Minnows Alert!!!

It would appear that the Great-Southern-League-Fixture-Gods have tweaked their fixture-abacus such that we'll be fully testing our promotion credentials over the next few weeks.  In a division where several deep pockets are funding several iddy-biddy clubs in a private battle to see who can be first to bankrupt them, we have a number of the miniscule main runners in our immediate sights.  All of them promoted way beyond their natural level.  All of them shelling out well over the odds for players who would normally laugh at an approach from them.  All of them utterly desperate to be seen to be serious rivals to the Poppies.

First up is the weird little speck of a club called Real Bedford, run like a bargain basement "Welcome to Wrexham" they aren't even the biggest football club at their location.  To be fair though, their Chairman has sufficient self-awareness to refer to himself as a budget Ryan Reynolds.  Their twitter-page may look more like a teenager's Death-Metal fan page than a football club site, but they are at least amusing in their efforts to manufacture some kind of rivalry with us....  Wanabee Poppies Rival Level - 6 out of 10

A couple of days later and Harborough Town drag their swollen, clanging bags of gold over the border to test their collection of mercenaries against us in a desperate attempt at validation.  Wanabee Poppies Rival Level - 12 out of 10.

Just over a week later yet we visit another bumpkin collection of inbreds, wildly over-inflated by obscene cash injections - Spalding.  This assumes they've finished carting in an instant stadium of shipping containers and hopefully employed a few able-bodied stewards to keep their small but angry collection of misfit fans under control for once.  Wanabee Poppies Rival Level - 7 out of 10.

Before September is out we are at home to the last of the "Little Four" in the form of Stamford - yet another club artificially financially bolstered, and, just like the others, still finding it difficult to attract more supporters.  Wanabee Poppies Rival Level - 9 out of 10, or 27 out of 10 if you include Drury and his childish antics.

Even the other fixtures in this period offer interesting challenges, with a home game against surprising league leaders Bishop Stortford and away to returning former non-league big boys, Worcester City, where between us and them we'll barely make a dent in their bloody 12,000 capacity stadium!

One thing is for sure, before the clocks go back this season we're going to have a good idea whether the Poppies 2025/26 vintage has got what it takes to attempt another title charge.

"Please Poppies, choose me!"

Still work to do, alas

The 1970's was a great time.  Don't let anyone tell you differently.  Modern media paints a picture of the 1970's being nothing but a mixture of power cuts, unburied dead and brown wallpaper.  Sure, we had all that but we also had much, much more.  For one, we had the arrival of colour television!  Forget your wall-to-wall online streaming services, NOTHING comes close to the excitement of the first time seeing all the bridge officers in Star Trek in their glorious primary colours!  And there were more musical genres than you can shake a rhythm stick at - Glam, Pop, Heavy, Punk and Prog Rock, Disco, New Wave, Funk and the Wombles.  We had affordable housing and even more affordable beer.  We had the greatest run of brilliant movies ever - The Godfather 1 & 2, The Exorcist, Jaws, Star Wars (and NOT A New Hope....), Holiday on the Buses and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Winning the Football League was pretty much a guarantee of winning the European Cup.  We had it all.

Unfortunately we also had rampant, unapologetic racism in society in general and in football in particular.  Racism and homophobia were, at times, so casual and common place that it would have made even Tommy Robinson blush.

As much as a progressive, civilised society would like to believe that in the intervening years abuse of people based solely on skin colour or sexual preference had receded such that only those on the very outer fringes of our species still harboured (quietly) such views, all too often we are reminded this is not the case.

A Premier League game on Friday was halted for 5 minutes when a Liverpool fan couldn't dredge his imagination deep enough when insulting Bournemouth striker Semenyo to aim beyond the colour of his skin.  We were one game into the season and this was the main news story coming from Anfield.  One guy in a crowd if 50,000 is statistically zero, but it is so dispiriting that such incidents still occur.

Unfortunately it would appear we never truly conquered intolerance and that the worst of it merely slumbered for a few decades until the time was right for it to rise again.  For most of the past 30-odd years your common-or-garden hard-right misanthrope at least had the decency to keep their repulsive views to themselves.  Well, decency might be too strong.  More likely they realised their views were poison and the vast majority of the population would rightly vilify them if they spoke up.

Pride-designed laces and armbands, and taking the knee before kick-off have really been shown-up as the empty gestures they are when the country's most popular and populist politician spouts nothing but unchallenged racist lies, and the supposed "Leader of the Free World" is a tiny moustache, and one testicle away from being a full-blown fascist.  With people like this dominating the public discourse it's hardly surprising their binary views are starting to become common currency again with certain, vocal elements.

This all came to mind yesterday when listening to the tannoy announcements that racist and other intolerant language would lead to lifetime bans.  Leaving aside how enforceable such a ban would be as regimes and club ownership changes over the years, I pondered if ANY threats would deter someone who lives on a diet of social-media conspiracy and echo-chamber, dog-whistle hard-right rhetoric from venting their bile when the mood took them?  Even if they can't be educated about their views, we can only hope they can try to keep their "thoughts" to themselves for the 90 minutes they spend with the rest of us.

This is NOT normal.
Satan usually has higher standards.

Trainspoppies

Choose Latimer Park

Choose a new season

Choose to hope for more of the same

Choose buying the new home shirt, but continue wearing the old one

Choose a slice of pizza in the fanzone

Choose trying to learn all the players' names (if only for when Dave Singh asks you in 3-months time)

Choose returning to your usual spot in the ground

Choose to shout "Freak" at Glennon in an affectionate manner

Choose a carpark pass you've still not seen hide nor hair of

Choose to ignore the odd Burton-bobble

Choose to attend more away games on the supporter coach

Choose not to go down the rabbit hole of KTFC Chat whenever we lose

Choose to believe not every volunteer will jack it in

Chose 5 minute Simon Hollyhead interviews over 15 minute Simon Hollyhead interviews

Choose a Klondike win for the third season in a row after bitching for decades about not winning it, if only to annoy Ken

Choose to wonder why all the millionaire-micro clubs in this division think they're going to boss it in front of their 300 fans

Choose the barstaff who have actually poured a pint before

Choose to applaud the kids taking half-time penalties 

Choose the odd visit to the Hospitality Lounge

Choose to continue to hate Rushden and Diamonds

Choose to use irony and sarcasm on the linesmen rather than anger as they can't process that

Choose Tuesday nights in the rain in Burton rather than Champions League in the warm and dry

Choose to lose your temper, patience and mind with the Poppies

Choose to repeat