Unreal, for sure

A tad out of date?  Perhaps.  But still relevant, and we NEVER pass up the opportunity of getting someone else to do some work for us.  Take it away Graham - 

With the new season kicking off my mind went back to last game we played - at Real Bedford. My first visit there was far from ‘Real’, in fact I found it quite surreal. I only got a ticket about 2 hours before kick-off.

Knowing of the limited parking, I went as advised to a light industrial estate. It turned out to be about a 15 minute walk away. Getting near to the ground, I began to see numerous cars parked on the verges on a quite busy road. What happens if they progress up the leagues?

I then saw 2 queues – one very short and one very lengthy for the Kettering ends. It was unclear why strict segregation was needed but it went as far as most people being searched, including an 80-year-old man being frisked by a young policewoman. How the short Bedford queue led to about half the crowd being Bedford supporters was unclear. (Ed - My favourite OTT measure was the drug-sniffer dog....)

The next peculiarity was the lay-out there with Bedford’s ground being literally next door, so close they even have the same postcode. Our queue almost stretched as far as the Bedford ground where, to add another twist, the Bedfordshire County Cup final was being played, fortunately between 2 Biggleswade teams.

The game itself for us was a bit of a non-event apart from seeing Thanoj probably winning the man of the match award, if one had existed, probably for the first time. Still it won him a contract to probably sit on their bench next season till he is loaned out, never to return. About the only other points of note were wondering why their management team were so angry with us when celebrating goals and, noting in our end, a recent World snooker champion. At the end I saw a fan distributing previously unseen programmes around from a box of unused copies! The unique experience of the evening was totally topped off when in it I saw the photo of their chairman - Peter McCormack, a bitcoin podcaster, apparently, who bought the club in 2022 and is a prominent figure in the bitcoin community. 

He was actually charged by the FA in 2024 for using this photo, despite his defence being based on his right to free speech and his holding of an AR-15 assault rifle being balanced by his peace sign. Later in 2024, 2 American businessmen, the Winklevoss brothers, invested over 3 million pounds in the club, although it was not apparent whilst looking around the ground. They are crypto-currency investors, apparently, and they had money to invest after a mere 65 million dollar settlement from Facebook as they claimed Mark Zuckerberg had stolen their idea. (See the film ‘A Social Network’ for more details).

As they say “ you couldn’t make it up”.

Graham James

Nothing unusual to see here.
Just a non-league club Chairman brandishing sufficient
firepower to start a small to medium sized war.