Grey Army! Grey Army! Grey Army!

We are constantly being told that us oldsters are becoming ever too numerous and act solely as a drain on society.  We're working longer, keeping young people out of good jobs.  We live too long and eat all the social care budget.  We get too much handed to us free of charge by successive Governments who need to attract the grey vote.

And a good thing too.  Young people are crap at working, they don't particularly need the NHS (except when falling drunk in the street on Saturday night because they also can't handle their ale) and Governments HAVE to appeal to us as young people are too apathetic to trouble voting booths.

And now, we're coming for your sports too!

Historically, sport has been annoyingly dominated by the young, slim and fit.  But, not anymore!  The door has opened a crack and we're going to waddle through and steal this from the young 'uns too!

That's right, the world of sport has finally realised the only people who can truly afford to shell out for all the required equipment are those people no longer physically able to actually play.  The answer?  Adapt the sport to better suit those with the time and funds to get involved.  

Thus Walking Sport was born.

Given how many old gits who KNOW EVERYTHING about football we have at Latimer Park we should be able to attract hundreds of players to these new sessions being held at the club.

Well, your correspondent attended the first session and can report it was good fun.  I sweated my absolute chubby ass off.  I had a laugh with the other guys who were also sweating as much as 1970 Top of the Pops hosts when they received a call from Operation Yewtree.  We kicked a ball about and tried not to break into a stumbling stutter which passes for running when you're staring down the barrel of 60! 

Sure, the next day every muscle in my body teetered on the edge of cramping.  And I have a pain on the outside of my right foot that has made me hobble for a week and swear at the cat.  But I'm going back, no doubt to be one of a dozen people offering to go in goal this week!  

So, if you're over 50, and have the most rudimentary footballing ability (sorry, John Fowler) pop along and see what you've been missing since you last had a full head of hair!

Once a pr*ck

 

Always a pr*ck

One hundred and fifty one and counting.

I'm really trying to get on-board with this latest iteration of the Poppies.  Cut adrift by our cheque-book wielding Chairman we are now a club that needs to generate every penny we spend.  Large numbers of Poppies supporters have come forward with initiatives and money-making ventures.  The club's management board is entirely made up of fellow Poppies fans who are working hard to prepare us for the forthcoming season.  There's stuff going on in the clubhouse every week.  Everyone is being positive and pulling in the same direction.  Even our small online collection of malcontents are either being encouraging or just resting their dumb-ass mouths for the Summer (probably looking forward to the upcoming school holiday?)

I'm really trying to join in and be happy, bouncy and positive.  Honestly.

But it's hard when our fixtures are announced and we have to play f*cking Redditch again.  

Why God, WHY?  Can't we ever just leave them permanently in our rear view mirror?  Is it too much to ask?

Not that I've got an especial problem with Redditch (although I have).  I could just have easily singled out St. Ives or Stratford or Coalville or Alvechurch or Barwell or Royston or Hitchen.  Partly it's depressing we've dropped back down to play these teams again, at their drizzly, grey, insular-minded, sparsely populated hovels (IT'S CALLED IRONY, BEFORE YOU LOSE YOUR SH*T) but mainly because these clubs will all be laying in wait for us to give us a bloody good kick-in after we thought we'd waved goodbye to them forever.  Back then we were the big boys, bolstered by Ritchie's funds.  We put together a great team and took gleeful pleasure in slapping them all around while sauntering to a League triumph.

Now, we return to the Southern League, chastened, leaderless, with an unknown Management and team.  And they'll all be waiting for us.  Angry, tough and bitter.  Ready to give us a, probably well-deserved, battering on their gleaming 4G pitches.  By rights, Telford should be the team everyone targets, but few of the clubs we will be playing will have have much history with them.  No, they'll be scanning the fixture list for the Poppies and the chance to hand out some payback.

It's all so depressing.  Festive period fixtures against Redditch, St Ives and Stratford.  Hand me my pearl-handled revolver now.  Last game of the season we travel to enjoy the hostility of the f*ckwit psychopaths of Nuneaton.  Even our ONE trip to the seaside has been scheduled for a Tuesday night FFS!  If I want to see the sea this season I'm going to have to visit Skegness.  Christ, as if things weren't grim enough already.....

Welcome to Redditch-on-Sea

How Much?! Jeez....

You'll find no-one more desperately unhappy when we were bodily ripped from our true home of Rockingham Road than the Patgod posse.  No-one who wanted to help achieve the unrealisable return to our ancestral home once we were turfed out more than we did.  We signed all the petitions, and took part in all the marches.  We stood outside the Council offices and chanted our lungs raw at our uncaring, hive-minded, bean-counting Tory councillors.

We too looked on with stupefied horror as parts of the stadium were knocked down.  The main stand came down in a screech of grinding metal matched only by our collective screech of horror.  The mighty "K" floodlights were brought majestically to earth with barely a whisper.  Matching our silent disbelief.  While the ground stood there was always hope.  Always the dream of a miraculous return....

The rest of the stadium was cleared away and for the longest time we looked forlornly at the pointless wasteland our beloved former home had become.   "Look what they did to my boy" as Don Corelone once wailed.

