Update from Guy

Hi Lads.

I've decided to make a move from Burton. I fancied a bit of sea air so I'm moving down to Torquay for the rest of the season.

My move there obviously has nothing to do with me being out of favour at Burton. It was entirely MY decision. I'm sure the management at Burton would have begged me to stay....if only they'd spoken to me......

Sitting out my third ban of the season had NO bearing on my being let go - I mean, my deciding to leave. At least I'm not dropping back into non-league football, even though even I am forced to admit that both of my teams this season were non-league this time last year.

To be honest, I'd had enough of being responsible for the entire Burton defence, not to mention wearing a bloody ridiculous yellow kit!

D-OH!!!

150th post on PATGOD ONLINE! Irrational Hatreds No.1 - Mascots

What is the point of football mascots? Is their only use to hopefully blindside the non-footballing public into thinking that football is a big, friendly, cuddly game for all the family? Probably.

As far as I can tell, no one within football has any time for them. Children up to the age of 8 recoil in terror from them. Children over 8 gob at them. Adults merely shake their heads with bewilderment what has happened to the game. And then gob at them.

Along with gun crime and crack cocaine, sporting mascots are another unwelcome gift from our former colonies across the Atlantic. Perhaps the Americans need these ridiculous figures to keep sports supporters entertained. This is probably down to the fact that all their sports are shit to watch. Having sat through an entire NY Nicks basketball game (that's 3 1/2 hours I won't get back), until the numbness of my arse matched the numbness of my head, they certainly need something to keep you awake, let alone entertained.

But we don't need such distractions with football. We don't turn up an hour early expecting to be "entertained". Our games don't stop every 5 minutes for advert breaks or mass change of the team. One senses that even the shoddiest passage of play from the poorest game at Rockingham Road (why am I drawn to the Tamworth game?) has more heart-stopping action than a whole season Basketball/Gridiron/Baseball put together!

In recent years we have had at least 2, maybe 3 big fluffy mascots. The current incumbent being "Champ the Lion", who is wheeled out for the odd big game. Champ followed hot on the paw prints of "Rocky Bear". After several years and several sweaty occupants, it is reported that the "Rocky Bear" costume can pretty much stand up on its own.... There may also have been a polar bear costume at the time of our sponsorship by Polar Trucks? I fear, however, that I have simply dreamt that one up! If anyone can confirm or deny the "Polar Bear" please let us know!

"Get away from me youse Freak!!!"

Tat for Tit

There's an email circulating at the moment in which a QPR fan lambasts everything he hates about football today. Runs to about two pages and just scratches the surface but is highly entertaining. If I wasn't such an IT numpty there'd be a link right here...

Anyway, lolling on the sofa tonight with half an eye on the United v City semi final I sat bolt upright at another example. Stephen Ireland, preparing to come on as sub, peeled off his shirt to reveal... a huge pair of angel's wings tattooed across his back.

I repeat - angel's wings across his back.

Either the combative City midfielder is in fact heralding the Second Coming, or it's a new chapter in what the modern player is prepared to undergo to establish inky bragging rights in the changing room. Because that can only be the motivation for ever more ludicrous skin scribbling - my tat's bigger than yours.

In the school playground culture of football, garish body decoration is the new Page Three bird or flash car. Pretty soon even the humblest semi pro will be decked out like a Maori warrior with little thought for later life, when a dark shrivelled smudge will remind them of bygone days.

Yet even as tats spread like an epidemic across the torsos, lower legs and arms of the nation's footballing finest, there's an odd reluctance to go beyond the collar line or wrist. Come on boys, who among you is man enough to have the Virgin Mary or their girlfriend's name in Mandarin emblazoned across their forehead. Or even sell the naming rights so that every firmly planted header has TOYOTA behind it.

Def Com One at Harrington

I really must stop listening to Radio Northampton. For one, they are about to get rid of the bright and breezy Annabel Amos from the Drive-Time Show, whilst at the same time giving Joe Pignatiello an extra hour each day to grizzle to his heart's content.

They also have an almost pathological inability to cover the Poppies away games. Last night we were treated to the Cobblers on the radio, and online coverage of the Scum, live and exclusive all the way from Non Park.

Another reason for my sudden dislike of listening to RN is the amount of coverage given to all our tweedy NIMBY's, bleating about proposed windfarms. This morning I gaped into my fry-up whilst listening to a proposal for Harrington, which a local objected to because it would affect an archaeological site. The archaeological site in question being a piece of land where part of the UK's nuclear deterrent was stationed during the Cold War.

WTF?

This story threw up more questions than I could shake an ICBM at.

Did we really have a nuclear missile launch site barely half a dozen miles up the road? I've got to say, this put me an awful lot closer to ground zero of a pre-emptive Soviet strike than I would have cared for. I'd quite prepared myself for surviving WWIII and becoming a kind of Mad Max style hero in a post apocalyptic landscape littered with leather clad armies of freaks with Mohican hair-cuts, with bits of the Statue of Liberty scattered around.

And since when did a nuclear missile launching area count as as an archaeological site? I can't recall Tony Robinson and his happy gang of bearded weirdos unearthing an early Bronze Age Doomsday Weapon.

