Finance is no cure for Fatalism, alas

Well, the statements on the club website by George and Brad pretty much redefined for the modern age the phrase "puff-piece."  Both sides sought to out-do each other in gushing praise of the other.  For a football club more famous for injudicious and questionable social media postings this piece was professionally put together with a polish and re-read through usually sadly lacking.

Brad and Craig celebrated in the appropriate fashion with another interview on Poppycast podcast, where enthusiasm for their coming tenure was palpable.  They have BIG plans, no doubt.  And I should have been as excited as they were.  I wanted to be.  But I wasn't.  No doubt this says more about me than them.  But I've been a Poppies fan for too many years to take anything at face value.  I WANT to get enthused by the prospect of Brad's billions funding my club, but at the back of my mind I'm remembering what happened at the Diamonds.  

Part way through Brad and Craig's chat on the Podcast all I that flashed in front of me was that this is exactly what Max Griggs said in the Evening Telegraph about his plans for the Scum 30-odd years ago.  To be fair, he was as good as his word.  The Griggs millions funded one hell of a roller coaster ride for the suddenly flush inbreds. But, at the end of the day, despite success and attendances we can only dream of in NN16 land, when the funding was pulled the Diamonds bubble burst in the most spectacular and instant way.  I don't want that to happen with the Poppies.

If all this reads as incredibly churlish, I apologise, but even the starriest-eyed, George-hating, Brad-loving Poppies headcase knows, deep down, nothing in football is ever too good to be true.

Brad New Day

It was a rare feeling to greet the morning after a Poppies defeat with renewed optimism about the club’s future, but we live in unusual times. 

The joint statement announcing agreement in principle to the sale was big on mutual appreciation before George gave us his version of the departing PM’s address in Downing Street. We can give him that – his time as owner undoubtedly delivered some good things – but the reason we were reading all this was fundamentally because his controlling tendencies went too far, alienated too many people, and stored up trouble for the club in other ways. 

Just how much trouble is something that Brad & co will no doubt be keen to dig into as they do their due diligence. We can only hope there is nothing in the closet that derails the bid completely. 

Assuming the deal is eventually done, there is a lot to look forward to but at the same time we need to try to not get carried away about what to expect in the near term. Yes I know, this is Kettering so about as realistic as appealing for world peace, but somebody had to say it. Brad so far has seemed to avoid hype of the kind that tends to come back to bite, and it will be interesting to see if this survives his first fans’ forum! 

Off the pitch it’s an opportunity for a reset of the relationship between the club and its public. The door should be thrown open for volunteers old and new, with no pre-conditions, and the end of the schism that split fans and killed the LP atmosphere can’t come soon enough.

On the pitch, this season is already a chase to finish as close to 2nd as possible, secure a favourable playoff berth and take our chances from there. 

The position with the current management duo is an interesting one. Until the club formally changes hands, decisions presumably still sit with George, though it’s hard to see how an arrangement that screams stop-gap and sticking plaster will last even until the end of the year. With every passing game the feeling grows that the squad, which has few obvious weak links, ought to be more dominant and free scoring, despite a longish (but unconvincing) unbeaten start.

Do we stick (until new ownership can make its choice but risk falling behind) or twist? 

Lots to ponder as we contemplate an ownership by former Poppies players for the first time. Not an automatic guarantee of success by any means - there are plenty of examples elsewhere of returning heroes soon finding out that running a club is very different to anything else.  Brad's background in business will help, but there will be a learning curve for sure. Perhaps we also all should keep that in mind because as welcome as this news is, we are not suddenly over the rainbow. 

The new messiah when he was just a mere mortal

 

Infamy, infamy!

A week after the chairman of the dastardly Poppies Community Trust chose to drag George’s good name through the mud, thankfully he has bounced back to set the record straight!

It’s all a little admin technicality, folks. A big fuss about nothing and no big deal!

Understandably hurt by the horrible slur he might have signed a funding application without permission, he knows who the true victim is. Him!

As soon as the situation ‘came to light’, and he recovered from the utter shock!... he was on the blower immediately to the council. Who sprang to his defence and we can expect a follow up interview with a council bigwig confirming every word!

All the Trust had to do was sign the document, he rightly points out. People saying that they had no part in producing it and can’t vouch for its contents is just fake news!

