Poppies in sponsorship shock!

Disturbing news has filtered out from Latimer Park that the club has agreed a first team shirt sponsorship deal with a company NOT belonging to one of the club owners!  This brings to an end an enviable 15+ year run of not being able to find a single company from anywhere else in the world who wanted to sponsor us.

Think we're wrong?  Let's look at the evidence.....

The last few years has seen Ritchie's company "Evolution" sponsor our shirts, extolling the excellent virtues of, er, evolution.  Evolution's great.  Everyone should try it.

Before Ritchie's takeover we had a succession of different companies adorning our shirts.  DCR Locums.  Palestine Aid.  A-line.  But they all had one tiny detail in common - they were all Imraan's creations!  Unsurprisingly our former Chairman had a bit of difficulty convincing the wider business community to trust their money to his safekeeping.  Not with the ready availability of so many poker sites, and YouTube footage of mysteriously available footballers who could juggle a football well.

Not that Imraan had the monopoly on using his own companies to decorate his players' chests.  Before him we were sponsored by Weldon, who provided a steady succession of board directors at Rockingham Road during Mallinger's tenure.

And before Weldon?  By our reckoning it was either Polar Trucks or Fenner?  About 97-98 season?  Probably Polar Trucks.  Were we arsed we could simply dig out a few old programmes and nail it down to the exact sponsor, and the exact year when someone other than a club director had sufficient faith in the club to divvy up some readies.  But we can't!

Now we have B&M Pallets putting their faith in the Poppies, owned by Brian Martin, former Poppies barfly / barman and ace quiz question mangler of the parish.  As of today we recommend anyone looking to purchase industrial pallets not to look anywhere else other than here -

Palletspalletspalletspalletspallets

where, somehow they manage to devote an entire website to the fascinating world of pallets.  Good on 'em and welcome back Brian!

Expect to see this logo, stretched out of all recognition
across hundreds of beer bellies over the forthcoming season

Poppies biggest opponent raises head once more

It was clear from last night's friendly with a Luton XI that we are starting to have the makings of a reasonable team for the forthcoming campaign.  A few more players added to the effective spine and who knows, we could be in the frame this season. 

The Luton team were game enough and gave our defence a good work out.  I was more concerned for the handful of Luton fans who made the trip.  Their last three visits to us have taken in stately old Rockingham Road, shiny soulless Nonce Park and now cabbage patch Latimer Park.  Our recent nomadic existence has been enough of a challenge to us, without inflicting it upon outsiders!

It was amusing to hear some of our old and not so old duffers bemoaning the lack of Luton Town first teamers on view.  As if we would recognise of name one of them if they stood right in front of us!  The days of us spotting a handful of former top-flight players, or heaven help us, the odd ex-International, are long behind us!  It's doubtful we'll again see the heady days of excitedly nudging our fellow fans and pointing out the likes of Andy Sinton.  Or watch stars like Stephen Hunt delicately hug the touchline, quietly staying out of the way whilst his agent puts the final touches to his new contract elsewhere.

But it soon became clear that once again our biggest challenge this season wouldn't be coming from another club.  Our toughest opponent will be our pitch.  The Latimer Park surface knows only two conditions.  Dry and hideously bobbly.  Or wet and unplayable. 

Early on the Luton players realised this wasn't going to be a night to impress the boss and land a lucrative contract.  It was a night for not being caught out by a chin-high bobble and look a dick.  In the first ten minutes one Luton player attempted that most dangerous footballing manoeuvre - a Latimer Park backpass to his goalie, right between the sticks.  The crowd held it's breath.  The Poppies players stood off out of respect for the audaciousness of the feat.  The goalie girded his loins.  He managed to get enough shin/knee/boot onto the ball to safely clear.  I felt like applauding.

Whilst I entirely understand we are where we are and beggars can't be choosers I recalled with bitterness the stonking quality of the playing surface we had at Rockingham Road.  We used to moan about the odd ball deviating and the curious goal-mouth mounds, where, at it's most pronounced, the bar in the centre of the goal was several inches closer to the ground than at the posts.  But, bloody hell!  It was Wembley compared to the rough field we play on now.

How can Marcus be expected to judge players on such a surface?  How can you demand football played on the ground, when the pitch is your biggest enemy?  Ironically, to excel at Latimer Park, you have to a player of such quality that you should never have to play on Latimer Park!

What can be done to improve the surface?  Yesterday a bloody good watering would have helped.  And then what?  Best suggestion is to borrow the roller from the local cricket club and spend a month rolling the f*cking thing flat.

Ah well.  The pitch may be horrible, but at least the sunsets are pretty.

Fixtures Out. Woo Hoo!

You can find the actual fixtures elsewhere, but we trust you'll find our cut-out-and-keep away day guide useful for the coming season.  Up the Poppies!

