solve everything. The dick tried to clarify matters today;

“He has since told Fox: “I’m not saying about discrimination but foul language, foul play. If you have foul play [when] the match is over you shake hands.”

These are the weasel words of a person that doesn’t fully grasp what he’s saying. Of course this is just the latest public gaffe;

- Just after he awarded the 2022 world cup to Qatar some bleeding heart liberal queried whether FIFA should be awarding a world cup to a homophobic regime, Blatter simply gave the following advice to gayvisitors;

 ”I would say they should refrain from any sexual activities.”

- Blatter, the ex-president of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders, would like to see the women’s game changed for the better.

“Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball,” said the Fifa chief.

“They could, for example, have tighter shorts.”

- He once compared the celebrity millionaire cunt Cristiano Ronaldo to a slave.

- During one of the biggest corruption fuelled crisis in football’s history he claimed;

“Crisis? What is a crisis? Football is not in a crisis.”

I suppose you can’t expect anything other than public gaffes from someone who used to count the ticket tout Jack Warner as an ally.

After his latest outburst there must be thousands of articles written with this tone because Blatter is now public enemy one in football. I wonder how much coverage of Blatter there would be in the British media if England had won the right to host the 2018 world cup. Each comment would be treated as yet  another crazy footnote from silly uncle Sepp but “we” lost. Hence the day after the vote this was the thought of many idiots;

“Panorama blamed for England 2018 losing World Cup bid to Russia“

People didn’t seem that bothered by FIFA’s corruption this time last year. Even when Panorama reiterated the well-known accusations that FIFA is essentially a corrupt organisation people seemed to be willing to overlook that if it meant that England would be hosting a world cup. In the hunt for post-defeat scapegoats the corruption of FIFA became the momentary great evil of football.

 

I wonder how much people really care that FIFA is corrupt, or that Capitalist society is inherently corrupt.  I wonder how long it will take before peoples’ attentions are taken up by wondering whether this will finally be the year that England bring the glory home. I’ll bet all it takes is some fantastic goals.

The poppy is the amphetamine of the respectable moaning classes

There are always two celebratory events at the start of a British November; “Bonfire Night”, where we celebrate Britain’s history of catholic oppression, and “Remembrance Day”, where we celebrate the annual row about poppies on football shirts.

This year the cause of the row is FIFA’s so-called refusal to allow glorious England to wear a poppy on their gloriously noble white shirts. FIFA’s bigwigs won’t allow England’s players to celebrate the gross tactical ineptitude and moral degradation of Field Marshall Haig.  This year’s row doesn’t involve the clubs because the glorious Daily Mail has made sure all football clubs now wear poppies on their shirts.

Last week the glorious Daily Mail, in its role as Britain’s moral guardian,  was forced to label FIFA’s decision as “Scandalous”. According to the glorious newspaper FIFA are taking a “hardline stance” that “will further discredit” an organisation that has already faced “numerous corruption allegations in recent years and seen two of its executives depart following a bribery scandal”. Apparently “campaigners” are calling on the England players to defy the ruling.

The glorious Daily Mail then phoned up several typically irritable and easy-to-quote people to tell them of FIFA’s “hardline” decision. This news naturally aroused the ire of the people they contacted.

First they phoned Peter Hodge MBE, the former honorary general secretary of the Normandy Veterans Association (NVA):

 ‘We should not allow Fifa to dictate to us about our traditions. We fought for freedom, and that includes the right to wear a poppy.”

Then they phoned George Batt, the present general secretary of the NVA. He stated that the decision is “disgraceful” and then went further;

“I’m lost for words. I can’t see any harm in wearing a poppy. It’s so sad………..I think it’s a bit childish because, after all is said and done, if it wasn’t for us blokes, Fifa wouldn’t be here.” 

Then they phoned Patrick Mercer, a Tory MP and former Army officer, for a touch of colour and variety;

‘The England football team are one of our most precious and proudest assets. They should be allowed to wear national symbols whenever they want, and that includes the poppy, and no foreign organisation should tell us otherwise.’

The snowball of indignation started to roll, another moral crusade had begun!!! By Monday the glorious Daily Mail had discovered that FIFA were cowering against the historical terror of the German Jackboot  ;

“Poppy ban on England kit enforced ‘in case we upset Germans’”

Those sneeky foreigners!! They’re all in cahoots to snuff out our traditional British spunk. The pressure accelerated after Monday, as Two Hundred Per Cent succinctly describes;

“But who cares what that pen-pushing pinko thinks, when there’s a jingoistic juggernaut on the move. Either stay still and be run over, or get on board and watch it magically become a bandwagon. When Prince William also joined Cameron and for a tantalizing few hours, we wondered whether, inspired by the Roses, Becks would rejoin the band and bring back the inglorious days of The Zurich Failures, ready for one last crack at breaking FIFA.”

You can always rely on a politician, in the middle of a political row, to join a bandwagon if they think the issue is sufficiently emotional. Cue Good Ole’ Dave!!!;

“The idea that wearing a poppy to remember those who have given their lives for our freedom is a political act is absurd.”

Call me weird but I expect better from my Oxford educated prime minister. I thought that he would be able to grasp the idea that freedom is a political concept.  The snowball continued rolling…..

By yesterday “The scandal of the 2011 poppy controversy” was so shocking that even ITN were on the case (I know this because their righteous indignation nearly made me throw up three times in 5 minutes.). ITV were right to be on the case because by then the combined weight of the indignation, the moralising and the sanctimonious shite had paid off;

“Fifa has agreed that the England, Scotland and Wales teams can wear poppies on black armbands during the upcoming internationals.”

Hurrah for the Daily Mail!!! Hurrah for the glorious Daily Mail, they did what they do best!!!! Everything changed because of them, the world won because of them;

“FIFA’s great poppy climbdown was the talk of football on Wednesday night as the England team were given permission to honour war heroes against Spain on Saturday.

Following a Daily Mail  campaign, world football’s governing body finally relented……”

Lawrie McMenemy was quoted. That’s Lawrie “a former guardsman and ex-England assistant manager”. The glorious Daily Mail said that Lawrie…;

“…….. praised the Daily Mail for its campaign………’It is a victory for common sense and respectability.”

The glorious Daily Mail then told us that…”England striker Darren Bent celebrated the FIFA climbdown over poppies last night by posing in a special T-shirt” (Incidentally the t-shirt is available for £20)

In light of their attitude on the matter I don’t know what’s more charming; 1) the fact the glorious Daily Mail is celebrating another moral victory or 2) the fact that the glorious Daily Mail is glorifying victory by saying  that a sportswear company has the foresight to make a quick buck out of controversy, and our war dead. Well I suppose they are celebrating their little victory over slimy and efficient Europeans, it must feel like the mid 1940s in their offices.

I don’t know if you were able to read the subtle message between the lines in this controversy but I managed to work out that FIFA were just another group of dodgy foreigners that has the audacity to try to tell the plucky British what to do.

If you actually cut through the wounded pride act of the glorious Daily Mail it seems that FIFA had quite a straightforward rule in place a few years before the Daily Mail decided to launch it’s latest crusade against the hardline stance;

“Players’ equipment are that they should not carry any political, religious or commercial messages. The same regulations are applied globally, and uniformly, in the event of similar requests by other nations to commemorate historical events.”

