Sounds Familiar?

This was how the end of Nicky Eaden's tenure at Nuneaton was reported in the local press a few years ago.....

"....But a run of seven league matches without a win, plus elimination from the FA Cup, has seen Hawkins look to move in a different direction with the club bottom of the National League North"

Eaden's bullet at Latimer Park was reported thus......

"....That shock loss (in the FA Cup at Sutton Coldfield) came after a poor start to the Vanarama National League North campaign with the Poppies winning just two of their first 11 matches"

Eaden's managerial "style" of last-ditch, dour, backs-to-the-wall, just trying to hang-on, was never going to be acceptable at the Poppies.  As a club we have been building steadily for the past five years, and we are hungry for more.  Not be told constantly reminded of how hard everything is, by a Boss with a permanent hang-dog face and miserable demeanour.

We all KNEW this season was going to the challenging.  We didn't need our new Manager repeatedly telling us this from Day One.  Tell us we'll piss the division, our new ground is practically built, and that we'll sign Ronaldo.  We'll know it's bullshit, but it will give us all a lift.  No, instead, Nicky gave us defeated body language, and a depressing revolving-door team, who did their damnedest to reflect their Boss's attitude.


Steve Kinninburgh and his dog-whistle voice have been given the task of shepherding us through a vital run of fixtures.  In the next 6 games we will play all 5 of the other teams at the bottom of the league.  With 4 of these games to take place at Latimer Park, the importance of the next few weeks can't be overstated.

After these games we have York, Boston, Alfreton and a double header with Brackley lined up.  I'm sure I'm not alone in being happier if we had a few more teams below us in the table by the time we begin these fixtures!

Eaden heads for the exit at Sutton Coldfield

If Music be the Food of Love....

Opinions of musical instruments at football games usually range widely between, "No way", and "No f*cking way". 

A loud drummer serves to do nothing but annoy those close by, and totally dominate any attempt at singing.  A drummer used to come to our occasional big games back in the day, and served only to drown out any atmosphere with his random, inappropriate and LOUD drumming.  The team thankfully made sure that really big games were sufficiently thin on the ground for this not to be too much of an issue.

Last Saturday's frustrating stalemate with Sutton Coldfield was (and I can't believe I'm typing this) enlivened by the visitor's musicians.  Not just a lump of a fan banging a drum with the natural rhythm of a thrashing octopus, missing a few limbs, caught up in a fisherman's net.  No, these guys could....actually play.  

Band at football match not bad, shock!

As well as a trumpet player, Sutton Coldfield sported 2 drummers (a'la Adam and the Ants circa 1980) to lend gusto to proceedings.  Even those Sutton supporters not directly involved with the instruments knew their roles within the overall orchestration with additional percussion and vocals, if "vocals" can be extended to include just the word "Tequila!" shouted with gusto.

A quick word of warning to our fans.  Just because we all experienced a reasonable band on Saturday, do not feel you are under any pressure to follow suit.  We Poppies fans have an unfortunate habit of "monkey see, monkey do" when it comes to seeing opposition fans doing something shiny and new.  Sometimes this works out for the best - you'll find it difficult to believe, but PATGOD wasn't the world's first fanzine....!  Sometimes it works out not so well - I still shudder at the recollection of Dave Chuckle, having heard a drummer, turning up at an away game with a cucumber and attempting to replicate the sound of semi-professional percussionist with a large vegetable and any random flat surface.....

Whisper it Quietly

At 4.45PM last Saturday we managed to hold onto a 2-1 win against "high-flying" Alfreton.  At pretty much the same time our newly-appointed-relegation-rival Bradford Park Wanderers contrived to ship an equaliser to another newly-appointed-relegation-rival, Spennymoor.  We didn't move up the table, but opened up a small gap between ourselves and the relegation zone.

This was followed up with another win against, admittedly lowly Cogenhoe in the County Cup.  Not the toughest opponents in the world, but a win is a win.  And back-to-back wins when struggling are not to be sniffed at.

Hopefully our re-introduction to the world of winning football matches will spark a few more positive outcomes in the weeks and months to come.  The truth is, we have been there or thereabouts in most of the League games this season only for luck to turn against us, 15 minutes of madness, or running out of steam (or a combination of all three).

