Cushy Number

Is there another police force in this country that has it as cushy as Northamptonshire? No rough inner cities. No frontline in the war on terror. No border controls to enforce. Sure, there’s Corby, a couple of houses given over to the growing of pot and the odd smash up on the M1, but all in all they have it pretty good. Not quite “Heartbeat”, but certainly not “The Wire”.

Can this be why whenever it looks as though there might be more than a couple of thousand people at Rockingham Road they act as though the end of social order might be imminent? Riot vans, horses, helicopters. No expense is spared (and then passed on) when it comes to quashing the civil liberties of a few hundred football supporters.

The all-ticketing nonsense we are being plagued by can squarely be laid at the door of Mr Plod. Just because the team we are playing used to play in the Football League doesn’t necessarily mean that every man, woman, child and pet in Kettering will be systematically raped and pillaged come 3.00PM on a Saturday.

What utter breakdown in law and order could be caused by a pensioner paying his money to gain access to the home end of the ground just before kick-off? How would society’s fabric be torn if a bona-fide Club Member showed his card at the ticket office at 2.30PM and bought a ticket?

Have our police got so little to do that they can spare so many of their number to jackboot their way around Rockingham Road? It makes you wonder how Northamptonshire Police would handle the situation if there were a genuinely large club in the County. Imagine for a moment if there was a club of, say, Leicester’s size within their territory….There would be no way to safely police games of that size without resorting to dawn raids, strip searches, waterboarding and organised death squads surely?

It’s not even as if the police are any use at our football games anyway. Where are they when the game is over and the supporters they have separated for 90 minutes are suddenly thrown together? The answer is of course, nowhere. Probably off counting their overtime pay and congratulating themselves on the fact the game between Kettering and Eastbourne hadn’t descended into a bloodbath.

Mind you, the way things are heading we may well be only the third largest group within Rockingham Road soon after away fans and the cops. Perhaps fourth if you count Board members!

.

.

.

.

.

"That's good work boys."

The Market Place and Galloping Middle Age

In keeping with the “Classic-Patgod” habit of ignoring football as much as possible we take a moment away from the hissing cauldron of fevered expectation at the start of the new season to cast an eye further afield within our fair Borough.

Anyone passing the almost permanent worksite on Sheep Street will hardly fail to notice that the new-look market place is nearing completion. Lots of steps, slopes and er, flat bits, with a weird transparent roof in one corner. I’ve got to admit; the whole thing is less disagreeable than I thought it would be.

Of interest to Poppies fans is the mention of the Club’s founding within the “Kettering Timeline” which is a section of specially carved stone slabs making up part of the new surface of the market area. It’s a nice touch, but as I looked over this slab and the rest of the market place only one thought kept intruding into my thoughts –

“How quickly will our shit-thick, retarded youths take to f*ck this place up?”

Have you reached that age too? When your cool, right-on, leftie outlook suddenly takes a giant lurch to the right? One day you’re campaigning for a free South Africa, and the next day you find yourself nodding along to David Cameron or instinctively believing what you read in the Daily Mail. The fact you are actually reading the Daily Mail is a bad enough sign in itself, letting alone agreeing with it.

I can’t exactly pinpoint when I became a boring middle-aged, right-wing reactionary, but these days I find it takes an enormous effort of will power not to twat those gurgling, guffawing, thick-voiced, teen scuzz-buckets every time I see one. Every time I pass one of those braying, hoodie-wearing gumbies at the very least I feel the need to mock them, and on my black-dog days, I want to stomp on their stupid pimply faces until I develop a serious Achilles injury.

Is it just me, or are young people really annoying?

Hanging around in chuckling herds, moaning about having “nothing to do”, and acting as though they are the only generation to have discovered alcohol. Of course they have nothing to do. Occupying yourself takes a modicum of intellect. Nothing to do? These ungrateful, dull-eyed cabbages don’t know they’re born! When I was their age I didn’t have a million different computer game systems, mobile phones, facebook, twitter, all weather football pitches, athletics facilities, 10-screen cinemas, skate-parks, and the dozens of other facilities laid on to keep these dribbly dullards entertained.

