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Post by hatter_in_macc on May 17, 2014 8:01:40 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 17, 2014 8:19:04 GMT
I'd rather Hull win as it'll mean more to them and their fans!
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2014 8:21:55 GMT
Higher viewing figures than a mid-afternoon start would bring for the television companies concerned - so we are led to believe, Downy. Well it's lost me. A 10pm kick-off time is late enough but I knew that when I moved here. There's no chance I'll be staying up for a midnight kick-off.
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on May 17, 2014 10:23:11 GMT
so it's a victory for the sky-consuming neutrals. people who don't really care that much about the result, and don't want to curtail their early afternoon trip to B&Q or sainsburys. nice one FA. b-leagues to help the richest, kick off times altered for those who aren't that bothered, and f*** all, yet again, for the match-going fan.
i f***ing hate football sometimes. those tw##s who talk about their team but never go (leeds is full of leeds fans who have been to elland road fewer times than me), those tw##s who only ever watch it from their sofa or from the pub. and yet the game is now tailored for their habits. absolute shite.
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2014 10:37:22 GMT
New FA Cup Final thread started to take it off the CHAOS thread.
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Post by hatter_in_macc on May 17, 2014 17:06:45 GMT
Cheers, Downy - and apologies to all for inadvertently leading CHAOS Off Topic!
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Post by bringbacklenwhite on May 17, 2014 20:00:17 GMT
Fulham (part 2).
1973. Student foray to the smoke to watch Loughborough Colleges vs St Lukes Exeter rugby match at the Stoop Ground (Colleges equivalent of the Varsity match but with more skill and less hooray-henry about it).
14-14 draw which included having Fran Cotton, Louis Dick, Clive Rees and Steve Smith on the pitch.
The late morning game was followed by a trip into London for the rest of the day, before a midnight coach trip back from Marble Arch. So, what shall we do for 10 hours ? A quick peruse of the paper showed that Sheffield Wednesday were visiting Fulham that afternoon. It was the only team available that we could claim a loose connection with. One of our party, Michael, was from Sheffield !!
We found our way to West London and still had time for a pint (to follow the others we had downed since a 6am start from the Midlands). A suitable hostelry was located and a round of "luke-warm London falling down-juice" ordered. Michael was 6ft 6 inches tall and had a blonde afro hairstyle (sort of Art Garfunkelish in a way). After an initial sip of southern pap he decided that he needed to make more room for the rest of the liquid and sought the toilet facilities. Having successfully eyeballed the Gents Door he reached up and placed the almost full pint on the beam above our heads.
Unfortunately the beam proved to be a faux-wood plastic one and the pint pot slipped from his grasp and disappeared inside the offending false fixture. Michael seemed unaware of the issue and set off for the loos while we ignored what had happened and continued to finish our drinks.
However, two minutes later a tremendous shout went up from the corner of the room where the beam met the main wall of the bar. Two local punters were suddenly drenched in cascading beer from above, totally soaking their caps and ruining the page of The Sporting Life that they were examining. I learnt at least three new swear words as we quickly vacated the pub and made our way to Craven Cottage.
I don't really remember much about the match or the rest of the day in London due to an extremely drunken haze.
