Friday, 29 February 2008
You shook me all night long
Seismologists are hard at work investigating the cause of this week's Market Rasen earthquake, which is pretty much the first time anything has ever had an epicentre in northern Lincolnshire apart from the explosion in teenage pregnancy.
During this inquiry one crucial piece of evidence must not be overlooked: an important seismic event which took place just four hours earlier in an adjacent region of the Earth's crust. I refer, of course, to Grimsby Town winning away at Morecambe in the first leg of the northern area final of the Johnstone's Paint Trophy.
After all, it is surely no coincidence that Cleethorpes people could be heard shortly afterwards reeling off shouts such as "Only 5.2 on the Richter scale? We should be beating these 8.6", "Booooooo, no ambition, sack the quake", and "You're not fit to move the earth".
And Britain's last major tremor was the Dudley earthquake of 2002. Its epicentre in the West Midlands prompted researchers to conclude that it resulted from a clash between the vastly oversized expectations of Wolves fans and the immense mass of Aston Villa's historical baggage.
Not that earthquakes are the only so-called natural disaster that is really attributable to football. We are told that climate change is responsible for events such as the flooding of Hull last summer, but they never mention that this particular climate change event was precipitated by the second most popular local sport, as the mere prospect of relegation prompted Hull City's 90 per cent glory-seeking fan contingent to bawl their eyes out for weeks on end.
(Incidentally, the Yorkshire floods were remarkable for another reason. After the plight of the victims was ignored by the national media, one local MP dubbed Hull "the forgotten city". This was a tremendous coincidence, as many Grimbarians had already been calling it that for years.)
So two more matches with Morecambe stand in the way of Town's great surge upward from the depths. The Earth's tectonic plates, as we have seen, can make great lurching movements from one position to another, without warning and with potentially destructive consequences – much like the Mariners' form and confidence since the return of Alan Buckley.
One expert has suggested that this week's tremor resulted from "the reactivation of an old fault zone which has lain dormant for tens or hundreds of millions of years".
This is close to the truth, as the fault zone has indeed lain dormant, but only for ten years – and it runs straight through Grimsby. On one side of it is a very recently created upward motion caused by the powerful resurgence of the local football club. On the other are billions of tonnes of overwhelming downward pressure exerted by the irresistible natural force of local pessimism.
During this inquiry one crucial piece of evidence must not be overlooked: an important seismic event which took place just four hours earlier in an adjacent region of the Earth's crust. I refer, of course, to Grimsby Town winning away at Morecambe in the first leg of the northern area final of the Johnstone's Paint Trophy.
After all, it is surely no coincidence that Cleethorpes people could be heard shortly afterwards reeling off shouts such as "Only 5.2 on the Richter scale? We should be beating these 8.6", "Booooooo, no ambition, sack the quake", and "You're not fit to move the earth".
And Britain's last major tremor was the Dudley earthquake of 2002. Its epicentre in the West Midlands prompted researchers to conclude that it resulted from a clash between the vastly oversized expectations of Wolves fans and the immense mass of Aston Villa's historical baggage.
Not that earthquakes are the only so-called natural disaster that is really attributable to football. We are told that climate change is responsible for events such as the flooding of Hull last summer, but they never mention that this particular climate change event was precipitated by the second most popular local sport, as the mere prospect of relegation prompted Hull City's 90 per cent glory-seeking fan contingent to bawl their eyes out for weeks on end.
(Incidentally, the Yorkshire floods were remarkable for another reason. After the plight of the victims was ignored by the national media, one local MP dubbed Hull "the forgotten city". This was a tremendous coincidence, as many Grimbarians had already been calling it that for years.)
So two more matches with Morecambe stand in the way of Town's great surge upward from the depths. The Earth's tectonic plates, as we have seen, can make great lurching movements from one position to another, without warning and with potentially destructive consequences – much like the Mariners' form and confidence since the return of Alan Buckley.
One expert has suggested that this week's tremor resulted from "the reactivation of an old fault zone which has lain dormant for tens or hundreds of millions of years".
This is close to the truth, as the fault zone has indeed lain dormant, but only for ten years – and it runs straight through Grimsby. On one side of it is a very recently created upward motion caused by the powerful resurgence of the local football club. On the other are billions of tonnes of overwhelming downward pressure exerted by the irresistible natural force of local pessimism.
Labels: buckley, earthquakes, flooding, football league trophy, hull, morecambe, optimism, pessimism, science, west midlands, yorkshire
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