KTFC Website gets quiet revamp

Chatting the other day to other Poppies fans, in the absence of any other Poppies-related subjects, talk swung to the official club website.  No-one could quite understand how Ritchie, with his IT business (or something similar, isn't it...?) had done nothing about our ancient website, which is bang up to date with information about our manager (just one behind), and players (including such worthy, but oddly outdated Poppies heroes such as Lee Fowler, James McPike and Nathan Koo-Boothe.

There seems to have been talk about revamping the club website from about an hour after Imraan's cold, dead fingers were prised from the Poppies reigns.  No sooner had he been kicked into touch than plans were mooted to claw back the club's official online organ.  Helpful because much of the site seemed to be unavailable to the people who actually run the club. 

Everyone fully appreciated that turning around the website lagged behind other trifling requirements such as players, somewhere to play and fending off winding-up orders.  A new club website could wait until we secured an actual club.

But now we have a secure (ish) club.  We have a championship.  We have terracing behind a goal.  There is even the threat of chips.  So where's the website?

Actually, the answer is, here - New KTFC Web Site

What?  Where?  How?

How long has this website been live?  Why hasn't the club trumpeted this?  Why didn't I know about it?  Why doesn't the old site link directly to this one?

C'mon, did everyone else know and simply didn't tell me?  Boy, when you're unpopular, you're unpopular!

That's Numberwang!

We now officially have 11 players for the forthcoming season!  Hooray!

As long as we have no injuries, holidays, Dubi missing the bus, substitutions or players leaving, we should line up for the whole of the 2015-2016 season thusly: -

 

Jamie McAlindon

 

Dominic Langdon / Brett Solkhon / Steve Kinniburgh

 

Richard-Noel / Jevani Brown / Saul Williams / Andy Gooding

 

Dubi Ogbonna / Elliott Sandy / Gary Mulligan

WGTPTPL!

At times I don't do myself any favours...!

Just a quick one to clarify, and then I'll honestly leave it alone - I wasn't really trying to get myself banned from KTFC Forum.

I used this pretense as the basis for a hopefully amusing blog.  I could have simply said, "I've been banned - WTF?". 

However, I thought I'd at least try to be light and amusing by suggest that I had deliberatly set out to be banned by being reasonable, even-tempered and merely offering alternative viewpoints to the norm on that Forum. 

In reality I was absolutely gobsmacked at being removed simply because I broadly support the efforts of the Trust, Club, Management and Volunteers.  But rather than simply bemoan this fact I thought I'd squeeze a funny blog out of it.

Entirely my fault for trying to be a bit sarcy, and forgetting not everyone "gets" my humour!







However, it seems I'm going to have to re-double my efforts to cash in my Poppynet chips too!

You could have knocked me down with a feather!

Have you ever wanted to know what it takes to be permanently banned from a forum set-up specifically to allow members to have a say, more or less without administrative interference?

Me too.

With this in mind, I put the KTFC Forum to the test. 

From what I can vaguely recall, the KTFC Forum grew out of a bit of a spat on Poppynet when a few members fell foul of the Administrators.  Apparently it wasn't OK to have all-night sessions of boozed-up threats of violence and harass anyone you didn't like.  Who'd have thought it? 
 
KTFC Forum soon became home to a mixture of Poppynet cast-offs, agitators, keyboard warriors and generally mouthy sorts.  AKA common or garden Poppy fans like you and me!

Opinions on KTFC Forum seemed slightly more forceful than on Poppynet.  Perhaps due to the perceived lighter administrative touch.  Perhaps due to the fact the some members seemed to personally hate the club management and be particularly narked when Baillie and Machin managed to fumble their way to yet another win.

Given the more turbulent nature of this forum, and it's original intent to offer a platform for all Poppies opinion, no matter how outlandish (a forum where an away win could generate 8 pages of blind hatred), I thought I might struggle to earn myself a permanent ban. 

Not a bit of it!



This week I received this message from one of the KTFC Forum board's big-wigs,

"You have been permanently banned from this board.

Please contact the Board Administrator for more information. (Tried -no reply...)

Reason given for ban: Constant digging at the forum / Always seems to be bullying people's ideas or picking faults rather than making contributions and suggestions towards the topic."



It seems that threats, abuse, pointlessly copying and pasting individual sentences from the official site, anger and vitriol AREN'T enough to earn a ban.

However,  suggesting that if supporters want something doing or changing that they perhaps look to do it themselves rather than expect someone else to do it for them IS enough to get a ban. 

It seems to be OK to demand that unspecified funds be raised in an unspecified way for an unspecified share of an unspecified stadium we don't have.  But it is NOT OK to question such a vague notion, or make the reasonable suggestion that if you think it's a good idea to raise these funds, why not instigate it.  Rather than sit around and naturally assume someone else put the effort in and do it all for you.

So, if you want to join the "I've been banned from a forum that doesn't ban people" club my best suggestion would be to hold back on the hateful posting (it's sooo last season) and merely raise the odd, innocuous question.  Providing the administrators don't agree with you, you'll be banned in no time!