You never know.....

Who says lightening can't strike twice?

 

"A" for Effort

The "Lavery-Revolution" of the past month has pushed us up the table possibly further than we dared to imagine just a few short weeks ago when relegation loomed awfully large.  It seems just five minutes ago we were looking at the two games against Subury as making or breaking our season. And probably our Club.  Now, we sit safely in lower mid-table.  Had we been offered this at the start of the season we would have rioted in the streets.  Now, we'll happily take it and look forward to better next season.

The five straight league wins are obviously what has put a far better complexion on 2023/24 than was looking likely, but I think Lavery has given us something else, which is probably just as important.  Self respect.

Although it was pretty clear we were never going to pull back the 2-0 halftime deficit at Stratford last weekend Lavery continued to cajole, abuse and encourage the players to fight.  And they did.  We created a few half-chances and ran our balls off until the final whistle.  Six months ago, hell, even six weeks ago we would likely have shipped two or three more goals in the second half as we went through the motions.

Earlier this season the players would have more than likely ignored "grumpy-gramps" Leese and "earnest bestie" Le Masurier.  They'd have jogged around the pitch, trailing in the wake of the opposition players fully expecting to shrug their way through a post-match bollocking and pick up their wages.  Not now.

I find it curiously heartening watching our tiring players put in yet another lung-bursting chase or charge-down under the scowling, withering ranting of the Manager.  No more sitting back.  No more just rolling over and taking it.  

Sounds mad to say it, but if nothing else this season Lavery has given us back the ability to "lose properly".  There are always games where, on the day, the opposition are better than us.  They use the ball better.  They get the rub of the green.  Earlier this season that would have meant clean kit at 90 minutes and a sack of goals in the "Against" column.  At Stratford we got in faces, fought hard, saw players carried off and had a final whistle dust-up.  And we got the bonus of seeing the oft-booed cry-baby Hussey whine for 90 minutes to the officials.  I'll take that.

I don't know how it works
and I don't much care!

When is an April Fool NOT an April Fool?

Eagle-eyed regular readers might just have picked up on my ever-so slight issue with the club's perennial fund raising raffle - the Krooked Klondike.  Every so often I might have alluded to the fact that not only did I never win the damn thing, but that certain unnamed club worthies, who may or may not also be the Club President, seemed to find my continued lack of success most amusing.  To such a degree I was never entirely certain my tickets were always making it into the tombola ahead of the half-time draw....

I may have mentioned something of this in the odd article on Patgod, but even I was surprised that typing "Klondike" in the Blog's search engine yielded at least three dozen articles about how badly the club had treated my loyalty over the years.

Well, despite the efforts of that unnamed club official, who's initials may or may not be KS, on Saturday, at home to Barwell IT FINALLY HAPPENED.  

That's right, KS (if those are his initials and he may or may not be the Club President) wasn't on the Klondike selling table when I entered the ground and made my purchase.  45 minutes later, despite being stationed next to the duffest tannoy speaker in the ground, I was pretty certain the number called out matched one of the tickets in my clammy fist.  A few minutes into the second half I bumped into my nemesis, who upon hearing of my good fortune pretty much confirmed my long-held suspicion by congratulating me whilst also letting me know in no uncertain terms that had he been selling the tickets this wouldn't have happened.

I

KNEW

IT.

However, never let it be said that I'm the one to let this rivalry continue to fester.  I'm happy to be the bigger man and declare a truce.  I'm going to let bygones be just that.  When I enter the ground next Saturday it will be with a clean slate.  All previously animosities forgotten.  I'll just make sure I only purchase my Klondikes from Gary Foreman from now on and everyone will be happy.

Happy Days.
As long as I don't stop to think of how much I've spent
over the years for this one moment in the sun.....

The Dave Singh-cident

Overshadowing the vital victory over Stratford this weekend was the bizarre incident involving everyone's favourite other-Father, Dave Singh.  Dave was escorted out of the ground after a Stratford player got in the ear of the linesman and managed to twist an utterly innocuous terrace comment into something that caused the referee to threaten to abandon the game unless Dave was ejected.  I can only hope the Stratford player in question is proud of his actions and the linesman is content to have been played like a poorly tuned piano.