Call me a raging communist infidel if you like but I’ll say that don’t think this rule was written so that FIFA could prevent the British association from displaying a poppy upon their shirts. I’ll really stick my neck on this, I think the rule was written with all members and all situations in mind.

I can understand FIFA’s point of view. They have to remain impartial and they don’t want football to be “used” to make the wrong kind of message. To FIFA the Remembrance period won’t have the same resonance as it does in Britain. The poppy, Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day probably look like just another commemoration.

If a precedent is made by allowing one commemoration then others commemorations will have to be allowed. Imagine the fall out if more contentious commemorations were allowed. What if the Armenian team wanted to commemorate the Armenian massacre, or the Greek Cypriots wanted to commemorate the Turkish invasion, or the Northern Irish team wanted to commemorate July the 12th. All three of those examples would obviously offend certain groups. What if a nefarious regime wants to glorify “terrorists”? FIFA simply has to remain neutral.

I’ll admit I can see the point of groups that want people to wear the poppy. We should remember the victims of the world wars. However this is the limit of my agreement with them, the emphasis of my thinking is the sacrifice of millions in two world wars . We should remember the needless slaughter of the Western Front. We should remember that it took the sacrifice of two generations for our government to attempt to make Britain become a genuinely fairer society. The emphasis of the glorious Daily Mail’s thinking is reminding the sausage-guzzling bosche that we won two world wars and one world cup. 

You could argue that if football teams wear manufacturers logos (symbols that are connected to a capitalist world view and therefore political) and national symbols (the crest of national associations are inherently political) on their shirts then it’s difficult to see what is wrong with commemorating the war dead of the twentieth century. FIFA are not above commemorating Nigerian dictators so you wonder why they are being so picky.

While I can see both sides of the dispute it is a bullshit dispute.  To turn the issue into corrupt Johnny Foreigner bashing, or overpaid footballer bashing, or any other scapegoat bashing is unseemly and disrespectful to “those that dies for our freedom” – the very people who the glorious Daily Mail are trying to commemorate.

Why should the English team have to wear the poppy on their shirts? Why isn’t it enough that the poppy is worn on suits and tracksuits? Why should they be placed under pressure? I sense that the Daily Mail have overblown things because of the reaction of the British Legion (the group that organises the poppy appeal) to FIFA’s decision. The decision hasn’t caused many problems for them ;

“We appreciate that showing support is not always possible under some regulations and we would never seek to impose ourselves in these situations.”

They reinforced this message yesterday;

“There are other ways to honour the poppy than by wearing it on a shirt.”

We need to be careful with the use of the poppy symbol because some sections of our society are not content to let the poppy remain as a simple symbol of remembrance. As we have seen this week Britain’s right-wing media have exerted a degree of unseemly pressure upon the people of Britain. Now we all have to be seen wearing a poppy and groups and organisations are under pressure to display the requisite “respect”.

This pressure is disconcerting and has little to do with the symbolic status of the poppy. The pressure to wear the poppy is now about showing how proud you are of being British and how much you support the actions of our armed forces. To the right wing press  if you’re not wearing the poppy you might as well want the Taliban to blow up all of the hospitals in London.

We can’t allow the Daily Mail and Murdoch’s tabloid to dictate the agenda on these matters because their so-called noble crusades have two agendas that are less than noble; securing market share and scoring political points. As someone on the When Saturday Comes message the poppy is more than a symbol for the right wing to use;

“The poppy, as much as it was about raising money, was about saying No More Wars, No More Militarism, No More Arms Races, No More Policy Built On the Interests Of The Many And Not The Few, No More Diplomatic Chicanery.”

If you think that the glorious Daily Mail’s poppy crusade  is an isolated example think again. Consider the way they became involved with the Normandy Veterans’ Association (NVA) over their 65th anniversary commemoration of the D-Day landings and you will have another example of how they do things.

The NVA quite rightly needed funding for their 65th Commemoration of D-Day trip so  the glorious Daily Mail got on Labour’s case;

“D-Day veterans will be denied Government help to make a pilgrimage to the beaches of Normandy to mark the 65th anniversary of the landings next year, it emerged tonight……….”

Once the Daily Mail were involved the help of the government wasn’t needed, the group could raise the money themselves. The Daily Mail could claim both a victory for their campaign and they then had a stick with which could whack Labour with ; “Aren’t Labour bad, look at the suburban liberal mafia, they don’t understand you”

“Britain’s D-Day veterans will receive the respect and support they deserve during this summer’s 65th anniversary after Gordon Brown finally threw the full weight of Government behind the ‘great generation of heroes’.

In a resounding victory for the Daily Mail’s campaign, Downing Street tacitly admitted ministers had misjudged the public mood in refusing to help.

The Royal Family is now expected to play a full part in this year’s events both in France and Britain, while Mr Brown will travel to Normandy on June 6 where he will be joined by other ministers and military service chiefs.”

Other media outlets could follow in the Daily Mail’s wake, and help to shower them with praise;

“The Normandy Veterans Association said it would not accept the money at this late stage.

It said it had almost raised enough with the help of a national newspaper (The Daily Mail)…………….

“There is no way in the world I am going to agree with the National Lottery standing up and saying they sent our veterans to Normandy in the 65th anniversary,” he said.

“The people of this country have put the money together and the veterans this year will be going to Normandy with the blessing and the appreciation of the British people and there is no way, that 10 weeks before the kick-off, that they are going to take the credit for this.”

It didn’t matter that “The MoD had previously said it was policy to provide funding only to commemorate 25th, 50th, 60th and 100th anniversaries of nationally important events.” It didn’t matter this agreement had obviously been made decades ago, the glorious Daily Mail had the scent of Labour blood in its nostrils and they won!!!

This shows what we’re up against; we’re being lectured on historical matters by newspapers using a heady mix of right-wing one-upmanship and political point scoring to a barrel-scraping level. We’re being told how to think by papers that seize the moral high ground simply to sell shed loads of newspapers.

When you look at the historical behaviour of the Daily Mail and Murdoch’s tabloid this attitude becomes even more disgusting.

Murdoch’s tabloid trumpets “Armed Forces Day” and the “Millies”. They claim to “Stand up for Britain!!” as if they invented patriotism yet they inflict puerile “journalism” on the British people, they spy on the British people and they refuse to apologise for the disgusting lies they peddle to the British people.

Then there’s the shrieking voice of middle class worry, the glorious Daily Mail. How they can justify taking the side of the ordinary decent working class British soldiers heroes, our great heroes of the past (heroes that have been let down by the craven liberal elite), is actually beyond my ken. The audacity with which they lecture people in their hectoring tone of injured decency is quite frankly disgusting in the light of their historical conduct.

Today the Daily Mail says that we must honour the war dead. In world war one they helped create the anti-German atmosphere with their coverage. Coverage like this led to hundreds of thousands of men joining up to die in the trenches;

When it came to the 1930s, the owner of Daily Mail, Lord Rothermere, rather liked fascism. He famously wrote a piece entitled; “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!!” and he was quite pally with Hitler;

The last paper we need lecturing us on how to relate to historical events is the historically fascist Daily Mail.

