The Crying Game

Two games into our triumphant Euro campaign and I’m sticking to my prediction that we are nailed on to win it. Woy’s half time rush of blood yesterday will be our equivalent of Sir Alf opting to play without wingers – the moment that it all started to come together.  Plus it will hopefully be the last time we see Sterling on the pitch in this tournament.  There’s a joke in there about Sterling Euro jitters, but I’ll leave that one to Gary Lineker’s scriptwriters.

It’s easy to pick on Sterling. Very easy.  So this won’t be difficult then. It must be great to have already picked up 25 caps on the strength of being able to scuttle along like a clockwork toy with about as much end product.  £49m for Sterling?  Imagine his value if he had positional awareness, better distribution and an ability to finish. Or any of the three. 

Joe Hart too will hopefully learn from his mistake against Wales. Like it’s generally better to stand in the middle of the goal.  At least, on the scale of England goalkeeping cock ups, he didn’t do a Robert Green or get caught flatfooted by a 45 yard lob.  At least not yet.

Let’s concentrate on the positives, the reasons why the rest of the competition will fear us.  Dier – the only person under the age of 60 called Eric, and playing with a maturity beyond his years.  Vardy – half goalhanger, half coathanger – in the form of his life and even managed to bag the glamorous Rebekah despite looking like a ferret.  Walker – keep up those surging runs, the further you get from defending the better we all feel.  Rooney – we always knew he’d light up a tournament, though we were kinda hoping it wouldn’t be his 14th.  Sturridge – our ace: just get through the next few weeks in one piece and you can be injured all next season. Which you will be.

Having lifted one monkey off our back by actually winning a game, just wait for the other totems to fall:

England don’t blow a really easy potential draw!

England don’t shoot themselves in the foot with a needless red card!

England win a penalty shoot out!

England at last beat someone good!

Meanwhile I hope that Welsh fan has stopped crying now.  It was only looking like a draw for chrissake. Even worse were the numpties in the crowd who were all forlorn at the final whistle, only to break into a big beaming smile when they saw themselves on the big screen. There should be a law against it.  People in the crowd shouldn’t be able to see themselves on the telly. It breaks the fourth wall.  They should look happy, tense or miserable according to the game situation, not endlessly gurn at the viewers. It’s bad enough having to look at Robbie Savage.  

If, by some cruel fluke, England don’t win Euro 2016, I hope to God that it isn’t France. Anyone but them. Whenever they host a tournament (which is too often) they always win, which is particularly annoying because they don’t even particularly like football in France.  It stirs their emotion slightly less than a bunch of drug addicts pedalling up mountains.  Even a close game of boules gets them more animated.  Another French win next month would just prove that these things are fixed.  But like I say, it won’t happen.  Come on England.         

Stop blubbing boyo

Another one of the great sights in world football

A disheartened Gareth Bale grudgingly admits that
perhaps the odd England player may just squeak
into the Welsh team.

Most Obvious Picture Gag Ever (Part Two)

Corby NOT joining Poppies in Southern League Premier

"Looks like we'll have to find
another way to pay for the
new conservatory - bugger!"

Still one of the great sights in world football

Ronaldo looking as though he's
about to start blubbing.

Like a girl.

Once More Into The Breach

Having decided it was time I threw my weight behind England’s Euro preparations, I went to the Portugal game the other night.  It was my first visit to the new Wembley and I have to say the place has freshened up somewhat since we were one of the last to bring the curtain down on the old place, which in truth was a bit of a dump. I had vowed that I wouldn’t return unless it was wearing a KTFC Wembley [insert year here] cap.  Yeah, I know.  Sometimes, though, you’ve just gotta adjust your expectations, so I approached this as a fact finding trip, ready for when we next march down Wembley Way. To the present stadium or its eventual successor.

Everything about the new Wembley is impressive – it just needs an England team to match.  On the outside concourse stands a statue of Bobby Moore, inscribed “First England captain to lift the World Cup”.  How clever - that won’t need updating the next time we do it!   Judging by the hype and legend each time we’ve since got as far as a semi, sneaking into another final will pretty much guarantee another statue, plus a lifetime of anniversary events like those which are currently unfolding.  Not just the umpteenth reliving of ’66, but fond recollections of ’96 too, in the complete absence of anything more recent. 

Even then, Skinner & Baddiel felt they had enough material to talk about "all those oh so nears, wear you down, through the years”. Guys, maybe it’s time for an album?  Still earlier, England went to Spain singing “This time, more than any other time, this time”, just SIXTEEN years after winning the bloody thing.  That’s like Roy’s boys vowing to recapture the glory days of Kevin Keegan.

Because England are really terrible at this.  Despite almost always, until recent times, setting off with pundits galore predicting we could go all the way, in our entire history we have played in the same number of actual finals as Greece and Belgium.  Even Denmark (DENMARK!) have troubled the trophy engravers as often as we have.  If international football was the Premier League, we’d be Newcastle.  Great stadium, passionate fans, high hopes, won nothing since the sixties.  When was the last time England won a knockout tie against a major team, someone we perhaps weren’t expected to beat?  You know what I think the answer is?  Never.  Not once.  It takes some doing to be that consistently disappointing.

So on that note I’d like to wish the boys all the very best in France.  My prediction: we’ll piss it.

Arise Sir Woy

Borough Council Fails to Back Poppies SHOCK!

"Asset of Community Value, blah blah blah"

Like the rest of you, I tried to read the link to the Localism Act, and like the rest of you got bored about two lines in and relied on others to go through the entire document and report back what it meant.

It would appear that it meant the local council could decree a site to be of "Community Value" and bring pressure to bear on an owner of such site to acknowledge this.

Put simple enough for PATGOD to understand, Kettering Borough Council could take the Pickerings to task over letting Rockingham Road sit there and rot.  Or, at least, in theory, KBC could do this.  Unsurprisingly they did f**k all.  As soon as the Poppies were mentioned, those trough-straddling self-important tossers backed off.

We have mentioned many times the vast gulf in attitudes Northamptonshire's councils have when it comes to their premier football clubs.  Corby council build their team a new football ground every 18-months, and worry about the costs later.  Northampton council gave the Cobblers a ground and then, seemingly, wrote them a £10 million pound cheque to push them to promotion.  In Kettering things are a little different.  Our councillors wouldn't piss on the Poppies if they were on fire.

Asked to pass a ruling which merely asks the Pickerings to consider doing something with a small parcel of land which is mouldering away within their town, our illustrious elected officials bottled it yet again.

None of this should be a surprise.  We only ever see these chain-wearing, smarm-bags when we win titles or go to Wembley.  On these occasions they can't get enough of the Poppies, taking centre-stage and pontificating about our importance to the betterment of the borough to massed ranks of voters.  At all other times we are simply an embarrassment to either ignored or derided.  F**k them.  We always knew they'd be of no use.  One needs only to see how they are buggering up the whole town to know these insular arseh*les would be less than no use to any organisation who could promote the town to the wider world.

As long as they can keep picking up their expenses for voting as they are told to, and using their free car-parking passes to be able to afford to park in Kettering, as any shop of note closes, or moves to Corby, they'll be happy enough.

Most Obvious Picture Gag Ever

Corby Town put into the same division as the Poppies next season.....

Corby Town v Kettering Town

"Call in the helicopter!"