 

Leaving aside the obvious ridiculousness of the incident a more disquieting thought occurs.  In an honest attempt by the sport to rid football stadiums of overly foul, racist or homophobic abuse, brusque terrace badinage runs the risk of being twisted by thin-skinned players playing the system.  Are you a player getting a bit of abuse for stealing a few yards at a thrown-in?  Get jeered for slicing a clearance?  Mention to an official you've been singled out for racist abuse.  The referee will sh*t himself at the thought of not doing the right thing.  So what if an innocent fan or two are ejected?  So what if those supporters are tarred with being known as racists.  So what if the club they support gets an unjustified reputation.

Poppies social media have been all over Singh-gate and rightly so.  

As we all know, there are many reasons to dislike Dave Singh.  It's never his round at the bar.  His beard tickles when he kisses you after the Poppies score.  That bloody blue coat he's owned since the 80's.  The way he always manages to insert himself in front of you on the terrace.  His dumb-ass, annoying-as-f*ck, cheery optimism.  The mouth-meltingly hot curries he makes.  

So, so many reasons to take against Dave that pathetically making up a sneery, racist slight shows how utterly classless the player was and how dangerous it is for officials to blindly take the word of a player over such emotive issues when there is absolutely no corroboration and dozens of witnesses are telling you the exact opposite.

An artists impression of when Dave still had friends

The Big One

The importance of  tonight's match-up cannot possibly be overstated.  A match between the forces of light and the forces of shite.  Apparently there's a football game this evening between Kettering and Sudbury, but I'm talking about the clash between the two Tory MP's representing both towns.

On the right, in the blue corner is James Cartlidge.  He has been Sudbury's MP since 2015, during which time has has served  as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Justice, Exchequer Secretary for the Treasury, and Minister of State for Defence Procurement.  The bugger is still not even 50 years old.

On the even further right and in the even bluer corner is local boy Phillip Hollobone who, despite being in the Commons twice as long as James has never come close to holding any official office.  Even Peter Bone was briefly given a job as the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons FFS!  When you consider how many PM's he has served under, and the absolute shit-show of changes in personnel under them, it takes a special kind of dim-wittedness to somehow be passed over for so long, by so many.

However, he DOES own a rather old union jack coat that, no doubt, he'll be wearing about the town when the General Election comes, when he'll be trying to blame all societies ills on everyone and everything but himself and his party despite being in power for the past decade and a half.

James Cartlidge - Justifiably Smug

Phillip Hollobone simply can't believe
we keep electing him

Trial by Television

It’s hard enough watching us play lately, but for those of a particularly masochistic bent, even more self harm can be derived from the post-match interviews on Poppies TV.

First we had Andy Leese, whose media strategy can be summarised as:

·       If we didn’t lose, it was all down to him and the clever decisions he made

·       If we lost, it was because the players hadn’t followed his instructions

·       And it wouldn’t happen again on his watch (it did)

Initially Jim was a breath of fresh air, speaking apparently from the heart and with a healthy dose of common sense.  But this miserable stretch of results has slowly sucked the life out of him, to the point where he has literally run out of ways to answer the question, why are we so shit?

For fans of the genre of trying to polish a turd, a collector’s item was the opening query after Telford, where Jim was asked if he had seen any evidence of improvement since Long Eaton.  After... a long pause... he suggested that we had kept our shape for the first 20 minutes.

Somehow, despite being demoted to ball wiper and other duties as required, Jim seems to have kept the media gig judging from the latest sorry spectacle.

Possibly the new boss is being kept away from the camera after his debut appearance almost crashed under the weight of so many obviouslys, including six in a single sentence.  

But more likely, Lav was still otherwise engaged delivering the mother of all bollockings and sent Jim out to do the honours.

Unless results improve (please God) can we make a humanitarian request.  Do the interviews have to be so long? There’s nothing to be gained from making the poor man field yet another question to which we already know the answer. Wriggling politicians get off lightly compared to the Poppies TV inquisition!     

Is this the worst Poppies team in living memory?

I suppose it depends on what constitutes "living memory" but there has to be a case for holding up the class of 23/24 as possibly the worst Poppies squad certainly that Patgod has seen.  Sure, we've often assembled teams with shoddy players in it, but it is difficult to look back and identify a whole squad that has so woefully underperformed over so long.