You see the effects of the right-wing pressure everywhere; in the things that people say, in the tone of the way that people say things, in the way people act. The pressure generally leads to a lack of thought, assumptions and emotional outbursts like Jack Wilshire’s;

“My great-grandad fought for this country in WW2 and I’m sure a lot of people’s grandparents did.

“England team should wear poppies on Saturday. It’s the nation’s tradition and it would be disrespectful not to.”

This would make every England footballer disrespectful for the last 80 years  Jack. The pressure can lead to far worse, horribly racist shite like this……………;

……. and it has also created public space for the horrible EDL racist cunts to have their say and try to claim legitimacy;

In case you’re wondering this prick has invaded FIFA’s HQ- if only there’d been a gust of wind……..

We must prevent the use of the poppy in this way. It cannot be co-opted by the right. If the poppy is anything it is an anti-war symbol.

Let us return to poppies upon football shirts. The pressure cause on this matter by the right-wing press is the latest way they can spread their poison and falsify history to suit their world view. They give the impression that the pressure to wear the poppy is historical but the pressure is a modern creation, and it’s their modern creation. I don’t remember poppies appearing on football shirts at all until a few years ago. I certainly don’t remember this happening in International matches.  For example;

“England did not wear poppies for games close to Remembrance Day against Argentina on 12 November, 2005 and Sweden on 10 November, 2001.”

The first team that I remember wearing poppies on their shirts was the New Zealand Rugby team of about 4-5 years ago. I think this may have had something to with a 90th anniversary (Gallipoli? The Armistice?)

In the past there simply wasn’t the same pressure on football clubs to have poppies on their shirts, not even after the world wars of the twentieth century. This seems odd as the way Daily Mail have tried to portray things but there was no pressure to wear a poppy on football shirts. This was even the case directly after the world wars, the time when you’d assume that there would be a greater willingness to highlight the sacrifice and to remember the loss of life.

This situation is similar to the anti-German hostility that idiots indulge in. You’d think that this feeling was historical after the wars and everything.  There’s a distinct atmosphere that everybody must hate the “Krauts”. Those “’orrible, dour, efficient krauts, with Zere Zenze of humour by-passes and zere brown shirts in ze closet” but just after the 1966 world cup win there wasn’t much anti-German hostility.

The final argument against the pressure is the way the clubs have sought to act to placate the Daily Mail’s pressure. The poppies are not embroidered on to the shirts they are heat-pressed transfers. 

This is a shoddy way to commemorate the war dead. The heat-pressed poppies show maximum respect in the maximum comfort without endangering athletic performance.This display cheapens the effort, it’s like the poppy campaign has to fit around the needs of the professional footballer. There’s no thought, or consideration needed, people just need to go along with it to stop people moaning at them.

Finally, I usually wear a poppy as a memorial to the slaughter of the millions in world war one trenches. I see the poppy as a memorial to the men butchered because their officers treated them as nothing more than cannon fodder to be wasted in a war that solved nothing. The situation about wearing poppies is well put by Two Hundred Percent again;

“One of those values was freedom, which at its base must, surely, mean the freedom to choose. That includes the freedom of fans to choose whether to support or not foreign policy actions in their own way at a time of their choosing rather than find they’ve gone to watch a sporting event and become co-opted in military boosterism. It should include the freedom of players to not be compelled to remember fallen in wars that have no meaning to them, or carry very different meanings due to their nationality. Maybe some would like to wear a white poppy (unlikely), or no poppy at all (likelier).”

I cannot stomach this pressure any more so I won’t be wearing one this year.

Stan Collymore sticks his head over the parapet.

Unless you have been held hostage in a network of underground tunnels you will know that John Terry, or to give him his full title “JT, Captain, Leader, Legend , saviour of the Queen’s spirit”, has been accused of racially insulting, or is it abusing?, another player.

Taking the slightly shaky slow motion pictures of JT’s lip movements as evidence it doesn’t look good for JT (Captain, Leader, Legend). If you think of his reputation it doesn’t look good. If you think of the way he come across on television in general it doesn’t look good. However until the case is proven one way or the other it’s a little unfair to judge an incident by the reputation of an individual involved in the incident, even if you already think the individual is an odious cunt.

(Forget the Terry Issue for the rest of the post, the rest of the post is about racism in general)

Thanks to seagull-like behaviour of the media (one swooping creature  is followed  by the rest of the flock)  this week’s big issue is RACISM. Look at all the people commenting on it!!! The general tone taken was; “The situation is nowhere near as bad as it was in the 1970s and ’80s”. When we compare today to that time the points made are undeniably true; there’s no banana throwing, audible monkey chants on TV or large recruitment drives for the far right.

Mind you, to anyone with any interest in football these are obvious points to make, and it is easy to come up with explanations; specific laws have outlawed racial abuse and abusive chanting, and the corporatisation of the football means that a negative image of football is unmarketable.

 Unfortunately some of the media decided to take a self-congratulatory tone about racism, the situation is radically better, especially in comparison with other places in Europe, and that was that. It was a little grating to hear after a bit. Can we say that racism is officially finished in British football, can we say that it has been eliminated in the minds of football fans?

You could highlight the England v Turkey match in 2003 as a worrying example, you could highlight the role of casuals in the racist EDL movement as another worrying example. You could say these examples are isolated examples, but you could also say they are examples where strength in numbers has allowed the racists to feel confident enough to say what they think.

Before this week I would have said that I don’t think that racism and racist thoughts have disappeared, I would have said that racist thoughts  are not expressed as much as they used to be, they are still being thought. “Thought not heard”. Then came Tuesday and Wednesday….. 

 Now I’d say that it doesn’t take much to allow the ugliness of racism to reappear. All you need is social networking media and you have a new method to express  racist feelings. After seeing the evidence this week on Twitter I think you can definitely state that racism is definitely is not dead as an issue, not in football and not in society.

This conclusion would be obvious if you had taken an interest in Stan Collymore’s twitter feed this week. To put it mildly he’s had to put up with an absolute torrent of racist shit. As Collymore said himself;

“I was called a n****r and a c**n. I was told my mother should be shot. I was told I should be lynched. Never mind that this scenario is taking us back to the 1970s, as some people have suggested. I felt like we were back in the 1700s.

And what makes it worse is that these people obviously have no ­problem with the things they were saying. 

I had messages from mothers, ­fathers, teenagers and students, ­complete with their personal profiles and pictures of themselves. Some gave their BlackBerry Messenger pin.

I re-tweeted some of the abuse to show that it was not just one or two morons responsible.”

