An artists impression of when Dave still had friends |
Poppies at the Gates of Dawn
"Coming in hotter than the Sun" and "Bursting Pomposity" since 1989
Sunday 10 March 2024
The Dave Singh-cident
Tuesday 27 February 2024
The Big One
The importance of tonight's match-up cannot possibly be overstated. A match between the forces of light and the forces of shite. Apparently there's a football game this evening between Kettering and Sudbury, but I'm talking about the clash between the two Tory MP's representing both towns.
On the right, in the blue corner is James Cartlidge. He has been Sudbury's MP since 2015, during which time has has served as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Justice, Exchequer Secretary for the Treasury, and Minister of State for Defence Procurement. The bugger is still not even 50 years old.
On the even further right and in the even bluer corner is local boy Phillip Hollobone who, despite being in the Commons twice as long as James has never come close to holding any official office. Even Peter Bone was briefly given a job as the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons FFS! When you consider how many PM's he has served under, and the absolute shit-show of changes in personnel under them, it takes a special kind of dim-wittedness to somehow be passed over for so long, by so many.
However, he DOES own a rather old union jack coat that, no doubt, he'll be wearing about the town when the General Election comes, when he'll be trying to blame all societies ills on everyone and everything but himself and his party despite being in power for the past decade and a half.
James Cartlidge - Justifiably Smug Phillip Hollobone simply can't believe we keep electing him |
Trial by Television
It’s hard enough watching us play lately, but for those of a particularly masochistic bent, even more self harm can be derived from the post-match interviews on Poppies TV.
First we had Andy Leese, whose media strategy can be summarised as:
·
If we didn’t lose, it was all down to him and
the clever decisions he made
·
If we lost, it was because the players hadn’t
followed his instructions
·
And it wouldn’t happen again on his watch (it
did)
Initially Jim was a breath of fresh air, speaking apparently from the heart and with a healthy dose of common sense. But this miserable stretch of results has slowly sucked the life out of him, to the point where he has literally run out of ways to answer the question, why are we so shit?
For fans of the genre of trying to polish a turd, a collector’s item was the opening query after Telford, where Jim was asked if he had seen any evidence of improvement since Long Eaton. After... a long pause... he suggested that we had kept our shape for the first 20 minutes.
Somehow, despite being demoted to ball wiper and other duties as required, Jim seems to have kept the media gig judging from the latest sorry spectacle.
Possibly the new boss is being kept away from the camera after his debut appearance almost crashed under the weight of so many obviouslys, including six in a single sentence.
But more likely, Lav was still otherwise engaged delivering the mother of all bollockings and sent Jim out to do the honours.
Unless results improve (please God) can we make a humanitarian request. Do the interviews have to be so long? There’s nothing to be gained from making the poor man field yet another question to which we already know the answer. Wriggling politicians get off lightly compared to the Poppies TV inquisition!
Sunday 25 February 2024
Is this the worst Poppies team in living memory?
Beginning of the end? |
Saturday 17 February 2024
The Third, Last Throw of the Dice
After drafting in additional players and trawling our back-catalogue of managerial bods with only Richard Lavrey picking up the telephone, the club has taken the further ambitious step of sacking all the supporters and drafting in a replacement crowd for today's game.
Having tried most other permutations to win a home game the Board have taken the bold move of releasing all 700 hardcore Poppies supporters and moving into the loan market for an entirely new crowd for the visit of Leamington.
The previous supporters have taken to Twitter with the following message -
"Our collective time at Kettering Town has come to an end. We'd like to thank the board and all the managers for giving us the chance to be disappointed most weekends. Our mutually agreed departure gives us the chance to look at options moving forward that may or may not include trips to B&Q, National Trust joint memberships and lunch with the in-laws. More than likely though we'll all be spending every other weekend in either Harborough or Wellingborough. Either way, we're gonna have to get used to wearing an awful lot more yellow than we've been used to...."
Speaking on behalf of our new supporters, former fan Anus McLintock of Brigstock also took to Twitter to say -
"On behalf of the new fan base I can only express how excited we are to be joining the club at this crucial time of the season. I used to be a supporter back in the day, and can remember as if was only yesterday the day we were relegated out of the Football League, blowing a 73 point lead in the League with only 3 games to go, being denied entry into the Premier League on the grading of the stadium and winning the World Cup at Wembley. I'm really looking forward to supporting "The Cherries" once again and cheering the lads on at a sold-out Rockingham Castle."
