What a day out. Seeing so many incredible footballers on one pitch - apparently the most expensive team ever assembled - was an experience. I'm not impressed by all of that big club stuff to be honest. But it was still a treat to witness Ronaldo on one of his good days.
When I told people beforehand that I had secured tickets for the Europa League Final, hardly anyone knew it was in Cardiff. "You do know it's the women's Europa Final, don't you?" said one pal. Even those that did assumed it would be at the Millenium Stadium, scene of a famous cup win in 2002. But no, this was at a ground I'd not visited before and one I didn't fancy trekking to for a Championship game to be honest.
It was an artful, tactical passing game, with a few hard challenges going in, but quite a contrast to what else we're going to see this season, I suspect. I was taken in particular with how the movement off the ball was so impressive by both sides, but also how hard they had to work, just to close down an option for an attacking player.
All in all, we had a fantastic day out. One of the lads mentioned towards the end how Spanish fans were so much better too. Maybe this was a one off - a final - and maybe we were sat amongst polite Spanish people as opposed to some of the louts we've encountered recently, but the displays of colour and noise from the Seville fans was something else.
As a day out it was also good to visit Cardiff again - a city centre that has improved massively in recent years, but still could do with a bit of love in places. The St David's Centre is good as far as sterile shopping centres go, even Chip Alley (Caroline Street) seemed to be a bit smarter.
The stadium has a good atmosphere, excellent site lines and I was pleased to see blue seats. Cardiff will always be blue and it upsets me to see the mess Vincent Tan has made of the club with his colour change.
And it was a new ground for me. Of the current 92 it is number 67. I
lost Torquay and Macclesfield recently, but regained Mansfield and
Cambridge. I have Rotherham, Fleetwood, Morecambe and Millwall in my sights. Oh the joys. And of the grand total it's 140.
Do you know what the 9th most
watched sports league in the world is? Well, I’ll tell you, it’s the
Championship. The league that will have Rotherham, Blackpool, Millwall, and my
team, Blackburn Rovers in it. It’s bettered by Baseball in Japan and the USA, North
American Ice Hockey and that weird form of rugby in crash helmets they play in
America – and of course by the major football leagues of England, Spain,
Germany and the USA.
The 552 games in the 2012 season were
watched by an average of 17,738 people. On a league of averages the
Championship ranks higher than the premier leagues of Brazil, Russia and
Switzerland.
Even lowly League One records higher
average gates than the Premier Leagues of Greece, Chile, Bosnia and Uruguay –
all countries who qualified for the World Cup.
I started looking into this when I read The
Miracle of Castel di Sangro, a neat little book by American writer Joe
McGinniss following a team in a small town in southern Italy when they reached
Serie B. It struck me that Italian football had a sort of Premiership Lite,
then a sparsely watched second division and then the equivalents of Conference
North and South.
Football as an ingrained part of our
national culture is unique and special. And they hate it. They. The
London-based marketing department of Manchester United hate it. The directors
of the ‘project’ at Manchester City and the owners of the franchise at
Liverpool. How it must mystify them.
All this talk of a competitive League Three
was said to be motivated by getting match practice for the large squads of the
Premiership clubs. You were encouraged to get excited about Chelsea B getting
promoted into League Two and scrapping it out against Chesterfield and Carlisle.
The example is cited that what’s good enough for Barcelona and Bayern to have B
sides playing competitive matches should be available to our big clubs.
And of course our good English boys would
be the best place to toughen them up on their road towards turning out for the
national team, much better than any three month loan spell at Preston North
End.
Even if the argument for match practice was
a factor, don’t you think they’d just double the foreign intake? You always
retain that suspicion about the deeper, darker motivations of any move which
serves to further the interests of the Premiership, especially the bigger
clubs.
What you suspect they are looking to chip
away at is the season ticket holder at Rochdale and Walsall, who should be
following a “major brand” winning over these fans and selling them all the tat
that follows. You can’t help but wonder that the progress of newly purchased
“franchises” wonder why on earth people would watch other clubs in their
catchment area.
