Friday, 28 September 2007
Coming home to roost
During Alan Buckley's spell with West Bromwich Albion in the 1990s I lived a couple of miles from the Hawthorns. My best mate Stu was a Baggies fan so I used to go along with him and see how Tony Rees, Paul Agnew and all the other Town exports were getting along. It was always interesting to compare notes with the Albion supporters, so when we got talking to one of them over post-match pints one Saturday, Stu decided to give him the context. "Pete's a Grimsby fan!" he grinned, indicating me.
The stranger turned to me with a face that would have split granite. He said – well, I'm not allowed to tell you exactly what he said, because my mum still reads this column, but (despite Town being placed comfortably above West Brom in the league at this time) the first two words were "you" and "sad", and the third rhymes with "trucker".
I was reminded of this lately by all the hoo-hah about the Mariners' proposed new stadium and the requirement to provide a new habitat for nearby bird life.
True, some local people seem to want the stadium to fail, just as they want the club to fail and everything else to fail (the reasons for this are too complex to explore here – which is a shame, because we could probably have had a lot of fun at their expense). But John Fenty, too, called the ruling "bizarre", and many people appear to be working on the assumption that birds are much less important than football.
This is more than a little short-sighted given that we've been watching football for about 150 years, while birds have been around for about 150 million.
But again, it's generally considered acceptable to like football, whereas ornithology is a hobby that tends to be thought of as, well, 'sad'. Why? No-one can really explain. I'm no birdspotter but as the years pass I grow worryingly fond of trains. And you may very well look down on trainspotters. But your scorn is nothing compared to the withering disdain that railway enthusiasts reserve for bus spotters.
The point is that nothing is more unfathomable to us than other people's taste – be it for birds, trains, Star Trek, Hereford United Football Club, or even Grimsby Town. And if we poke fun at the twitchers then we're no better than that sneering oaf I met in the pub in 1994. So let's all of us just do the right thing, and save our contempt and mockery for Chelsea.
And you know what? The people who only like things that it's OK to like, and aren't interested in anything 'sad', always turn out to be the most tedious truckers of all.
The stranger turned to me with a face that would have split granite. He said – well, I'm not allowed to tell you exactly what he said, because my mum still reads this column, but (despite Town being placed comfortably above West Brom in the league at this time) the first two words were "you" and "sad", and the third rhymes with "trucker".
I was reminded of this lately by all the hoo-hah about the Mariners' proposed new stadium and the requirement to provide a new habitat for nearby bird life.
True, some local people seem to want the stadium to fail, just as they want the club to fail and everything else to fail (the reasons for this are too complex to explore here – which is a shame, because we could probably have had a lot of fun at their expense). But John Fenty, too, called the ruling "bizarre", and many people appear to be working on the assumption that birds are much less important than football.
This is more than a little short-sighted given that we've been watching football for about 150 years, while birds have been around for about 150 million.
But again, it's generally considered acceptable to like football, whereas ornithology is a hobby that tends to be thought of as, well, 'sad'. Why? No-one can really explain. I'm no birdspotter but as the years pass I grow worryingly fond of trains. And you may very well look down on trainspotters. But your scorn is nothing compared to the withering disdain that railway enthusiasts reserve for bus spotters.
The point is that nothing is more unfathomable to us than other people's taste – be it for birds, trains, Star Trek, Hereford United Football Club, or even Grimsby Town. And if we poke fun at the twitchers then we're no better than that sneering oaf I met in the pub in 1994. So let's all of us just do the right thing, and save our contempt and mockery for Chelsea.
And you know what? The people who only like things that it's OK to like, and aren't interested in anything 'sad', always turn out to be the most tedious truckers of all.
Labels: birds, buckley, fentydome, hereford, personal taste, trains, west brom
Friday, 21 September 2007
Bucking the trend
Last year it was Graham Rodger not having "contacts". The year before, it was Russell Slade's direct style. Go back a bit further and it was Paul Groves playing and managing at the same time, and before you know it you're back to Alan Buckley in the 1990s, whose style wasn't direct enough. The moaners and groaners among Town's support are a fashion-conscious bunch: they have to have something new every season.
