Hamilton nails top award

Despite the naysayers who despair of the Poppies lowly position these days, and, indeed, his lack of appearances for us this season as either starter or bench warmer, our sometime winger Louis Hamilton has still managed to win the "Sports Personality of the Year".

We'd like to think this national award is as much a reflection of the way the fortunes of the good ship Kettering Town FC have been turned around in the past 12 months.  Either that or Louis truly has the greatest personality in the history of sport.  Probably both.

A typical all-action Hamilton moment,
lacking only the ball, which won
the nation's hearts, and votes.

Personality Goes a Long Way

The relentless countdown is almost over and in just a few hours we will learn who is the 2014 BBC Sports Personality of the Year.  Just in case anyone fails to care enough about the outcome, the BBC has been filling the airwaves for weeks with reminders of the event and profiles of the main contenders (helpful background info for the majority of sports fans I suspect, who had never heard of half of them).  ‘Who will win this year?’ is the question that has supposedly been debated in pubs and clubs across the land.  Maybe it has, I don’t get out much.

But as we settle down to watch this potted summary of the sporting year presented by the BBC at its self satisfied best, is it heretical to ask, what exactly is the award meant to be for?  Is it, as the name suggests, the biggest sporting personality of the year, or just recognising someone who’s won a lot of stuff?  For every Henry Cooper, David Steele or Gazza among past winners, there has been Nigel Mansell (so boring his car came a close second), not one but four ice dancers, and Nick Faldo, who is dull even by the standards of a sport where you only have to wear a pair of checked trousers to be lauded as a great character.  And for anyone who put the 1971 award going to Princess Anne as the sort of cringingly deferential thing that couldn’t happen any more, there was a shock when the 2006 award went to her daughter. And again for success in an event that is open to 0.003% of the population.

In fact, in recent years the main award seems to have been particularly odd, going in 2009 to Ryan Giggs presumably on some sort of Nectar points basis, then in 2010 to A.P. McCoy thanks to a block vote by Ladbrokes customers.  This year the red hot favourite is said to be Rory McIlroy. Sure he’s had a successful year, but is he a personality?  Maybe he will reveal himself to be one in a gracious acceptance speech, before he jets off to rake in another sack of winnings in Dubai or somewhere.

My pick for this year’s award didn’t even make the shortlist, which just shows how outrageously unrepresentative it is. In a year in which his character has truly transcended his sport and dominated the headlines like no other, who else but Kevin Pietersen?  No one said it has to be a likeable personality!

 

KP - still optimistic of a recall to the shortlist, apparently

GET YOUR STINKING PAWS OFF ME YOU DAMN DIRTY APE!

http://www.poppynet.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16374&start=150



16 pages and counting.....

MADHOUSE! IT'S A MADHOUSE!

I truly can't believe a thread on Poppynet (usually the less reactionary of our club forums) about our win last week at Hanwell has reached it's 12th page!

For anyone who can't be arsed to wade through it all, here are the highlights: -

Most people are happy enough that we won at Hanwell, and the team played well.

A couple of posters (one, a suspiciously recent member, and almost certainly not an ex player....) have managed to keep the thread going for almost a week, batting our seeming staggering amount of faults back and forth.  Whilst most normal fans are content that we are doing well this season and clear top of the league, these guys are having none of it!

It simply isn't good enough!

(A) We need to be beating teams better
(B) We need to be beating better teams
(C) Only players win matches
(D) Only managers lose matches.  And do so with their all-encompassing technical naivety.  Or if they haven't lost matches they may well do so in the future!
(E) Managers should be sacked if any decision they make ever fails to generate instant success.  Or if they don't shout more.  Or shout too much
(F) Brett should be put in charge for no apparent reason
(G) If we are promoted the Managers will be found out next year.  Or the year after
(H) Players sign despite the Managers
(I) As we are a bigger club than everyone else in the league we should utterly decimate all our opponents.  No disrespect meant to anyone.  Of course....
(J) The Chairman picks the team.  Or is it the Managers set the budget.  Or something
(K) Failure to win the FA Cup is just that.  Failure!

I'm just glad we actually won the Hanwell game, or these malcontents would really have gone to town!

A short trip down memory lane

I occasionally wonder if I sometimes go over the top with criticising fellow supporters who moan about our Management team, losing the odd game, lack of cover or even chips at Latimer Park.  Or when people gripe about the Trust, and what they've done for the club.

I was searching google for images of Juventus v. AC Milan to use as the basis of a gag about the way Hanwell's and our kit looked yesterday.  As you do.  Good for a quick giggle.  Instead I happened upon a couple of articles from the website "200%" from what looked very much like our final days of existence.  One of these articles included some particularly fine writing from the Blog you are now reading, and a link to PATGOD from October 2012.

