Good day at the office for a change

Yeah, yeah, another win.  Henry dominantly back at the heart of our defence.  Wilson looking sharp again.  Another good crowd.  Blah, blah.

All well and good.

More importantly, yours truly finally felt the benefit of the good grace of some higher being, and won the Club 200 draw at half time!  Finally, after decades of shelling out for Club 200, 500 Club (when we were bigger!) and Klondikes, my  number managed to match the number!

The official position is that I don't care about winning, as the money spent is all going to the club anyway.  Buying raffle tickets at pretty much every home game I have attended since the late 1970's, and the Trust's various draws for the past 10+ years is just part and parcel of supporting the Poppies.

All b*llocks of course!  The amount of money I'd thrown at this ungrateful club has driven me to be a sad, bitter, twisted figure for much of my adult life.  Nothing is more certain to cause me to rant about life's inequities more than trying to mentally tally how many tickets I'd bought, and how much money spent over the decades without even getting close to actually winning something.  This was brought forcefully home to me last season, when I still couldn't get close to winning the Klondike at Steal Park even when, on some of those frozen, grimly-spartan Wednesday nights, I must have bought most of the bloody tickets!

More annoying than the Klondike was the Club 200, a patently evil entity, which I have diligently entered every season since it's inception.  Statistically, without even trying, I should have won it two or three times by now.  Everyone seems to have won the bloody thing.  Some twice.  Some twice in successive games...... Poor old JC, whilst, I think, congratulating me yesterday on my good fortune, told me he had never won it either, despite entering every year.  Well, tough-titty JC, because I have!  And that goes double tough-titty to anyone else who hasn't won either!

The club shouldn't worry too much about this win turning my head.  I'm pretty sure they are going to get most, if not all of it back off me!

Now I've joined life's winners I resolve that the cynicism and misery of my former days are behind me, and that each new day will be treated as a blessing to look forward to.  At least until the Appeal on the 7th October.  Shit!  I could be the last ever Club 200 winner! 

That's certainly darkened my mood again.

"£63 you say?  I'm gonna
spend, spend, spend!"

Poppies time on death row continues to bore

With the date of October 7th jotted in everyone's diary as the day that a Judge either overturns our winding-up order, or the Poppies cease to be, there is little to do now other than catch a few football matches and bide our time.

The calm which has descended over Poppydom masks the passion and anticipation we all feel for the club and the hoped for survival.  We know that this is the last chance, and also the last hurdle to clear in extricating ourselves from Ladaak's reign.  Success means we can truly start again with a clean slate.  Failure?  Well, we can all go and find something else to moan about on Saturdays.

From the outside our calm must look a little bewildering.  Things are very quiet for a good reason.  We've been here too many times to waste our time gnashing our teeth and beating our breasts. 

It really does feel that for the past 12 months almost every game we have attended has been dubbed, "possibly the Poppies last ever game".  You can't play and support under this sort of constant pressure without becoming just a little blasé about the goings on at Kettering Town FC.

For now I'll welcome Northwood to Latimer Park, wonder why Alumasc won't let us use their empty carpark, hope a house falls on Keith Cousins, and hope to finally see us win a game!

Poppies fans "Laughing in the face of fear, and
tweaking the nose of terror"

Twenty Thousand Reasons

Well, with a couple of curious amounts appearing on our "Just Giving" page, including one which prompts the disquieting image of club enforcer Ken Samuel "leaning on" Sid Chapman for a donation, the £20,000 figure we have been asked to raise has now been pledged.

Personally I didn't think we had a chance of raising this sum.  Historically, far too many Poppies fans have given the impression that as long as they paid the entrance fee to have a good moan at the team, someone else would always be there to sort out problems and make up shortfalls and basically ensure the club continued. 

Given that supporting the Poppies over the past few years has become less a case of our team entertaining us than them waging a war of attrition against us, perhaps we have whittled our support down to a stubborn hardcore of nutters?  A small, hardened group of people so dedicated to their club that they will put up with almost anything as long as it bears a Poppies logo.  No level of football is too low.  No football ground is too basic.  No Mickey Mouse opposition (who still beat us) with barely triple-figure attendances, is too disheartening.  Perhaps we have reached the perfect supporter profile where the few left are entirely, 100% dedicated to their club, no matter what?

Now we few, helped by people from all levels of football, have raised the £20,000 asked of us.  Will it help?  God knows.  The club has been wound up.  An additional £50,000 is required.  There is no certainty the Appeal will be successful.  The Judge could have a row with his Missus on the morning of our appeal and confirm the winding up petition out of spite.

We can only hope for the best and that any or all of the following occur -

• Ritchie and C*ntsins come to an agreement, and this time C*ntsins doesn't renege again.
• C*ntsins accepts an enormous cheque, or falls off a cliff.  Either works.
• The wife of the Judge at our Appeal decides to pleasure her hubby excessively on the day we're in court.
• Our 20K somehow helps to finally secure the future of the Poppies.

