Gary, Gary Gone.

The sad news of Gary Stohrer's departure has filtered through to Patgod Towers and we couldn't let his leaving pass uncommented.  We join every other Poppies fan in wishing Gary all the best for the future, assuming he doesn't join one of our rivals and end up pissing all over us, in which case he can f*ck right off!  We can't believe that we are alone in wondering if letting go of a guaranteed 100% effort midfielder in favour of a succession of unknown signings who could be gone as soon as they arrive is necessarily a good idea....but I guess in Lavery we must trust.

Gary is one of those players who does a lot of the unglamorous hard yards in midfield.  One of those players who rarely shone with a flashy defence splitting pass or 30-yard pile-driver, but you certainly noticed when he wasn't there to break-up the play and set us going forward again.  This season a combination of Gary and Andy Thanoj gave us such solidity in the centre of the park that the players around them have truly flourished, but therein lies the problem.

All players want to play.  All the time.  And it was clear that Gary was going to be trailing behind Andy when it came to the starting XI.  There's only so many times you feel satisfied with a 20 minute cameo from the bench.  If that.  Gary has just got back to fitness and wants to play as much as possible to make up for lost time, and I doubt anyone could blame him for looking elsewhere for that.  Hopefully at a better level than Wellingborough, where he's keeping his hand in presently.

However, Gary's departure leaves a couple of important questions hanging that Patgod needs to address....

Firstly, the title of "Mr Kettering" needs to be re-allocated.  This will probably end up being a straight fight between Connor Johnson and Lewis White, with Dan Jezeph waiting in the wings in case neither of them fancy playing under such an unforgiving level of supporter expectancy.

Secondly, with the departures of Gary Hooper and now Gary Stohrer, the rest of us Garys at Latimer Park all move up a couple of places in the Kettering-Gary-Pecking-Order.  

While I grudgingly accept that perhaps as bona-fide club do-gooders Gary Foreman and Gary Graham probably out-rank a piss-taking blogger, I reckon I've got a fair crack at the nailing down the No.3 Poppies Gary slot.  

I'm certainly going to give it my best effort, but if you're a Gary who frequents Latimer Park and reckon you've got a better claim to the No.3 spot by all means let me know so I can launch a spiteful character assassination of you on this very platform....

What Gary gets up to in the privacy of
his home of an evening is entirely up to him....

Spurs - still there in the rear view mirror

They won’t be happy down the Lane.  It's a bleedin' disgrace I tell ya!  And to add to their woes, plans to install a manual FA Cup goals scoreboard at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium have been postponed they say. Another nail in Ange’s coffin?  Probably. A cause for celebration in NN15?  Definitely!

Unlike some we don’t get to draw teams from 4 divisions lower. We have to earn our goals the hard way, sometimes against opponents from a much higher level. Would love to see how that would translate to Spurs in terms of difficulty.  On present form, probably Villa away!

So thanks to Ange and his imploding fortunes our record will stand for at least another season, maybe two – unless Man Utd, lurking dangerously, yet again win the Cup before deciding to sack their manager anyway.

A final thought before we sit back to enjoy the rest of the competition with bragging rights intact. Has anyone ever calculated the most goals CONCEDED? Now wouldn’t that be a double!  

Strewth mate

 

All The Three's

THREE GOALS

THREE POINTS

JUST THREE POINTS OFF THE TOP OF THE TABLE

THREE HUNDRED LOVELY QUID COURTESY OF KEN SAMUEL!

See you next season Mick.

Kids Today....

A curious incident from this week's trip to Banbury.  No, not the defeat.  Unfortunately these are becoming all too common and expected.  Nor poor Johnny Edwards barely getting a kick.  This too is becoming unhappily commonplace.

No, I'm referring to the Supporter coach being inundated with young 'uns.  Now, anyone who has been on the Supporter coach knows that the term "young 'uns" covers literally anyone not drawing a pension, but in this case, we are talking REALLY YOUNG 'UNS.  Or teenagers as I believe they are known.  Fully half of the coach seemed to be made up of people more concerned with homework the following day rather than still being alive the following day.  People with smooth faces, reedy voices and copious amounts of annoying, youthful optimism.