It was so bad for Collymore that he tweeted the following to show the extent of the onslaught he faced;

“Called a lawyer mate who I asked to monitor my feed over last month. “At least 150 separate actionable offences under English law“

I didn’t see many of the really horrible ones because Collymore shielded the rest of us from them. He did re-tweet some of the more reasonable ones (that’s “reasonable” in the Daily Mail sense of the phrase). The authors’ use of  Daily Mail-eque common sense prejudice was shocking enough that we didn’t need to see the real filth. Reading those tweets was a truly soul-destroying experience. One cunt compared racism to banter;

“sad sad man, have you heared of banter. As if he is going to be racist when most of his team mate are black or other origens”

One fucker mentioned the word “lynching”, as if the word didn’t have certain connotations with the dark side of American history;

“ would love to know what you know Stan, you obviously know the truth!!! Seems to me you’re looking for a #Lynching”

Another cunt didn’t mind if there was racism as long as you paid him enough;

“pay me the money these players are on and they can call me what ever they like. #putittobedstanley” 

Another cunt told Stan, a past victim of racism, that; 

“you clearly have a massive chip on your shoulder. Get Down off your pedestal and be constructive”

Other fuckers just wanted him to forget the issue of racism;

“change the record collymore concentrate on the football #justsaying”

- “yes we all know there idiots without you harping on about it. Change the record”

“The row on race is so boring. If everyone laughed it off and didn’t make a big deal out of it, racism wouldn’t even exist.”

I double-checked Collymore’s profile to see if he had said Terry was guilty or something equally incendiary for the  tossers to use as a justification but there was no evidence of anything like that.  All he seemed to be tweeting about was the issue of racism in football (as well as society in general). The strongest comment he made was a condemnation of an inappropriate song sung by the Chelsea fans. 

Like Stan said in his article, the really scary thing is that these people are ok with using racist language;  like using the word lynching in a debate on an emotiuonal subject when they are evidently unaware that it has dark connotations in American history. On the other hand if he is cognisant with the proper usage of that term it just shows there some obnoxious cunts in the world, and that of course is a terrible thing to consider.  

If you call the person writing racist stuff a racist, my god watch the claws come out then. Watch them squirm, and then say they’re not racist.

People don’t seem to be comfortable with issues about race. Thanks to the bullshit propaganda of the Daily Mail, Daily Express and tabloids the term “Political Correctness” (the idea that you treat people with decency) has become a rallying point against the perceived  social and moral decay that people think afflicts Britain.  The horrible atmosphere created by the right-wing press has rendered logical thought redundant and leads people to doubt simple facts and ideas. People are so unwilling to engage with the subject, or think clearly before expressing an opinion, that they come out with the most stupid crap;

“I just had chicken in black bean sauce. Does that make me racist?”

Where do you start with this? What kind of moron thinks that you can’t describe a black pen as a black pen? These morons obviously don’t understand how to use the English language properly. They can’t see that calling a black person a “b++++ c+++” is different from calling black paint “black paint“. These people should be banned from leaving the house.

The stupid cunt that wrote the last tweet I quoted couldn’t understand why Collymore had blocked him. Not only could he not understand the problem, his arrogance was fucking breathtaking;

“Collymore has blocked me. Clearly didnt like me daring to disagree with him.”

Yes he actually thinks that Collymore, and the rest of us, are the ones with the problem not him. If it wasn’t bad enough that these cunts try to justify what they typed other cunts have a very disturbing mindset.  They seem to see the use of racist language and racial epithets as part of a new game;  ”Insults on Social Networking Media”.

I became so angry by what I was reading I challenged some of the people who sent Collymore tweets. While some gave the tired old justification “I’m not racist but….” other just insulted me;

“LOL nonce”

 

“Yeah it’s a word, like the word cheap describe you mum”

 With people like this it’s no wonder racism continues to be a problem. With people like this words lose their meaning because racist terms and racial epithets are bandied about as easily as “and”, “of”, “but” and “O M G”. It’s so fucking depressing to live in a world where cunts can communicate easily using language like this;

“give over about the racism shite who actually gives a fuck, #melter”

I’ll tell you what you little cunt I give a fuck, and people I know give a fuck, and people I don’t know give a fuck, millions of people I don’t know give a fuck 

 

 I just can’t figure out quite how some people get things so badly wrong. I really despise football for giving these twats a subculture to exist in.

The end is nigh

None of us want it to happen but the last ever match at Farrar Road is going to happen. Here’s a picture of a ticket for the match;

At the moment they are still available.

Bangor City and their new ground

When I re-read Ffwtbol last week I came across an article about Bangor’s new ground at Nantporth and it caused me a nagging sensation.  I began to feel that I should really write an update for the couple of people that read this blog. When someone on the When Saturday Comes message board asked what was happening at Nantporth later in the week I realised that an update for the couple of people that read this blog was an absolute must.

Let’s start with the plans; they look like this and so far there has been this much progress.

The plans for Nantporth represent the bare minimum that the developers/builders are prepared to leave us with. Fortunately the club have their own plans – already in motion –  to improve the complex once we get our hands on it.

Eventually we hope to have a community-friendly complex that will include a 3,000 capacity ground and a 3G training pitch. There will be a monument at the new ground for all the people that have had their ashes spread at Farrar Road. After its development the basic shape of the ground will be traditional; stands down both sides and terracing at both ends. The local community will be able to use the 3G pitch and the good-sized clubhouse.

It’s fitting that the local community are involved because the club is part of the local community. The local community have already played their part in developing the potential of the complex by signing the petition to support the 3G pitch planning application (Planning permission was granted partly as a result of this support).  The community aspect of the development is the most exciting aspect of the move.

It’s one thing to write about plans but money and further planning permission remain difficult obstacles to clear. Unfortunately there is no pressure upon the developers to provide more than the binding contract – signed 10 years ago – sets out. This is why we are only going to get the most basic of facilities.

Consequently the development of Nantporth will rely on grants from various sources. For example the 3G pitch will require grants from at least 3 sources and may need the involvement of Coleg Menai, the local tertiary college. There is much positivity about the potential development because Bangor’s board seem confident that the club will be able to access the funding. Dilwyn, Bangor’s chairman, has told us that everybody, including the FAW, is onside. The FAW have even proclaimed that they are impressed by the plans. This is very important because the FAW can provide grants.

As you can imagine a lot of people are very sorry about leaving the historic venue of Farrar Road, some are even inconsolable. People are bound to be sad that we are about to lose our comfortable old home. It is a place that “..smells of football”, to quote FC Midtjylland’s general manager. 

While Farrar Road is certainly historic it’s also a bit musty if you look too closely at the edges. Some great steps have been taken since the summer to make Farrar Road look presentable but the murals and new coats of paint can’t hide the fact that Farrar Road needs a major re-fit for European matches.

Unfortunately the resolute and immovable attitude of the owners of the ground, the city council, has meant that the development of the historic ground was always sadly out of the question. For roughly a decade they have said that the development of Farrar Road will cost too much. As they are the owners of Farrar Road that’s been a major problem.

One could argue that Farrar Road could have been developed with grants from the FAW Trust. The main problems with that were, 1) the club didn’t own the ground so they could not apply for grants and 2) let’s just say the city council wanted Farrar Road off their list of expenditure as quickly as possible. Hence the solution at Nantporth was formulated. Although this plan is old news – and we’ve had a decade to get used to the idea –  it doesn’t make the situation any easier to deal with.

The events of the last decade haven’t helped us deal with the situation either. We’ve had our misguided hopes raised almost perpetually. The proposed move was continually postponed (Nothing happened from 2001 until 2007 – when they laid a pitch and built an access roundabout was built – From 2007 until August 2011 nothing further happened) Plans for the post-move use of the Farrar Road site were also continually changed.  We hoped the move would fall through but the move is happening.