All my generation had was Wicksteed Park up the age of 13 and masturbation thereafter, but we all grew up OK. And had curiously firm handshakes.

Instead of occupying themselves with one of the numerous entertainment avenues open to them, the flower of our youth prefer binge-drinking, teen pregnancy, knife crime and thieving. It doesn’t bode well for our species, does it?

Mind you, if one of them finds themselves unable to resist nicking the Kettering Town slab from the Kettering Timeline on the market place, I’m sure I could take it off their hands for a couple of cans of Stella.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"Huh, huh, huh, wicked!"

F*ckwits

Three Days to Go

New season starts at Forest Green on Saturday, as if you didn’t know!

How are we shaping up for this new season? As ever, on the pitch nothing is guaranteed until games are being played for real, and neither team has a 20-goal head start! New players we have seen such as Jennings, Green and Spencer certainly don’t look out of place, and Fowler looks quality. The rest of the lads from last season are still good enough. All in all we look quite tidy.

Off the field things look slightly less rosy. Still no full-time Club Secretary, but plenty of Directors. The “all-ticket” mess is still ongoing. Are all our home games all-ticket? Will anyone be allowed to pay on the gate? Are we going to turn away all the old duffers who don’t know the games are all-ticket? Will the new kiosk for the sale of tickets at the ground ever be built? All these questions remain unanswered.

If the all-ticket policy is to continue the club needs a facility for online purchase of tickets, and an outlet for purchasing on the day. Not everyone plans in advance to watch the Poppies, and not everyone lives five minutes from the ground either. I fear attendances will take a sharp dip in the opening weeks of the season.

Why is it that more obstacles are being put in the way of supporting the Poppies, when a mixture of lethargy and pessimism will do an effective enough job anyway? When some fans finds it an effort to make it up to the Poppies to see the game, how will they be convinced to make the journey twice?

Perhaps a handy way around these problems would be for fans to pay money at the turnstile as they enter the ground. No, really. Wacky I know, but it could just work! Like it’s worked for the last 137 years without much of a problem.

Patgod Issue 6 – Darlington sweep all before them

After Darlington left Rockingham Road with three easy points following the proverbial “men against boys” victory the writing was on the wall for our title aspirations. The writing said, “You ain’t good enough”.

Back then the Conference was still mostly made up of the teams we knew and hated for many seasons, interspersed with the annual “Guest Star” from the Football League. Generally they slummed it for a season and went back to where they came from. Being full-time in an otherwise part-time league always proved to be a handy advantage (see also the Poppies circa 2007-2008).

The Division is a lot different today – you can barely turn around for knocking into former lower league, and not so lower league has-beens. Our season in the Ryman league seemed like a detour to the farthest reaches of Hell, even though it was only a division below the highest level we’ve ever played at. One can only image what it must be like for fans of Luton, Oxford and Wimbledon to have gone from playing the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United not so long ago, to digging out the road map and looking for Eastbourne, Hayes & Yeading and, let’s be honest, little old us! Doesn’t bear thinking about.

Morrell Maison – No More Mr Nice Guy?

"Hold me back Ron, or I'll twat him!"

The ongoing saga of Morrell Maison’s post Poppies career has been a quiet affair only briefly enlivened by football club take-overs, beating up players, touchline bans and ousting by supporter organisations.

And yet when he was here he seemed such a likeable chap, had time for everyone, and a ready smile.

Except that is for the two occasions I happened to catch his attention. He didn’t come across as such a nice guy then, I can tell you!

The first occasion was at a reserve team game at Rockingham Road. You remember reserve team games? They tended to be held on a Wednesday night when the main stand was opened up to a combination of old foggies, people desperate to wring the last penny of worth from their season tickets and sad bastards with absolutely nothing else going on in their lives. Er.. and me of course.

Anyway, the game was in full flow, and although he wasn’t directly in control of team affairs Morrell strolled around the technical area with a cup of tea in hand, offering the odd word of instruction. Suddenly there was a comically poor decision given against one of our players. It was such a laughable bad decision I let out a surprised and inadvertent snort or derisive laughter. It appears I was the only person in the small crowd to find this passage of play so funny, and I let this noise escape me at the exact moment the ground fell into almost perfect silence. My exclamation carried across the ground quite audibly.