Perhaps the tide is starting to slowly turn?  Perhaps we are getting the measure of this division?  Or, perhaps we are starting to try to win games, rather than trying not to lose them?

...or perhaps we're benefitting
from selecting our best forward?

Aaron has started 4 games this season.
We won 3 of them....

There but for the grace of God

Any medium or long-time Poppies fan knows about suffering.  And the cold, hard fear that comes with being, on a handful of occasions, within a hairs-breadth of losing our club.  This knowledge, does impart, though, a sense of calm when a few results go against us.

No-one minds when fans take defeat badly.  It's a natural reaction.  If we didn't care who won or lost a game, we'd all be rugby fans.  Where some of our fans get out of line is that they believe their personal anger trumps everyone else's.  They seem to think that because they scream loudest at the players, or bravely on social media that no-one else feel it as badly as they do.  Not the players.  Or club officials.  Or the other supporters.  They're wrong of course.  We all feel it.  But some of us can see beyond that day's match.  Club officials need to see beyond the next match, the next month and even the next season.

When a football club has nothing to worry about other than the actual football, a lot of people must be doing a lot of things right.  A football club is a living organism where numerous people put in, mostly unseen effort to keep the show on the road.  Ninety minutes on a Saturday every fortnight is the very tip of the iceberg.

Having peered over the brink more times than any of us can remember, all of our thoughts are with the supporters of Bury today who would dearly love to have nothing more to vex them than a below par performance at the weekend.  Hopefully this serves as a wake-up call this morning for every football supporter who still has their club and wants them to mortgage their future to chase immediate success.

Bury today. Bolton next?

Ugly Poppies fans show no signs of growing up anytime soon

In a week where elements of our online "support" well and truly lost it once again in an embarrassingly juvenile way, a far more important story than us losing a game of football may have passed you by.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49434573

At the age of just 40, former footballer Junior Agogo died following a stroke suffered a couple of

years ago.  A tragedy to be sure.  But, Junior Agogo, you ask?  What's he got to do with the price of fish, and the stupid levels of online Poppies fury directed at our Chairman because we lost a game of football?

Nothing really, beyond perhaps putting things in perspective.  A life ended sadly short trumps a second-half capitulation in a single match, surely?  But, there's a slightly more Poppies-centric angle to the story of Junior's earlier career, and a certain game against us while he was a Barnet player.

Anyone who was there on that sunny afternoon at Underhill in April 2003 will never forget what they saw.  To put you in the picture, we were winding down a singularly unhappy season in the Conference.  We had bounced back into the top flight at the first time of asking after a fabulous afternoon at Tiverton, and we were back where we belonged.  Except, as it became painfully and speedily obvious, we DIDN'T belong at this level anymore.  Nailed to the bottom of the table for pretty much the entire campaign, Carl Shutt was eventually, humanely fired in favour of the far cheaper Dominic Genovese, who was given the task of shepherding us through our final half dozen fixtures.

One of these last, or possibly the last of these fixtures was away to the old enemy - Barnet, who had already started their yo-yo existence between the Football League and Non-League.  This season they were back down with us dead men, and, for once, weren't in the running for promotion.  Consequently only over a thousand turned up to watch Martin Allen's Bees run up a cricket score against the already doomed Poppies.

Between 3 o'clock and 4.45pm Barnet, with Junior Agogo much to the fore, Barnet spent 89 minutes and 45 seconds in the Poppies 6-yard box.  Every shot or header hit the goal frame, or a defender's face, or the keeper's nuts, or a fellow attacker.  It was achingly funny to watch - like a comedic Alamo, and we knew, absolutely KNEW that if Barnet had played all night, they still wouldn't be able to score.  We even went down to 10 men and it did them no good.

But what made it even funnier is that in the barely 15 seconds where we booted the ball into Barnet's half of the pitch, they contrived to score an own goal and then let our loanee Lee Clark sprint from the halfway goal to score one of  the least expected or deserved goals we've ever achieved.

The final whistle was greeted with laughter and bemusement from all corners of Underhill.  We'd won 2-0 despite having only one attempt on goal, and Barnet failed to score despite having (at a conservative estimate) 40 thousand attempts on goal.