Some of the early to mid 1980's teams were pretty ropey, but they were teams that still managed to avoid relegation from what was the top tier of non-league football.  The team that was finally relegated from the top division in the early 2000's wasn't great, but it won promotion the following year.  Mind you, the team that was relegated again the following season, rock bottom of the Conference was pretty piss poor.  But again, it was a team being relegated from what would now be the National League, so that in itself must garner a kernel of respect, surely?

In the battle to be crowned "Worst Poppies Team Ever" it really comes down to a straight fight between our current team and the last one to be relegated from this division in 2012-13 season where even if we hadn't been deducted 10 points we'd have still finished rock bottom by a further 10 points.

A closer analysis of that season and this one throws up quite a few disquieting similarities.  

Both seasons followed relegation from the National League structure into the Southern League Premier.  Both seasons took place against a backdrop of an owner actively seeking to sell the club.  Both seasons saw a revolving door of players and managers where you rarely bothered to learn new players names as they had a shelf life of less than a month.  And that was if they were any good.

But are we being entirely fair to the class of 2012-13?  During that season we barely escaped from Non Park to Steal Park.  We stopped playing for a month.  We were back in Court facing winding-up orders.  We were literally piecing teams together on a weekly basis.  We had an owner who didn't give a f*ck and a prospective owner about to be handed a 5-year ban from football.  Clearly 2012-13 was a clusterf*ck of clusterf*ckedness.  

We were rightly relegated and were frankly an embarrassment to Kettering Town FC, the town of Kettering, the County of Northamptonshire and the Southern League.  And yet.....

This season we may well have shuffled off an owner and a shed load of managers and players, but we are a far more settled club.  We know, barring the merest hint of rain or the lightest of frost, where we're playing.  We're getting several hundred punters through the doors.  We have a thriving off-field scene.  Our only problem is getting 11 sufficiently qualified and motivated players onto the pitch wearing red and black.  But, here we are, getting regularly thumped by tiny clubs from tiny towns and are reliant on other clubs going bust or being patently not good enough to be in this division to give us even a CHANCE of staying up.  

2012-13 was always going to be a crap season.  2023-24 we started off pondering, if not promotion, at least a good showing and a possible tilt at the play-offs.

We have a couple of games coming up against Sudbury that will go a long way towards deciding our fate this season.  But even if we somehow pull ourselves out of current nose-dive I think we would be hard pushed to award worst Poppies team in living memory to anyone but the current crop.

Now, Lavery, print this article off and pin it to the dressing room wall.  Show it to the players before they take to the pitch.

We've tried everything else....

Beginning of the end?

The Third, Last Throw of the Dice

After drafting in additional players and trawling our back-catalogue of managerial bods with only Richard Lavrey picking up the telephone, the club has taken the further ambitious step of sacking all the supporters and drafting in a replacement crowd for today's game.

Having tried most other permutations to win a home game the Board have taken the bold move of releasing all 700 hardcore Poppies supporters and moving into the loan market for an entirely new crowd for the visit of Leamington.

The previous supporters have taken to Twitter with the following message -

"Our collective time at Kettering Town has come to an end.  We'd like to thank the board and all the managers for giving us the chance to be disappointed most weekends.  Our mutually agreed departure gives us the chance to look at options moving forward that may or may not include trips to B&Q, National Trust joint memberships and lunch with the in-laws.  More than likely though we'll all be spending every other weekend in either Harborough or Wellingborough.  Either way, we're gonna have to get used to wearing an awful lot more yellow than we've been used to...."

Speaking on behalf of our new supporters, former fan Anus McLintock of Brigstock also took to Twitter to say -

"On behalf of the new fan base I can only express how excited we are to be joining the club at this crucial time of the season.  I used to be a supporter back in the day, and can remember as if was only yesterday the day we were relegated out of the Football League, blowing a 73 point lead in the League with only 3 games to go, being denied entry into the Premier League on the grading of the stadium and winning the World Cup at Wembley.  I'm really looking forward to supporting "The Cherries" once again and cheering the lads on at a sold-out Rockingham Castle."

"Kettering Town on hold for Ron Atkinson...?
Sorry mate, wrong number.  Do you need a cab...?"