Certainly I seemed to find this incident funnier than Morrell did. I don’t know whether he thought I was laughing at his player, or didn’t like the sound of a fat bloke chortling loudly, but he gave me a stare of pure venom. It was a real Samuel L Jackson, bad-mother-f**ker look. I spent the rest of the game trying to avoid eye contact with our Manager and, more importantly, desperately trying to not find anything else on the pitch amusing – not as easy as it sound given that Darren Caskey was playing.

I put this down as a one-off until an away game at Worksop. This was the game where Anthony Elding received his 15^th Poppies red card in only his 12^th game for us and we slithered to a defeat, which pretty much ruled us out of play-off contention.

The team had indulged in a post match, halfway line huddle during which some of our supporters let them know how disappointed they were at the abject lack of effort, skill, and passion on display with various pithy phrases. As we continued to morosely file out of the ground, a curious feature of Worksop’s ground became worryingly apparent. In leaving the pitch the players walked straight across our path and into the dressing room. This served to quieten the mutterings amongst our brave terrace warriors. The players were mostly big buggers, and even if they couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo there was no guarantee they couldn’t hit a double chin with their fists.

At this point one of our more forthright fans known only as Rover couldn’t resist making a final critique of the day’s events. Unfortunately for me, Rover, at barely 5 and half foot tall, was to my rear. Consequently when Morrell’s head snapped in the direction of this latest comment he locked eyes directly onto mine. “Thanks Rover!” Instantly Morrell started answering back and heading in my direction, I guess not to thank me for making the effort to get to Worksop that day. Thankfully Nathan Koo Boothe, in almost certainly his only decent challenge in a Poppies shirt, held back his irate boss and the players smuggled the snarling Morrell down the tunnel.

Twice I had come into the Manager’s line of vision and both times saw his ugly side. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I had given him cause on either occasion, but I was an innocent bystander both times. Given the way some fans shriek at our Managers week in week out to no effect I don’t know whether I should be disheartened or proud of my record!

Patgod Issue 6 – Wanky, wanky Wanderers

Difficult to believe now, and even more difficult to explain to someone too young to remember, but there was a time when Wycombe Wanderers were mere upstarts, intent on emulating Kettering Town. For a couple of seasons we grappled at the top end of the Conference, and then the balance of power shifted forever. No one knows for certain how or why Wycombe overhauled us.

Admittedly Wycombe’s Board of Directors appointed the success-hungry Martin O’Neill as Manager, invested in their team, moved to a brand new ground, attracted thousands of new fans and went all out for success. At the same time our Board of Directors were ignoring Tax Bills, negotiating a crippling rent for our ground, investing in board room refurbishments and giving laughing-boy Morris the budget to rush out and sign players of the stature of Neil Horwood.

No, how Wycombe surpassed us must remain one of those unsolvable mysteries, like the Pyramids, or Atlantis, or why were there no cats or dogs in the local area when Tony Ansell did our catering.

Patgod Issue 6 – Part One - Most Famous Patgod Cover? Early 1990

Nelson Mandela’s release into the world and into Winnie’s waiting arms (only one of which it subsequently transpired he had looked forward to) had the whole world agog with wonder back in 1990. A new era of peace and stability flourished in South Africa and everything there changed for the better. From that day forward the black ruling classes kept the rest of the population down, rather than the white ruling classes as it was in the bad old days.

The world celebrated with the newly liberated Mandela by allowing his country to host pretty much every world-sporting event in the next few years. Never mind that other countries had waited longer or were more deserving. All that was forgotten in the rush to give South Africa more and more events at which their status as top of the world murder league could be further enhanced by whacking a few sports-tourists unlucky enough to have wandered 5 yards from their Hotels.

This Patgod cover managed to be only the 21,954th publication to feature Nelson on their cover following his release – still the fastest reaction time a football fanzine had managed at that date.