The lament in vogue this autumn is that Buckley's 4-5-1 formation is 'negative' and he should switch to 4-4-2. But some people will never be happy. Last weekend against Stockport, Town used the 4-4-2 system twice in one match, and they're still complaining.
Maybe everyone would be happy if we reverted to the 2-3-5 system. This suicidally attacking formation was the cause of all those 8-3 and 9-2 scores you see in the history books, as it was favoured for some time by managers in the early 20th century, and presumably also by Kevin Keegan at Newcastle, Ossie Ardiles at Tottenham and Town and Burnley in their 'Fright Night Special' in 2002.
But the thing is, really, that the infinite tactical subtleties of a match played for 90 minutes by 22 people over an area of more than 8,000 square yards just can't be adequately expressed or understood using a blunt system of three-digit shorthand – regardless of what we might think we might think we've learned about professional sport from staying up until 4am playing Football Manager on the computer.
Or as the manager himself has more succinctly put it: "If 4-5-1 is boring then what happened when we won 6-0 at Boston?"
And the one thing that never changes about fashion is change itself. If Buckley were to play 4-4-2 for the rest of his career, the moaners and groaners would find some other reason to boo the team or stay at home.
Indeed, you could bet some of the people now asking why they should part with their hard-earned cash to watch a five-man midfield are some of the same people who used to criticise the manager during his earlier spells at the club for never deviating from his beloved 4-4-2. Perhaps they'll even run out of football reasons one day, and they'll have to move on to actual fashion, and end up posting on the messageboards about new signings being put off by the embarrassing lack of Gucci and Prada gear in the manager's wardrobe.
But you'll never find our support here at Cod Almighty tossed weakly about by the winds of fashion. Well, I mean pessimism is just so last season.
The lament in vogue this autumn is that Buckley's 4-5-1 formation is 'negative' and he should switch to 4-4-2. But some people will never be happy. Last weekend against Stockport, Town used the 4-4-2 system twice in one match, and they're still complaining.
Maybe everyone would be happy if we reverted to the 2-3-5 system. This suicidally attacking formation was the cause of all those 8-3 and 9-2 scores you see in the history books, as it was favoured for some time by managers in the early 20th century, and presumably also by Kevin Keegan at Newcastle, Ossie Ardiles at Tottenham and Town and Burnley in their 'Fright Night Special' in 2002.
But the thing is, really, that the infinite tactical subtleties of a match played for 90 minutes by 22 people over an area of more than 8,000 square yards just can't be adequately expressed or understood using a blunt system of three-digit shorthand – regardless of what we might think we might think we've learned about professional sport from staying up until 4am playing Football Manager on the computer.
Or as the manager himself has more succinctly put it: "If 4-5-1 is boring then what happened when we won 6-0 at Boston?"
And the one thing that never changes about fashion is change itself. If Buckley were to play 4-4-2 for the rest of his career, the moaners and groaners would find some other reason to boo the team or stay at home.
Indeed, you could bet some of the people now asking why they should part with their hard-earned cash to watch a five-man midfield are some of the same people who used to criticise the manager during his earlier spells at the club for never deviating from his beloved 4-4-2. Perhaps they'll even run out of football reasons one day, and they'll have to move on to actual fashion, and end up posting on the messageboards about new signings being put off by the embarrassing lack of Gucci and Prada gear in the manager's wardrobe.
But you'll never find our support here at Cod Almighty tossed weakly about by the winds of fashion. Well, I mean pessimism is just so last season.
Labels: buckley, fashion, formation, groves, miserable, rodger, slade, systems, tactics
Friday, 14 September 2007
Music is just organised noise
Have you been watching the Twenty20 cricket? It's like normal cricket, but with all the subtlety and intrigue replaced by brutal slogging and chart pop bands playing live between innings. Cricket fans pretend to like it, but they only tolerate it because it's the one form of the sport their children will watch. They might as well call it Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Sunny Delight cricket.
