Leon Clarke - End of an Era

Leon Clarke's sudden departure has come at a most inopportune time.  There was every indication that at some time in the next 2 or 3 months he was likely to notch an actual goal for the Poppies.  Those first 4-5 games where he didn't have a single effort of note seem a distant memory.  Great days where he barely moved above walking pace, and generously never caused defenders any problems whatsoever.  For the next few games Leon crept closer and closer to, if not actually scoring a goal, at least making the goalkeeper aware he was on the pitch.  The locals at Berkhamsted and Leiston will talk in whispered, reverential tones for many years to come of the day THE Leon Clarke played at their stadiums and almost had an effort on target.

And then.  It happened.  Mark the date - Tuesday 21st November 2023.  Leon lumbered into the air like a disinterested salmon and headed the ball towards the Mickleover goal.  An actual attempt on goal where, if the keeper had not made a regulation save, it would have been an honest-to-goodness goal.  We were THAT CLOSE to seeing an actual, live Leon Clarke goal.  For the Poppies.  In the flesh.

In the end it wasn't to be.  Leon has left us, heading to his 300th club and they will be the next team willing to take on the eternal quest of trying to tease a goal from him before he gets his bus pass.  We wish them all the best.

As interested as Leon 
ever looked in a Poppies shirt.

Don't Panic Chaps!

It's all change as club stalwart Paul Cooke steps down and retires from his numerous roles at Latimer Park.  This means some other mug will have to become club statistician, assemble too good a matchday programme for our level and bully the boss into admitting where it all went wrong in post match interviews.

Needed - a new Cooke

But, for the love of God DON'T PANIC!  Don't listen to the doom-mongers.  Ignore the naysayers.  We can 100% confirm that Patgod IS NOT GOING TO RETIRE.  Honestly, we're in it for the long haul and won't let you down.  No more than we do presently anyway.

When you need poorly punctuated sarcasm, unresearched statistics and baldy spelt cynicism masquerading as wit, we will be there for you.  Chairmen leave.  Players flit in and out.  Managers get the chop.  Club worthies quit to join us proles on the terraces.  But Patgod will endure.  You have our promise and our commiserations.

Poppies Re-Leese-d

We all know one swallow doesn't make a Summer.  Equally we know that one good performance doesn't mean we are out of the relegation woods.  But, bloody hell, how refreshing was last night's effort against Mickelover?  Players that previously shrugged their way through sleepwalking defeats to all and sundry suddenly looked hungry, determined, communicative and active.  It shows how anaesthetised the players and supporters had been by Leese with his dismal outlook and tactics that simply putting in a 100% performance was so bloody entertaining.  Just seeing us looking to go toe-to-toe with another team rather than stand off them and watch them carve us like a Sunday roast, brought tears to eyes, smiles to faces and swelling in loins all around Latimer Park.

Langmead was solid.  Toseland expansive.  Sharpe dangerous.  Scott useful.  Miller excellent.  Even Clarke was spotted sprinting on at least two occasions.

As for the players, we'll tell you what.  Why don't we draw a line under the season so far?  We won't bang on about the lack of endeavour, the poor results and poorer performances.  Let's say the season started yesterday and we'll put Leese's wretched tenure firmly behind us.

How does that sound?  OK?  See you at Alvechurch.

Turning the corner at last?

Bye Bye Andy Part 1: Barely Managing

It took a final humbling capitulation away to Coalville for the club to bring down the curtain on Andy's unhappy reign at Kettering.  In truth he couldn't have argued had the club chosen to terminate his contract earlier.  Chastening defeats interspersed with the odd flukey win had not won Andy to the hearts of the supporters.  Throw in his post match analysis which rarely deviated from, "it is all the fault of the players for not listening to me", and we have ended up where we are.  Over a third of the way through the season, looking over our shoulders at relegation and seeking a new manager.

And yet, his appointment back in the Summer was greeted with universal acclaim.  Finally, a Manager with experience, longevity and suspiciously dark hair for a man older than even the writers of Patgod.  He was personable and said all the things we'd been wanting to hear.  The only, even slight issue was that the majority of his managerial experience came in more southerly leagues.  But a good Manager is a good Manager.  Most of us weren't even bothered when the, "we're a few weeks behind in pre-season" line was trotted out again.  We had our man and our man was Andy.

By the end of September Andy's reputation was in tatters.  I heard fellow supporters who had stoically accepted a lot of ropey football over the years calling, vociferously for the gaffer's unusually brown-haired head.  Our record over August and September makes harrowing reading and made even more harrowing watching.  We won just one of our first 10 league games.  And some of those defeats were substantial.  Not always in the score.  Yes, sometimes in the score, but more to do with the gulf between us and often quite moderate opposition.  In the first three games both Stourbridge and Barwell completely and utterly played us off the park.  They were both in entirely different gears to our lumbering team.  Had both won by several more goals we couldn't have argued.  Hitchin's 4-0 win at Latimer Park, equally could easily have been by a larger margin.  

"But, what of our FA Cup run" fans of Andy would argue if he had any.  It does seem, looking back, that any luck Leese enjoyed came in this competition.  Completely uninspiring wins against Hullbridge, Sporting Khalsa, and a Rourke's Drift win at Hitchin got us far enough to be easily rolled over by a Chesterfield team rarely out of first gear.  It really didn't matter if the opposition came from two divisions above or below - we sportingly strove to make them look better than us.