Look at the plans for the Etihad Campus next
to Manchester City’s home, these include a mini-stadium with 7,000 seats –
their reserves, sorry Elite Development Squad, currently attract a few hundred
fans to watch them at Hyde. When that ends, City will be punting the
possibilities of a match day experience against the stiffs of Juventus and
Liverpool.
For all its faults, the popular pyramid
league system we have in this country is nothing short of miraculous. A national
culture of loyalty to a club, a centre of a community – a totem for a town.
Something that matters, even when deep down we know that some of the football
is pretty crap. All the scandals of owners cocking it up, clubs going bust,
foreign players coming in at every level – it still carries on. Something still
sustains it as a spectator sport that thousands upon thousands of people take
part in every week.
Make no mistake, the close on half a
million people who watched non-Premier League Football on one weekend in May is
a barrier to the onward march of the greed league. League Three would just be
another way to chip away at the foundations. That daft idea might have been kicked
into the car park for the time being, but there will be something else equally
as mendacious and stupid soon enough.
A pal of mine has had two conversations with the protestors on King Street outside the Kedem cosmetics store.
The first, with the Palestinian lot, was along the lines of do you support Hamas? The initial response was 'yes, of course'. The next question was "have you read what Amnesty International have to say about Hamas?" was met with a blank look, a wiser counsel then intervened, but the point was made. This is knee-jerk unthinking idiocy.
Then there are the protestors against the protestors, who handed out a leaflet claiming the shop is owned by people in England paying English taxes to the English government. No they don't. There's no such thing as an English government, my friend said. "I thought Scotland was a separate country," the protestor replied. Where do you start?
But if this is the level of sophistication, debate, protest and the kind of ignorance we are dealing with then they should all be prevented from protesting on the grounds of stupidity alone. Or maybe we should protest against this protest in order to defend the union. Down that road madness lies, but I rather think we're some way down there already.
It was a perfect evening for football last night. It was an imperfect night, but on balance you have to be pleased with a point and the performance.
I never got round to doing a season preview last week, but frankly I couldn't really add much to the peerless optimist Mikey Delap on his Wild Blackburn Rover blog. I thought his most important point was this one:
"What we lacked last season was that mental toughness and confidence to
close games out. Sure part of it can always be apportioned to
organisation and the system you've set up - but ultimately calmer heads
and better retention of the ball turn those desperate late defensive
lunges into a routine defensive clearance and that hoofed clearance into
a more astute, pressure relieving pass."
It was heartening that we came from behind last night. Tom Cairney still has that urgency and energy to unlock teams and pull rabbits out of the hat, but last night in the second half we dominated midfield and possession because of the protection and cover and challenges of supersub Lee Williamson, who I thought was our best player. Kilgannon was the strongest in the first, despite conceding at a set piece, something that needs to be worked on as the better teams will have a strong physical striker like Jones to be bully around the box.
I loathed the new kit before last night. I thought it was a departure from tradition and made us look like Coventry City (nothing against them). But seeing it close up it's actually remarkably close in shades to the 1991-92 shirt. That away kit is dreadful though, the worst we've ever had.
I was staying away from Ewood in protest and just doing away games, but last night was another step back. Last season we had a few invites and comps, but this was putting money on the counter.
Finally, Venky's were there last night. Most fans will never forgive them for allowing our club to be wrecked. But it's fair to say now they are propping up a loss-making business, proving that their greatest error was to trust certain people who took them for fools and by their stubborn refusal to listen to sense, but we are where we are. Better this than what is happening at Leeds and Blackpool. Hopefully dialogue will soon follow with the Trust and other positive potential partners.
Went to see a football match in a rugby stadium last night. Except it wasn't much of a match. It was the Class of 92 All Stars - Giggs, Butt, Scholes and the Nevilles - turning out with some friends against Salford City, the club they've recently acquired.
