The President's Address

In the current climate we are getting increasingly used to being directly addressed by our leaders.  There's Boris, cutting out the blather for once and giving it to us straight and explaining to the ignorant of our country what the word isolation, and the distance of 2-metres actually mean.  President Trump, looking more and more like someone who should be assembling particularly poor balloon animals has chosen his public addresses to use the outbreak as a future trade-bargaining chip with China, and sulkily arguing with reporters for asking.....questions (!)

The President of KTFC has also chosen this time to also address his people.  Even though I have had personal issues with President Samuels and his smirking indifference, laughing in my face and sometimes downright untruths when it comes to my attempts to win the Klondike half-time draw, I'm going to be the bigger man and call a truce in our ongoing tussle.

Even though Ken cheerily fleeces me at every home game, he needs to be heard.  Click below to read his words and see his admittedly but also annoyingly sexy image -

Hail to the Chief

The virus has created unforeseeable circumstances where the very existence of football at this level could be under threat.  Yes, we are being asked to dig deep once again, and in the present circumstances none of us know financially where we are likely to be when we are on the other side of the virus.

But we are in just as precarious a position as we were several years ago when we stuck between extricating ourselves from Non Park, convincing the league we were still viable, AND negotiating with BPW.  Remember?  When we all pledged we'd do ANYTHING to give our club the chance of surviving?  Well, this situation is no different, and if we don't all pull together we could lose the Poppies.

Whether you are a season ticket holder, or attend most games, or go every now and then, or even if you have vowed you "Shent goo agin" until we somehow magically play at Rockingham Road again, the club needs what you can spare.  Send what you would have spent at Latimer Park for the next couple of games.  Or what you'd have spent down the pub this Friday.  Or what you'd have spent on personal grooming products - no-one is going to see your ugly bastard face for a while anyway!

It could be the difference between footballing life and death for our club.

All PATGOD asks is that, at least for the time being, none of our readers holds President Samuels personal enmity against my ever winning the Klondike as a reason (however justifiable) not to respond to his appeal and try to keep the Poppies going long enough for us to moan about them again in the future.

He is Legend

Social isolation.  Shops closed.  Schools closed.  Pubs and restaurants closed.  Football postponed.  Air travel a distant memory.  Toilet paper the new currency.

Welcome to the world, 2020 style.

With so much changing and with no-one seemingly in charge, or knowing how long our lives are going to be affected it's warmly reassuring to know that at least one thing in this mad world is still carrying on as normal.

Richard Atkinson still wants your money!

That's right.  With the world slithering to sniffling end, the Provisional Arm of the Poppies Trust has decided that our wallets still look on the heavy side, and Richard's just the man to help out. 

"Just give us yer fecking money!"

The Trust's 300 Club is a simple beast.  You buy tickets at a fiver each.  On the 19th of each month a draw is made.  Half the money goes to the club, and half to a lucky punter.  This punter then needs to spend his winnings on pasta PDQ before Richard comes up with another scheme for getting it back again!

Home Comforts?

An interesting fans forum?  Whatever next?  A football match?

What do we know now that we didn't know before?  Not that much.  We already knew Ritchie pays far too much attention to a handful of dickheads on social media.  We already knew that the people running the club these days are an honest bunch doing a good job.  We already knew that running a football club is a thankless task.  We already knew that putting a moderate player who lives in Manchester on a contract is a pretty dumb idea.

But there was more to this forum.

The meeting was run by Dave Mahoney and Neil Griffin, effectively playing good and bad cop respectively.  Dave told us of the exciting developments happening around the ground this season and over the summer.  Then, to stop us getting carried away, Neil weighed in to kick us all in the nuts over our constant whining, lack of numbers and delivered some home truths about football finance.  And you know what?  No one argued with anything he said.

Neil posed a very interesting question.  As we seem to be a below average supported club at this level should we really be looking to spend even more money that we don't have developing an inaccessible field closer to the middle of Geddington than the middle of Kettering as a future home when we will soon have a reasonably good facility in Burton?  An ad hoc show of hands didn't entirely rule out the possibility that we are starting to get used to our new home.  Is Frenchies Field more "Kettering" than Latimer Park?  Should the club spend an absolute fortune in the hope that missing fans will suddenly turn up?  Kevin Costner believed that if you build it, they will come, but where's the guarantee that would happen?