Two things have happened because of the impending move; everything suddenly feels poignant and  people have started to “bluster”. The logical will say that well this was coming anyway and wonder why people are blustering now but logic doesn’t create emotional ties.

The way the move has been engineered in the last couple of months has only added to the general unease. After a decade of delays, postponements, aborted actions, the application of pressure by ”whoever” has led to a general feeling that we are to be thrown out of Farrar Road with indecent haste.

Originally last summer “they” (I’m unsure who’s actually calling the tune here so “they” will remain obscure) said we had to be out of Farrar Road by May 2012. We groaned but we had all heard the mutterings and rumours about work on Nantporth recommencing. Although no-one wanted to hear this we grew accustomed to the idea. We knew the move was going to happen anyway and at least this time period would provide a chance to secure the funding for the ground. We thought that this would give us the chance to have a complete ground before we first played on it. More importantly we could plan a proper farewell for Farrar Road.

Then the tune changed and “they” gave Bangor City  three month’s notice to move out instead. As a result there is grumbling about the precise roles of the developer and city council in the move. The justified grumbling has may parts;

Firstly, we are still not entirely sure about what’s going happen to Farrar Road after Bangor City move out. At first we heard it was going to be shops, then it was a bowling alley, then more shops, then it was ASDA, now we’re not sure.

The self-imposed impotency (or thick-headedness if you’re being charitable) of the city council doesn’t fill people with much comfort. In a small university city they have allowed the stock of private student accommodation to mushroom. They have also allowed the city’s cinema and main hotel to be replaced with student accommodation. There are fears that Farrar Road will also end up this way. There has been no mention of social housing unfortunately from the developers.

Secondly, there is disquiet at what the developers/builders are giving us, (even though we are tied to the contract signed a decade ago so cannot change this). The developers/builders are getting a lot out of the deal we feel that there should be some good will from the developers/builders. They may not be obliged to help us out but morally they owe us a football ground worthy of the Bangor City’s stature in Welsh football. There are several reasons why we are owed good will.

- We are moving from a city centre location to the very edge of the city.
- The developers are getting the better end of the deal.
- We have suffered a decade of lost potential

The last point is the main point. If the move had happened a decade ago, things would now be different;

- We would have the ground as we wanted it by now.
- We would have had an income generating clubhouse (something we haven’t had for donkey’s years) – that’s a decade of potential income lost.
- We haven’t played a proper home fixture in Europe since 1998 (we’ve played in Rhyl and Wrexham)
- We may have lost potential Wales matches (u17, u19, u21, womens)

It would not take much for the good will to be honoured. A construction company should be able to throw up an extra three stands quite easily, it would be a mere gesture on their behalf.

Having said all that the community aspect of the new ground is exciting, we have even planned to build our own terrace if all else fails.

Can you trust the evidence of your eyes?

There are some things in local newspapers that have to be seen to be believed. Take this letter for example;

 

I’ve tried to work it out but I can’t. I have managed to narrow it two possibilities;

The first possibility; It was written by a complete idiot and reinforces the idea that most football fans in north Wales are hype-fiaxted invertebrate loudmouth morons. – “Alex Ferguson shows no vision blah, blah, blah”

The second possibility; north Wales is now home to a world class satirist.

That’s the trouble with north Wales you never truly know where you are with people.

This is a call……………

Thanks to a single picture of Gareth Bale the slippery slope is now in view.

I’m not complaining that some sportsman have been given the chance to become olympians - If you gave me the chance to become an Olympian I’m sure I’d take it – I’m complaining that olympian status of certain sportsman could be used a precedent further down the line. I’m complaining about  the prospect that the personal glory of 3 or 4 sportsmen  (the only Welsh players considered good enough to be an GB olympic squad) could cost millions of people the chance to follow a national team of their choosing in the future.

Just by playing in a two-week football tournament Welsh players would be creating a precedent that some people would want to refer to. These people would use the fact that Welsh players (plus Scots & N. Irish) have played for a single British national team as a stick to beat Wales (as well as Scotland & N.Ireland). They would say that “Well you did it once and that didn’t hurt, why can’t you do it all the time?”. Then the Welsh national team would cease to exist.

This is not scaremongering, some people in the world of football believe that it’s illogical that Wales (as well as Scotland & N.Ireland) play as separate countries. If Blatter or whoever is chasing votes to become president then it’s amazing what they’ll promise, and nothing gets in the way of making money.

You can’t trust slippery fuckers like Blatter anyway. On this particular issue at first he said a GB team would pose a threat to the independence of the four home associations, then he said that it would not.

I don’t want this to happen, I don’t want to support the same national team as the EDL and the BNP. I’m sure I’ve said this before but no-one is listening.

“ They” all think how great it would be to have a GB football team, “they” all think we’re being narrow-minded,” they” all think we’re stuck in the mud. These people are twats, don’t listen to them.

To send a message to them here’s a new flag for the olympics, a flag that shows what a lot of  people feel about the prospect of a Team GB football team;

By the way lads, if you’re going to moan about the denial of your chance to be a olympian, save it for the autobiographies.

When all hope is lost…………….

Below this you will find the best song in the world at the moment. It really gets to the heart of the problems in football, as well as other things in our society. It’s called “Rock and Roll is Full of Bad Wools” and it’s by Half Man Half Biscuit.

Ha;f Man Half Biscuit have also written an official anthem for the World Korfball championahips. The championships are happening at the moment and include Wales.

If you want to know why Half Man Half Biscuit are fantastic, read this article from “The Quietus”.

Congratulations are in order

I must offer congratulations to my friend Phil Stead. If you see him you must do this as well because Phil is the author of the excellent blog, Ffwtbol.

I should re-phrase the last part that sentence, Phil is the author of the excellent, award-winning blog, Ffwtbol.

On top of  being named in the Guardian’s “Top 100 football blogs to follow” last summer, and being voted one of “WSC’s blogs of the month” in 2008, Ffwtbol is now officially the best blog in Wales thanks to the Welsh Blog awards. (Ffwtbol also won two other awards – Peoples’ Choice and Best Sports Blog, awards that I incidentally voted for.)

The awards, and title, are very well earned because Phil constantly writes excellent and thought-provoking articles. The articles are written with an obvious passion, an excellent turn of phrase and a great imagination. Phil also illustrates his articles with his own excellent photos.

There are two qualities that really make Ffwtbol stand out. Firstly, it’s the focus upon the esoteric, although obvious, charm of Welsh football. This is something that most media outlets steadfastly refuse to cover. Secondly the posts cover a huge range of issues; everything from the lost promise of erstwhile teenage stars through match reports with a little twist to charming social history is covered. 

Here’s a typical well-reasoned post from Ffwtbol;

“Time to turn your back on the greed game

There is a storm brewing on football’s horizon. A movement is taking shape and preparing for a long term campaign which will require sacrifice, perseverance and no little moral strength to succeed in its aims of redressing at least some of the balance which has seen the game taking too far from its roots. The continuing greed and arrogance of the game’s richest clubs is being publicised and thrown into stark relief against an economic climate of struggle, of business failure, and of redundancies.