Salford beat the old fellahs pretty comfortably, 5-1, but Giggs scored a Perlo penalty which was very entertaining.
The spectacle was spoiled by a few idiots running on the pitch during the match (not just Robbie Savage either). It had a feeling of young United fans day out. There was pretty much a full house in the stadium, used by Salford Reds and Sale Sharks rugby clubs, and the traffic and parking was a bit of a joke.
There was a defiant and jubilant atmosphere in the lounge afterwards where the stars did a Q&A. United fans are pretty optimistic about the future - they've put the whole David Moyes episode behind them and think things are going to start getting much better under Van Gaal.
The Salford City experiment is an intriguing one. Chatting to one of the directors last night it became clear this is no whim. Gary Neville in particular is a driven and ambitious businessman - he has all kinds of plans for the future in all kinds of different businesses and this is being done properly. Part of the mission, they explained last night, was to get local lads playing a decent standard of football and getting this club into a higher league.
Greater Manchester is pretty well provided for with football clubs. Each borough has a first class team that the community should support - Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham. Tameside has a few non-league teams and Stockport has a club which is temporarily in the doldrums. Salford has always been the exception, but it is the one borough most closely associated with United's hardcore support, even more so than the bulk of Trafford, which has Altrincham.
Plenty of people thought the fund raiser last night was the first move of the club from Moor Lane in Kersal to the brand new AJ Bell stadium. I wouldn't bet on it. There is more development potential at the present ground and they'll have been charged an arm and a leg to play in someone else's asset. Why do you think FC United wanted their own place and why have Stockport County got into such a mess?
I don't imagine it's going to be a cakewalk either - achieving Championship standard in 15 years. New players will think they're going to get big money (they won't), fans will take a long time to get behind the club. Salford is a proud place with it's own identity, it's got a feeling like it's Manchester's East End (even if it's west, I know). But as we'll see from the BBC fly on the wall documentary that's being made about the club, there will be twists, turns and heartbreak.
So, does it count as a new ground? I'm claiming it. It's not going on my 92 as it wasn't any kind of league game, but it was a football match in a stadium. Number 139.
My musical and political formation took place in the 70s and 80s. I only have to listen to a few bars of a clutch of 20 songs or so on a playlist I've made (or a mix tape, if you prefer) and I'm transported back to CND marches, strikes, strife, Mrs Thatch and Rock Against Racism.
Here are six songs from that playlist that with a bit of fine tuning, updating and downright fisking are still as relevant today.
Up Against the Wall - Tom Robinson Band
The whole burst of energy from Robinson's music from the late 70s takes you to a London of the Grunwick pickets, Grange Hill, National Front marches, the winter of discontent, multi-racial London and the imminent election of the Conservatives. There's a beautiful sequence in this angry anthem, which sounds phenomenally relevant now.
High wire fencing
on the playground
High rise housing
all around
High rise prices on
the high street
High time to pull
it all down
Then there's an attempt at portraying a two-track London that hasn't quite stood the test of time as West London becomes a wealthy bubble and the edges push further and further out.
Consternation in Mayfair
Rioting in Notting
Hill Gate
Fascists marching
on the high street
Carving up the welfare
state
I'm sure Tom Robinson tweaks that whenever he sings it in the bath, but it still works for me.
Bloody Revolutions - Crass
If there is one song, one band and one lyric that turned me against ideological socialism it is Crass and this, quite the wierdest, widest ranging, oddest song I have in my collection. It is a powerful destruction of the left's departure from humanity in the course of developing revolutionary rhetoric. Crass were impressive and persuasive propagandists, railing against everything. But even now it screeches a loud hailer in the face of tupenny ha'penny placard wavers urging solidarity with struggles they don't understand. At a stretch, you could imagine Christopher Hitchens coming up with some of this. Crass, eh? An anthem for the Neo-Con generation.