What bothers me most about Twenty20 is the music over the PA every time a wicket falls. This is in case supporters of the fielding side forget they should be celebrating, and would otherwise vacantly wonder why all those strange men on the grass in garish pyjamas are suddenly hugging each other.
This in turn recollects Town playing away at places like Watford, where goals for the home side would be greeted with a deafening wave of noise – but not from the fans, whose celebrations would be drowned out by tannoyed snatches of James Brown singing 'I Feel Good'. Again, it's all too easy to forget that you should feel good when your team scores a goal, and were it not for James' reminder you'd be contemplating the irredeemable hostility of a godless universe and the wisdom of leaving the stadium now to bagsy a nice corner table at the pub.
Blundell Park has never done music very well. For some of the 1990s Town used to run out to 'Simply The Best'. This was dismally unimaginative, and it was always hard to get excited because 'Simply The Best' is the sort of thing played at the end of motivational seminars at work when outside speakers on £600 a day come in and tell you: "Employee engagement is an attitude. It's about making a superior contribution."
Furthermore, of course, there was a supreme irony in hearing the words "better than all the rest" as a prelude to being thrashed 4-1 by Crystal Palace and Sheffield United every fortnight.
In one remarkable celebration last season, fans of tomorrow's opponents Stockport stood and applauded for minutes on end when they conceded at Barnet, praising the record run of nine clean sheets that had just ended. It's hard to imagine this spontaneous grassroots expressiveness at a bleak and remote new ground like that of, say, Stockport's neighbours Chester. Mind you, it's even harder to imagine Chester going nine games without conceding a goal.
GTFC have twice asked fans in recent years if we'd like goal celebration music at Blundell Park. Both times we said no. But we also said no when they asked about matches being switched to Friday nights. So if Buckley ever finds this elusive goalscoring forward, and Town ever build the Fentydome, don't forget your earplugs – or you might as well watch Twenty20 cricket.
What bothers me most about Twenty20 is the music over the PA every time a wicket falls. This is in case supporters of the fielding side forget they should be celebrating, and would otherwise vacantly wonder why all those strange men on the grass in garish pyjamas are suddenly hugging each other.
This in turn recollects Town playing away at places like Watford, where goals for the home side would be greeted with a deafening wave of noise – but not from the fans, whose celebrations would be drowned out by tannoyed snatches of James Brown singing 'I Feel Good'. Again, it's all too easy to forget that you should feel good when your team scores a goal, and were it not for James' reminder you'd be contemplating the irredeemable hostility of a godless universe and the wisdom of leaving the stadium now to bagsy a nice corner table at the pub.
Blundell Park has never done music very well. For some of the 1990s Town used to run out to 'Simply The Best'. This was dismally unimaginative, and it was always hard to get excited because 'Simply The Best' is the sort of thing played at the end of motivational seminars at work when outside speakers on £600 a day come in and tell you: "Employee engagement is an attitude. It's about making a superior contribution."
Furthermore, of course, there was a supreme irony in hearing the words "better than all the rest" as a prelude to being thrashed 4-1 by Crystal Palace and Sheffield United every fortnight.
In one remarkable celebration last season, fans of tomorrow's opponents Stockport stood and applauded for minutes on end when they conceded at Barnet, praising the record run of nine clean sheets that had just ended. It's hard to imagine this spontaneous grassroots expressiveness at a bleak and remote new ground like that of, say, Stockport's neighbours Chester. Mind you, it's even harder to imagine Chester going nine games without conceding a goal.
GTFC have twice asked fans in recent years if we'd like goal celebration music at Blundell Park. Both times we said no. But we also said no when they asked about matches being switched to Friday nights. So if Buckley ever finds this elusive goalscoring forward, and Town ever build the Fentydome, don't forget your earplugs – or you might as well watch Twenty20 cricket.
