Update from Guy

Hi Guys,

When I heard my old muckers at Burton managed to ship 3 goals in the last 5 minutes to lose 6-5 at home I have to admit I laughed so hard a bit of sick came out of my blow hole!!!

Cheers for now,

Guy XXX

It's Google Time

The news that Northamptonshire has been put on to Google street maps had most of us scurrying to our pc's to see how our houses look on the net.

Obviously the second place any sad-act Poppies fan looked was at Rockingham Road, and see how somewhere we see every week suddenly looks on our pc screens. Not saying that's what WE did, but there are a couple of good views on offer. Our favorites were the view coming down Beatrice Road and the one looking over the wall at the Cowper Street End. That's IF we'd been sad enough to look of course....

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=cowper+street,+kettering&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=11.644408,28.081055&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Cowper+St,+Kettering,+Northamptonshire+NN16,+United+Kingdom&ll=52.411713,-0.727372&spn=0,359.972577&z=15&layer=c&cbll=52.411668,-0.727526&panoid=PbsZ1TEj8zR15zxa8fREXQ&cbp=12,208.56,,0,-20.21


http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=cowper+street,+kettering&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=11.644408,28.081055&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Cowper+St,+Kettering,+Northamptonshire+NN16,+United+Kingdom&ll=52.411373,-0.727329&spn=0,359.972577&z=15&layer=c&cbll=52.411251,-0.72726&panoid=jXNTDktp53XKcJIExDZYuQ&cbp=12,251.38,,0,23.87


What was bloody annoying was seeing my own street. For at least 364 days a year an ignorant t**t from the next street uses our street as his personal parking area for his assorted vans and lorries. I swear to God one of them was left there for 6 solid months one time! There was grass growing on the bloody thing!

Obviously, the day the Google camera van decided to drive up my street it was the one day per year that all his vehicles were in use somewhere, or clogging up someone else's streets. Bugger! The entire world will now never believe me again when I bleat about this dickhead and his parking all over my street. Damn the interweb!

As Close to a Match Report we’ll ever do!

The home defeat to lowly former Football League Leviathans, Cambridge United was painful and threw up a number of issues worth delving into a little deeper.

Boots

What the hell is going on there? I counted 3 pairs of sky blue, 2 bright yellow, one red and one white amongst our starting line-up. That left just 4 of our players wearing honest to goodness black boots. Has the world gone mad? Doesn’t everyone know that there are only two types of player who can just about get away with wearing wanky coloured boots?

1. Premiership Prima Donnas who step-over the ball too much, wear make-up, dive as soon as an opposition player is within 10-yards, and are photographed getting into taxis late at night with glamour models who have left their knickers at home.

2. Anyone who plays football on the artificial pitch at the Kettering Leisure Village.

Home Supporters

Where are they? How can we take more people to Nonce Park than assemble for a home game? Why are we suddenly down to just our hard core support? We used to get more at home for the visit of all those pissy little Essex teams (who generally left with 3-points) back in the nightmare Ryman League Season. These days we are in the top 5 of the strongest ever division outside of the Football League. So why the apathy?

I hope it’s not down to the ground situation. Do people really not come along because it would appear we can’t be promoted? If so, we wouldn’t have ANYONE at the ground for most of the previous 138 years!

Is it the pricing and ticketing? Possibly. No matter what anyone says, upwards of £16.00 for football at this level is a bit of a joke. And queuing twice just to give half a dozen turnstile operators an easy job, (and stop the odd one allegedly dipping their hand in the takings) is a pain in the arse, and totally unnecessary.

Was Tuesday’s attendance hit by the glamour of Champions League football on the telly? I wouldn’t have thought so until last week, but now the dullards at the North Northamptonshire Development Company want to rebrand the area “North Londonshire”, who knows, maybe we’re all Arsenal fans now?

Whatever the reasons for our lack of numbers, isn’t doesn’t exactly scream out, “C’mon Council and Pickering! It would be an offence to God and Man if you allowed this mighty Club to fold!” does it?

Cambridge United

We can only assume that Cambridge United have a special dispensation from the League to be allowed to use any part of their body when controlling the ball. Otherwise it would mean that the referee was completely blind as he waved away handballs time and time again. And the way he chased the Ref around the pitch, Abbey seemed to suggest their goal also came from such an amendment to the rules that the rest of us weren’t let in on.

