So, after 90 minutes of huffing and puffing in grotty conditions and getting a miserable soaking yesterday, it will count for nothing. The club Secretary dropped a bollock by not checking Lethwaite's availability to play, and the player himself didn't bother to volunteer the fact he'd played in an earlier round. Terrific. Well done one and all.
All this latest f*ck-up has done has given the professional moaners on KTFC Chat, Poppies Talk, Reds Revue, Kettering Grizzlers and Town Twats online forums even more to bleat about. In the game of "Poppies Are Going Bust Bingo" getting thrown out of the Trophy due to playing someone too dumb to realise their very selection will cost us the game, has had many shouting "FULL HOUSE!"
However, all is not lost.
Patgod is here to remind us all how being a Poppies fan is still brilliant. We've lined up five good reasons why every other supporter of every other club must wake daily bemoaning the fact they weren't born in our fair corner of Northamptonshire. Or, five dismal facts that we blindly cling to which will only serve to drag us down as surely as concrete life belts.
(1) We are, at time of writing, the FA Cup all-time goal scorers. Yes folks, until 10 minutes into Tottenham's 3rd round game at home to Shitkickers and Bunion Athletic FC, the mighty Poppies have scored more FA Cup goals than anyone else. True, even the most cursory view of our FA Cup goal chart shows an awful lot of several goal thumpings handed out before WW I to long-defunct Micky Mouse sounding clubs from the Peterborough area. But, as they say, you can only beat what's in front of you....
Mind you, other than occasional bragging rights, what does this fact actually achieve for us? Literally nobody else in football knows or cares. Nor did we until one of our Statto's came up with the, er, statistic several years ago. I'm more suspicious over the fact the same Stattos have stayed curiously quiet as to which team has conceded the most goals in the history of the FA Cup.....
(2) We introduced Shirt Sponsorship. That's right. It's OUR fault otherwise attractive football kits are hideously branded and that soulless Betting companies have managed to push their relentless drug on the football supporting public. Yay us.
(3) We used to get enormous gates. All the time. Sorry, but another piece of self-perpetuating nonsense we cloak ourselves in to bolster our superiority. During my Poppies supporting days I can only recall ONE season where we averaged 2,500 (a mythical figure people seem to recall we attracted all the time). And the average gates for that season, under Peter Morris's first failed tilt at the title, were helpfully bolstered by have a couple of 4000+ gates for the last two home games when a shed load of glory seekers thought we might get promoted. All of them were long gone by the time the following season kicked off....
(4) Rockingham Road was the best stadium in Non-League. Many people who still consider themselves to be Kettering Town fans wouldn't be seen dead at Latimer Park because it isn't a patch on RR. No, it's not. That's true. But it's also true that Rocky Road wasn't the non-league Old Trafford we all seem to remember it as. Did any of you ever use the toilet on the Cowper Street cinder bank? Or get stuck behind the 43 fences erected down the length of the Britannia Road terrace? Or get moved from your seat in the stand because the area you were in had failed it's safety inspection? Or get soaked when anywhere in the half of the ground with no cover?
Rocky Road was a good ground for our needs, and we all loved it because for any faults it had it was OURS, and had belonged to our parents and their parents before them. But let's not kid ourselves the whole non-league footballing community lived in a state of permanent jealousy because it was our home and not theirs. Because they didn't.
(5) We are a sleeping non-league giant. Some of our most deluded supporters can't understand why Ritchie isn't fully funding us to revive the glory days. On the very weekend where we attracted to a home game over 16,000 LESS than attended a National League fixture one division above us, some of our addled-brained base are still convinced we are a big noise in non-league circles. Half of the division above us are former Football League clubs and there are dozens of teams tussling to get up into our division regularly attract double our gates, and yet somehow we see The Poppies as a team others fear, are jealous of and seek to emulate. They don't, they shouldn't and they won't.
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| Glover - take a week off from being bollocked. |
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