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on May 17, 2014 21:00:36 GMT
good 'un lennie. i will contribute Fulham (part 3)in about 1998 or '99, we had a midweek fixture at craven cottage. we'd booked advance cheap rail tickets from stockport and got decent prices. i was driving three of us, including my brother and one of our mates to stocky to get it. as we got out of buxton and onto long hill, my mate realised he hadn't got his train tickets. back we went to collect them. it probably cost us fifteen or twenty minutes, but we've never been very good collectively at leaving sufficient time for things. sadly, our mate who is a proper earlybird, and can often be found if he travels separately sitting in the car park of whichever club we're visting an hour and a half before kick off (and who we probably drive to distraction) wasn't with us that day. we needed his organisational skills. got to stockport, parked up, and found we'd just missed our train. we spoke to the ticket office staff and were told that since the train we'd booked for had now departed, we would have to pay a 'supplement' of £35 each. that was virtually an annual salary in 1998, so we said some cross words and decided we'd drive instead. back to my car. my brother would drive down, and i'd bring us back. on the way down the M6, a wheel came off a knackered looking trailer ahead and bounced down the motorway towards us, spinning end over end. while it just missed us, the wheels had already come off that day and would continue to do so - it turned out to be a bit of an eighteen-wheeler day. none of us had the faintest clue about driving in london. we got there in time for rush hour, and couldn't find fulham. in fact we only had the vaguest sense of probably being in west london. not entirely sure how we found the bit we needed, but we parked up on a posh street which turned out to be further from the ground than we'd expected (about two miles). at the game, fulham looked decent. we perked up a bit when we either equalised or pulled it back to 2-1 (can't quite remember), but it definitely finished 4-1 to fulham. not exactly the result we were looking for. a stockport lad, who used to travel on club coaches quite a bit and also tended to start a lot of chants, particularly 'arthur brownlow', wanted to come back with us rather than the coach. although we acquiesced, that meant more driving as we'd need to go home via stockport rather than straight to buxton. he's just recently started watching county again after years and years of bans had kept him away, but after moaning about the distance to the car for the whole walk back to it, he just fell asleep in the back but churned out noisesome fart after fart for the entire journey to stockport. in the confined space, it was like we were a family of badgers determined not to be smoked out by a vengeful farmer's chemical warfare. we should just have left him in fulham to create a modern smog for england's capital. however, we eventually dropped him off in edgeley and slunk back to buxton, windows open to defumigate the car, and to keep my cross-eyed tired eyes fresh enough to focus on the road. since then: - i've become slightly more confident driving in london
- i've been no great supporter of fulham's years in the premier league
- i have ensured i've had cars with electric windows so that if anyone's cutting cheese in the back, i don't have to let their primordial fug roll past me in order to escape via the driver's window.
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Post by bringbacklenwhite on May 18, 2014 8:30:57 GMT
Nice one. Fulham will have a complete chapter of their own soon.
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Post by Epworth Hatter OLD account on May 19, 2014 9:31:17 GMT
“Fran”
At work we have two big clients and both of them have quite a large number of Aston Villa fans. One is based in the Midlands, which makes sense, but one is based in Surrey, which doesn’t.
Anyway, my boss is a Man C*ty season ticket holder and every year we take some of our clients to the C*ty vs. Villa game at the Etihad. I do feel a bit dirty enjoying corporate hospitality at the pinnacle of footballing greed, but there is free food and beer on offer so I’m sure you’ll forgive me betraying my footballing roots for just one day!
We normally get a table with the buffet but this year, due to late booking, they didn’t have any tables left. Rather than cancel, my boss paid for a corporate box. The same amount of free food and beer, only this time you get served at your own table. Our waitress for the day was Fran*. She was about 60 and clearly loved C*ty and loved working for them. I know, it takes all sorts. She served us our drinks and food and we had some good banter with.
The afternoon was going swimmingly well and our clients were enjoying their experience. One slight problem was one of the guys, Mick, was tucking the beer away a bit too quickly. The two clients are both motor manufacturers, but business talk is banned, so everything is usually ok. However, at one point when Fran left the room, the door slammed shut and the metal plate on the door closer fell off. It wasn’t a big deal until Mick commented, “It’s about as reliable as one of your cars, eh guys?” Slightly embarrassed we all decided to ignore him. Sadly he interpreted the lack of response as we hadn’t heard him. So he said it again, this time louder and with a big laugh. Again we ignored him. So he said it a third time, even louder. Midway through his ‘joke’ I stood up suddenly and declared that the teams might be coming out to start the game. It was about half past two, everyone saw it as a deliberate distraction. Except Mick, who stood up and was looking of the window to an empty pitch. Crisis over.
At half time we went back to the corporate box for more food and drink. Fran was there and we started to chat again. We told us a story about a group she had to serve who were not a pleasant bunch – she said they kept telling her to go away. To add to her woes, the head of the group was a C*ty player at the time, but was injured. She didn’t want to give away who he was, she said she was too professional for that! She did describe him as: “He used to play for C*ty, but now he plays for Bolton. He’s Bulgarian and his name sounds like Stillian Petrov, but it’s not him.” Nice with the subtle clues there, Fran. (Although I don’t think Mick still knows who she was talking about.) We lent her a sympathetic ear, but her story was taking quite a while so didn’t want to encourage her too much. Her final line on the subject was, “He was a real pig!” And then she walked out.
