C'mon Poppies Media - sort it out!

No more interviews with barely coherent, cliche-trotting players!

No more pre-match John Ramshaw cheery Geordie rambling!

No more post-match Paul Cox intense sensibleness!

No, we want more tasty gossip from old from ET hacks like this, spilling beans and rubbishing reputations from a bygone era.  

Hell, I don't mind if it eats into coverage of the game itself.  If Alan and David want to natter on when the game kicks off I'm happy to stick with them and pick up the match from start of the second half.  

It's not as if we do much for the first 45 minutes anyway!

Click here for fun for us oldsters!

I think we've finally found "H"

 

"PAUL COX: 🗣️ We were definately taught a lesson - I've learnt so much which may not sound much but it is a positive! I'm confident now what I need to do with shape, personel and how to take things forward."

Utterly expected news in from the distant future!

 

Job Vacancy - by Graham James

Kindergarden manager 

A vacancy has arisen to look after a group of youngsters, mainly on Saturday afternoons, but with occasional evenings, if we can get their parents’ permission, of course. 

It will mean keeping watch over them whilst they sit on a bench watching men kick a ball about. Whilst there you will helped by the teaching assistants Paul and John and probably a few others as well. After 45 minutes they will join the adults in a communal room where they will be entertained by Kyle the Clown and shown how to slide along the floor by Uncle Connor. Some of the kids may be asked to join in with the grown-ups on the field when the game is nearly finishing, but this may not happen very often it seems from previous experience.

Supervision will be required after they have finished watching as they may try to join the men in another building in order to have a drink. They must not be allowed in however until they look older.

They also may need supervision in getting home as they may not live in Kettering, as Kettering kids tend to watch games at Bugbrooke or Daventry instead.

Please apply using Tik Tok as this will be the main method of communication with the youngsters. An ability to dance poorly and rap is therefore desirable but not essential as training by Lil MC Cookie will be provided.

Here we go again folks!

In keeping with most recent Poppies pre-seasons we go from having two or three registered players the week before the season starts to having dozens of players signed on by the first Saturday.  Presently we have enough Connors, Kyles and Reece's to take a fair stab at launching a new Terminator franchise.

Also in keeping with the past few seasons I'm not going to bother trying to put too many names to faces among our new chaps.  There's no point really.  If this level of football has taught us nothing else it has taught us that players don't hang around too long if they aren't starting games and with our squad now numbering over 20 there's going to be a lot of disgruntled bench-warmers and even more disgruntled not-even-made-the-benchers.

Several of the players announced with fanfares this week will be history before September is out and before you know it we're playing a Tuesday away game in an unfriendly northern stronghold with only three named substitutes, including a couple of under-18 players.  A few weeks after that we'll no doubt start trawling for additional bodies.  Ah well.  At least some of them might achieve a fleeting Poppies-fame by appearing in KTFC programme quizzes in years to come.

Get those photographs in quick....

All Obituaried Out

It hardly seems possible that we’ve lost them both now, so close together. When players move on they somehow remain frozen in our mind the age they were - in Robbie’s case, what, early 30s? We knew next to nothing of his subsequent life as a chief scout, working with Moyes at Man United and West Ham. In our memories he was always the lethal and spiky cutting edge of the early Morris years. He came, he scored, he got a yellow for dissent. 

To a generation of Poppies fans Robbie was a hero – occasionally flawed - whose goals propelled us to the Fourth Round via an unforgettable afternoon in front of the MOTD cameras.  We were fortunate to have three seasons of a still deadly Robbie at the tail end of his career, and though I never saw Roy Clayton in his pomp, it’s hard to imagine that we have ever had a better finisher. Rest in peace Robbie, and please no more news like this for a very long time.

 

Perhaps it's time to stop digging?

 Surely nobody believes that the club's decision on season ticket renewals struck the right note.  Certainly no season ticket holder would, faced with handing the club hundreds of pounds for, effectively nothing.  One would assume even the club hierarchy might look back on how the renewal process was handled and wonder if it could have been done better and fairer.

At least one would have hoped so.

Stop Shovelling Whenever You're Ready.....

But, having read the latest "Poppies Voice" I fear that our Board is not only "not getting it" but actually getting further away from understanding the legitimate grievances ST holders are feeling.  Not only are these supporters bearing the entire financial brunt of last season's cancellation we now read that purchasers of the "Terrific Tuesday" three for two tickets offers from, we assume, 2 seasons ago will still have their purchase honoured in full.  Good for them I suppose, but it does seem to be another slap in the face for fans who stumped up hundreds of non-transferable pounds.

Loyalty is a finite resource in life generally.  Just ask energy, internet or telecoms providers.  Who only buys one brand of cereal for their entire life?  Or purchases their clothing from only a single brand?  But football is different.  With remarkably few exceptions, you don't change football clubs. Clubs benefit from an inordinate surfeit of loyalty.  Supporters will follow, defend and give a large wedge of disposable income to a football club that has done nothing other than share it's name with their place of birth!  