The Second, Last Throw of the Dice

Another week goes by and a couple more players in blurry photographs appear on social media holding the ubiquitous Poppies shirt, standing alongside an increasingly panicky looking Jim Le Masurier.  That poor bloody shirt has been handled by so many temporary visitors this season it must feel like it's on a table in the entrance of a Primark store on the first day of the sales.  I'm not sure how many more times we'll be welcoming kinda-nothing players who are of a level and quality that the prospect of a handful of paydays at a struggling Poppies side seems like a good career move.  Surely we can only have so many more changes in personnel if not performances before we're all reaching for "deckchair" and "Titanic" cliché.

A look at the League table, best done like my Missus watching a horror film - through fingers or from behind a cushion, squeaking, "has it gone yet?" paints an ugly, stark, but clear picture.  Basically us or Sudbury are going to fall off the footballing map at the end of the season.  As we have yet play Subdury we have no idea how indifferent a team they are.  Were it not for Nuneaton's latest demise they would be sitting above us in the table.  As it is, with Nuneaton's results now a distant irritant, we sit 4-points proud of Sudbury.

We know very little about the club who are standing between us and consecutive relegations.  What we DO KNOW is that not only do they have 3 or 4G pitch, but they now have permission for a second artificial pitch.  TWO artificial pitches to make money out of, while we continue to try to play on our flooded or frozen cabbage patch with, seemingly, no chance of ever getting just the one new surface.  They also seem to have a positive outlook to the remainder of the season, making a big feature on their social media of the run in, grandly calling it "THE RUN IN!"   They also count, switching between the blog and Wikipedia with masterful aplomb, former Poppies players Jamie Griffiths, Bradley Thomas and former Poppies Assistant Manager Dean Greygoose among their less than stellar array of old boys.

What they don't have is a terrific number of supporters or the best of luck when it comes to teams going bust.  They had managed to do the double over Nuneaton and must have been less than chuffed when those results were wiped.  Their attendance against local rivals Needham Market attracted an extra 300 fans (more than double their average gate) to the hotly contested B1115 / B1078 derby.  Nor do they have, unlike us, the very strong likelihood that they'll be playing a 38 year-old defender as a makeshift centre forward for the rest of the season.

But, probably the best thing they have over us is they don't seem to share our almost crushingly fatalist outlook and our world-weary pessimistic self-destructiveness somehow magically allied to a blind belief that we are still some sort of force in non-league football.  The bastards.

Probably nice guys and may even be able to play a bit of football. 
Unlikely to reach double figure appearances for the Poppies between them 
as we scramble around for a magic personnel formula rather than
try old-school nonsense like playing with heart, passion and fight.

What Just Happened?

At the time of writing, a match report on the Long Eaton game is yet to be added to the official website. It seems fair to assume that whoever was assigned to write this one up has downed tools in protest, or has been unable to get past “shitshow” in the opening sentence. 

There are bad days at the office and there is what we witnessed on Saturday, a supposed ‘must win’ that far from slightly easing our relegation anxieties has sent them off the scale. Did the players expect Long Eaton to simply roll over?  Long before the visitors had the temerity to actually score, we were merrily fluffing chances like it was all going to be a walk in the park – until suddenly crumbling at the first setback.

At half time it was still possible - just - to believe that fired up and attacking the Tin Hat, a win, however narrow, would still be scraped.  As opposed to the bottom of the barrel, which was tunnelled through after about another 20 minutes, followed by about ten feet of Latimer Park clay until finally hitting bed rock.

Pretty much without exception the players out there looked like they’d given up. Against a team that only we seem to have any trouble in beating. A team whose noisy little band of fans were so unused to seeing them dominate a game, one of them forgot to take his flag when changing ends. In front of a crowd mostly stunned into silence, rather than ripping their heads off in fury like many a Kettering crowd of old.

Where on earth do we go from here?  Afterwards, Jim seemed to have no better idea than the rest of us. His post-match interview was part WTFery, part disaster victim being encouraged to relive events as the first stage in rehab. 

The frustrating, maddening thing is the same group of players are capable, not of so much better, but at least looking like they possibly could care less. We have seen this, on occasions. They are even capable of putting in a good collective 45 minutes. But if they think they are too good to go down, think again.

