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.

Here We Go!

 

All the best to our new Managers ahead of tomorrow's kick off....

scrolls through Facebook....

Greenie and Bridgie.

Good luck, we're all counting on you.

Why, why, why us? Again.

So, out of the blue, Liam decides to "step down" as Poppies boss barely 7-days before the season starts.  Cue pandemonium on social media.  Cue calls for Brad Piercewright to renew his interest in the club.  Cue calls for George's exit.  So far, so Kettering.  I don't know if other clubs are run in such a random fashion, but somehow I doubt it.  I doubt many could survive it!

The reasons  we are slipping into yet another shit-show?  I don't know the full ins and outs of our current / latest calamity, but I do know this -

PERCEPTION IN FOOTBALL IS ALL

If people perceive a club is having problems it doesn't really matter if they are or not.  The perception is there.  A couple of seasons ago the Poppies were PERCEIVED to have a racism problem over a couple of incidents that, in at least one of the cases, 100% did not happen.  We have a PERCEIVED  hooligan issue because a couple of pissheads stumbled onto the pitch, and when Telford fans come here, their teen-burberry brigade want to dance with OUR teen-burberry brigade.  We're PERCEIVED  to be trouble, so start finding ourselves being segregated home and away.

PERCEPTION

Presently the perception is that the current Club ownership are stumbling from one f*ck-up to the next.  From the outside looking in all we can see are amateur-hour mistakes.  The club has shed a load of volunteers and helpers - why?  The club seemed to care more about some random community hall than their own football ground - why?  The club seems to shrug off sponsors and food outlets all the time - why?  Any upgrades around the club look like they're held together with cable-ties and hope - why?  Our social media output looks like it's being done by toddlers - why?  Despite repeated attempts, still nothing can be done with pitch - why?  Our Manager departs on the eve of the new season - why?  

Well, we all suspect the "why" in Liam's case, by why NOW?  Why not at the end of last season?  Why not if and when his case comes up?  It's perception again.  If the club ownership knew Liam was about to quit why pretend everything in the Poppies garden was rosy?  If this is the case, you've seemingly lied to the players, the sponsors and the supporters about the situation.

If the club hierarchy DIDN'T know Liam was about to jump ship, in many ways this reflects on them even worse.  If this came as a shock you have to ask what is going on with the club and it's officials.  How does such shattering news somehow entirely escape the notice of those in charge?  Perhaps it is better to be seen as a calculating hard-arse who deliberately kept quiet about the manager's imminent departure while signing players, sponsors and season ticket holders, than be perceived as being totally out of the loop in your own club.

In our previous article we offered George the sound advice and a warning - 

"For George's sake we need to hit the ground running.  A stumbling start, on or off the pitch may see the pressure for regime change rekindled after such talk had abated during the World Cop".

Well, the World Cup is over.  The part-time World Cup fans have all gone home.  No-one's queuing to get into the Fanzone anymore, which without a big screen and a big match is just a glorified parking area.  You're left with Poppies fans now and we demand more than a bit of flash and the occasional rabbit being pulled out of a hat.  You're not running a summer carnival of an event - you're running OUR club.

Who knows what the knock-on effects of this weekend's news will be?  Players wriggling out of contracts?  Supporter's boycotting games?  Loads of Stourbridge fans telling us in painfully squeaky Brummie accents, "We told you so?"

The Club ownership have not just dropped the ball.  They've dropped it and then kicked it into next door's garden which is thigh high with stinging nettles and they have an angry sounding dog.  Perhaps this will prove fatal for their tenure.  With Brad Piercewright presumably still interested in acquiring the Poppies, George and his crew, presuming they still want to be the club owners, couldn't have chosen a worse time to reach for the "self-inflicted cock-up" button.

When the fun STOPS stop

Reporting back for pre-season

You'll be pleased to know that PATGOD has reported back for a thorough pre-season work out ahead of 2026-27 term.  We've summered well.  A few mental pounds might need to be shed before our sarcasm and cynicism are match fit, but we're confident we'll find our footing again. We've also reached certain age milestones that we needn't go into too much, except to say, had W**** T******** kept his mouth shut would have resulted in discounted admission prices at the Latimer Park turnstiles.

The World Cup is now safely in our rearview mirror and the club's new, impressive Fan Zone will be given over to us miserable sods again.  A World Cup where Thomas Tuchel's team took a similarly unsuccessful leaf from the Poppies end of season safety-first playbook.  Get an early goal?  That'll do.  Warm up the defenders on the bench and tell the reserve forwards to hit the showers.  Hopefully, with our pre-season striking acquisitions our ambitions may stretch beyond hitting the ball in Panter's general direction, then sit back and hope he beats 3-men and scores.

It's been a strange Poppies summer.  The club has been actively coveted by a former player with money to burn, while at the same time our current owner has presided over one of our better pre-season recruitment drives.  Got to say, I know nothing about most of the players we've signed, but the fact we're going into our friendlies fielding our own players rather than the usual conveyor belt of trialist "talent" can only be a good thing.

This season Liam has a team HE has put together to attempt his tilt at the title.  Assuming of course he is around to shepherd his new charges and not sitting out a ban for historic online activities (that sounds far more suspect than I intended).

For George's sake, we need to hit the ground running.  A stumbling start on or off the pitch may see the pressure for regime change rekindled after such talk had abated during the World Cup.  He first needs to get the clubs comms running properly.  Sorting our hideously out of date website should be an easy start.  How hard is it to update the playing staff to include our new signings?  I was temporarily excited to see that George Forsyth had come back....

Also, perhaps ensure the Twitter and other accounts aren't accessible by people fired up by too much time / alcohol / grievance.  Some of our posts last season were bizarre at best and inexcusable at worst.  Either re-jig the accounts so previous password holders can't access them, or remember to log out of the club accounts when indulging in personal score settling.  Either way - sort it!

Oh, and if we can keep the cheap, tacky and largely inaccurate AI-generated slop to a bare minimum - that would be much appreciated!

With pre-season in full swing, the NN15 / NN16
hosepipe ban couldn't have come at a worse time.