Hang on, does that mean I actually have to pay that money I've pledged?  Bugger!

Ta La Me Ducks?

And so to Latimer Park yesterday for the latest instalment of Possibly The Last Game Ever, cameras and gallows humour at the ready. That’s not to underplay the seriousness of the present situation – we have flirted with disaster many a time over the years, but being officially wound up by the court is a first even for our poor beleaguered Poppies.

But if many in the crowd were fearing that maybe this really was it, they disguised it well, with raucous support and no apparent intention to give up the struggle just yet.

Aylesbury arrived in charitable mood and allowed us a two goal head start, presumably instead of a Just Giving contribution. However, unused to such generosity we gradually let things slip, as the Ducks waddled back into the game and we went from Lame to Sitting en route to Dead.  An old wartime bomber flew overhead – knowing our luck, it had us in its sights (you wouldn’t put it past Cousins). The lads behind the goal broke into a Dambusters chorus.  Facing yet another defeat, DT drew upon all his management expertise and identified a possible solution – bring on our one quality striker!  Left field I think you’ll agree, but sometimes you have to think outside the box.

Suddenly things started to happen. First a missed penalty, then a messy equaliser from the inspired substitution, then an equally messy winner.  Messy but miraculous in the circumstances.  It was as if someone up there (and I don’t mean the bomber pilot) decided that after two years of unrelenting punishment, we deserved just a little bit of joy.  Everyone in the 749 crowd apart from a few visiting Ducks left happy. Even their chubby keeper didn't look too sorry, but maybe that was the thought of an imminent giant packet of pork scratchings.     

If this was the last hurrah, it was at least a proper hurrah, not another 7-0 thrashing with ten men.  Hope the Sky cameraman captured it all for posterity.  Here’s my contribution.

Football backing the Poppies

The number of news stories, across the television stations and the Internet has shown that many people beyond we Poppies fans want to see our club survive this latest attack by bloated businessmen to screw more cash out of us. 

This man wants to kill our club. 
We say, pay him, then f*ck him!

Some because they can't get their heads around why a club over 140 years old can be allowed to end.  Some because they hate the way money in football is held in so few hands.  I assume some back us because they hate Keith C*ntsins as much as we do?

If you haven't yet donated to the "Save Kettering Town" appeal on Just Giving, now is your chance.  It could be your last chance....



https://www.justgiving.com/local/project/savekettering/



Other sites that have caught wind of what is happening to us have been quick to jump to our defence and help promote a united front against C*ntsins.


http://www.thedaisycutter.co.uk/2013/09/a-club-like-kettering-footballs-630m-question/

http://backpagefootball.com/help-donate-two-days-worth-of-gareth-bales-wages-and-save-kettering-town/62859/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23936591

http://twentyfour7football.com/kettering-town-wound-up-over-58000-debt-15366

http://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/top-stories/save-kettering-town-fc-appeal-gets-under-way-1-5456944

http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/update/2013-09-03/kettering-town-vow-to-fight-on/

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/sport/football/non-league/preparations-under-way-as-kettering-town-fight-for-survival-1-5450616

http://www.footballtradedirectory.com/news/2013/september/kettering-given-winding-up-order-over.html

http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/update/2013-09-03/dunstable-fans-to-raise-money-for-troubled-kettering-town-fc/

http://www.dunstabletoday.co.uk/sport/football/local-football/dunstable-town-v-kettering-town-to-go-ahead-as-blues-offer-help-to-poppies-1-5448934

http://www.footballeconomy.com/content/kettering-town-wound

http://footyaccumulators.com/blog/kettering-town/save-kettering-town/

With all these people, and many others supporting or at least bringing attention to our cause, it really is the time to stand up for the final time and fight to save our club.

Just what can £70K buy you nowadays anyway?

It's looking like it's time to dig deep again in order to make a very rich man just a little bit richer.

But what could we buy with any funds raised?

100 Million = pay off C*ntsins and buy Gareth Bale.

100K = pay of the C*ntsins, and have 30K left over to perhaps put some more hard standing around the perimeter at Latimer Park.

70K = pay off the C*ntsins and gob in his face when we hand over the wedge.

58K = pay off the figure C*ntsins originally pulled out of the air for us to pay for a ground we couldn't actually use.

50K = pay off the figure agreed between C*ntsins and Ritchie, before C*ntsins remembered what a c*nt he was and upped the amount.

£300 quid = pay a very uncouth Eastern-European, underworld type to arrange for a regrettable but especially messy accident to befall a certain local businessman of moderate repute.

PATGOD would be happy to start the collection ball rolling with an initial payment of, say, £300....

The End (Again?)

http://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/kettering-town/poppies-wound-up-at-high-court-1-5447254

Stunned. 

But how ironic that this news comes out on the day Gareth Bale signed for Real Madrid for 85 million quid, and he gets to trouser £300,000 per week.

Roughly speaking, the money Bale will earn between 3PM and 3.20PM during his first game would get us debt free and able to start again on an even keel.

F*cking madness.