We're all soft as s*ite! OFFICIAL

Today's game with Gateshead has been called off.  Just because the ground is a bit hard.  And there's a bit of snow on the ground.  Ah, diddums!  When did we become so soft?  When did we stop simply clearing snow from the lines around the pitch, grab an orange ball and get on with it?  And when did it become acceptable for players to wear vest, gloves and now those bloody silly neck warmers just because the temperature has dropped a smidgen?

When did men stop being men?

Jonny Graham crashes the equaliser into the roof of the net!

It certainly wasn't like this back in 1992 when on a bitter Friday night in January the Poppies lined up against Colchester United in a top of the table clash.  Cold?  It was the sort of night where even Polar Bears wouldn't have ventured out.  And yet over four thousand of us slipped and slithered our way to the game, only to see us go 2-0 down before little Jonny Graham struck twice late on to get us a point.  And I don't remember a pair of gloves in sight.  Except for the two pairs of gloves, dozen layers of clothes, hat, and thick woolie socks I was wearing of course!

Surely the only reason the game went ahead was because it was being televised by some micky mouse oufit called Sportscast (?).  They had secured the rights to televise Conference games to the uninterested patrons of the few public houses in the country who had the "foresight" to believe that a bit of third rate kick and rush would gather in the punters....Needless to say the company offering this service lasted not much longer than the cold snap. 

Should the game have gone ahead?  No, of course not!  But one can picture the Sportscast hierarchy badgering the beleaguered officials into letting the game go ahead, allied no doubt, by a Poppies Chairman, weighed down by the enormous gate takings, that he would have returned over his own dead body!