Friday, 25 April 2008
The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate
I can't say I've ever cared a great deal for Peterborough United Football Club. In this, at least, I have something in common with most of the population of Peterborough.
Partly this is my generalised horror of all those commuter towns north of London. There's never anything to do there because it's all happening down in the capital. Seriously – if you think living in Grimsby is boring you've never spent a week in Bedford.
As far as the football goes, it's about envy and fear. All through the 1980s and 90s, Town's shrewd management meant we punched well above our weight, one or two divisions higher than the teams representing much bigger towns and cities like Bristol, Northampton, Stoke, Hull and Peterborough.
And just as you always knew that eventually Town would mess it all up and crash back to the fourth division, you always knew that eventually some 'self-made' business types, with no charisma, no mates and nothing more fun to do, would see these small clubs in big towns and splash loads of money in the hope of making them the new Reading and winning some admiration to compensate for the lack of love they received from their parents in early life and the incessant bullying they suffered at school.
Sure enough, all those clubs are now comfortably better off than the Mariners. And Peterborough stand poised to surge up through the divisions thanks to the personal fortune of a bored Irish millionaire who stuck a pin in a map.
The one thing in their favour, though, is that they are not Milton Keynes Dons. They may represent perfectly the abhorrent current tendency for the outcomes of football to be distorted as clubs become toys for rich men to amuse themselves with. But at least they haven't stolen their league status from another community 60 miles down the road.
So despite my gut dislike of Peterborough I was looking out for their results all season in the hope that they'd pip the Franchise to the last promotion spot. It's like that presidential election in France where it got down to the last two and everyone voted for the horrible right-wing candidate, just to keep out the even more horrible extreme right-wing candidate.
But of course, the Franchise are already up (they've had even more money pumped in than Peterborough) and their 'fans' will be looking on the internet for the songs that football supporters are supposed to sing when their team wins promotion.
So it's back to business as usual tomorrow. The Posh are just another club with much less history than us and a shedload more money. And if they all keep getting promoted ahead of the Mariners, who will we have left to despise?
Partly this is my generalised horror of all those commuter towns north of London. There's never anything to do there because it's all happening down in the capital. Seriously – if you think living in Grimsby is boring you've never spent a week in Bedford.
As far as the football goes, it's about envy and fear. All through the 1980s and 90s, Town's shrewd management meant we punched well above our weight, one or two divisions higher than the teams representing much bigger towns and cities like Bristol, Northampton, Stoke, Hull and Peterborough.
And just as you always knew that eventually Town would mess it all up and crash back to the fourth division, you always knew that eventually some 'self-made' business types, with no charisma, no mates and nothing more fun to do, would see these small clubs in big towns and splash loads of money in the hope of making them the new Reading and winning some admiration to compensate for the lack of love they received from their parents in early life and the incessant bullying they suffered at school.
Sure enough, all those clubs are now comfortably better off than the Mariners. And Peterborough stand poised to surge up through the divisions thanks to the personal fortune of a bored Irish millionaire who stuck a pin in a map.
The one thing in their favour, though, is that they are not Milton Keynes Dons. They may represent perfectly the abhorrent current tendency for the outcomes of football to be distorted as clubs become toys for rich men to amuse themselves with. But at least they haven't stolen their league status from another community 60 miles down the road.
So despite my gut dislike of Peterborough I was looking out for their results all season in the hope that they'd pip the Franchise to the last promotion spot. It's like that presidential election in France where it got down to the last two and everyone voted for the horrible right-wing candidate, just to keep out the even more horrible extreme right-wing candidate.
But of course, the Franchise are already up (they've had even more money pumped in than Peterborough) and their 'fans' will be looking on the internet for the songs that football supporters are supposed to sing when their team wins promotion.
So it's back to business as usual tomorrow. The Posh are just another club with much less history than us and a shedload more money. And if they all keep getting promoted ahead of the Mariners, who will we have left to despise?
Labels: chairmen, franchise, peterborough, promotion, relegation
Friday, 1 February 2008
A not particularly brief history of failure
I was in the north-east last weekend, wearing a Cod Almighty T-shirt, which meant I had to spend a lot of time saying "John McDermott, Grimsby Town" to people trying to work out which Newcastle player was decorating my upper body.