Belatedly, Andy started picking up a few league wins.  But, incredibly lucky triumphs over Berkhamstead and Royston where our opponents are probably still shaking their heads over their defeats, did not even come close to papering over the cracks.  It was soon business as usual as we slithered to further Leese-shoulder-shrugging defeats against Leamington and Coalville.

If nothing else, we've had a salutary lesson this season that there are truly no guarantees in football.  An established manager.  A reasonable budget.  An incredible amount of supporter goodwill.  Even the Latimer Park surface is behaving well.  And still, we are struggling like f*ck not to be relegation fodder.  

The club simply HAD to act now to give any replacement a fair chance of pulling us out of our current nose-drive.  Disappointingly, it was clear Andy wasn't going to accept his limitations and volunteer to step down.  He would have ground this season down to dust and considered it a job well done had we finished fifth from bottom playing in front of 200 bored supporters.  Sorry Andy - not good enough.

Bye Bye Andy Part 2: Barely Playing

Andy Leese has been removed from his job for not being able to do it very well.  But, as we know, Managers can only do so much.  Once the players cross the white line there's little Managers can do.  That goes doubly so for Leese.

The players this season have been very poor.  No if's or but's.  We've been rubbish at the back, rubbish in midfield and, yes, rubbish at front.  They have not played two good halves of football back-to-back.  There has been no leadership, little communication and scant effort.  The players all look half as fit as the players we have played against.  Personally, and more disappointingly, I don't think I'd be bothered if ANY of them left, and I cannot recall ever thinking that in previous seasons, no matter how dire things got.

I can't believe any of our players could put their hands on hearts and say they've given their all this season.  They have looked unfit, under-prepared and often, unforgivably, uninterested.

This is all the more annoying as a lot of them are easily good enough for this level.  They are not world-beaters, but they should at least be Barwell-beaters.  Most of them will still be here under the next manager so we can only hope the new man (or woman...!) can wring the missing 20% out of each of them that a good manager, or even professional pride should bring forward.

You've let us and yourselves down so far this season.  But, unlike Leese, you have the chance to redeem yourself.  If you do - great.  If you think you've done your absolute best so far this season I'd strongly suggest you follow your ex-gaffer out of the door because you haven't.

Bye, Bye Andy Part 3: Barely Supporting

The sacking of a Manager is often a good point to take stock.  The people who run the club have a chance to perform a reset.  The players have slates rubbed clean ahead of the new Manager letting them go in favour of their personal favourites.  But what of the rest of us?  The unwashed masses who have no choice but to be here because for good or ill, Kettering Town FC is our club.

Waiting to hear about a new appointment is, let's admit it, usually an exciting time.  Listening as some outlandish names are bandied about by "people in the know".  I think my personal favourites were when Sean Dyche and Peter Beardsley were mentioned as being literally on Kettering railway platform before being snatched away.  Or that time Gazza was supposedly drinking the Beeswing dry ahead of becoming our Manager.  As if!

Invariably the glamourous names fall away and a jobbing technocrat is unveiled to the unenthusiastic hoards.  Some do well, some badly.  Some get far more abuse from the supporters than others.  Some deservedly, others not.  But some of our supporters seem to exist to abuse club officials and even fellow supporters.  Not in person. Obviously.  Not even always at games,where their attendance can be intermittent at best.  No, they start sh*t-storms on social media, no matter who or what it costs the club.  Nothing is as important as their right to destructively complain.

The annoying thing is our toxic element is such a small part of our supporter base.  When you look at all the incredible work and effort being put in by fellow fans at the club and for our benefit and to help keep the Poppies afloat you could almost weep at the damaging vitriol spewed onto Facebook by some of our number.  

But it's worth remembering and repeating that for every "fan" out there who isn't happy until he forces a player, manager, official, chairman to quit the club we have dozens and dozens cleaning the stadium, selling (admittedly bent) klondike tickets, serving food and beer, organising coaches for away games, hosting in the hospitality lounge, putting on events and many, many more activities that keep the club going.  We don't always notice and certainly don't always appreciate the enormous amount of effort so many people put in for their love of their Poppies.  Sometimes all it seems that we do is complain about shelling out 15 quid to get into Latimer Park.

During this period of reflection that the manager and players have let us down perhaps we supporters should look to ourselves to see if we too can do better.  Not attending a game hurts, really hurts us as a club.  Missing a game at Latimer Park in favour of attending an away game may make us look good on the road, but does nothing for the club's coffers.  I'd love to know how many of the younger guys who loudly proclaimed at Chesterfield that they were "Kettering till they die" regularly rock up at Latimer Park?  We'd started the season with a few big gates which, perhaps understandably have tailed off given the fare we've been served, but you have only to look at what is happening at Nuneaton Borough to understand the phrase, "Use it or lose it".  

We can't always assume someone else will pick-up the slack.  Sometimes it's down to all of us to do our bit.  We're all guilty of sometimes falling out of love with the Poppies, but in the final analysis we are so intwined with our club that to hurt it is to hurt ourselves.  As we ask our Management and players to do better perhaps we too can improve.

"Pork Scratchings and a nice chianti......"

 

Who knew the club would throw-up

a "Silence of the Lambs" remake

we didn't know we wanted!