No more "Canavan of Love?"

Yesterday's win over Poole had many hallmarks of a "Classic Poppies" encounter.  Rain, mud, battling performance against a very well drilled side, and a vibrant atmosphere.

A more regrettable hallmark of former Poppies days also showed itself - a supporter's complete and utter blind like or dislike for certain home players.  How many times at Rockingham Road do you remember standing feet away from a fellow fan, listening in amazement as he noisily rants against one of our players all game long?  Surely you recall biting your tongue (and even occasionally suggesting he shut the f*ck up) as this fan screams blue murder at one of our players, who even were he to score a hat trick, would feel this guy's constant ire?  Nothing the player would ever do, other than leave the club, would be good enough for this fan.

I experienced a sense of this attitude on Saturday, on a more collective level.

Allow me to explain.  Due to me being kranky when wet I spent most of the second half among our boisterous Tin Hatters.  The time was evenly spent between slagging off their knob-jockey goalkeeper and singing the praises of individual Poppies players.  Both good.

Except where it came to poor Liam Canavan.  Is he a good player?  Time will tell.  He has had some stonking games.  He has had some stinkers.  But he certainly puts in a shift every game.  Don't think so?  Watch him for a while.  He truly gets from box to box quicker than everyone else.  We see his mistakes more because he's always getting involved.

None of this impressed elements of the terrace chanters, who moaned and groaned every time Canavan did anything that didn't end with a goal.  And yet, I listened with mounting amusement to some of the other players being cheered to the rafters and given their own songs, for basically doing nothing.

I've absolutely nothing against Wilson Carvalho, but more songs were sung in his honour than actual touches he had against Poole.  A case in point was during the second half when he dribbled almost the entire length of the right wing, without having the ball under any sort if control, or even, if memory serves, even really kicking it.  It bobbled from him to the defenders and back again, as he lurched into their half of the pitch.  Eventually another defender got bored of letting Wilson get back near the ball and easily cleared it.  The Tin Hat roared its approval of Wilson's inability to kick the ball anything like properly, singing his name with gusto!

A few minutes later and Elliott Sandy put in a good sliding challenge to put the ball into touch.  The Tin Hat responded with a song featuring his name.  This, despite the aforementioned challenge coming about after he fannied around and lost the ball in the first place!

And Rene Howe was having his name sung well into the last third of the game where seemed to have got stuck in the mud, and got nowhere near the ball for fully 20 minutes!  AND took a crap penalty!

But poor old Canavan!  He even got slagged off when he tried to spread the play and Wilson mis-controlled the pass!  And then Wilson missed the target from 10 yards out to seal the game, AND STILL the Tin Hat game him another rendition!  God knows what they've had done to Canavan if he'd missed the same opportunity!

Canavan - looking dapper
post match in the Clubhouse.
Not letting the boo-boys
get him down.

Salford City Saturation and one from the Class of '09

Is it ok to admit to already being a little bit fed up of hearing about Salford City? A couple of years ago, they were barely known even in non league circles, now they’re about to have their second televised live game in a month, hot on the heels of a fly on the wall documentary series.  I have to remind myself it’s just a stirring tale of a little part-time club that just happen to have five multimillionaire owners. Us, we’d settle for just three.  Ok, two.

Joking aside, this clearly isn’t a vanity project for the famous five.  The setting could hardly be less glam, and watching from the kind of unmade spectator banking we know all too well, there’s no sign of playing to the camera as the Nevilles, Giggs, Butt & Scholes watch their semi pro heirs. Scholes in particular looks so down to earth, you expect him to pull out a flask of tea.    

Salford won promotion last season but it wasn’t an easy journey. A new management duo was installed as the challenge faltered – a novel ‘bad cop, even badder cop’ combination that is 10% motivation, 90% swearing. Hilariously, two nights before a “big game” against Lancaster City, the team were allowed a night out, but with a 2 drink limit.  The management duo soon realised this wasn’t being strictly adhered to. Imagine!

Inevitably, having had maybe 3 small glasses of wine or an extra Peroni the lads were off the pace on the Saturday and the dugout Kray twins delivered a blast that was straight out of Mike Bassett in bleep count.  “That was an absolute f***ing disgrace – and that’s constructive by the way”.