"It all seems very easy, this revolution game
But when you start to really play things won't be quite the same
Your intellectual theories on how it's going to be
Don't seem to take into account the true reality
Cos the truth of what you're saying, as you sit there sipping beer
Is pain and death and suffering, but of course you wouldn't care
You're far too much of a man for that, if Mao did it so can you
What's the freedom of us all against the suffering of the few?
That's the kind of self-deception that killed ten million Jews
Just the same false logic that all power-mongers use"
Heartland - The The
This whole Infected album was a masterpiece, a magnificent production, a multimedia experiment and a remarkable commentary on international tension, global relations and just the gut wrenching feeling of unrequited love. The Heartland track takes me to the 1987 election and the fear that the North of England would be cut off forever, ripped asunder and forgotten in a world we don't understand any more.
"All the frightened people running home before dark..."
The image then that follows as Matt Johnson drops a key and warns of a dystopian nightmare we can't comprehend...
"All the banker's getting sweaty beneath their white collar,
as the pound in your pocket turns into a dollar ... "
It all evoked a new world order, Airstrip One, the dark conspiracy of American power. We've been through it and out the other end now. But it's very Naomi Klein, don't you think? Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards - Billy Bragg
Our
youngest lad asked me what this was about yesterday. To me it's about
wanting something better, even if there's a sadness about it that seems
to belittle a lot of political activism.
"So join the struggle while you
may, the revolution is just a t-shirt away".
It's actually a wonderful joyful
celebration of campaigning and politics that takes you through the lost
causes, misplaced optimism and shattered dreams.
The British Way of Life - The Chords
There's a sadness around The Chords, they attached their wagon to the short-lived, ill fated 1979 Mod revival and sank without a trace thereafter. But they were always so much more than just another Jam tribute band. This track may be a bit too much like This is the Modern World in the chorus, but it was a forerunner to many of Paul Weller's later classics which spoke to the army of kids who hung off his every word from the estates and streets of England. It may not have the demons of the Tories and the cops to rub against, but it does speak to solid conservative working class values, dreams, friends and family, shared experience.
"A cinema, a bowling green,
No culture to preserve,
everyone's always staring at each other,
but no-one speaks a word."
I took that as a positive, even then. Even the bitterness and empty predictable routines of football, marriage and Sunday dinners.
California Uber Alles - Dead Kennedys
An interview I read with Jello Biafra shook me to my core when I was about 13. Many punks completely misunderstood what they were all about, enjoying the shocking lyrics and the anger over the deeply political message that these slightly more sophisticated American punks were peddling. It stood somewhere between the hollowed out nihilism of the Exploited barmy army and the agit-prop of the Anarchists like Crass and Conflict. They ultimately had to record a track called Nazi Punks F*** Off because the message hadn't got through. This song though, to me, was another reality check for a rebellious youth in the best country to have been born in. To be born British in the late twentieth century was a lucky time, really. As the song goes:
And it's a holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll do what you're told
A holiday in Cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul
Having always been more of a Christopher acolyte than a follower of Peter, I still subscribe to the Hitchens scripture. And yes, the theocratic analogy was quite deliberate.
The fate of Israel will be decided in
people’s minds, in countries like ours, and on TV screens, not by
bullets and high explosive. Each episode of this kind makes that future
more doubtful.
At first I was staggered by that. I do find the small victories on Twitter and on the messageboards of liberal newspapers to be tedious, especially as the backdrop is death and destruction of real people, not of arguments and points. We may like to think that starting hashtags on Twitter and supporting John Snow means that the Israeli army will cease, but they won't. Britain doesn't have the same power any more. That is the real legacy of appeasement and retreat.
But wars aren't won on our TV screens. It's a fallacy. Propaganda is important, just look at the rampaging ISIS mob as it butchers Mosul, recuiting other nutters to their winning team. Or rather you can't, because they won't allow it. We can't see it, but it doesn't mean it isn't happening. And it doesn't mean they aren't winning.