Stripes? Why stripes?

After 151 years our club has finally bowed slightly to that new-fangled democratic malarky and given supporters a say in the design of the shirts we will be expected to rush out and order over the summer in the hope of wearing them in time for the Christmas postponements.  You know.  The sort of thing other clubs have been doing for years.  The great Poppies-supporting public were never trusted to give their opinion when club owners and Chairmen had the opportunity to flick through a sports catalogue and pick a random colour and design, content in the knowledge that they were literally the only person in the club who would NEVER actually wear the final shirt.

The three bland choices the club have given us for next season haven't exactly set pulses racing in this corner of NN16.  Not like the wild "Design a Kit" competition when the Trust hosted the memorabilia exhibition at Kettering museum when kids (and, ahem, older kids) were encouraged to create a Poppies kit from scratch.  Some of those were pretty out-there, and you were left wondering what was being smoked in a number of households.  But, still, it would have been fantastic to have been seen some of the designs made real, adorning an embarrassed looking Henry Eze or a baffled looking Adam Cunnington.

Oh so meh....

No, instead we've been handed a choice of red and black stripes, or red with a bit of black and red with seemingly no black.  Disappointingly, the "traditional" red and black stripes seems to be by far the favourite with the herd-mentality, seal-clapping, Poppies fanbase.  But why?  And why do we consider red and black stripes as our "traditional" kit.

I'm happy to be corrected for this (well, not happy, obviously) but traditionally we have worn red and white with red and black only coming in in the early 1970's.  And for a number of seasons after Big Ron's red and black stripped warriors were a happy memory we reverted to a mixture of red and red and white.  Sometime with a saucy dash of black thrown in - such as the mighty Milas FA cup run shirts of the late 80's.  I'm pretty certain the red and black stripes only made a belated comeback under Mark English's brief but eventful reign.

But, for out-and-out red and black stripery I believe we've probably gone this route for, maybe 15 seasons in our history.  And even then, to my mind, the best stripery kit wasn't even really stripery, but the hoopery kit of several years ago.  Now, THAT was a classic which I'm delighted to continue to model and receive envious glances for on matchdays.  And will continue to do so until it wears out or it shrinks further (!) I doubt anyone will again wear the current horror-show of a shirt an hour after the final whistle of our last game of this season.

It's not that I inherently dislike the red / black combination because I don't.  There are so few teams that use red and black as their colours that it makes us a bit special.  There might be other teams that wear red and black other than us, AC Milan and Bournemouth but I can't think who off the top of my tired head.  It's just, I wish we could be a bit more imaginative with how we deploy the colours.  Red shirts with hooped red and black sleeves?  red shirts with black collar and cuffs?  Red with black side panels?  Red with black pinstripe?  Narrow red and black hoops?  Red and black halves or quarters?  There's so many options ahead of falling back on the red and black stripes.

And why oh why can't we EVER have red and black hooped socks?  Retro or not, I think they'd look dead cool!

Who you gonna call?

 

  

Where's Bill Murray when you need him?

Addendum: Or a referee and linesmen with even 

a nodding acquaintance with the game of football.

The first, last throw of the dice.

Obviously as the weather has calmed down on a Saturday we are away from home.  No storms.  No flooding.  No ice age.  We must be on the road....

Exactly WHO we will be cheering on the road today down at Hitchin is more of a mystery.  We've signed a new spine of a team in the shape of, checks notes, keeper Dan Jezeph, defender Lathaniel Rowe-Turner, midfielder Jack Degruchy, and forward Kane Richard, plus George Forsyth until the end of the season.

If nothing else, the club are setting out their stall about trying to keep us up this season.  Signing actual grown men rather than a succession of kids who were getting well and truly bullied off the pitch by all and sundry.  It hasn't escaped anyone's notice that three of the signings are from the now-defunct Nuneaton.  In fact, I had a "heated debate" with someone who accused the Poppies of picking over Nuneaton's still warm corpse.  Their point of view being it was unseemly to acquire these players.  On the contrary, I corrected them, we've offered the chance of a payday* to three players who were suddenly out of work and had no club.  

*assuming we can afford to pay for new players while simultaneously telling fans we have no money and have all our home games called off due to the vagaries of the new-normal UK winter weather.