When further terracing and stands pop up at Latimer Park, and Paul Cox's new-look team hit the ground running next season, who knows, perhaps we'll start feeling more at home at home?

Safe for another season

Take a bow Tim Krul.

We'd kiss you if we could somehow
force our way past Jon Dunham.

Grounds Reunited

As a postscript to GL’s valuable contribution to the anorak community, I felt myself irresistibly drawn to footballgroundmap.com.  Where had this site been all my life? (alright, the post internet part of it). Previously, if I thought about it at all, there was just a general notion that I’d been to quite a few. I had no idea how many.  Now I could count them!  This instantly unleashed my inner nerd (alright not so inner) that had to know, how many?   *

On logging on I spent what was probably the most pleasurable hour I have had in a long time. And that includes the Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special (if truth be told, I won’t lie to you). Walking down through the divisions from Premier League to God knows where, most often supporting the Poppies but with an occasional excursion, felt like a ground-hopping version of The Incredible Shrinking Man. Today, Old Trafford, tomorrow, Aylesbury FC (not to be confused with Aylesbury United (no) or Aylesbury Vale (double no). Amongst other things I discovered that I am a third of the journey to becoming a member of the 92 club. The pedant in me wants to point out that at the time I went there, several now-former members were part of the Football League.  The rest of me says, oh shut up.

If one day we finally achieve League status and I'm around to see it, then maybe the tally will increase. At present it will feel good to add the likes of Bromley and Eastleigh to the list.  

Along the path of clicking on yep, been there I found that a ground once visited is never forgotten. Even the humblest arena is special because it is. Going to the Nou Camp or the San Siro was memorable, but so was Cray Wanderers and Desborough Town. At the Nou Camp I saw Messi score a hat trick, at Desborough we scraped a win in the Senior Cup. I know which pleased me the most (alright it was Messi). Every ground visited is a memory of some kind. Somewhere out there, even Latimer Park is a notch on someone's bedpost.  We can only hope, not literally.   

What’s the point of all this? In the overall scheme of things, not much.  No one goes to their grave thinking, I wish I had visited more semi-professional grounds (please let's hope that's true).  But if the grounds are incidental to something you love rather than being the sole point of it, that feels right. And with the odd diversion to tick another one off, even better.

 * 155 but I'm working on it. Does Subbuteo count?

When Skies Are Grey

It’s often said that Northants is a bit, well, dull, but that does have its upside.  Generally when severe natural events hit the UK, our corner of the country is relatively unscathed. Take these floods for example. A lack of major waterways is definitely helpful when rainfall records are being broken.  My adopted home town of Malvern, close to the Severn, was actually cut off for 2 days recently, which lead to panic buying of artisan bread and olive stuffed tomatoes in the local Waitrose. Meanwhile Worcester city centre looks like the Ganges and the prospects of play at New Road are looking doubtful, though the umpires are due to inspect in September.

By contrast it would take something truly biblical for the River Ise to be a risk to life, though I suppose Wickies lake could overflow, adding an element of risk to the miniature railway that is not normally experienced at a steady 8mph. The Lady of the Lake could become The Lady in the Lake.

Then there’s hurricanes. Here they hardly hever happen. The 1987 great storm cut a swathe of destruction across southern England. However, in fairness to Michael Fish he got it right if his prediction was narrowed down a bit, to say north of Watford Gap services.  No hurricanes, but plenty of wind.  Northamptonshire is apparently England’s third gustiest county!  Now why isn’t that on the road signs?  It must be something to do with being the highest point until the Urals, a fact which is so ingrained in local folklore, we’d really hate it not to be true.  Certainly on a cold day Latimer Park feels like it’s the highest football ground until Russia. And the local wind turbines are kept busy (if you spend more time studying the ones on the Latimer skyline than watching the game, it’s a pretty good indicator of how the afternoon is going). 

So no serious floods and no hurricanes. Tornados?  You’re kidding. Even by British standards (occasional reports of a ‘tornado’ that disturbed a couple of wheelie bins somewhere) we seem to get off lightly.  There was that earth tremor a few years ago, sending underground shock waves that were felt in Kettering. I know this because it woke me up. On a Richter scale of terror, though, it measured about 0.4.  The earth shook more when Rene Howe took a dive. 