As a grizzled veteran, my immediate response was as you'd expect.  Bloody kids.  Making bloody noise.  On my bloody coach.  But, I tell you what - it was actually refreshing to have new blood on the coach.  Yes, they were noisier than the usual crew.  But not overly so.  And they were there to support their team. Just like the rest of us.  Once they learned how to close the toilet door after themselves (utterly vital on RB coaches - believe me!) and realised you couldn't change seats willy-nilly with people who've sat in the same spot since before the Falklands War, they were a welcome breath of fresh air in the often stultified away-trip atmosphere.

A lot of us older folk forget that we too were once the noisy no-nothings at Poppies games, being barely tolerated by our elders.  Gently nudged, and sometimes not so gently in the direction of what was acceptable behaviour on the terraces by those who had seen too much over the years.  We were helpfully guided in our Poppies-supporting journey by fellow fans, probably all long gone now.  The circle of life sort of thing.  Without Elton John's awful song hopefully.

So, on balance, new fans coming through is A GOOD THING.  We get to roll our eyes at some of their antics, correct some of their more outlandish actions and can barely understand anything they say, but then, we don't have to.  We don't have to have great philosophical debates with them, we just all need to rub along and keep them interested in the Poppies long enough to one day take the burden from us!

Even my visuals are over 40-years old.....

F*ckwits Ahoy!

Yesterday's last minute winner at Sudbury was most welcome.  90 minutes of turgidness redeemed by a single moment of quality.  This is by no means a recommendation for the "Mullered Sports" Youtube Channel, but Mr Mullered happened to be in right spot to capture the goal quite beautifully, from Thanoj's exquisite, defence splitting pass to Pennant's nerveless finish.  

Mr Mullered's appearance at our game in Suffolk had filled me with a sense of foreboding.  Like the Grim Reaper, his all-too-often appearance at Poppies games heralds either a shite performance, a defeat, or both, captured by the mobile phone of this Angel of Footballing Death.  And, for fully 95 minutes of the 96 minutes played at Sudbury his unloved attendance at the game seemed to signal our usual inability to perform in front of his jowly glare.  How unlucky a mascot is he in the grand scheme of things?  I can't say for certain, except to say he was thrown out of the ground during our last away win by the ever-officious stewards at Telford.  I'm not saying his departure helped us win the game, but I'm convinced it didn't hurt!

So, back to yesterday's game.

Last minute winner = a good thing.

Last minute winner followed by a gumby pitch invasion = a bad thing.

Football is a game built on rules, regulations and accepted norms.  The players and clubs have a shit-load of directives and rules they need to follow.  Or be fined.  Or have points deducted.  Or be relegated.

Supporters?  We have basically two rules to follow.  Resist the urge to pelt the players and see if you can avoid being on the pitch.  Sounds easy you'd think?  At the moment certain elements of our support seem to be having problems with both of these, quite reasonable rules.

Last week a supposedly pissed-up 15 year old hit the opposition goalie with a plastic bottle.  Yesterday a group of pissed-up adults (a blur of pissed-heads?) thought that a jig on the pitch after our goal was literally the only was to celebrate a late winner.

Leaving aside the, admittedly, admirable physical dexterity of (A) hitting a bit of an arsehole goalie with a lightweight bottle from 20 yards, and (B) instantly leaping quite a tall fence when gumped out of your head on grog, you've got to ask what the hell is going on with some of our supporters.

Don't go on the pitch or throw things at the players.  Two quite easy things to remember.  You'd have thought?  Even when half cut.  It might not bother the people doing these things (nor, dispiritingly, far too many, not-actually-at-the-game apologists on KTFC Chat), but football clubs can get into a world of trouble when these sort of things happen.  

Is it really worth doing a bit of a drunken wobble in front of defenders who have just lost in the last minute (who thankfully ignored our idiots) for the club to be fined?  Or the club being forced to employ more stewards or even pay for police to be at games?  Or even the club being told by the league not to serve alcohol in the stadium as it's become clear some of our lightweights can't handle it?  

What price a grinning, imbecilic waddle onto the turf now?