But good to see old boy Gareth Seddon in the home dressing room and sneaking the odd important goal.  We even got to see inside his personal museum, a little less grand than the Rooney version, with a Poppies shirt hanging next to the door.  Who says our TV days are over?  In many ways Seddon was the star of the show – chirpy, cheeky and the one player who dared to argue back when Ronnie and Reggie were in full flow. He’s now also a model, apparently, and seems to have gained a lot more ink since leaving Rockingham Road, including what looked like The Lord’s Prayer across his chest. That or the lyrics to American Pie.

And so the Salford story rolls on to Hartlepool and another Friday night in which the casual viewer can play FA Cup cliché bingo. God help us if they get through and draw Man Utd.  The BBC will probably give them a Christmas Day special.

Marcus Mark 2

Let's hope our early mid-season blip and Marcus's recent wobble are behind us.  A couple of shoddy performances and the inevitable online hysteria (at one point fully half a dozen fans were baying for blood......) are in the past. 

Marcus has coaxed a few more shekels out of Ritchie's pocket to refresh the squad, including the eye-opening re-signing of Rene Howe, who went from lanky Poppies goal sensation to chubby scummer a few years, and a few divisions ago.  In fact, we once included a photograph on these hallowed electronic pages of a hefty Rene and even chunkier Lee Tomlin together from their Direones days, looking for all the world like early leavers from a Weight Watchers weighing session on the look out for the nearest kebab shop.  I'd repeat it here, but I'm buggered if I'm going to trawl back through nigh on a thousand articles just to see Tomlin's piggy eyes hungrily staring out at me as though I was a cake.

It looks as though Jevani Brown and Saul Williams have moved on to make room on the bench, and at right back, for the incoming players.  Shame in a way as Williams, despite being microscopic had put in some shifts, and Brown looked the part.  However, he and Dubi are very similar players, and one of them is on a contract, so was always likely to remain here.

Marcus's back-room squad has seen a similar make over with his replacement, his new assistant Brian Page making everyone budge-up a bit on the team bench.

What this has done though is give Marcus a chance to freshen up the on and off-field squad, which, anyone who saw the footballing lesson handed out by Burscough last week will attest, it bloody well needed!

We have spent most of this season either a couple of wins from the play-offs, or a couple of defeats from the relegation zone.  It is doubtful the team, the ground or club are ready for promotion into the Conference North, but Kettering must always be at least looking to mount a challenge.  We've seen a tail-off in support that needs to be coaxed back.  The facilities and plunging temperature aren't going to help with this, but a few wins might.

WANTED 
More photo's like this one

....and less photo's like this one

Things we learned from a very short Trophy run

1. Marcus's third stint with the Poppies began even worse than his second one finished.

2. The Northern League would appear to be appreciably stronger than the Southern League.

3. Gates are likely to tumble even further when your team doesn't produce a single effort on (or off) goal for fully 70 minutes.

4. A team that passes to feet, can dribble, anticipates the ball and play to a plan will invariably beat 11 blokes who standing around shrugging their shoulders.

5. Our chances of a third walk down Wembley Way have never looked slimmer.

Don't hold your breathe.....

The real "Impossible Job"

As rumours fly as to whether Marcus has gone or not continue to flash around the shrinking goldfish bowl that is the Poppy-sphere only one fact has been proved to be incontravertable: -

No Manager in his right mind would want to manage this club.

We all know that this division is tougher than the one we won last season.  Don't think so?  Just ask Bedworth, who came up with us last year.  Their plastic pitch hasn't helped them much so far, being 11 points from safety.  I think they'd trade places with us without too much argument.  If 2015-16 ends with a mid table finish, with an outside push for the play-offs, surely this would represent a reasonable season of consolidation?  As it stands, we are 10 points behind the leaders with 2 games in hand!

It is becoming tedious to see the usual malcontents shrieking like a bunch of squealing ingrates everytime a team dares to beat us.  When did we become such a ridiculous group of entitlement-junkies?  Were we witnessing this at any other club we'd rightly say, "WTF?"

The previous duo were hounded-out by a frenzied minority, and, seemingly by a Chairman taking far too much notice of internet would-be-managers.  Their crime?  Doing the job and pissing the league.