There is only one country "like ours" where people's minds will decide the fate of that Israel: Israel itself.
I have constantly struggled with LinkedIn, the Facebook for grown-ups, supposedly. There is probably no other social network that is essential to be on as a serious person in business, but there is hardly any serious business that seems to take place on LinkedIn, except recruitment.
So help
me out here. Am I doing something wrong with this service? I posted a fairly existential question about LinkedIn on LinkedIn recently and at first it mysteriously disappeared. Censorship I think you can safely call it.
Then, when I edited out any reference to LinkedIn, I posted it again and from my 500+ connections I got two replies. Then I remembered why I rarely checked postings, posted, or even knew such a service existed.
The frustration started when I kept
getting random people agreeing to connect, who I don't recall inviting.
Maybe I invited then because I mistakenly clicked on the Gmail account button when I was trying to cross-check contact lists I have built up. That, or they spammed everyone in my email account?
For three years now I've bemoaned the faulty user experience on desktop, tablet and app - they are so different that it feels
like another service entirely.
We went to see Allen Blue, one of the founders a couple of years ago. He was excited then about some big changes and opportunities coming down the path. Just as he did in this video on the Guardian site. All that stuff about channels - nope, me neither. Do you know what, I'm still waiting for the great leap forward.
I keep up my profile. I see why that is important. But how it helps the world's professionals beyond helping headhunters find people jobs is still a mystery to me.
It pretty much fails in its social mission too. I moderate a couple of Groups and have joined a few more. Who posts in Groups? Who other than recruiters and SEO hucksters really
uses it as a social media platform to engage and use as a business tool?
I watch the news every day. My faith, my values, what I cherish above all else, is the sanctity of human life above all political squabbles.
It distresses to see humanity stripped from much discourse about Gaza. "They" did this, so "we" can do this.
What particularly upsets me is tit for tat 'yebbut' posturing telling me what I am not allowed to condemn, or pity, or mourn. Like some guy Hillel Neuer in a quote recently listing every current atrocity and challenging anyone to somehow associate any shred of condemnation of Gaza with them all, thus laying down the charge that to fail to do so is actually "anti-Israel". Then some pillock on a demo has a banner likening Israel to Hitler, which a stream of other twits claim is enough to render the entire march as wrong. Or those who think not enough Israelis have died to justify military action. It's all messed up.
It's all been reduced to banter on Twitter. Suarez, Gaza, the Golf, Ukraine, Michael Gove. Instant opinions and powerless passive aggressive nonsense.
It's wrong to kill on such a scale. Wrong to lob rockets indiscriminately, wrong to kidnap school girls in Nigeria, to blow airliners out of the sky above Ukraine. This should never become a zero sum battle of moral equivalence, that the scoring of points on social media is the ultimate forum - the goal, the triumph. Of course it isn't, but it feels like it's getting that way.
Where in our twisted humanity did we lose the capacity to be able to call something for what it is without the Pavlovian response of "yebbut what about what they did?"
We're not unfamiliar with Nicky Campbell's voice in our house. It used to be the first one we heard in the morning, but we get up before he starts his Breakfast show on BBC Radio Five Live these days. We're not immune to his talents and the cadence of his voice and his vocabulary.
So his foray into music isn't a surprise - but the delights of his work with Kate Robbins are. Why do I say that?
For a start I don't really like smokey bar room jazz - not my thing - but it's what Kate does very well. She did the Crying Game song which dominated that movie. But for those of us prepared to like a bit of everything, to dip into something new and to make our world just that little bit bigger, there's so much to luxuriate in here. It's a lovely blend of styles, clever use of instruments and for fans of Nicky a cute turn of phrase at every turn.
Musically, I like Nicky's vocals on Tell My Heart (video above), a tender and uplifting song with probably an unconscious nod to another current favourite of mine, David Ford.
But I think my favourite track is Let's Just See How It Goes - redolent of Paul Heaton and The Beautiful South with lots of quirky references to pepper a doubled headed love song, managing to rhyme Machiavelli and Delhi Belly as it does so.