The match report here, if anything, paints a postive Poppies spin on the game -

https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/6253519.bees-left-with-sting-in-their-tail/

The Barnet fans in the bar afterwards were very chipper and a pleasant afternoon was spent with them.  Looking back now, I dread to think what the reaction of elements of our supporters would have been were the positions reversed.

Actually, I don't have to imagine it.  I'm seeing it most Saturday evenings!  Throw random anger, anonymous social media and a sense of entitlement into a pot and stir vigorously and you have the worst of modern football, and a glimpse of ugly Poppies support circa 2019.

I guess we're not in Kansas anymore.....

The elation of the late with against Telford has faded into the background after a couple of dispiriting emphatic defeats.  If nothing else, we've left ourselves with a lot to do to match last season's record of just two away defeats....

The manner of the defeats has been the most disappointing aspect of these losses.  Sure, at Kings Lynn last week, we ended on the front foot and the home fans cheered the final whistle with not a small amount of relief.  Truth was, however, they should have been out of sight long before their weak-link keeper fumbled yet another ball in front of his goal. Darlington were not so generous in  making their victory look close.  By all accounts we were not only not at the races, we weren't even aware that races were being staged.

But then again, we knew this season was going to be an enormous step-up.  From Day One most of us have said we'd accept staying up this season as an acceptable return to this level.  Of course, a mid-table finish, or an upper mid-table with a brief flirtation with the play-offs would be even better, but most of us are realistic enough to know anything more than survival would be a big ask.

We all know a couple more rapid fire defeats will ratchet-up the indignation from the usual quarters within our support, but we really need to keep our eye on the survival prize and not allow our knees to jerk with their usual rapidity.  It doesn't help that, by and large, we've had nothing but building, continued success for the past 5 seasons.  Eventually you hit the buffers of arriving at a level where you are an also-ran rather than a sure-thing.  I think it's fair to say we've arrived there now!

At the time of writing, two clubs in this division have instantly freaked-out.  Bradford Park Avenue and Hereford have dispensed with their Managers before the mid-point of August has been reached!  This is a tough division.  We will need to fight on and off the pitch to earn the right to play in it.  We wanted to be back in the "Big Time".  Well, were there now.  We can either enjoy it or get scared and fretful.

At least we've been told that we can continue
to drink inside the ground, which should
help to numb the expected pain!

Ready or not, here we go....

Tomorrow sees our biggest leap into the dark since 2012 when we were thrown out of the National League, and into a Southern League hungry to kick the sh*t out of a fallen "big boy".  Our last experience of National North was the surreal Championship season where our team made up of slumming League One rejects, and buoyed by DRC's bottomless chequebook had slapped the rest of the division around so much the other clubs cheered at the prospect of seeing the back of us.

We re-enter this division tomorrow in a far humbler manner than we left it.  We have only half the team that won the Southern League last season.  We no longer have our big old, crumbly-comfortable Rockingham Road.  Or, indeed, our cold, hard, non-functioning Nonce Park.  We have our bobbly field and newly brightened floodlights.  We do have a handful of players that will be brand new to most of us.  We also have a new Manager, who was slipped into the role almost before Marcus Law had made his, still unexplained, departure.

Nicky Eaden is the new gaffer, and almost the poster boy for, "Mr No-Nonsense Northern Gaffer".  Overall the online Poppies support seem quietly happy with what Nicky has done and who he has brought in.  "Quietly Happy" at our club would translate as "Ecstatic" at any other club, but we like to keep our powder dry at Latimer Park!  A photograph of him holding a Poppies scarf over his head is still glaring by its omission, but I'll try not to mention this again....

AFC Telford will be slumming it with us tomorrow.  Their team will provide a stern test for our newly assembled team.  Their expected large support will provide an even sterner test for us supporters.  We've spent the past six years being a big fish in small ponds, where an away support that stretches to two cars raises eyebrows.  I really hope our vocal element, unused to being sung back at, add wit and withering sarcasm to their vocal repertoire, and perhaps lean less on anger and abuse.  If we resort to fury the first time away supporters mock Latimer Park's shortcomings, we're going to be for a long and angry season!

It's going to be a tough season.  Management, Officials, Team and Supporters are going to be as one more during 2019-20 than possibly ever before.  Let's give it a go, and remind this division of what they've been missing in Kettering Town Football Club!