Sign 'em up!

The club has so many Smiths (loans allowing) and Connors (suspensions allowing) that I have oft pondered during quiet passages of play - most recently during the first half against Chorleyzzzzz if there was an actual Connor Smith out there we could sign to get the best of all worlds.  If for no other reason than to give me a private chuckle.

Well, bugger me if a few minutes alone with Wikipedia hasn't thrown up just one Connor Smith but fully THREE Connor Smiths currently plying their footballing trade in the UK!  I can't believe, given our fixations with both Connors and Smiths we haven't given at least one of them a contact!

C'mon Ritchie, get one of them in!  Hell, why not all three!

Connor Smith 1

Connor Smith 2

Connor Smith 3

Failing that, there is a County music star who could also fill the role.....Yee Haw!

Dose of Reality

This afternoon we'll be entertaining Chorley and still, theoretically, be chasing the final Play-Off place.  This final Play-Off place suddenly drifted into our firmament a month ago when a good run of results punted us into nose-bleed territory.  A run of away defeats since then has blunted these ambitions somewhat.  Whether we reach the Play-Offs or not I truly hope this isn't the measure by which the 2021-2022 season is judged.  

To my mind, were we to even finish mid-table the season can only be considered a success.  The fact that the Play-Offs are even being mentioned in March is frankly incredible.  

We have a playing surface that must surely repel any footballer worth their salt.  Our stadium, even with the vast amount of welcome work done, is still the worst at this level.

But the biggest drag-factor, holding us back, and what will continue to hold us back is the utter apathy of the people of Kettering.  As much as we like to believe we're still a big club we are two thirds of the way down the attendance chart in National North.  Other towns back their clubs.  Take Spennymoor, they get TWICE our gates while their population is less than a third of Kettering.  Today's opponents Chorley average well over 1200 despite a population of less than half that of Kettering.

We happily mock Brackley's small gates, but they average barely less than a hundred than we do squeezed from a tiny population of 13,000 - a town slightly larger than Desborough.

Unfortunately, until we start attracting regular four figure gates we will always be punching above our weight simply by playing at this level.  And that is unlikely to happen while people who profess to support the Poppies are content to not watch them play.  Even though we have now not played at Rockingham Road for over a decade there are too many people who haven't moved on or are simply waiting for a new "Rockingham Road" to suddenly appear at the end of their street before they can be arsed to actually watch the club they profess to support.

There is literally no way we are ready to compete in the Play-Offs with a small squad being watched by a small support at a small ground.  Imagine if we somehow stumbled to promotion!!!  Jeez.  We would be murdered by the teams in the National League.  There are some seriously monster-sized teams roaming at that level.  We are doing well to be competitive at National North.  Going forward?  The people of Kettering need to decide with their feet what kind of club they want to pretend to support in the future.

It's a tragedy we lost Rockingham Road and we'll never forgive
those who cost us our spiritual home.  But it's gone and there's not
a damn thing we can do about it.  Some still need to realise this.

As if we couldn't hate Stevenage more.....

 Crook gets another chance to fail

Paul Raynor joins long-time managerial partner

Steve Evans in the Stevenage technical area

What, is it 1974 all over again?

It is a commonly held if rather lazy view that the 1970's were unremittingly grim.  A decade stuffed to the gunnels with 3-day weeks, power cuts, beige furniture, the Yorkshire Ripper and flared jeans.  Those of us that lived through the 1970's as a kid tend to hold the decade in a more positive light.  

No, we kids recall more playing football with our mates until your legs ached and / or you were dragged home at dusk.  Penny sweets the size of your fist.  Real Star Wars at the cinema.  Watching Tiswas with your Dad.  I enjoyed the flan-flinging and pop videos.  Dad very much enjoyed Sally James.  If you were posh, i.e. you lived on the "new" Ise Lodge estate, you watched Multicoloured Swop Shop and your Dad had to settle for a disinterested squint at Maggie Philbin.  

Roles were reversed for The Sweeney (basically Life on Mars for real) when we joined parents for a hard-hitting drama where whisky sozzled coppers took on tooled-up robbers armed only with heavy sideburns and an even heavier length of lead pipe.

Music styles in the 70's were brilliant and seemingly every month brought a brand new type of music.  The decade started with the Beatles and went through Glam, Prog, Rock, Soul, Disco and Punk before depositing us with the New Romantics as the 80's dawned.  Take a random look at any singles or album chart from the 1970's and tell me it wasn't a time of musical Titans?  Compare that with the sludge being serve up now.