At this point you’re probably thinking, come on Patgod, even by your standards this is a bit thin, there must have been some wild and wacky weather event here. Well since you ask, in 1558 it is recorded that Northamptonshire was hit by a hailstorm in which the stones were nearly 5 inches across!!  The equivalent of being pelted by frozen coconuts, though it’s unlikely that back in 1558 people made that comparison.  Remember this was long before the first recorded fun fair.  So one freak ice shower then nothing for 450 years. Somehow this feels exactly as it should be. This is Northamptonshire.  Unusual stuff happens elsewhere.    

 

 

Still waiting for the big one to hit NN16

PATGOD - relevant as ever!

Poppies fans, as usual, have a lot of important questions to ponder.  Will we ever play again?  And if we play again, will we manage to squeeze in all of our fixtures?  And if we squeeze in all of our fixtures, will we win enough of them to stay up?  And if we do stay up, will the ground upgrades be done in time to satisfy Nationwide League requirements?  Aagh!  Too many questions!  Too much to think about!

But none of this is giving me sleepless nights.  No, currently the Poppies question that I can't shake off is, admittedly, not a particularly pressing one.  It's this one.....

Exactly WHAT building is this to the rear of the famous old Eldred's Field Poppies photograph?  We've all seen the image a hundred times, and we know where Eldred's field was.  It now sits mostly under Tennyson Road and York Street and no more than a hefty, wind assisted goalkick from where I'm typing this.

The (in) Famous Eldred's Field photograph

But, the large building to the rear?  Is that still there, and if so, which building is it?  And why is this question keeping me up nights?

For years I have been under the impression that it was the rear end of the Ken Hall factory, which is still at the end of Newman Street.  A view seemingly confirmed in Mel Hopkins and Bob Brown's mighty tome - "When Football Came to Kettering".  The view in the photograph can still be roughly approximated if you roll up a trouser leg and stand in the entrance to the Masonic Lodge carpark and look across at Ken Halls from there.

A couple of weeks ago this certainty was rocked when local brainy-box and all-round Mr Kettering, Ian Addis, in a talk about lost sportsfields of Kettering suggest, the building in the rear of the Eldred's Field photograph was the similar building in York Road.

Woah!  Way to push my world off it's comfortable axis Ian!

This building is also still with us, and has been turned into flats (quelle surprise!)  Could this be correct?  Ian Addis has forgotten more about Kettering since I started typing this than I'll ever know, but I'm not certain about this at all.  So uncertain in fact that I've been out with my trusty box brownie to try get to the bottom of a mystery that literally no-one else is interested in.

The "top of the spire" photograph, showing Eldred's field on the right

My one-man quest for the truth isn't helped by the fact that today you can't really see the York Road building from the same angle you can see the building in the old photograph.  Some pesky builders built some solid real estate in the way over a hundred years ago - damn them!  You can see the building from the York Street side to get an approximation of, presumably how the other side of the building looked.

The first thing that strikes you is just how bloody similar the York Street flats and Ken Halls actually are!  Both are two storey's high with identical pitched roofs, square second floor windows and round-arched first floor windows.  Just like the building in the Eldred's Field photograph.  Based on the initial inspection, it really could be either building!

Green Lane's extra roof joists and
additional painted bits.

But, I believe that there are a couple of very small points that seem to point more towards Ken Hall rather than Green Lane.  Admittedly this is based on looking at the face of the building on Green Lane that faces the road, because, as already mentioned, the side of the Green Lane building that would be seen in the old photograph can't easily be accessed these days without breaking into a few back gardens....!

There seem to be more roof joists in evidence in the Green Lane building than at Ken Halls, and in the original photographs.  In fact the Ken Hall and original photograph look to have an identical configuration in the top corner?

Ken Halls factory today

Also, the first floor, rounded windows seem to have a little more painted areas linking the windows in the Green Lane building than is found on the Ken Hall building or on the original photograph.  Also, looking at the ariel shot from the Parish Church, showing the houses on Green Lane, wouldn't some of these be seen in the background of the original photograph?  And, the Parish Church ariel photograph, to me, suggests the football pitch wouldn't have quite fitted to place the Green Lane building in the spot where it features in the Eldred's Field photograph?

Ken Hall's factory?  Not today.....

But, I'm no expert, and could be entirely wrong about all of this.

Probably the only way to sort this question out for all time would be for Ian Addis to take on Mel & Bob in a no-holds-barred fist fight.  But that would probably be literally the worst nerd-fight in the history of the world.  And no one would want to see that!