At one point this developed into a discussion about the original use of black and white stripes, but eventually we had to concede that neither Newcastle nor the Mariners could claim that honour and were reduced to bickering over which club was the first to have nicked their kit design from Notts County.
County, as all non-Premier League supporters know, are the oldest professional football club in the world. In 1862, when they were formed, the game was still played by toffs instead of working men, and County were known as a "gentlemen-only club". As anyone will tell you who witnessed their brutal exhibition of knees and elbows at Blundell Park in August, or indeed Jason Lee's astonishing recent tally of yellow cards, this is not a description that would readily apply today.
The Mariners, too, are older than many clubs, having been formed in 1878. Clubs such as Town and County have an extensive official chronology, encompassing well over a century in the Football League and membership of every division.
But not every club in the league can claim so proud a past. There are outfits such as Peterborough and Scunthorpe which have been members for only 40 or 50 years. And then there are Wycombe and Macclesfield and the like, who arrived even more recently. Finally there are Milton Keynes Dons, whose entire history reads: "2004 – Scandalously permitted to steal identity, players and league status of Wimbledon FC. 2006 – Relegated to fourth division."
An interesting item of history that links the two clubs meeting at Meadow Lane tomorrow concerns the number of defeats and relegations they have suffered. When Nicky Law expertly guided us to the fourth division in 2004 it was the 13th time Town had gone down. Notts are the only English professional club to have been relegated more often.
County have also lost more games in the Football League than any other club: a total of 1,716. Coming up a close second – despite being formed 16 years later – are our very own Grimsby Town with 1,710. In County's case this is largely attributable to their long history. In Town's case this is mostly attributable to the directors deciding that people like Nicky Law and Mick Lyons would make really good managers.
So be grateful for the existence of tomorrow's opponents. Their history is a long and venerable one, without which the fabric of English football would be noticeably less vibrant. And if it weren't for them, we'd be the biggest losers in the country.
At one point this developed into a discussion about the original use of black and white stripes, but eventually we had to concede that neither Newcastle nor the Mariners could claim that honour and were reduced to bickering over which club was the first to have nicked their kit design from Notts County.
County, as all non-Premier League supporters know, are the oldest professional football club in the world. In 1862, when they were formed, the game was still played by toffs instead of working men, and County were known as a "gentlemen-only club". As anyone will tell you who witnessed their brutal exhibition of knees and elbows at Blundell Park in August, or indeed Jason Lee's astonishing recent tally of yellow cards, this is not a description that would readily apply today.
The Mariners, too, are older than many clubs, having been formed in 1878. Clubs such as Town and County have an extensive official chronology, encompassing well over a century in the Football League and membership of every division.
But not every club in the league can claim so proud a past. There are outfits such as Peterborough and Scunthorpe which have been members for only 40 or 50 years. And then there are Wycombe and Macclesfield and the like, who arrived even more recently. Finally there are Milton Keynes Dons, whose entire history reads: "2004 – Scandalously permitted to steal identity, players and league status of Wimbledon FC. 2006 – Relegated to fourth division."
An interesting item of history that links the two clubs meeting at Meadow Lane tomorrow concerns the number of defeats and relegations they have suffered. When Nicky Law expertly guided us to the fourth division in 2004 it was the 13th time Town had gone down. Notts are the only English professional club to have been relegated more often.
County have also lost more games in the Football League than any other club: a total of 1,716. Coming up a close second – despite being formed 16 years later – are our very own Grimsby Town with 1,710. In County's case this is largely attributable to their long history. In Town's case this is mostly attributable to the directors deciding that people like Nicky Law and Mick Lyons would make really good managers.
So be grateful for the existence of tomorrow's opponents. Their history is a long and venerable one, without which the fabric of English football would be noticeably less vibrant. And if it weren't for them, we'd be the biggest losers in the country.