Football was real football back then of course.  Heavy balls.  Heavy pitches.  Heavy players.  The fighting on the pitch was only just trumped by the amount of fighting on the terraces and in the nearby streets.  It was definitely a different time for football and, to be honest, much of the dickheadedness isn't missed now.

Or so we thought before a wanabee "crew" seemed to have attached themselves to the Poppies over the past few weeks, culminating in the ridiculous scenes at the end of the Telford game.  I mean, what the f*ck is going on?  

Pissed-up would-be hardmen shouting the odds and throwing objects, and themselves onto the pitch.  Stupidity which culminated in the descent into actual violence after the Telford game.  Hopefully the subsequent arrests and naming-and-shaming on the official club Facebook page will deter these arseholes from venturing to Latimer Park again.  

The club, football and society doesn't need these wastes of skin.  Let them go back to acting the hard men in their own pits where they have our complete permission to drink, smoke and inject whatever they want into their bodies while they fritter their empty, preferably not too long lives away.

"C'mon Gary, get the telly onto ITV....."

Yeah? And?

 So, AFC Scum, we've signed your striker.  Tough.  Don't think for a second that we've forgotten about this, and we still owe you.....

 Dog's Bollocks

Dog Sh*t

Five Things You See on TV Football You REALLY Don't Have To Copy

Just because we see bigger fans of bigger clubs doing dumb stuff when we see them on the telly we don't have to ape them like simple-minded buffoons.

(1)  Drums.  Don't.  Just don't.  You won't be able to play it properly.  Everyone will think you are a dick.  And when your team is four down at half time you're going to feel disinclined to use your drum and can't exactly hide it away.  Don't do it.

(2)  Watching the game with no top on.  Admittedly this was more of a fad a few years ago when the ugliest gut-buckets (usually from Newcastle) commemorated the coldest Tuesday evening of the season to peel off their ultra-tight replica top and give us all a good look at yards of blubber and a fistful of ugly tats.

(3)  Throwing stuff on the pitch.  Another blast from the past that seems to be enjoying an unwelcome resurgence.  Even at our lowly level.  For years we didn't see this sort of thing on the telly, except when we saw a bit of religious fundamentalism from north of the border.  Suddenly throwing stuff at opposition players has become popular again.  Players don't always help by running over to the opposition fans every time they score and then collapsing to the ground, stone dead when an empty plastic bottle almost hits them.  Showing the usual, stupid mentality of top-level supporters they have chosen to dust off this particular hooligan trope at a time when every game is covered by a thousand cameras.  

(4)  Running on the pitch.  Other than celebrating winning the League your average fan should NEVER run onto the pitch.  Forget about being thrown out or being banned - that pales into insignificance when balanced against who dumb you look, lumbering around on a slippery surface like an out-of-condition walrus.  Those players you slag off are half your age and weight and are wearing the correct footwear.  You are a middle-aged tubby wearing non-grip trainers and haven't run since leaving school when Thatcher was still Prime Minister.  Have a word with yourself.

(5) Waving a cardboard sign asking for a player's shirt.  Tacky beyond all measure.  If you want a shirt, visit the club shop and badger your parent.  And, assuming Jack Grealish picks you out and gives you his shirt what exactly will you do with it.  By the following Tuesday it will be screwed-up and forgotten at the bottom of the wash basket.  And do you REALLY think the Poppies have enough shirts to waste one on you no matter how much you bellow lager-flavoured spittle at Jordan Crawford on the final whistle?

Looks like Liam Watson didn't get the Manager's memo.....

 "It's a fair cop...."

Click on the link above if you want to see something almost unique.  Liam Watson being far, far too even-handed when being interviewed after Southport's defeat at Latimer Park.  It's almost like he hasn't read the National North League Managers Handbook. 

Doesn't he know that: -

(A) If you lose to the Poppies at Latimer Park it's because of the pitch.

(B) If you lose to the Poppies on your own ground it's because Kettering are always in your face and play a kind of rough, physical football of the type you personally don't advocate.  You are such a football purist that if you can't play the ball 100% on the ground and fizz it around like Barcelona in a pre-saeaon friendly you'd frankly prefer to lose,  Certainly rather than play THAT kind of football.