Then they started building housing on OUR ground adding the final, flimsy built, shitty-cardboard, rabbit hutch, commuter-scum insult to the indelible injury we had all suffered.

Now this.  We can hardly bring ourselves to look at the pernicious Estate Agent website.  They are looking to parcel up our history and sell it to the highest bidder.  We can barely see through our tears to look at such unapologetic, untarnished, capitalist greed.

 

Mmmm.

That all said, if I knew how stupidly expensive the properties could be I'd have gladly lent a hand and a sledgehammer and helped pulverise our delapidated old dump myself!  

Loadsamoney!  Kerching!

Every Little Helps, I guess

The club has thrown open the doors for volunteers to help with numerous tasks around Latimer Park.

This can only be a good thing.  The more the fans get a glimpse behind the scenes at just how a club of our size is run, the more they will appreciate the astonishing amount of hard, unglamorous work that goes into giving us 90 minutes of football on a Saturday afternoon.

We at Patgod have felt sufficiently fired up with pre-season zeal to look to lend a hand.

Unfortunately, we can't see any requirements for jaded world-weariness, inappropriate scorn, sarcasm or taking pleasure in mocking any and everything.

No, it seems the club are seeking folks with distinct and discernable talents.

Ah well, better luck next time.

Keeping up with Poppies news....

 ....the Northamptonshire Telegraph way....

We may have signed a new player.

Or lost one.

Or gone bust.

Your guess is as good as ours!

"It could have been us....."

I'm not sure which fact is the more outlandish.  That Luton Town and Kenilworth Road will be featuring on Match of the Day next season or that little old us, not that long ago, for a few seasons, were pretty much their local league rivals.  During our last (ever?) flirtation with the National League we came up against Luton who were finding getting back into the Football League infinitely harder than they imagined it would be.  I think the medical term is Wrexhamitis.

The first game between the much-reduced Hatters and the Ladak-funded Poppies was an early season 0-0 in August 2009 in front of over 3000 at Rockingham Road.  This result was bettered when we won the return game at Kenilworth Road in early December.  A Ritchie Partridge thunderbolt was the only goal of the game in front of over 6500, of which 6300 of the attendees gnashed their teeth for fully 90 minutes.  This was my first visit to Kenilworth Road and yes, if you've never been there, everything you've heard about the place is true.  A dog-rough ground in a dog-rough area of a dog-rough town.  Yes, you do clamber up a stairway that allows you to look into the neighbours gardens and bathroom windows.  And yes, the away end has the narrowest seating imaginable.  Anyone over 5' 6" has to watch the proceedings sitting side-saddle.

No, me neither...

In the 2010-2011 season Luton hit back at the Poppies by winning 3-1 at Rockingham Road in another early season fixture.  Luton were assisted by us having Ian Roper and Iysden Christie sent off (lessening the weight of the Poppies on-field team by roughly 50%).  Amazingly, the match-ball was claimed by future Poppies nobody Matthew Barnes-Homer who probably didn't notch three touches of the ball during his Poppies "career" let alone three goals.

The return fixture that season was the only game against Luton I wasn't present for.  Instead I had to rely on Radio Luton Town FC's completely unbiased and factually inaccurate commentary - I lost track of how many times we were referred to as "Kidderminster".  We threw on future England International Callum Wilson to try and grab us an equaliser late on, but that role was ably filled by Danny Mills with a last minute goal to secure a 2-2 draw.  Much to the complete disbelief and disgust of the radio commentators who couldn't accept the mighty Hatters had not beaten lowly Kidderminster.

I'd like to say that this is where our interactions with Luton came to a natural end.  A win each and a couple of draws.  Honour satisfied.  Unfortunately we faced off against the Hatters for one more season.  A season I think we'd all rather forget.  The one that started with a new stadium and signing players from Real Madrid (!) and ended with the club almost being wound-up and George Rolls trying to get his slippery paws on the levers of power.  

By this time the league had decided that the Poppies and the Hatters were pretty much local rivals and assigned us the Boxing Day / New Years Day honours.  By the time the Christmas period rolled around Imraan had forgone any pretence at being interested in his football club and a team with a pair of barely interested Ifil's, a punch-drunk Jamie Navarro and a couple of substitutes lost 5-0 in a game where Laurie Walker was our MOM by a country mile.  Without him God alone knows what the final score might have been.  10-0?  15-0?  He seemed to personally prevent future Poppy Aaron O'Connor scoring a dozen on his own.  

The return match a week later saw our Heroes manage to lose by the same score.  This time though Jerel Ifil was nowhere to be seen and Phil Ifil couldn't even be bothered to stay on the pitch for half the match, shrugging his way to another red card.  The only winner that day, Luton obviously excepted, was Imraan.  I doubt very much if any of the £20 entrance fees the 1500 (2000?) Luton supporters coughed up made it into authorised KTFC coffers.....

And there you have it.  Not many seasons later and while we are girding our loins for the upcoming visits of Barwell, St Ives and Redditch (jeez....not again), Luton are busy preparing themselves to receive the cream of the Premier League.  And Tottenham.