Instead the Trust have chose to go legal and are clearly just trying to hold the club to ransom! But what can you expect of a bunch of troublemakers notorious for plotting such things as walking football and holiday camps! 

It’s all a vicious SMEAR and very unfair!

Brad & co had better get their facts straight if they try to use this against ol’ George, because a club that is living from month to month is clearly worth a heck of a lot more than they think!! 

Blinded by the Lights

We've all known for some time that George enjoys a bargain.  If something is free of charge, or paid for by someone else, he's your man.  He's never happier than when a necessary task or function is carried out for free by a volunteer, which is curious given how many of them he has lost during his tenure. 

The more business-minded of us would applaud his attempts to maximise income at Latimer Park. The only way we get bigger and better as a club is to increase revenue.  Even his biggest detractors would admit the fanzone and the matchday hospitality experience have greatly improved in the past couple of years.  George must be doing something right.  Two good seasons on the pitch and 1000+ crowds speak of a club on the up.  The more you can get FOC, the more money is available to invest into the club and the team - which is what we all want.

And yet....

From very early in the Akhtar reign questions were being asked.  So many volunteers were stepping down and raising questions about George's methods and attitude.  The Club social media output vacillates between impressive and imbecilic - when it works at all, as the current playing staff page on the website will readily attest.  Despite hosting a number of fan events and inviting anyone and everyone to ask any questions they liked of him, his often terse reactions suggested there were certain questions that weren't entirely welcome.  We found this out for ourselves when asking about the imposition of car-parking fees on a carpark he didn't own, only for George's nice-guy persona to drop for a moment.  

And yet, until yesterday, no-one could point at anything that George had actually, unequivocally, done wrong. That changed when Clark Cowell - Chair of the Poppies Community Trust accused George, via KTFC Chat of basically fraudulent activity with regard to securing funding for the new floodlights.  Assuming the events have played out exactly as Clark has described, if is difficult to see how George will be able to justify his actions, or survive them.

If it proves to be a fact that George did indeed sign the funding application on behalf of the trustees of the Community Trust, you've got to ask - why?  All he needed to do was to invite one of the trustees to complete the funding application, so why do it himself?  Don't know.  Perhaps he assumed as Club Chairman he was sufficiently highly placed to complete the application.  Or did he perhaps think no-one would think of questioning him doing it?  Either way, it will take more than an AI-augmented social media reply to justify what to our totally-untrained legal-eye looks an awful lot like fraud.

We'll wager that THAT night at Sixfields feels
an awfully L-O-N-G time ago now....

To B or not to B

Unless you’re the kind of dyed in the wool 100%er who would no sooner miss a home game than eat a roadkill squirrel, the decision about whether to ‘go’ this week often centres around -

Can I afford it?
Recent form any good?
What’s the weather going to be like? (will I fry, soak or freeze)
Can I be arsed?

However, as avid followers of social media will know, these days there is so much more to consider – namely

DO I BOYCOTT?

Yes, do I actively decide that regardless of any of the above, I’m not going, to make a point. The precise nature of that point and its intended target obviously demanding a detailed summary in advance. Because what good is a boycott unless the whole world knows about it, and you get a warm glow of self importance to waft around. 

As for reasons to boycott, take your pick -

Volunteers leaving
Unpaid bills
Clueless ownership
Lack of communication
Lies
Insults
The website sucks 
So does AI
Pitch is too narrow
Pitch is too dry
Pitch doesn’t give enough assistance to spin
Scoreboard is broken
Didn’t like the scoreboard anyway
PA person can’t pronounce Fatadjo
PA person isn’t Pete Simcoe
All of the above

So many to choose from, so go ahead if it makes you feel better. The rest of us sad sacks will keep on turning up, because if you’ve lived through the likes of English and Imraan you learn just to hang on in there, and try amidst the chaos to gain some pleasure from supporting a bunch of players doing their best. 

To those who might very reasonably say, I'm very unhappy with the way the club is being run and want to register that, what else can I do but stay away?

Organise a demonstration, make a banner, stage a sit in, go on local radio, do a podcast, hand out leaflets (our ideas are so 90s!), sing songs, hell even write a blog that no one reads - there are many options all of which aren't necessarily counter productive.  But no one benefits if the team are running out to an echoey ground, falling gates mean wage cuts and we are back in a downward spiral on the pitch as well as off.  

