Post season friendlies

As the curtain falls on this campaign, with the only cries of “More!” coming from opposing strikers who haven’t had it so easy since they were knocking them in for the under 11s, we can put away our Poppy bobble hats for a few months and rediscover how it feels to pass an enjoyable Saturday afternoon. With no further fixtures until the first pre-season run out in July, it’s time to smell the roses, go fishing or just sit in numb silence in a darkened room. All fun by comparison!

In the old days, seasons didn’t end quite so abruptly. Often there would be a low key testimonial of some description – a Poppies Select taking on Boston or Oxford United, watched by a few hundred charitable souls with nothing better to do on a May evening. Or there would be a cup final, usually of the county variety, but sometimes a tiny bit less local. About 20,000 claim to have been there the night we beat Hendon to lift the General Motors Acceptance Corporation Cup! And as for the gala finale of the Midland Floodlit Cup, even Pep’s Barcelona never put 8 past Redditch!

And for a spell in the late 70s and early 80s, Rockingham Road played host to a succession of top drawer, end of season friendlies of the type you never see nowadays, before the Premiership came along and seasons extended forever. These were genuine prestige occasions, in which every kid of a certain age would converge on Rockingham Road for a rare glimpse of a moustache or perm owned by someone famous. Kicking things off in 1979 was a Roy Clayton testimonial against Big Ron’s West Brom. I still have the programme and the first striking thing is the date – the 24th of May. Ron must have recalled his team from their holidays for this one.

It was the full gun too, as he would say – with Regis, Cunningham and Robson not a bunch of 3rd teamers and one bloke you’d ever heard of. A year later Man City were put to the test, a slightly less cosmopolitan City than the current version, but again names we knew off the telly, including future Poppy and first ever million pound misfit, Steve Daley. City blew £1.4m on Daley and never heard the last of it. By the standards of the average recent Liverpool signing, he was excellent value.

However the game that stands out was in 1981 when KTFC entertained the European Champions. (NB for younger readers, Nottingham Forest. Ask your dad.) They even brought the trophy with them. Around 5,000 were there to see a real treat. Forest were at full strength and I can still remember the buzz of excitement at the pace of Trevor Francis. However our own Nicky Evans scored twice past Peter Shilton and seemed destined for big things - ultimately ending up at Barnet.

After the game we swarmed around the back of the stand, clamouring for autographs. It was a dog eat dog, survival of the fittest thing – which is why I only got Ian Wallace. Two years later Forest returned, without the cup and many of that team. Meanwhile our fortunes had slipped to the extent that many of the crowd probably hadn’t bothered watching us since the previous occasion.

We didn’t know it at the time, but that was the end of the big post season friendly. In many ways a shame, but at the end of this particular season probably for the best, on compassionate grounds.

Why all sports except football are crap. No.2 Rugby

FIVE REASONS WHY RUGBY IS CRAP


1  They've managed to create 2 versions of the same sport.  And they're both crap.

2  No-one has the faintest idea of what constitutes foul play, nor which way the ref will give a decision after the whistle has blown.

3  All rugby fans are insufferably smug.

4  Rugby is seen as a friendly, safe sporting environment. This may have something to do with the fact that no one really gives a toss who wins just as long as there are lots of homo-erotic clinches and the supporters can drink themselves into a Guiness-fuelled stupor during the game.

5  I once got caught up in a traffic jam near Twickenham.

Now and again scrums have been
known to get out of hand.

"Corby Cube is Crap" says Corby

The great and good of Corby, including members of the council and their MP are lining up to give the leader of Corby council a good kick -in over the steaming pile of sh*te that is the Corby Cube.  Seemingly the planners dropped b*llocks everywhere, the architects have been blasted for not building to acceptable standard despite the construction costing some 20 million above and beyond the original costing.  The ruling Labour council is being savaged for trying to keep all the cock-ups and incredible overspends under wraps, particularly during recent elections.....

Amazingly the Cube's construction falls some way short of current fire regulations!

WHAT!  IN CORBY!

Have they forgotten that this is a town twinned with Nero's Rome?  A place stuffed  full of druggie pyromaniacs?  A town where the charming residents have even manage to burn down the boating lake?

What were they thinking?

Squeaky Bum time at Steal Park



It's brown trousers time as Drury expertly oversees Corby's slide from play-off
wanabees to relegation wanabees.  He may have left the tilt at demotion
just a little late this season, but Graham will still do his best to deliver
Southern League football to the town.

His Chairman is slightly less keen on games against Arlesey and Frome rather
than Kettering and Darlington and has publicly announced his determination
to stay up.  "We must stay up!  If only to get our one big gate next season
against Kettering.  Who knows, we may even break through the magic 300 figure!"