Heading out of the revolving Latimer Park door (not that they got to play at Latimer Park particularly) are the exotically named Phoenix Schultz and Neo Dobson.  No great loss except in as much as I never got to post a photograph of 80's funkmeister James DeBarge and pretend it was Neo Dobson.  Well, at least until now....

Neo Dobson takes our thanks with him
as he heads back to the Cobblers

 

Dear Diary

Wednesday 17th January 2024

Weighed into an online discussion about the time we had a large lead at the top of the Conference at Christmas before falling away over the last couple of months.  Different people seem to remember what actually happened in many different ways.  I've heard otherwise sensible Poppies fans claim we were as many as 15-20 points clear after leaving Boston with out customary 3-points.  One today managed to mix something like three different seasons together and claim that we were 10 points clear with 4-games to go at the top after beating Lincoln City and still blew the League.... Reminded me of seeing a video of addled-Gazza telling how he managed Kettering to a relegation during his 39 days here....

Memory is a curious thing.  And another thing memory is, is curious.

Thursday 18th January 2024

After a week of shedding players the news comes through that Nuneaton Borough have resigned from the League.  Not entirely unexpected, but still utterly shocking at the same time.

Feel guilty that after feeling incredibly sad for Boro and their fans for all of two minutes, I wonder how their demise will impact our League standings and chances of avoiding relegation.  Only natural I guess, but I'm not proud to be thinking such thoughts.

Attended the latest Fans Forum where any potential bolshiness from the floor was tempered by the Nuneaton situation.  If them.  Why not us?  Particularly as we seemingly don't play home games anymore.  Oh, and the potential for flashpoints greatly reduced by the fact that our biggest loudmouth keyboard warriors have an aversion to attending Latimer Park.

Meeting quickly adopted the traditional format.  Club bigwig spells out how precarious things are.  Second bigwig makes it clear we need to redouble our efforts to attend off-field club events.  Manager and Captain apologise for team playing crap.  The usual.  Questions requested from the floor, where it takes ages for the first hand to go up but once it has the dam is burst and the oft-asked questions are asked until the meeting is called to an end when the same questions have their second or third airing.  Still can't work up the nerve to ask anything out loud.  Bottler.

Friday 19th January 2024

You can tell that we have a home game this weekend as the temperature has dropped to minus 42 degrees and even polar bears are wearing scarfs.  It seems that the build-up to every home game is greeted by Biblical-level flooding or the dawning of another ice age.

Saturday 20th January 2024

To no-one's surprise the game against Stamford is called off.  Shame, as I was looking forward to

Stamford - lovely town.  Crap people

meeting up again with the pig-ignorant arseholes that seem to make up most of Stamford's support.  Once got offered "outside" by one of their delightful followers for questioning his horribly sexist, racist and homophobic exclamations and then basically told to f*ck off by another Stamfordian when I jokingly asked why he was huddled under an umbrella long after the rain had stopped.  

Bought some Poppies online raffle tickets of some description.  Don't expect to win.

Sunday 21st January 2024

Saw an unofficial League table showing Nuneaton's results removed and, if accurate, we are lifted out of the relegation zone.  The way we are playing this was the only way we were ever going to be thus elevated.  A lot of teams around us have suffered points deductions by having their wins against Nuneaton expunged.  I'd feel wore had the same not happened to us about a thousand years ago when Newport County went bust.

Obviously weather today is 10 degrees warmer then yesterday....

Hitting A Stour Note

Two photographs taken 5 years apart:

2019, moments after Tom Knowles’s thunderous winner at Stourbridge. Last we saw of Tom, he was disappearing under a pile of team mates, never to be seen again. Thanks for the, er, memory.  

2024. Same ground, same opponents, same division.  Very different direction of travel!

Instead of several hundred behind the goal bellowing out our victory songs, a glum few watch in near silence.  Whilst, just out of shot, being mocked by a bunch of potty mouthed ten year olds.  

It wasn’t that we were bad at Stourbridge. They barely threatened apart from the two times they found the net, whilst with a bit more belief in the penalty box we might have had three or four.