 

Fingers Crossed....!

We are more than a bit nervous at Patgod Towers today as we've just come from our interview with the Club ownership where we needed to re-apply for the right to continue to provide this blog to the Poppies faithful.  Yes, in keeping with other barely tolerated outfits at Latimer Park we too have had to abase ourselves to continue to offer unfunny attempts at sarcasm to an increasingly blasé readership.  

We feel we came across well in our "sit-down" with the Great Leaders when outlining our intent to continue finding most of what is happening off the pitch at Latimer Park to be bordering on the ridiculous.  I don't think we necessarily impressed when blagging how we might somehow generate an annual 10-figure sum for the club's coffers by writing a few pithy articles, augmented with photographs "borrowed" from Shorty's online output.  

It was a bit of a shock to be told that anyone could do what we do, and that there were plenty of other volunteers waiting in the wings to write this blog if we failed to impress during our "little chat".  This came as news to us as we've spent nigh on forty years trying to palm the bloody thing off on to someone / anyone else....Still, we felt our card was well and truly marked.

Just in case, like many others better qualified than us, we don't make the cut and are ousted from our own blog, for the continued Glory of The Club we make the following suggestions for anyone found to be more ideologically pure than us, and are handed the reigns of Patgod.

Be careful when you type as this website doesn't seem to have a speel-cheek facility

Be careful what you type as thin-skins abound at Latimer Park

Always print ANYTHING that people send in to the 'zine.  Don't worry, this won't take up much of your day

The blog password is "weluvimraan123" which gives you some idea of our previous inability to spot a "wrong-un" and just how stupid-long we've been ploughing this unresponsive furrow.

Leaving aside the off-pitch shannanigans, at least on the field the lads are doing the job.

Here's Shaun Jeffers "easing" the Leamington defender out of the way yesterday to allow Bayley Brown to slot home the injury time winner.

Unreal, for sure

A tad out of date?  Perhaps.  But still relevant, and we NEVER pass up the opportunity of getting someone else to do some work for us.  Take it away Graham - 

With the new season kicking off my mind went back to last game we played - at Real Bedford. My first visit there was far from ‘Real’, in fact I found it quite surreal. I only got a ticket about 2 hours before kick-off.

Knowing of the limited parking, I went as advised to a light industrial estate. It turned out to be about a 15 minute walk away. Getting near to the ground, I began to see numerous cars parked on the verges on a quite busy road. What happens if they progress up the leagues?

I then saw 2 queues – one very short and one very lengthy for the Kettering ends. It was unclear why strict segregation was needed but it went as far as most people being searched, including an 80-year-old man being frisked by a young policewoman. How the short Bedford queue led to about half the crowd being Bedford supporters was unclear. (Ed - My favourite OTT measure was the drug-sniffer dog....)

The next peculiarity was the lay-out there with Bedford’s ground being literally next door, so close they even have the same postcode. Our queue almost stretched as far as the Bedford ground where, to add another twist, the Bedfordshire County Cup final was being played, fortunately between 2 Biggleswade teams.

The game itself for us was a bit of a non-event apart from seeing Thanoj probably winning the man of the match award, if one had existed, probably for the first time. Still it won him a contract to probably sit on their bench next season till he is loaned out, never to return. About the only other points of note were wondering why their management team were so angry with us when celebrating goals and, noting in our end, a recent World snooker champion. At the end I saw a fan distributing previously unseen programmes around from a box of unused copies! The unique experience of the evening was totally topped off when in it I saw the photo of their chairman - Peter McCormack, a bitcoin podcaster, apparently, who bought the club in 2022 and is a prominent figure in the bitcoin community. 

He was actually charged by the FA in 2024 for using this photo, despite his defence being based on his right to free speech and his holding of an AR-15 assault rifle being balanced by his peace sign. Later in 2024, 2 American businessmen, the Winklevoss brothers, invested over 3 million pounds in the club, although it was not apparent whilst looking around the ground. They are crypto-currency investors, apparently, and they had money to invest after a mere 65 million dollar settlement from Facebook as they claimed Mark Zuckerberg had stolen their idea. (See the film ‘A Social Network’ for more details).

As they say “ you couldn’t make it up”.

Graham James

Nothing unusual to see here.
Just a non-league club Chairman brandishing sufficient
firepower to start a small to medium sized war.