The game was ok. C*ty ran out 4-0 winners – which was expected. At full time we went back inside for a final drink. We were talking about the game, when Fran butted in mid flow and started to tell us about her legs. One of the guys had gone to the gents, so she grabbed his chair and just started a plotted history of all her recent medical conditions. It was bizarre. I’ve never had a waitress sit down at my table and say, “Let me tell you about my legs – oh the trouble I’ve had with them…” Five minutes later (that’s right folks, 5 whole minutes - count to 300, slowly; it's a long time!) she was still going. At that point we started to make for leaving and she eventually stopped.
Since then, no one can remember the game, but we all remember Fran. It seems we all, independently, had the same thought running through our mind: “I’m as tolerant as the next bloke, but maybe ‘He used to play for C*ty, but now he plays for Bolton. He’s Bulgarian and his name sounds like Stillian Petrov, but it’s not him’ had a point.
*Not Faye’s real name
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on May 19, 2014 18:19:11 GMT
excellent story eps. although when did five minutes become eighteen thousand seconds?!?
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Post by bringbacklenwhite on May 19, 2014 19:01:04 GMT
Fulham (part 4)Blackpool vs Fulham (mid 1990's) division 4 match. Pool had a "quid a kid" scheme, with a fiver for accompanying adult. So for £8 Mrs Len had a quite Saturday afternoon !! This day they were (obviously) playing Fulham. The teams ran out on to the pitch and the visiting centre-half gave me the impression that I recognised him from somewhere. He had a certainly style to his movement around the pitch. I just couldn't place it though. He was really putting himself about as well. A hard tackling no-nonsense approach in the "man's division". At half-time I managed to see the team sheets in the programme of another long-suffering Dad. The name jumped out of the page at me - Terry Angus !!!! Terry Angus had been my very shy and unassuming centre-forward when I coached the Coventry School Boys Team from Under 11s through to Under 16's in the early 1980's. He was a great goalscorer but struggled a bit on hard pitches and in cold weather. He had signed schoolboy forms with West Brom at 14 though. Here he was 2 foot taller and a backside on him like a prize Aberdeen "Angus" !! Sadly, I didn't get the chance to shout a greeting to him as, 15 minutes into the second half, my gentle protege' took the Blackpool striker out at roughly waist height and a straight red saw him take the long walk for an early bath ! Don't know what had happened to him but somebody had certainly toughened him up. The lad was still playing for Nuneaton at 40 years old in the FA Cup when they nearly did for Middlesbrough. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Angus
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Post by Epworth Hatter OLD account on May 19, 2014 19:32:26 GMT
excellent story eps. although when did five minutes become eighteen thousand seconds?!? Cheers, ars - duly edited. Not sure what I was thinking there. And to think between the ages of 20 and 30 I was an accountant before I was dismissed for no reason. What a waste of 14 years. Ba dum tish.
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on May 19, 2014 20:07:26 GMT
And to think between the ages of 20 and 30 I was an accountant before I was dismissed for no reason. What a waste of 14 years. i actually chuckled at that!
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Post by bringbacklenwhite on May 19, 2014 20:13:12 GMT
Finland Shirt
I was interviewed by a London based press-officer for Age UK (who sponsor our Blackpool FC Walking Football project). He looked about 17, but so do most people to me who don't possess any facial hair.
After a few of the usual questions about background, involvement and benefits of taking part, he threw me a little bit as he asked me why I was wearing a Finland shirt with the number 10 on it and named on the back with "Litmanen".
So I threw it back at him. "Simple", I replied, "It's to cover up the Vietnam national shirt I'm wearing underneath" !!! His chin nearly hit the ground when I showed him the sweat stained, yellow starred red shirt.
(I ought to say here that I have a collection of shirts purchased in countries I or members of my family have visited. I bought the Finnish in Tallin one as I couldn't find one for Estonia).
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