"Kettering Town on hold for Ron Atkinson...? Sorry mate, wrong number. Do you need a cab...?" |
Thursday 15 February 2024
The Second, Last Throw of the Dice
Another week goes by and a couple more players in blurry photographs appear on social media holding the ubiquitous Poppies shirt, standing alongside an increasingly panicky looking Jim Le Masurier. That poor bloody shirt has been handled by so many temporary visitors this season it must feel like it's on a table in the entrance of a Primark store on the first day of the sales. I'm not sure how many more times we'll be welcoming kinda-nothing players who are of a level and quality that the prospect of a handful of paydays at a struggling Poppies side seems like a good career move. Surely we can only have so many more changes in personnel if not performances before we're all reaching for "deckchair" and "Titanic" cliché.
A look at the League table, best done like my Missus watching a horror film - through fingers or from behind a cushion, squeaking, "has it gone yet?" paints an ugly, stark, but clear picture. Basically us or Sudbury are going to fall off the footballing map at the end of the season. As we have yet play Subdury we have no idea how indifferent a team they are. Were it not for Nuneaton's latest demise they would be sitting above us in the table. As it is, with Nuneaton's results now a distant irritant, we sit 4-points proud of Sudbury.
We know very little about the club who are standing between us and consecutive relegations. What we DO KNOW is that not only do they have 3 or 4G pitch, but they now have permission for a second artificial pitch. TWO artificial pitches to make money out of, while we continue to try to play on our flooded or frozen cabbage patch with, seemingly, no chance of ever getting just the one new surface. They also seem to have a positive outlook to the remainder of the season, making a big feature on their social media of the run in, grandly calling it "THE RUN IN!" They also count, switching between the blog and Wikipedia with masterful aplomb, former Poppies players Jamie Griffiths, Bradley Thomas and former Poppies Assistant Manager Dean Greygoose among their less than stellar array of old boys.
What they don't have is a terrific number of supporters or the best of luck when it comes to teams going bust. They had managed to do the double over Nuneaton and must have been less than chuffed when those results were wiped. Their attendance against local rivals Needham Market attracted an extra 300 fans (more than double their average gate) to the hotly contested B1115 / B1078 derby. Nor do they have, unlike us, the very strong likelihood that they'll be playing a 38 year-old defender as a makeshift centre forward for the rest of the season.
But, probably the best thing they have over us is they don't seem to share our almost crushingly fatalist outlook and our world-weary pessimistic self-destructiveness somehow magically allied to a blind belief that we are still some sort of force in non-league football. The bastards.
Monday 5 February 2024
What Just Happened?
At the time of writing, a match report on the Long Eaton game is yet to be added to the official website. It seems fair to assume that whoever was assigned to write this one up has downed tools in protest, or has been unable to get past “shitshow” in the opening sentence.
There are bad days at the office and there is what we witnessed on Saturday, a supposed ‘must win’ that far from slightly easing our relegation anxieties has sent them off the scale. Did the players expect Long Eaton to simply roll over? Long before the visitors had the temerity to actually score, we were merrily fluffing chances like it was all going to be a walk in the park – until suddenly crumbling at the first setback.
At half time it was still possible - just - to believe that fired up and attacking the Tin Hat, a win, however narrow, would still be scraped. As opposed to the bottom of the barrel, which was tunnelled through after about another 20 minutes, followed by about ten feet of Latimer Park clay until finally hitting bed rock.
Pretty much without exception the players out there looked like they’d given up. Against a team that only we seem to have any trouble in beating. A team whose noisy little band of fans were so unused to seeing them dominate a game, one of them forgot to take his flag when changing ends. In front of a crowd mostly stunned into silence, rather than ripping their heads off in fury like many a Kettering crowd of old.
Where on earth do we go from here? Afterwards, Jim seemed to have no better idea than the rest of us. His post-match interview was part WTFery, part disaster victim being encouraged to relive events as the first stage in rehab.
The frustrating, maddening thing is the same group of players are capable, not of so much better, but at least looking like they possibly could care less. We have seen this, on occasions. They are even capable of putting in a good collective 45 minutes. But if they think they are too good to go down, think again.