An hour later and I had re-read everything we'd written during the ill-fated removal to Non Park, Imraan, Rolls, Non Park, Not playing football for a month.  Re-birth at Steel Park.  Gates down to 150.  The club barely hanging on by a particularly narrow thread.  Huge defeats.  Relegations.

I hadn't gone back before and looked over the stuff we wrote during this period.  Why would I - far too depressing!  But I found I wasn't depressed by it.  Not to sound too self-serving, but it is a gripping story.  Horrific, but nevertheless gripping, even though we know the ending.  In over 140 years of history I cannot believe the club has been at such a low ebb.  Reading our bumf from back then, you genuinely cannot see how the club could come out of it's nosedive to destruction. 

All of this wasn't 20 or 30 years ago under Gingell or English.  It was just 2 years ago.  It all happened since the London Olympics.  George Rolls is still only halfway through his 5-year ban from football!  Events so recent that they have yet to fully pass into the fabric of the club consciousness.  At least for some people, who wave away those days, and the efforts of those who effectively saved the club, in a rush to go back to moaning about the most incredibly trifling of matters.

If you're bored, have a pop back to the blog from the start of the 2012-13 season.  Compare where we were then to where we are now and tell me we shouldn't still be pleased and grateful to still be able to complain about our football club.  So much has changed.  Oh, except for Pedro looking to launch another "Stay -a - Weymouth!"  Some things remain comfortingly familiar.

Mourinhos or Muppets?

It has often been noted that Poppies fans can have comically high expectations. In our headstrong younger days, Patgod was as guilty of this as anyone, penning furious editorials about failure to seal promotion to the Football League or perform brilliantly in a televised cup tie. These days we are a bit more reflective. Multiple relegations, ground moves and brushes with extinction have tempered our satisfaction levels ever so slightly. We’d now settle for a potential giant-killing trip to a Conf North side with a bit of cover behind the goal.

However, the fire still burns bright in some bellies, as shown by the ongoing trench warfare about the incurable failings of the current management duo. Especially the one who’s kinda funny looking. Nothing they do is ever good enough. Maintain a 5 point lead? Huh, just shows how the team are winning despite them. Fail to win a game? Sack them both!  Now!!  Or as an interim measure to appease our wrath, the one who’s kinda funny looking!!!

Management Mourinhos or Muppets? Let’s look at the record.

2014/15 season

Chelsea P14 W11 – win ratio 78.65
KTFC P19 W15 – win ratio 78.95

Chelsea: goals for 33 – average per game 2.35

KTFC: goals for 47 – average per game 2.47  

Chelsea: goals against 14 – average 1.00

KTFC: goals against 18 – average 0.95

Chelsea: owners who don’t resemble baffled albino chimpanzees: 0

KTFC: 1

Not bad! And before anyone pipes up about the standard of the opposition, we’d like to see how Fabregas would fancy a midfield scrap against Egham after hanging his £2,000 suit on a nail in the away dressing room.

Baillie and Machin may not be everyone’s idea of a dream team but judged on results they are doing well, so why the continuing abuse – especially towards Baillie. Why not pick on Machin too? It’s not an original thought, but the answer might be that Machin looks like the kind of guy who it might be a bad idea to upset, whereas Baillie is a bit lumpy and you could easily run away from him.  

But what does appearance matter? Look at the other Mourinho, the ginger one. Sean Dyche - that mysteriously undercelebrated son of Kettering who is continuing to prove that resembling a nightclub doorman is no barrier to mixing it with the big boys. Not for him the modern fetish of notepad scribbling, expensive imports and pseudo-bollocks about “philosophy”, he just gets the most out of what he can assemble. Plus he still sounds only a sliver away from lapsing into broad Kettering in a post match interview (“we wern frit an’ad a roight good goo sarfnoon, me ol’ booty”) and his brother works at Weetabix. All important credentials.

So it takes all sorts to make a world and there is more than one shade of Mourinho. Smooth and silvery, ginger baldy, bit scary, and kinda funny looking.  We say carry on guys, we’re right behind you.

That said, if we slip up today at Hanwell…

 

 

From left: Bit scary Mourinho, funny looking Mourinho

Management Haters Come Clean

At long last those people demanding Management changes have come up with the Top 5 qualities they expect any new Boss at Latimer Park to have: -

1  Not being Thomas Baillie
2  Not being Thomas Baillie
3  Not being Thomas Baillie
4  Not being Thomas Baillie
5  Not being Thomas Baillie

"Jesus!  What has Machin done that's been so good?"