Labels: colours, franchise, history, law, losing, lyons, newcastle, notts county, relegation
Friday, 24 August 2007
From despair to where
Surely even the most determined, hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool, Grimsby-'til-I-cry miserable sod would have to admit that Alan Buckley did a good job turning Town around last season. Perhaps they'd have to be whispering it quietly in an empty room while a bath was running and an illegal rave was in full swing downstairs, so that nobody else could hear them and they could save face, but Buckley's impact is undeniable.
Even his achievement, though, is eclipsed by that of Paul Ince in keeping tomorrow's opponents Macclesfield in the Football League.
I've never thought of Ince as any kind of all-round good sort. I can imagine Buckley being an interesting bloke to have a pint and a packet of peanuts with (dry roasted, I think: dry for his press conference humour and roasted for Gary Harkins' post-match debriefing when he got subbed off against Bristol Rovers last season).
But I can't see the same thing with Ince. I am obliged by the rules and constitution of the National Association of Big Girl's Blouses, of which I am the founder member, to take against anyone with a nickname like 'the Guv'nor' – but when that nickname has actually been made up by the person it refers to, it does tend to suggest the kind of dull-witted knucklehead who sets fire to cats and thinks women shouldn't drink pints.
Anyone hated by West Ham can't be all bad, though, and the Silkmen will be forever indebted to Ince for their escape last season. By early December they were 11 points from safety, having failed to win any of their first 19 league games. Two of their players had suffered broken legs in a 1-1 draw at Stockport. Two days after that, another one broke a leg in training. At this point, if Moss Rose had been razed to the ground by a plutonium egg dropped by a giant red pterodactyl that had lain dormant in the Cheshire undersoil since the late Cretaceous period, Macclesfield fans would simply have sighed gently and said, "Uh-huh."
A month later, in a Buckleyesque reversal of fortune, they'd won seven out of eight and were well on the way to trampling over Boston in their miraculous scramble to safety.
Just to undo all this good work, though, Ince opted to capitalise on his achievement by walking out to join the most despised club in the country in MK Dons. Back in the doldrums, Macclesfield are still struggling to attract 2,000 fans to Moss Rose – where Ince's franchise operation equalised last Saturday four minutes into injury time. If I were a Macc supporter right now I'd be feeling like a determined, hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool, miserable sod too.
Even his achievement, though, is eclipsed by that of Paul Ince in keeping tomorrow's opponents Macclesfield in the Football League.
I've never thought of Ince as any kind of all-round good sort. I can imagine Buckley being an interesting bloke to have a pint and a packet of peanuts with (dry roasted, I think: dry for his press conference humour and roasted for Gary Harkins' post-match debriefing when he got subbed off against Bristol Rovers last season).
But I can't see the same thing with Ince. I am obliged by the rules and constitution of the National Association of Big Girl's Blouses, of which I am the founder member, to take against anyone with a nickname like 'the Guv'nor' – but when that nickname has actually been made up by the person it refers to, it does tend to suggest the kind of dull-witted knucklehead who sets fire to cats and thinks women shouldn't drink pints.
Anyone hated by West Ham can't be all bad, though, and the Silkmen will be forever indebted to Ince for their escape last season. By early December they were 11 points from safety, having failed to win any of their first 19 league games. Two of their players had suffered broken legs in a 1-1 draw at Stockport. Two days after that, another one broke a leg in training. At this point, if Moss Rose had been razed to the ground by a plutonium egg dropped by a giant red pterodactyl that had lain dormant in the Cheshire undersoil since the late Cretaceous period, Macclesfield fans would simply have sighed gently and said, "Uh-huh."
A month later, in a Buckleyesque reversal of fortune, they'd won seven out of eight and were well on the way to trampling over Boston in their miraculous scramble to safety.
Just to undo all this good work, though, Ince opted to capitalise on his achievement by walking out to join the most despised club in the country in MK Dons. Back in the doldrums, Macclesfield are still struggling to attract 2,000 fans to Moss Rose – where Ince's franchise operation equalised last Saturday four minutes into injury time. If I were a Macc supporter right now I'd be feeling like a determined, hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool, miserable sod too.
Labels: buckley, franchise, ince, macclesfield, miserable, relegation, survival
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]