Some the English Premier League’s recent publicity has been stunning, even amongst its own history of self-interest since football began in 1992. There were reports that ‘foreign owners’ were aiming to stop the process of relegation from the top division. Let’s ignore the jingoistic implications of that remark, and admit that the idea would appeal to many of the clubs, who we know feel no responsibility towards the game as a whole.

Let’s stare open-mouthed at the audacity of  Liverpool Football Club’s move to arrange its own television rights. Even if we forget that the modern club was founded on the socialist ideals of Bill Shankly, it is not difficult to remember that the reds were a pretty mediocre side until the 1960’s. If Wolves and Burnley had been so selfish and arranged their own TV rights in 1960, and if there had been no relegation, then Liverpool would still be playing in Division 2. Yet they now seek to deny other clubs the same opportunity of progression that they were granted.

In an even more worrying movement, the Premier League clubs recently introduced the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) which, among other changes, will revise the system of compensation when a youth-team player leaves one academy to sign for another club. In other words, smaller clubs will receive less compensation for players who are poached by the top clubs. To force this through, they threatened to reduce the £5m of funding they currently give to the Football League for player development.

Premier League ticket prices have also hit the news recently. Firstly we had Arsenal’s £1000 season tickets, then QPR’s £75 match-day ticket. And it’s not just the EPL either. Tickets for Cardiff supporters travelling to Leeds have been priced at £37 each. For a second tier game. Like many others, I refuse to travel. Football’s not worth that much.

But this is where the problem starts. What price loyalty? Because the concept of loyalty has been nurtured by marketing departments who are only too aware of the power of peer pressure and the desirability of association with your team these days. When I worked at Cardiff City in the 1990s, we would regularly be visited by salesmen selling all sorts of tat embossed with the club stamp. Credit cards with a club badge were one option. “The mugs will buy anything with your logo on it”, said the salesmen, and he was right. We paid higher interest rates because our plastic card was printed with a club crest. We used it to buy £50 club shirts and promote the sponsor, we paid for a £12 printed name on the back, and donated £6 to add a Coca-cola advert on the sleeve. It’s laughable when you think about it.

Fans don’t help themselves in this respect. We’re always mocking stadia for the number of empty seats that we can see. “Is that all you take away?” we chant, when we know that times are tough. We pressurise our fellow supporters to fork out on expensive tickets which help subsidise the Bentleys being driven in the car parks. We are idiots. We’re being taken for fools by the privileged elite.

But things are starting to change. Huddersfield boycotted their match at Sheffield United over the £28 charge to watch a Division Two game. When Chelsea fans start to object to ticket prices, you know that football has jumped the shark. This is a fan-base that would wave wads of cash at clubs supported by striking miners in the 1980s. The Stamford Bridge executives cleverly handed out free tickets to minimise the effect, and any football boycott is doomed to failure while we place so much weight on our loyalty. If only we could do boycotts like the Bulgarians, who apart from 200 weak-willed souls, completely ignored the recently international with Wales in protest at recent performances.

The super rich clubs think they can do without us. Financially they’re right. But how would their games appear with no supporters? They also think they could get by without serious opposition. They want to replicate the Scottish and Spanish leagues where two clubs dominate in front of huge crowds. Is that what you want? It’s a nonsense.

So how much is football worth? The FAW recently announced prices of £10 and £1 concessions to watch the Wales friendly against Norway which seems about right. The last time I looked it was £17 to watch Wrexham, which seems extortionate for a non-league game. I think that Championship football is worth about £15 a ticket, and yet I wouldn’t pay more than £10 to watch Blackburn v Wigan in the EPL. I’d personally like to see a sliding scale where tickets are priced according to capacity like you get on airlines.

This afternoon, I will pay £8 to watch Bangor City play at home. I will have pretty much the same experience as those of you who pay ten times that amount. I’ll have a pint and a pie, I’ll chat to some mates, I’ll cheer when we score and get mildly annoyed by a ref’s decision. What will be missing is the sense of occasion, the feeling that I’m somewhere that you would like to be. Modern live football is built on the desire to be present at ‘an event’ which receives world-wide publicity. It’s like getting a box at the opera where the hoi-polloi can see you. So you’ve got a ticket to see United? Well done, you’re a mug, and you know you are.

It’s time to say ‘bollocks’ to the EPL, and to the Champions league for that matter. Your hard-earned money is going into the pockets of multi-millionaires who really couldn’t give a damn whether you turn up or not. Your managers are playing their reserve teams in fixtures that you’ve saved up for weeks to see, and they are charging huge amounts to anybody who can’t afford the several hundred pounds it costs to hold a season ticket. Quite simply they are taking the piss.  You see those empty seats? That’s not because your opponents are unpopular, its because their tickets are overpriced and their fans are hard up, and there’s no shame in that.

http://www.reclaimthegame.org.uk/”

So congratulations Phil and keep going. I can’t recommend this blog highly enough.

Did I tell you I sold Phil a hat on Saturday?

Bangor City fans á la L.S. Lowry

If L.S. Lowry had owned a digital camera and supported Bangor City (This is plausible, he used to visit Anglesey) he may have taken photos that looked like these;

If you want to get ahead, get a hat

Bangor City 2 Neath 1

Welsh Premier League

22/10/11

Consider the bobble hat, the normal, common or garden woolly bobble hat. Like all clothes it remains where you last placed it, waiting to be used, pregnant with possibilities. It could endow you with a sense of elan, a bit of panache, a dash of dash, it could even make passers-by swoon at your stylish example or it could  just make you feel warmer.

Normally it’s the magic of film that awards clothes special powers. I don’t know about you but I’ve never owned anything that would enable me to fly or disappear or speak mandarin. Saturday’s events prove that situation has now changed, now I possess a magic hat. 

In the light of that statement consider this bobble hat;

At first glance it’s an unassuming bobble hat, retro styled but unassuming, an unassuming gift. Well this hat has magical powers. I kid you not, it actually does.

Now I know what you’re thinking, this is just another football fan claiming that they have enchanted underpants or a lucky vest. I’ll bet you think I’m just like one of those twattish talking heads from the telly; “ Whoever invented clothes  is quite literally a genius ……… Don’t you hate people who like “Books”, I mean what are books about?”. I can assure that I’m not one of these malodourous tossers.

I am being perfectly serious when I say I have a proper magic hat, with proper magic powers. I mean it. I know what you’re going to say now. “Didn’t you say that your 1986 Argentina away shirt had magical powers before the Llanelli match but Llanelli won so that shows you were very wrong” Well no, that wasn’t a magic shirt. What I’m talking about now is a piece of clothing with genuine magic powers. Behold the evidence;

The first half. I was surrounded by annoying people. When I say this I obviously don’t mean the people who normally stand near me for they are “sound”, I’m talking about really annoying people. I do wish these people wouldn’t drink before matches. I certainly wish that they wouldn’t drink on the terraces. I definitely wish they wouldn’t roll their empty beer bottles and waft their smoke in my direction. I’d state categorically that they shouldn’t put their small offspring  upon their shoulders.