Certainly 1000% better than the shitshow at St Ives, which was so limp and disinterested it would surely have aroused police investigation if anyone had actually bothered to bet on the result. 

But the overwhelming feeling was that, like five years ago, this was a pivotal game for our chances and this time it didn’t go so well.  

It seems that we may have been kidding ourselves that the main problem was Leese’s  management style. Increasingly it’s clear that – yes that was certainly a contributory factor – but the plain fact is this squad is too lightweight and inexperienced for this division.  A lot of that is on him too, but not all.

Without Stohrer’s industry in midfield or someone other than Ty capable of scoring, right now it looks an uphill task to avoid another, unthinkable, drop back to a level where we will be closer to park pitch than the Football League.

Whenever a season starts to really unravel the cry goes out for a fan’s forum.  Well, fair play, this week we’ve got one.  However, from information already made available, it feels like optimism may not be high on the agenda. 

Well done to the vocal minority who have been relentlessly harping on about how uselessly run the club has been and predicting village football, starting from when it seemed a distant possibility.

As they show absolutely no sign of shutting up, indeed seem to revel in every setback, they may get to gloat about how right they were. 

Some Good Kettering News For A Change

Being from Kettering can be tough.  Our football club is meekly slithering to consecutive relegations, the town centre is a dismal shop-free wasteland and James Acaster is unfathomably considered the funniest person from the borough.  But not everything is going against the residents of the Holy City.

Buccleuch Estates have today been refused permission to bulldoze some of the few remaining woods and meadows in Kettering to build even more warehouses that would be standing empty for years to come.  It's possible Buccleuch Estates will appeal as there are two things the obscenely rich don't like.  Not getting even richer is one and having the proles telling them what to do is the other.  In this case, the people of Kettering, wonderfully well marshalled by Dez Dell plus many others and their "Save Weekley Hall Wood" campaign have risen up and said a resounding "NO" to our betters.  

I'm sure the Duke will be furious that the peasants have stymied his evil plans, and wishes it was the 17th century so he could round up the ringleaders and have them hunted with his hounds.   But it's not, your Grace.  It's the 21st Century now, so you'll have to go the modern route and consider "fiscally-encouraging" our easily-swayed, tame local council to get your way.  Or, perhaps look to get on the right side of history and consider a different plan that doesn't trash what little of our countryside you haven't already covered in asphalt and tin roofs?  

Green - yes, Greed - no.

https://saveweekleyhallwood.com/

Another sunset.  One we hope we'll continue to enjoy
(c) Dan Whitney

Where do we go from here?

Another away game and another comprehensive thrashing handed out by another team looking better than us in all departments (except goalkeeper, but this is only because I can't rate a player that was untested over 90 minutes of football).  A defeat to a team backed by a town with a population half that of Desborough.

What's worse is there's no obvious way out of our cycle of thumping defeats.  We have conceded 10 goals in our last two matches (as if you needed reminding), but could not have argued if we had shipped twice as many.  There's a strong case for awarding Billy Johnson MOM for both games even though he spent most of them picking the ball out of his net.

The morale-boosting win over Mickleover now seems like a game from a different age.  Since then we seem to have lost a number of grown-up players to be replaced by young boys, playing at being footballers.  It's not their fault to be young and hideously inexperienced, but it does us no good as we fight to stay in this division.

Increasingly I'm reminded of the last time we were dropped into the Southern League Premier division.  We were extricating ourselves from Non Park, didn't play for a month when we really should have been wound-up, and rotated through numerous players who were picked simply because they were available on the day and could get to the ground for 3 o'clock.  We finished rock-bottom of the division and spent the next couple of years rebuilding against clubs who looked on a three-figure gate as a bumper pay-day.

That time we had the backing of Ritchie to help us rebuild.  Now?  Well, don't look at the League Table for the Love of God.  A win in the 6-pointer at Stourbridge next week will still see us firmly in the relegation zone.  And this is at a time when the very notion of 11 players in our shirts beating another set of players in a different jersey feels more like a fantasy than a possibility.

Still, as we wallow in the unceasing dread of another relegation here's yesterday's sunset.  Not as good as the Halesowen one, or indeed, as good the as the sunset at Needham Market when we last played there and strolled to a regulation 3-0 win on our way to the League title....  But then, most things aren't as good now.