One welcome and one unwelcome debutant at Sudbury

"First Goddamn Week of Winter"

So said the character of R.J. MacReady, played by Kurt Russell in director John Carpenter's1982 body horror classic, "The Thing."  Stranded in Antarctica, standing in the ruins of an exploded helicopter alongside the corpse of a murdered Norwegian, unaware that a monstrous shape-shifting alien parasite is about to kill all of his colleagues, MacReady bemoans the commencement of the annual cold season.

And yet, MacReady's reaction seems mild when compared to a number of Poppies supporters the past week over the postponement of a couple of games of semi-professional football.

We genuinely do appear to have a smattering of supporters who seem to believe we should have a dispensation from frozen conditions and that any fixture cancellation is a complete and utter failing of the club.  The perennial subject of "The Sheets" is raised once again.  Not that we really know what "The Sheets" entail or what they can protect us from.  I'm pretty certain that over the years I've read people on social media bemoaning our lack of "The Sheets" when we've lost games to frost, snow, rain, drought or even the opposition still being involved in the later rounds of the Trophy.

With League One and League Two games tumbling to the cold today, despite, no doubt, sheets galore being deployed, one has to wonder about the basic economics of such an investment for a club at our level.  I may be miles out, but I seem to recall a figure IRO 20K mentioned somewhere for sheets that may or may not allow your game to proceed.  Assuming, of course, you can call upon a small army of volunteers to lay and then remove the said sheets over the course of the week building up to the game.  Having once helped with such an operation at f*cking Non Park of all places, I can attest to this being hard work, and certainly not achievable in 5 minutes.  And when you are heaving acres of heavy fabric you get a better sense of just how large football pitches are.

But none of this means anything when social media commentators start bitching about a game being off that, in all probability, they might have swerved themselves anyway because it was too cold.  Usually on the Thursday before a prospective postponement some bright spark will suggest the Club magic up some sheeting and wonder why we hadn't already bought some, bloated as we are with FA Cup run money.  A handful will bemoan why we don't have Championship-level contingencies in place to protect a UCL level pitch.  A few will throw the odd accusation around about the club not fancying playing.  The odd dullard will choose this moment to announce they are going to watch Harborough Town today anyway....

The upshot is the club DOESN'T have frost sheets.  Nor the manpower to deploy them.  Given the amount of League One games succumbing today it is doubtful "The Sheets" would have saved today's game anyway.  So, stay home, knock the thermostat up a degree or two, dig out that half-full bottle of Advocat you couldn't entirely force down your Aunt at Christmas and get uber-eats up on your speed dial.  At 3pm, fire up the VCR and slip your ancient "John Carpenter's The Thing" cassette in and crank up the telly.  Believe me, the guys in the movie are in for an almost as bad a 90 minutes than we were going to endure against Alvechurch.

"Couple of pints of lager please Gary"

Reason to hate Redditch - No. 246

Redditch, Redditch, Redditch.  Like stubborn dog sh*t on our shoe we can never quite shake them off.

Anytime we get relegated or promoted, BANG! There they are.  As welcome as thrush and just as difficult to be rid of.  We have to drag ourselves once again to their eternally miserable wreck of a stadium and put up with their angry, grizzling supporters.

Why?  Why us?

This season, just to add a further unwelcome twist of crapulence, the game is to be segregated, meaning we will be denied access to their warm club house - by far the best part of the stadium.  Why segregation?  Is the thought of a successful Poppies bringing a few hundred fans across to their blighted, urban, spunk-bubble of a town so scary?  It's not as if there is a problem with the two sets of supporters.  They are all mouth and accent.  We're all too old and gnarled.

The closest I've ever seen to a dust-up at Redditch was last season when the two Managers faced off against each other.  Given that their manager looked like a steroid-ravaged, cage-fighting, angry bouncer from a Scouse drinking pit and our manager was cuddly Andy Leese, I wouldn't have given our boy much of a chance.....about the same his team had.

On one memorable trip to their charming town we pretty much had to step over a couple junkies enjoying the fruit of their labours in a multi-storey carpark stairwell.  After spending another dreary afternoon at the Valley I gave serious consideration to reaching for the needle myself and tucking into some blessed chemical-based relief.

Why God, WHY?