Silly Rules
I queued for half-an-hour at the Orient yesterday, because they couldn’t take cash on the turnstiles, as it was Good Friday.
Ridiculous
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain
With all of the death threats and bombs in Glasgow over the last few days and the statement from Paul McBride, I decided to search the Internet to learn more. After all, anybody who is less than a hundred bricks short of a full load, would want the problems to be sorted and be stopped for ever.
I found this excellent web site from Phil Mac Giolla Bhain. Read this post about a tax demand from HMRC and note some of the associated comments.
Tomorrow is another battle in the Glasgow Premier League. It will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 5 Live. Rumour has it that Jeremy Bowen has been asked to commentate.
Leyton Orient 2 – Peterborough 1
This afternoon I went to Leyton Orient to see them play Peterborough in League One.
In some ways they are the most accessible club to where I live. Arsenal are nearer, but although I want them to win more than say Chelsea or Norwich, I would never pay money to see them.
The Two Faces of Football
This morning the news of the threats against Neil Lennon broke.
This evening, I’ve just watched a marvellous display of football as Tottenham and Arsenal fought out a three all draw.
Now, when I was young and growing up in North London, the rivalry between the two North London teams was fierce and probably on the same level as it was between Rangers and Celtic in Scotland at the time.
The rivalry is still there in North London, but it is still at a fierce but fair level. I would doubt there have been any more than a handful of arrests tonight. How many will we see in Glasgow on Sunday?
What has gone so wrong in Glasgow?
Scottish Football Gets Uglier
And now there are parcel bombs to Neil Lennon and two fans. There is also this story on the BBC about a Facebook page threatening the Celtic manager.
I can understand why Scottish football is in so much trouble. We certainly don’t want Rangers and Celtic in the English leagues.
As I said before they should form their own Glasgow Premier League and perhaps play behind closed doors. But would that make the domestic violence linked to the games as reported here, better or worse. Certainly that report in the Glasgow Herald, paints a grim picture of the matches.
And then there’s the sectarian songs, that have got Rangers in trouble with UEFA after the match against PSV EIndhoven.
UEFA were soft on Rangers and they should have banned them from Europe.
Is Josh Carson the New George Best?
I just typed Josh Carson George Best into Google and found a lot of results, like this one.
Here’s an extract.
Paul Jewell has dubbed Josh Carson as “the new George Best.”
That might sound a bit far-fetched, considering that only a month ago 17-year-old Carson had not even played a League match.
But Jewell was referring to Carson’s colourful personality, as much as any potential footballing prowess, especially as Town’s new find actually forgot to go to training on Sunday.
The Northern Ireland Under-21 international, perhaps still basking in the glory of his two goals in Town’s 2-1 win over Crystal Palace on Saturday, was sitting at home when the phone rang – it was Jewell telling him to drop everything and get down to training.
In the end, Carson was only a few minutes late, but Jewell kept ducking the apologies from his new teenage sensation for the rest of the day.
And remember that was before he scored the only goal at Bristol City.
In my mind George Best was only a good footballer and not a great one. In the years I have been watching football, I have seen two great Northern Irish footballers; Danny Blanchflower and Pat Jennings. Both had long and illustrious careers. George Best’s could have been great, but he decided to blow it all!
So in some ways, I hope for his sake, that Josh Carson isn’t the new George Best! Carson has been playing much in the manner of that classic Northern Irish winger of the 1950s and 1960s; Billy Bingham.
Josh Carson Does It Again
The football wan’t the best although in the end the result was what I wanted. Lee Martin got himself sent off and then the ten men of Ipswich attempted to hold on for the rest of the match.
The deciding goal had a touch of good fortune about it, as Josh Carson intercepted a stray pass and then beat David James from over twenty metres. I felt at the time, that it might have been a goalkeeping calamity, but it appears it was just a well-placed shot, that James couldn’t reach.
Carson has now scored three times in three starts and when Ipswich have won in those three games, he’s scored all the goals.
How many world-class strikers have started their career with such a record? Not many I suspect!
Is There A Need For An Evening Football Rail Ticket?
When I’ve gone to football at Ipswich evening matches lately, I’ve had to go by Cambridge for other reasons, so I’ve had to buy a ticket from Cambridge to Ipswich and then one from Ipswich to London. I’ve never had a problem buying the last ticket and the ticket has been reasonably priced. Last night, I booked a seat on the 18:10 to get to Ipswich, as I was travelling in the rush hour. I didn’t want to go earlier as Ipswich is a gluten-free desert. But I was unable to buy a reasonably priced ticket in either London or Ipswich. I then thought, that this might be due to the hour change and there were no late trains, so I left the match at half time and then got a ticket to Colchester for £6.20, where I duly arrived at about nine o’clock on a train that was returning to London virtually empty. At Colchester, I bought a ticket to London for under a tenner and then caught the 21:30 to Liverpool Street. Again the train was virtually empty. So the trains were running and I could have seen the whole match. But the machine wanted to charge me £24 for the ticket, as against the £19.80 I paid to get to Ipswich in the rush hour.
Next Thursday, it’s the Norwich match and I’ll be going. I can get up for £19.80 in the rush hour and back for £5.30 after the match on any train.
It all just blows my head in.
Why couldn’t I get the £5.30 ticket last night and in the end travelled in an empty train?
What is needed is a special football ticket, that applies to evening matches outside London, at places like Ipswich, Norwich, Reading, Watford, Milton Keynes and Brighton.
If you travel out by train, you should be able to buy a much-reduced ticket for the journey home on production of a valid match ticket. After all the return will probably be on an empty train.
Incidentally, some Ipswich fabs don’t buy season tickets because of the difficulty of getting to evening home games by train. So both the train company and the football club are losing out.
Did Jack Warner Ask for a Bribe?
Read this story from the Press Association about a possible meeting between Jack Warner and two of the leaders of the England 2018 World Cup Bid team.
I thought when I read the article in The Times this morning that Mr. Warner might consider it to be a libel. Let’s hope he tries to prove it in a UK Court of Law! I’m sure Rupert Murdoch would enjoy the challenge.
I’m very much against libel tourism, but in this case I might be prepared to make an exception.
How To Relax Before Football
I took this picture before the match at Ipswich against Crystal Palace yesterday.
Waiting for the Football
Is there a better way to wait for proceedings to start?
It was a good match too, with Josh Carson scoring his first two goals for Ipswich. When did we last have two good seventeen-year-old strikers, who’d come through the Academy?
The Anonymous Widower 