Barrow match in pictures.....

...because frankly we can't be arsed to write that much about it!





"Hand it over, hand it over! sang the turnstile operator.
"With absolute pleasure", I replied!
"I'm glad to be rid of it!"





Off went the smoke bomb, the red mist causing the
scenes of pandemonium you see here.

By the way, if you've ever wanted to know
how Ashley Westwood views the world 90% of the time,
I would imagine it would be much like this!



And after 90 minutes or grinding tedium we thank what
remains of the golden class of 2011-12 for their efforts,
and wish them well for the future.  Those few who

actually have a future in football that is.

We had eventually hung onto a draw against a mediocre

Barrow team, barely going through the motions,

who had lost their last 25 games (more or less)

Bravo!





We all draw a line under the season and rush back to Kettering PDQ. 

Even though the club is contractually obliged to fulfil a

meaningless fixture at Darlington next week, we're all more
than happy to call it a day.

In the middle of the photograph are my usual, losing

Klondike tickets.  Half a lifetime buying tickets - never won it! 

Imagine my delight when the winner is announced as proposed

new owner George Rolls, who has been here all of five minutes!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!!!



Desperate to wring some last value out of this season of hell
we descend upon the club shop and hoover up all
the cheap, pointless tat we'd resisted all year long, leaving it
resembling a particularly sorry-looking Soviet era supermarket.

Roll on next season!





Why all sports except football are crap. No.1 Formula One

FIVE REASONS WHY FORMULA ONE IS CRAP

"It's my sport, GIVE ME MONEY!"

1  Not a sport at all, just glorified adverts going too quick to see, driven by arrogant shites.

2  The entire "sport" is owned by a tiny, weird-looking troll.  How does someone own a sport?

3  Said troll would gleefully allow Hitler's Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union to host races just as long as they gave him a big pot of money.

4  The troll's missus is patently out of his league and were he poor wouldn't have looked at him once, let alone twice.

5  I got struck in traffic once near Silverstone!

Has this been the worst season in living memory?

Short answer - yes.

Slightly longer answer - yes, of course it f*cking has been!

More considered answer -

Although it feels like we are getting relegated every other season, in real terms we have barely suffered a handful of relegations in my Poppies supporting lifetime.  Precious few promotions either, but that's another blog entirely! 

Back in the early 1980's, just after a unified national non-league top division was set up we were the perennial Forest Green Rovers of our day in so far as always seemed to just avoid relegation.  We managed it by finishing just above the relegation zone, unlike FGR who magically seem to be major beneficiaries of the end of season Conference Cup whenever they fill one of their accustomed bottom four places.

These seasons were grim, but we had Frankie Murphy to offset the gloom and keep us warm during the cold, cold winters.  We owned our ground.  We never actually went down!  After that we achieved numerous top 5 finishes, which these days would have meant a two-leg beating against a former league giant, but back in the 80's and 90's meant bugger all to anyone.  We even sacked managers for finishing near the top of the table! 

Peter Morris's fateful return ended up with him consigning us to the drop for the first time in a generation, but even then, under Shutt we almost pulled off the FGR, Great Escape.  And, as we bounced straight back in breathtaking fashion the following season, it seems almost like we were never actually relegated!

The 2002-3 relegation was a much grimmer affair.  A season of sustained struggle, total capitulation and highly paid players barely performing.  Sounds familiar?  This horror show was then magnified by our slipping into the repellent sludge that is the Ryman League and spending a year flailing around like a dying mammoth trapped in a tar pit, whilst pygmy teams we'd never heard of jabbed us unmercifully with their spears.  Thankfully we somehow managed to finish sufficiently close to halfway up the league to be "promoted" into the newly formed Conference North division. 

From there, boosted by Imraan's big bucks, savvy business acumen and excellent organisational skills (note - two of these may be lies) we eventually managed to beat down all the little part-time teams with our squad of highly paid ex, and future Football League stars, and get back into the big time of Conference National.  And that should be the end of the story, with us back where we belong.

If only.

Although previous relegations hurt and at the time seemed like the end of the world, none of them compare to what we are going through presently.  After a season of unremitting shite, served up by supposedly quality players, where our club has been run like a hideously bad joke, we are going down to the Conference North.  At best. Where at least 2/3 of the teams are waiting to beat the crap out of us for what we did to them the last time we were there, and the denizens of Corby are already whipping themselves up into an angry, bestial sexual frenzy at the thought of finally being back in the same division as us.  We will be playing miles away from home at Non Park.  We are still hideously in debt.  Imraan still hasn't quite got around to leaving.  The man looking to replace him has a certain...reputation.  We have no Manager yet in place, and almost certainly no players.

It really is difficult to see how it could be worse!