"So, what would Stone Age man have done on this site?"

"Well Tony, they would have used this Thermonuclear Missile launch site to nuke their enemies back to the, er, before Stone Age...."

And as for Harrington itself - I've looked at it on a map, and it's miles from the sea. So, where are the infamous "Harrington Docks" we all used to sing about? You know the song. It starts with the line, "My brother's in borstal" and ends with the proud statement about Dave Singh being my Dad!

As I say, more questions than answers.

Come in a taxi...

There are still seats available on the supporters coach to Gateshead tonight. Or would be if there was a coach. To the horror and probably disgust of one-time Travel Club stalwarts, not only is the club not taking a busload of fans to an away trip, it may not be taking any fans at all.

Judging by the pre-match thread in which various Poppynetters tell an anxious world whether they plan to attend a particular match, so far there is only one confirmed traveller, and unless he's happy with his own company he may yet change his mind.

Let's hope not, after all there must be a particular pride in being one of very few fans to make a trip. I have memories of some meaningless late season games where the away numbers were pitifully few, but never single figures. The Travel Club, although not in its heyday, was still fulfilling its charter of running a bus (or a scaled down equivalent) to every game, and that automatically delivered a cargo of social misfits to the doorstep of many a semi-professional arena.

(There's ample material to be had in describing some of those characters, but we'll save that for another day, when advances in digital effects make it possible to reproduce their likenesses.)

Once, many years ago, a midweek jaunt to Barrow drew a travelling army of four. I recall this because they were featured in a home programme in recognition, and in an age when a hundred or so Fulham fans receive personal thankyous from Roy Hodgson for braving a Premier League trip somewhere recently, the Gateshead One ought to be similarly honoured.

Assuming of course that Roy doesn't mind penning another letter...

Two Birds - One Stone

Radio Northampton tonight (Monday 22nd January 2010) featured a couple of local stories that got me thinking.


The first was a veritable love fest featuring the ever optimistic Peter Mallinger, the ever cadaverous Les Manning, and ever-generous Chris Mallender of Corby Council. They were gushing (literally I fear) over the start of work on the Steelmen's next football ground.

The second story concerned wind farms, of which more in a moment.


The Corby Town piece was short on detail - for instance it didn't delve too deeply into the tendering process which ended up with a Corby director's company just happening to secure the contract of building the ground, or how much the Council had chipped in.


I squirmed, and I hoped any Kettering councillors listening squirmed at Mallender's suggestion that Corby Council stand ready to assist the Poppies with their ground issues. What could he have meant by this? I mean, what more could Kettering Council possibly do to help the Poppies? So far our elected officials have managed to sit very securely on their hands and lumped the Poppies in with every other sporting organisation or business in the Borough. That's right, KTFC means as much to Mr Hakewell and cohorts as such institutions as Grange Infants School Tiddly Winks 2nd XI, or the bloke who sells the ET at the top of Meadow Road.


One cannot help but be left with the feeling that had our ground issues come under Mallender's jurisdiction he would have been straight to the media complaining about absentee landlords and their stranglehold over the town's premier sporting club. No doubt this would have been followed swiftly by a compulsory purchase of the ground and rental back to the Poppies for a peppercorn rent on a 999 year lease.


But, alas, our representatives are so naval-gazingly insular that they can barely drag themselves away from the day-to-day business of grinding what little we have in the way of a distinctive town centre into dust and defecating on the remnants.


The other story concerning windfarms made me chuckle. Whenever it is suggested that a wind farm be set up anywhere in Northamptonshire there is an immediate backlash from an instantly formed group, with a catchy title such as, Cranford Unreservedly Negative Towards Sails, or, Towcester Wives Against Turbine Statues, or my own favourite group, Windfarms Are Not Kosher Enough Rigid Structures.


These groups are made up of the worse kind of blathering Tory reactionaries who believe that electricity is somehow created magically in their 3-pin sockets, and that only a reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher crossed with Adolf Hitler can save their rural idyll from galloping darkies and communists. Arguments about the value of wind farms as opposed to nuclear power stations fall on deaf ears. "How can a nuclear disaster such as the one suffered at Chernobyl possibly compare with Channel Five needing to be re-tuned on the television sets?"


Let's be honest for a moment. The countryside around here is OK, but it's not exactly awe-inspiring. Poets won't weep and piddle their pants for Northamptonshire when it is the wind farm capital of Europe. And if this means that we no longer have to toy with nuclear power or buy coal from Russia, is this not a small price to pay?


Anyway, if the Council secure us a new ground I'm sure that no-one would object if we kill two birds with one stone and attached sail turbines to the floodlight pylons? Everyone will be happy. We've got somewhere to play AND we can be a net contributor to the National Grid.


C'mon KBC - you know it makes sense!

Chris Beardsley remains vertical - shock!

This is actual, real proof that Chris Beardsley can remain upright and stay on his feet, and is not constantly grovelling on the ground looking for a free kick. This photo also offers incontrovertible evidence that he doesn't spend the rest of the time elbowing former colleagues or whining to the ref, like a big girl.

However, it doesn't exonerate him from running as though he still felt the discomfort of a rather vigorous night before at the hands, and other appendages, of Dave Bridges.