More obvious to everyone in the ground was the moment in the first half when one of the Cambridge defenders rolled the ball around his upper body and arms for what seemed like several minutes like some sort of party trick. “Play On” waved the Ref once again.

Thanks must go to the Cambridge supporters for turning up in decent numbers to stop the gate looking even paltrier than it was. Not quite as many as they had last year when we were practically herded into a pen inside our own ground, but still pretty good. It was funny hearing them bragging about “staying up” though. It doesn’t seem that long since they missed out on a play-off spot to get into the Premier League, and now they are happy to squeeze a win out of little old us to prevent them sampling the delights of away trips to Maidenhead and Dorchester.

Their Goal

We all know that football was invented simply to drive us all insane, but does the game have to kick us in the head every week? Cambridge No.10 Danny Crow spent 99.9% of the game whining and rolling around on the floor after imaginary challenges. The other 0.1% of the time he was scoring their winner and charging around the pitch like an all-conquering hero. Why, God, why? If we had to lose to a single goal, why did that dick have to score it?

The Team

No one can say that the players aren’t giving their all. Even Greg Taylor, who has been working through some nightmarish performances in the past few weeks, is at least giving it everything.

A little more creativity in and around the Cambridge box, and better finishing and we would have been out of sight by halftime.

Lee is at least trying to coax actual football out of the players which is always to be applauded. Imagine though, a non brain-dead version of Moses Ashikodi (difficult I know) playing up front in this team. That would be most agreeable, as long as he doesn’t take our penalties of course.

More from Issue 8 of Patgod

It must be hard to referee a football match well. The thousands of puffing, struggling, blind, Kettering-hating officials that have come and gone through Rockingham Road over the years have amply proved this.

But, would we be any better?

Yeah, probably.

Minute Silence V Minute Applause

Another respectful silence was held at Rockingham Road this afternoon for Keith Alexander (is it just me getting old, or are we having minute silences more and more often?)

I know we are supposed to think about the recently departed recipient of the silence during those 60 seconds, but I tend to spend this quiet period thinking how loud the traffic is on Rockingham Road, or how noisy people coming through the turnstiles have suddenly become, as well as hoping my phone doesn't start ringing.

Earlier today there was a minutes applause for Keith at the FA Cup game down in Portsmouth. I couldn't decide whether the silence or the applause was the more fitting as a mark of remembrance. I suppose it depends on the context. Obviously the anniversary of Armistice Day would be unseemly with people vigorously applauding, but you can see how a popular footballer could be given an appropriate send off with one last round burst of cheering and clapping.

I knew, deep down, that we would go the silent route at Rockingham Road - this clapping malarkey is so Premiership! There is also the issue here that there are large swathes of our support who have never applauded for a whole minute in their entire lives! Some of our more miserable brethren (I'm looking at you, top of Britannia Road terrace), haven't applauded that long IN TOTAL during their Poppies supporting careers! The shock of applauding for so long may be too much for them, and they might expire.

And then we would be back where we started!

What Will it be Today?

There is less than 4 hours until today's scheduled kick-off at home to Grays. The weather section of the BBC website suggests Rockingham Road should be basking in temperatures as high as 8 degrees Celsius, with the possibility of a little light rain.

So, what will cause today's game to be called off?

Blue Square Betting has the following odds: -

2/1 Waterlogged pitch from sudden downpour
3/1 Frozen pitch from sweeping storm blowing straight down from the Artic Circle
7/1 Either Poppies or Grays going bust in the next hour
15/2 Plague of Frogs
10/1 Everyone forgets the game has been rearranged for this afternoon, and no one turns up
12/1 Everyone remembers the game has been rearranged for this afternoon, and no one bothers to turn up
20/1 North of Kettering struck by meteorite
25/1 It's much too nice a day to waste at the football, let's all go to the coast!

Keith Alexander RIP

Today we all heard of the tragic death of Keith Alexander. No one would ever say that Big Keith was the greatest player we ever had. He probably wasn't even the best player we have ever had called Keith, but you'll find no one at Rockingham Road who doesn't remember him fondly.

Ashikodi probably scored more goals for us in a month than Keith managed in his career, but I'd wager we'll still be chuckling about Keith's loose-limbed dribbling and inability to head a ball long after it will be a case of "Moses Who?"

Below are a couple of bits taken from old PATGODs and reflect how we all felt about Keith. I still can't believe that he'll never end up actually Managing us one day....