These people are never the happy drunks, are they are always the  incoherent and rambling drunks, the drunks that laugh at their own risible  jokes, the drunks where  aggression bubbles just under the grip on your elbow. One of Saturday’s drunks liked beating his chest for no discernable reason. When he was chanting incoherently, he was shouting incoherently at the referee for perceived slights upon his sense of fair play. The apogee of his behaviour was getting up on the fence to berate the keeper for having the audacity to take goal kicks. He was more than embarrassing. The cameras were there but this gibbering fool didn’t care. As scousers might say, he was a bit of a whopper.

Then there was the football, it’s probably best we don’t talk about that as it was almost turgid. Neath went in front and could have scored a few more. A mixture of woodwork, Idzi and a bit of luck combined to restrict Neath to one goal. Bangor on the other hand were rather subdued. We had a go but there wasn’t much precision. Well I say had a go but it was abject, abject stuff. We couldn’t even get the ball to clear the first man at corners, abject, abject, abject. Or at least this is how I remember it.

At half time, the weather seemed to become colder. As I walked around the ground I noticed a definite chill in the air. Luckily I had the aforementioned hat with me. I put the hat on. Things began to change, things began to happen!!!!

2nd Half. Bangor made a half-time substitution. Bangor managed to string a few passes together and we  had shots as well. As Mike Smith saw it;  “On 51 mins the odious Morgan left the field with Garyn Preen coming on for the little showman whose blatant gamemanship had vexed the mainstand faithful.” It was starting to go our way, my hat was working!!!!

Not only did we win more corners in the second half they actually reached the centre of the area. My hat was working!!! Neath’s keeper was playing well unfortunately. Then Sion and Walshy came on and this is usually a sign of good things to come. The Neath defence became visibly nervous so resorted to manhandling Sion to the floor. The next prominent moment was owned by Brewie, but his free header nearly hit me. We were getting closer, the moment of glory was almost upon us. One of the drunks was thrown out. My hat was working!!!

Then we swore the moment  was upon us, a good move resulted in Sion crossing the ball from the left wing, we thought the moment was there as the ball sped across the area. When the ball left the six yard area without a touch……. the sighs, oh the sighs!!! Curses!!! My hat was still working!!!

Then the moment did  arrive, before we had time to absorb and reflect on the enormity of the missed chance, the ball was in the air on the edge of the six yard box and Peter Hoy Football Genius was running towards it. Peter Hoy Football Genius met the ball with his head and the ball was in the goal. What a moment!!!!! What a hero!!! As he ran off, we ran around the around in paroxysms of  joy. My hat had worked!!!!

Unfortunately Neath’s keeper appeared to be very injured. Dylan, Alwyn and I speculated that he must have collided with a post. He had to leave the pitch. That’s the problem with injured keepers, they are usually injured in a painful, and usually serious, way. As an associate member of the goalkeepers’ union I wished him a speedy recovery. We clapped him off. Unfortunately the keeper wasn’t wearing my hat but my hat hadn’t finished working.

Les missed a great chance but we shouldn’t have worried, Neath had a couple of chances but we shouldn’t have worried. We shouldn’t have worried because my magic hat was working its magic. In what was surely the last of the six injury time minutes, somehow the ball was near the Neath goal again. Somehow Bully had a shot, somehow it went in of the underside of the crossbar. We won, we won and it was all due to my hat.

Yes my hat had won the day!!!! Now Bangor City had a new hero!!!

I talk the talk but……..

I have a confession to make, last week I talked the talk but I didn’t walk the walk and I ended up in Cardiff at 9:15 am last Saturday morning. It’s taken me a week to pluck up the courage to tell the world about it.

Here’s what happened……..

The process of my resolve weakening begin on the Tuesday of last week (11th October). I tried to fight it but slowly and surely my resolve dissolved until the following thought; “What the hell, I’m going to south Wales anyway I might as well watch the rugby!!!”, popped into my head. Well the train tickets weren’t going to get any cheaper. My resolve wasn’t likely to be very strong thanks to my rugby-loving dad.  I’ve been watching Wales play rugby since I was in primary school so I decided that I wasn’t going to let the plebs stop me watching a rather big match. 

There was only one problem; my reason for going south.  I had to be in Llanelli by 1:30 pm at the latest to watch Bangor’s match in Llanelli. Before my gradual dilution of my stance  I was going to leave on the 7:25 am train from Llandudno Junction but if I took this train it would mean missing the rugby match. Luckily enough the generic timetable website told me there was a train at 5:15 am. If I got that train I could watch most of the rugby match and still get to Llanelli in time for a few refreshments!!!!! Unfortunately this would mean having to get up at 4:00 am. 

Last Saturday morning I arrived at Llandudno Junction and found the Marie Celeste of stations. Even at 5:05 am trains still run late and my train eventually slouched onto the platform with an unrepentant shrug.

I thought the train would be packed with plebeians put there were only two people with rugby attire. Safe in this knowledge I sat back and fell asleep. In Chester I awoke in a haze to hear a crackling announcement tell me that we had to change carriages. Thankfully I found a new seat with a table. Unfortunately my reverie was shattered by three Tory-faced battleaxes.

You may be wondering how I knew they were Tories, well in a carriage that contained no reservations and over 40 free seats they demanded to sit in the precise seats that their tickets stipulated. Their jolly reasonable demand forced a man out of his seat just as he had become comfortable. Only Tory cunts act like this. 

A TNS player got on the train at Gobowen but they all look the same to me so I can’t tell you which one (He got off at Newport in case you’re wondering). I know it wasn’t Steve Evans as the train seats remained urine- free. Yet more Tory-faced harpies sullied the train at Shrewsbury. You know the equilibrium of your zen won’t last long when loud contempt for Wales and loud discussions about Big Brother are heard from the other end of the fucking carriage. These harridans pushed me in the direction of the red-shirts. Oh how I despise the Daily Mail reading ways of the border country mindset.

Each station was deserted on our southward journey, even Newport. The only person I recall seeing on Welsh soil was a young man on a rugby pitch in a red shirt. It was obvious he was dreaming of glory as he lined up the match winning conversion. Maybe the Welsh news had been right all along, maybe this was the most important thing in the history of Wales.

At 8:45 am Les texted me to say they were in the Millennium Stadium. This was odd as I’d arranged to meet them in an unspecified pub. I’d read on a message board that you needed tickets to get in. When I asked him Les said I could just blag my way in. I thought about it briefly, in years to come I could live off the kudos of watching the semi-final on a giant screen in the Millennium Stadium; “Oh yes you watched the semi-final but were you in the Millenium Stadium?” I foresaw doors held open in perpetutity and the key to Llandudno around my neck for the citizens of Llandudno remain impressed by this kind of shit.

As we pulled in to Cardiff I could see its streets were deserted as well, maybe everybody actually did have “rugby fever”. I arrived outside the Millennium Stadium to hear the commentator say that Warburton had been sent off. I looked at the stall selling programmes for £7, I wondered what they were programmes for.

As a less than natural blagger getting in was rather easy. All I had to say was “My friends have my tickets and I’ve come all the way from north Wales” and they let me in. It must have been the sincerity in my eyes.  I suggest you try this for six nations matches.