Is Kettering Town Football Club inherently special in any way?  No.  It is an entity that has, over the years, antagonised other local companies, broken contracts, made numerous enemies locally and further afield, and sh*t on it's own supporters plenty of times.  It should have gone to the wall for financial mismanagement more times than can be recalled. 

And yet, the club is still here, and so are we.  Loyalty?  Stubbornness?  Pure bloody-mindedness?  Take your pick.  We are all of these things.  And among the ranks of people who, for reasons they probably can't recall, still support this club, those who happily hand the club hundreds of pounds every season before a single ball has been kicked in anger surely must rank as the most loyal, stubborn, bloody-minded of all.

And what do these ST holders get for this investment?  First dibs on big match FA Cup tickets we'll probably never buy again.  Priority tickets for the next Latimer Park sell-out?  In reality the benefits are usually limited to getting through the turnstile slightly quicker and shaving a quid or so off the admittance fee.  Plus the comforting glow of feeling that by helping fund the club early on in the season we have, in some small way, done "a good thing".

The unspoken agreement is that we pay up front for a season's worth of football and the club treats us ever so slightly better than those fans who pick and choose when they attend.  Neither party is looking for anything more, but also, nothing less.

The Club have come dangerously close to breaking this simple reciprocal arrangement, but perhaps worse than that, they seem to not realise or more worryingly, care that this is the case.  Instead we are repeatedly told how many games last season we watched on our moderate streaming service, which far too often seemed to come with non-functioning zoom facilities.  AND we are now put on notice that should this season follow the same covid-disrupted pattern as last season even this patchy service won't be included within our ST purchase, and we would need to pay twice to see each fixture.

How about this Poppies board?  Count yourselves lucky any of us have renewed our season tickets this season.  Bank the money of the few more that may renew in the week leading up to the first league game.  But please stop trying to justify the fact that we've been screwed over.  I think most of us are willing to put this incident down as the only misstep of the current regime and move on.  We don't need to keep being reminded that we've been specifically targeted for this and potentially future shoddy treatment.

Poppies probably go close!

Ten Years On. Wow.

It's exactly 10 years since we trooped over to Nonce Park for the first time as tenants rather than angry visitors.  We were attracted in by the multitude of new signings, the new shiny facilities and obviously, the unmatched glamour of Irthlingborough.

It's fair to say the following 10 years have been diverting to say the least.  

We no longer play in a multiple million pound stadium, one promotion from playing in the Football League, under the guidance of a money-is-no-problem Chairman promising us the world.  No, these days we play on a bobbly field, with moderate but improving facilities under the measured guidance of a pragmatic Chairman promising us a carefully costed plan to inch our way to the top table of the National League at about the same time we will be writing a sequel article to this in another 10 years time. 

I know which plan looks the better bet.

Below is a link to a short piece we wrote 10 years ago on the eve of our first Nonce Park home league game against Newport County.  Looking back, we're ever-so-slightly proud that we managed to keep our feet on the ground and just about remembered to act like proper Poppies supporters and find the whole spectacle a little bemusing.....

Nonce Park - here we come!

What the f*ck did we all think would happen?

A Long Hard Season in Prospect.....

 .....one home friendly in and I know a season of strife lays before me.

First Klondike draw.
Five out from winning ticket.
And so it begins.

See you when the season starts!

 As the strangest pre-season for many a year wends it's merry way to the start of a new season it is good to see that nothing much changes.  Elements of our support are already losing their collective sh*t because the club haven't announced a raft of new signings.  As usual.  Of course, the situation hasn't been helped this season by the lack of a single home friendly for us to run our jaundiced eyes over the latest crop of Poppies-wanabees.  You know.  Those games you hate attending, but feel you're missing out on when we don't have any.

Pre-season games are only good for watching trialists sweating their bollox off, seeing the pitch look almost playable and usually a goal of the season contender.  Once upon a time there was the odd game against a club sufficiently high up the footballing pyramid that you ACTUALLY RECOGNISED AN OPPOSITION PLAYER FROM THE FOOTBALL LEAGUE SHOW!  Alas no more.

Beyond that, the games have no interest to the average punter.  A hundred triallists trying to fool the club management that they hadn't spent the summer eating kebabs and drinking literally any liquid with even the most tangential relation to an alcoholic beverage.  Joined by the few players from last season who hadn't managed to double their wages elsewhere with a move to a lower league team being bankrolled into future oblivion by a local spiv.

Between these two groups of players Paul and John will fashion a squad to start the season with.  And then obviously augment rapidly as Autumn approaches and we're not exactly pulling up many Conference North trees....

Looking forward to it already!

We've all had good Summers...