Mick McCarthy Splashes The Cash
Mick McCarthy seems to have got in quite a few players this summer, but he doesn’t seem to be forking out a lot of money.
The latest sighting Jordan Adekunle from Crawley is seventeen, so I don’t suppose he broke the bank.
On the other hand,not one of the new signing seems to be a complete dud!
A Restricted View Seat At Loftus Road
My seat at Loftus Road was marked Restricted View, but it wasn’t too bad.
A Restricted View Seat At Loftus Road
In fact, the experience was a lot better than last time I came. QPR seemed to have bought some paint and repaired the seats.
How Much Beer Was Drunk In Trafalgar Square Yesterday?
Accordiung to this report on the BBC web site, Westminster’s team of cleaners, picked up about two tonnes of empty beer cans in Trafalgar Square yesterday.
if we assume that a can weighs about 20 grams, that means about 100,000 cans of beer were drunk in the square yesterday. Reportedly 25,000 Scots came down to see the match.
But at least little untoward happened!
The same story was reported in The Scotsman and a reader added this comment.
If we can organize this maybe we can handle being independent. Put a deposit on beer cans and the homeless will benefit.
Although, their estimate of the number of cans was a lot lower.
The Germans who came for the Champion League Final didn’t seem to drink much at all.
Greg Dyke On Qatar 2022
Greg Dyke, who is the new FA Chairman, can always be relied on bucketfuls of common sense. His pronouncements this morning on holding the World Cup in 2022 in Qatar are forthright and should be taken seriously by the bunch of elderly time-servers, despots and bribe-takers called FIFA. Here’s an extract of the report on the BBC.
“Even if all the stadia are air-conditioned, I think it will be impossible for the fans,” Dyke said.
“Just go out there and wander around in that sort of heat. I just don’t think it’s possible.”My position, and I suspect the FA’s position, will be: ‘You can’t play it in the summer.'”
I think the whole tournament is already dead-in-the-water and that it probably won’t take place in Qatar. If it does, it will be in fully-enclosed air-conditioned stadia, with virtually no spectators and absolutely no real fans or atmosphere.
At Least There’s No Football Team Like Chastity Bumgardner
It is reported that Charlotte Green is to be the new voice of the football results on BBC Radio 5 Live.
let’s hope that she doesn’t fall into her other persona, where she is described in the Independent as the queen of corpsing. Here’s an extract.
Green almost lost it in 2000 during a story about a woman called Chastity Bumgardner. She had proved less resilient in 1997, however, when an item about the chief of Papua New Guinea’s armed forces, Major General Jack Tuat, led into a story about a sperm whale.
I suppose she might corpse if she got the classic East Fife 4 – Forfar 5, which can happen this year as they are both in Scottish Division One. The dates to note are the September 14 and January 25.
If you don’t believe anybody is called Chastity Bumgardner, just type it into Google and the true story is not funny at all.
You Don’t Have To Be Big
I went to Reading today to see Ipswich play. We did lose 2-1, but Jay Tabb scored our goal.
He is not one of the tallest players being only 1.70 m., but judging by the reception he got from the fans at his old club; Reading, he was popular with the fans.
In some ways he reminded me very much of Terry Dyson, who I saw play for Spurs many times in their famous double-winning side of 1960-61. Dyson was very much an irritant and got a lot of his success by being persistent and in the right place at the right time. Tabb seems to play in a similar vein. According to Wikipedia, the much more successful, Kevin Phillips is the same height, and he’s just signed to play in the Premier League at 40. Having met Kevin Keegan, I can attest that he’s not much taller than my 1.71 m.
Given the fact that the next batsman in line to play cricket for England; James Taylor, is only 1.68 m., do we sometimes put overdue emphasis on size?
I’ve Got No Boxing Day Football Again!
This year Ipswich Town are away at Doncaster on Boxing Day. They’ll of course be no trains.
But how many other matches will be impossible to get to?
Derby on Tuesday, October 1st
Leeds on Tuesday, January 28th
Yeovil on Tuesday, March 11th
Huddersfield on Tuesday, April 8th
Is This The Way To Develop Railways?
It has been announced today that the government has fully approved the Croxley Rail Link. This report on the BBC gives full details. Here’s their summary.
An extension to the London Underground’s Metropolitan Line to serve the centre of Watford has been given the final go-ahead.
The government gave the £118m Croxley Rail Link the all-clear through the Transport and Works Act Order.
The line will be extended to Watford Junction via Watford High Street and two new stations will open, including one near the town’s football ground.
This seems to be a scheme that has a lot of merits.
Personally, it will mean that when I go to see Ipswich play football in Watford, I will avoid the long walk across the town. I think that because of this ease of access, Watford FC will be one of the bigger beneficiaries, as ease-of-access always brings in more visitors to any venue.
This fairly small scheme will have all sorts of benefits. This paragraph is lifted from Wikipedia.
When the Croxley Rail Link is built, direct services into Watford Junction from Amersham would also be possible, thus linking the commercial centre of Watford to the new developments in Aylesbury, as well as providing the Chilterns with transport connections, via the Junction, to the North and other destinations.
I’ve always thought that Watford should be more of an interchange when going north to take the pressure off Euston.
i think we can honestly say that the £118 million that this development will cost, will return an awful lot more in benefits.
But then we’ve got a bit more clever with some of the schemes we’ve started recently.
The Hitchin flyover will take a few minutes off the times for trains on the East Coast Main Line for £47 million. It will be fully open in a few weeks.
Improvements to the Felixstowe branch line and its junction with the main line north of Ipswich, aren’t the biggest of developments, but they will take significant numbers of trucks off the road.
If you go to the Network Rail web site, you’ll find lots of these smaller projects.
I think we should complete all of these before we decide on the detailed route of HS2.
To The Hive To See Ipswich Town
Barnet have a new ground called The Hive and I went there yesterday to see Ipswich play.
As new grounds go, it is a good attempt to create a 6,000 or so capacity stadium.
Note Edgar Davids playing for Barnet and Titus Bramble for Ipswich.
Cissé’s Stand On Wonga
Papiss Cissé is adamant he won’t wear a Wonga-branded shirt, as reported here in the Guardian.
I support his stand.
I would like to see a law, where all loan companies from the banks, through peer-to-peer lenders to the legal loan sharks, have to publish the amount of money they lend in various parts of the country.
That way we could see if shirt sponsorship was a good idea for lenders.
The Anonymous Widower 