Labels: buckley, celebrations, chester, cricket, fentydome, music, stockport
Friday, 7 September 2007
Modern life is rubbish
The trouble with modern life, and all its whizzy gadgets and conveniences, is that we have come to expect everything, and expect it instantly, when very often it's more rewarding to wait a bit longer for stuff.
Take the railways. I've been going to London a lot lately – it's actually a really good service, and pretty cheap if you book in advance and all that. This is clearly not the way to run a railway in Britain in 2007, so the franchise is being given to other train operating companies who promise to get us there about ten minutes quicker, just as long as we let them put up the fares at three times the rate of inflation.
And it's only recently that we've watched the football through the filter of these inflated expectations and deflated attention spans. For the first Town fans, back in the 1870s and 1880s, life was rubbish and there was stuff all they could do about it. Every week the trawler owners' lackeys would get you of bed at 3am, burn your house down and make your children into soup, so it scarcely mattered if you'd spent Saturday afternoon watching the Mariners lose 9-0 at home to Goxhill Clodhoppers.
Conversely, in these days of luxury we have a coronary if we have to lift the cushion up to get the remote control, so it's beyond all human toleration when there are things we can't change immediately just by pressing a button – like Town being stuck in the fourth division.
And some are already condemning the Mariners to another disappointing finish this season – on the evidence of just four league games.
Partly I blame this newspaper for saying Town are "joint bottom". We're not joint bottom – we're ahead of Wrexham and Accrington on goal difference, which is just as valid a measure as points. When Arsenal scored with the last kick of the 1988–89 season to seal the league title on goals scored, even Liverpool fans would have been too embarrassed to claim their team were actually "joint champions".
But at the same point in bygone years, we wouldn't have a league table to be joint bottom of, because nobody drew one up until mid-September. Nowadays websites publish tables before the season has even begun, and some fans spent July calling furiously for Alan Buckley to be sacked because Town were several places below Accrington on alphabetical order.
Four games into the 1997–98 season Town were in a relegation spot – and I trust we haven't forgotten what the current manager achieved just afterwards. If I had my way, Buckley would be manager for life – and I'd probably have him running the railways as well.
Take the railways. I've been going to London a lot lately – it's actually a really good service, and pretty cheap if you book in advance and all that. This is clearly not the way to run a railway in Britain in 2007, so the franchise is being given to other train operating companies who promise to get us there about ten minutes quicker, just as long as we let them put up the fares at three times the rate of inflation.
And it's only recently that we've watched the football through the filter of these inflated expectations and deflated attention spans. For the first Town fans, back in the 1870s and 1880s, life was rubbish and there was stuff all they could do about it. Every week the trawler owners' lackeys would get you of bed at 3am, burn your house down and make your children into soup, so it scarcely mattered if you'd spent Saturday afternoon watching the Mariners lose 9-0 at home to Goxhill Clodhoppers.
Conversely, in these days of luxury we have a coronary if we have to lift the cushion up to get the remote control, so it's beyond all human toleration when there are things we can't change immediately just by pressing a button – like Town being stuck in the fourth division.
And some are already condemning the Mariners to another disappointing finish this season – on the evidence of just four league games.
Partly I blame this newspaper for saying Town are "joint bottom". We're not joint bottom – we're ahead of Wrexham and Accrington on goal difference, which is just as valid a measure as points. When Arsenal scored with the last kick of the 1988–89 season to seal the league title on goals scored, even Liverpool fans would have been too embarrassed to claim their team were actually "joint champions".
But at the same point in bygone years, we wouldn't have a league table to be joint bottom of, because nobody drew one up until mid-September. Nowadays websites publish tables before the season has even begun, and some fans spent July calling furiously for Alan Buckley to be sacked because Town were several places below Accrington on alphabetical order.
Four games into the 1997–98 season Town were in a relegation spot – and I trust we haven't forgotten what the current manager achieved just afterwards. If I had my way, Buckley would be manager for life – and I'd probably have him running the railways as well.
Labels: accrington, buckley, history, league tables, patience, promotion, relegation, trains
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