I knew Les and the others were standing on the pitch area by staircase 310. (The pitch had been removed and we were all standing on tarmac.) I went to this area but couldn’t find them. I looked at the screen, the score was 3-3. I walked around to find Les but I couldn’t. Whilst I was in the toilet one bloke told his mate that sending off was a joke and you don’t need any more conclusive proof than that. 

After a couple of minutes walking I felt very odd. The volume 0f noise generated by the crowd was so awesome I suffered sensory overload. I was encased by a cocoon of white noise, virtually deaf and unable to think clearly. It was one of the most disconcerting sensations I’ve ever felt in my life, I think they do something similar in Guantanamo Bay. The best way that I can describe it is being helplessly adrift in an ocean of loudness because when I looked up at the screen I felt better, just like a seasick man looking at the horizon feels better. When I resumed my search and I was adrift in the white noise.

As a result of not feeling myself it took me a few minutes to register the stares. Then I realised that in their eyes of most people in the stadium I had made a faux-pas; I was wearing a blue shirt in an ocean of red material. I was wearing my 1986 Argentina away shirt because during my last trip to south Wales to watch Bangor I wore it and we won. Therefore I thought the jersey had magical properties. In the excitement of blagging my way in I forgot this little detail. It’s funny but I thought rugby fans didn’t look at opposition fans as football fans do.

The white noise abated a little so I reasoned that Wales were doing as well. Now I was able to concentrate on finding Les and the others. I managed to find them and they had what Scousers would call a “good spec”. I stood next to Alwyn and everything was fine, I had a good view, I was with friends and I had a cold beer. Yes everything was good, well it is was good if you discounted the bloke that eschewed quiet contemplation for bellowing down my ear. It wasn’t so much the act of bellowing down my ear that was the problem, it was the fact the fucker liked to state the bleeding obvious; I was almost deafened again, this time by the evidence of my own eyes.

 The crowd was how I feared last week, they had been whipped into such a frothy red-shirted state by the media that they were just a mass of drones screaming mindless incantations. Oh how they bellowed  and “OOOOOOHH”-ed, my how they shouted and “AAAAAAAHH”-ed, oh how they screamed “Fucking Kick it butt!!!”. They did it all as one as well.  Coming to the Millenium Stadium didn’t seem like a good idea any more, kudos or no kudos.

Towards the end of the first half I zoned out of the white noise to gaze at my surroundings. If the pitch had been there I would have been roughly halfway between the halfway line and the goaline. I visualised that I was in the same position from which James Hook would be able to miss his kicks. The stadium appeared to be a lot smaller from pitch level than the view from the stand suggests. When I looked in the stands I could actually make out what people were wearing. With a well-timed shout the players would be able to hear you, even in a full crowd. 

Half time arrived with Wales narrowly behind. Parts of the half-time “show” highlighted everything that’s wrong with being forced to be “WELSH” (File this under ; Hype; The Creation of).

The atmosphere of forced “jollity” and pressure to conform was a little bit too much.  Why the organising bastards had to make everything so very loud was beyond me.  For example some annoying fucker encouraged us to….”MAKE SOME NOISE!!!”  It would have been bad  at any time but we were talking about a quarter to ten in the morning.

She then embarked on what Half Man Half Biscuit might have described as “several minutes of mantra-filled oompah – I didn’t see the point “our boys” weren’t going to hear us, they were in New Fucking Zealand!!!! but she just plunged in to encouraging us to have a good time; “”LET’S MAKE SOME NOISE FOR THE BOYS!!!”………… “COME ON WALES!!!”………….. “IF YOU WANT WALES TO WIN SCREAM!”………….. “SHOW THE BOYS YOUR SUPPORT!!!” she screeched. It was the cliched behaviour of someone that thinks they’re meant to act in this way. Stick to trying for a meeja career love.

Then there was the Coup-de-grace, the thing that really made my teeth grind., Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the pantomime choir “Only Men Aloud!!”

It’s not that I don’t like choirs as an art form. They have their place in the musical realm and they often sound good. It’s this horrorshow of a re-imagining I can’t stand. Firstly they perform like a bunch of self-satisfied cunts; it’s those fucking grins. Then there’s those fucking choreographed moves and synchronised arm-pumping. So on top of the hype, the sensory overload and the getting up at 4:00 am I had to watch these pantomime fuckers strut their contemptible stuff in public.

The grins lit the blue touch paper in my head but when they started performing  ”Don’t Stop Believing!!!” the detonastor went off.  What a fucking song choice. Firstly it’s a fucking 80s cheesefest re-popularised by people like the cunts that present T4. Secondly, did the organisers really think we needed  reminding that Wales can still win a game at half time when they’re trailing by 3 points. Do they think the world is populated by braindead ITV viewers or something? I can only assume that they must have practiced this song  for the performance beforehand. They would have looked pretty stupid if Wales had been winning, unfortunately Wales were losing.

Due to the festival vibe (we were outside and live music was being performed) I decided to pee in an empty bottle. Then I remembered that I was in a stadium. The genius moment!!!!; I saw the possibilities of a sport/festival crossover moment. I carefully placed the bottle of piss on the ground. I looked at to make sure it was steady and lined up the kick. I took three long strides backwards and then one to the side. I then assumed the Johnny Wilkinson stance. I strode forward and “gave the bottle an almighty belt” as Bill McLaren might have once said. The bottle drifted wide of  the singing cunts by a matter of inches. As it turned out this was an apt metaphor for the second half of the match.

The second half had more white noise but there more tension than the first half. You could almost cut the tension with a knife. That’s the trouble with hype creation, tension is a by-product. Every passing opportunity led to a gasp, every missed opportunity led to a very loud groan, every mistake led to “FOR FUCK’S SAKE MAN, YOU’RE SHIT (insert correct name) MAN!!!!

Then Mike Phillips scored a try and there was so much joy in the area that people became so lost in the moment that they forgot Wales needed to score the conversion to actually go ahead in the match. Wales missed because Jones hit the post but you wouldn’t have known from the lingering hope in the air and the general gobshite behaviour.I really love spending time with people that don’t know the rules properly!!!

This is where things took a disturbing turn, I began to coast on the waves caused by the red-shirt wearing masses. I began to wince, I began to contort my face, I began slap my thigh in frustration. That’s the trouble with hype if you’re not careful, it makes you act in funny ways, even if you’re merely part of the collatoral damage.

The closer the match got to the final whistle the more fraught the voices  became, I told myself to calm down. At the final whistle I dealt with the disappointment like the imposter it is. 

After the match I joined the traditional 40 minute queue at Cardiff Central. On the train to Swansea  a drunken moron in a red shirt (who’d have thought it!!!) tried to wrestle my bag of crisps out of my hands, one of his mates threateningly wondered if I was wearing a French shirt.

When I returned to Cardiff later that evening I was surrounded by drunk people in red shirts, kids in red shirts, dogs in red shirts, lampposts in red shirts, irritating young women in red shirts that screeched at each other in red-shirted Subway as I queued for a sandwich in a red shirt.

I depsised myself for getting dragged in to it all.

Anyway, here’s the biggest lounge in the world.