Now it seems that Marcus is being hounded out in much the same way.  His crime?  Not doing the job and pissing the league.  His other failings are equally reprehensible.  He does not play the game EXACTLY how each and every one of us wants.  All 450 of us, with different opinions....  Not playing wingers, who, lets be honest, tend to drift out of the game for roughly 85 minutes every Saturday.  Who was out last, consistent winger?  Have we ever had one?

Will Marcus stay or go?  No-one can say at the moment.  If he does jump ship I hope his replacement has the common decency to be the perfect manager, with millions of contacts, play majestic football week-in week-out, with 8 wingers on the pitch.  At least.

Fall of the Roman Empire

Even the most jaded football fan cannot fail to be stirred by the events we are seeing unravel at Stamford Bridge.  In a world that is short of good news stories, this truly gladdens the heart.  Watching Chelsea’s season implode is up there with the closing scenes of It’s A Wonderful Life, or Jeremy Clarkson being extradited by the Argentinians.  It’s even upstaging the Leeds soap opera, where Steve Evans is currently midway through his six match spell in charge.  

The first sense that something special and unusual was afoot was when Mourinho spat out his dummy over Physiogate, only to meet his match as the club doctor refused to go quietly.  Her withering look as she left the field is my vote for Pout of the Season.  Only a week into the campaign and Chelsea had already found a new way to be detestable, no mean feat.   Then they started losing matches and Mourinho tried his usual deflection strategy of blaming the officials, because of course they’re bound to be biased against little clubs who never win anything.  He saw nothing wrong in keeping Costa in a cage for a week then letting him loose to kick, gouge and generally be ungentlemanly against Arsenal, then stamped on Wenger's glasses afterwards and blamed the fourth official. 

 

All the while, the FA charges keep piling up, including one for persistently coming up with laughable post-match excuses.  Things are getting so bad, John Terry is coming across as a calming influence.  

Mourinho seems to be building up to some kind of dramatic exit but, hey, no rush, not while you are giving so many people so much pleasure.  

               

I'm the daughter of a what?

 

Speaking up for the Poppies

It was a shame that this weekend's Race Night was so poorly attended.  Race Nights have formed the backbone of off-field fundraising at the Poppies for many years.  Attendances at these events have waxed and waned over that period.  Usually, when the club was in the mire it was standing room only in the Tin Hat, or Northern Lights Club.  When everything seems to be tickety-boo attendances tend to drop off to a hard core of people who enjoy shouting at videos of horse races that had finished twenty years earlier, and eating dodgy sausages.

They still managed to raise just shy of a grand, which is bloody good going and hats off to Martin and the boys.

But why was the event so poorly attended?  Given the million and one media outlets open to the club these days surely they can get news of off-field events out to the faithful.  Was the Race Night mentioned on the website?  If so, I couldn't find it.

Twitter and Facebook are all well and good, assuming events are repeatedly mentioned, because the instant nature of these online services means that important messages are soon drowned in a welter of kitten images, updated status's and photographs of dinners.

Unofficial Forums are great for reaching the small, vociferous groups of Poppies fans who have lots of ideas and opinions, but tend not to actually do anything.....

Once upon a time club events would have been mentioned in the local rag.  They probably still are, but, like everyone else, I tend not to read it since it became a weekly!

However there is a way of reaching all of our fans and relaying important information.  A way of addressing a captive audience of all those who have the Poppies at heart.  And, if you listen carefully between the Scottish Highland Reserve League Half-time scores and abusing our opponents you might just hear Gary Graham mention something over the matchday tannoy.

Or not.  But if not, why not?  Why aren't the club using the pre / half-time / post match tannoy announcements to actually tell us important things?  Letting 600 Poppies fans know of a Race Night raising funds for the club obviously can't compete with reading out UCL half-time scores, or winding-up the ET reporter because Norwich are three down at the break.  But, still, as mad as it might sound, it might be a good idea to use this time to let everyone know of events the club is hosting.  Even if it means taking a two minute break in reading out pointless dross that no-one is interested in, or ruining "Match of the Day" for anyone deliberately trying to avoid the Premier League results.

Perhaps then we might actually know of club events before they've actually happened!

How many members of the Poppies Media Team,
Poppies TV and Match Day Announcers does it take to
keep us to date with the scores at Rothwell Corinthians?