So yes, something to savour this summer, the soundtrack of our afternoon in the garden, as well as the morning chorus.
I set up the challenge to be disciplined about my reading pile and plough through a number of titles I've been putting off, a few that had been bought for me and a couple where I'd been to an author reading and had them signed.
I reviewed Steve Armstrong's Wigan Pier book on the Discuss podcast number 3. I liked it, it was a fairly searing indictment of two track Britain. Tristram Hunt's Engels biography is beautifully written, that's also reviewed on Discuss podcast number 4.
Stuart Deabill's Personal Situations in London Clubland was a brighter read, I especially liked the Small Faces stories. One of the skills in putting together a book like this is having a good ear for a tale. Fair play to Stuart for crafting a compact and readable tome that stretches a long period.
There's a piece in the pipeline for STAND about the strength of lower division football in England. It was inspired by the Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinniss, which tells the story of how a small club rose to Serie B. It seems in Italy they have a Premiership, then the equivalent of League One, then the Conference North and Conference South.
This and the Kev Sampson one were gifts from my friends Mike Emmerich and Neil Tague. There's something special about enjoying a book that someone gets for you. You start to reflect on the things that bring you together and what you like about your friends.
Did I only read these books? No, I cheated. I sneaked in a few on holiday like the new Tony Parsons crime book, The Murder Bag, which was very good. He's found his muse again, it seems. I read a Lee Child book I found on the campsite library when I'd run out. He has a talent for creating a page turning, but it isn't literature.
The Parsons book I read on a tablet, something I haven't taken to. There are three things I like about physical books that a tablet or Kindle can never displace. First, finding them in charity shops, church sales, of someone's discarded pile; second, getting bought one by a friend who thinks you'll like it; and thirdly, just the sheer joy of handling it and seeing how far you've got to go and holding it up when someone asks you what it is, especially if it's signed by the author as a few of these were. Call it showing off, maybe. But it's been a while since this book did some namedropping.
In this episode of the Discuss podcast we again 'grasp the nettle', returning to the controversial topic of the recent DISCUSS debate: 'Is religion a force for good?' Joining me and Tom Cheesewright in the Pod this month: Angeliki Stogia, a Labour councillor for Whalley Range, Manchester City FC chaplain and Manchester's 'Minister for Business', the Reverend Pete Horlock. Also covered: Uber, 'the dismal science', whether Philip Blond has lost it, and the usual recommendations for your reading and
viewing pleasure.
I broke my vow of silence today. I shouted at a referee at a kids football match. It wasn't over an offside call, or a controversial decision, but because I was worried about someone getting hurt.
These are big, strong, proud 15 year old lads. They have now properly embraced the physical side of the game, I have no issue with that. But when emotions are running high and tackles are late, then a quiet word from a good referee can calm things down. This ref didn't spot what was happening, so I said: "You need to get a grip here ref, or someone's going to get hurt." He didn't like it, but it needed saying.
Thankfully both the managers had words with the lads on both sides who were at risk of losing it. All was well in the end. I totally back the FA Respect campaign and abhor parents who swear and rant at referees. But respect also has to be earned and players have to be protected, sometimes from each other, even if it was a friendly.
This house will become a shrine, and punks and skins and rastas will
all gather round and hold their hands in sorrow for their fallen
leader. And all the grown-ups will say, "But why are the kids crying?"
And the kids will say, "Haven't you heard? Rick is dead! The People's
Poet is dead!" And then one particularly sensitive and articulate
teenager will say, "Other kids, do you understand nothing? How can Rick
be dead when we still have his poems?" And then another kid will say...
If you're of a certain age you can recite whole chunks of the Young Ones off by heart. Certain conversational triggers owe a debt to that incredible cult TV series. Only this week a mate said on Twitter he was outraged enough to want to write to the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen.
I am genuinely shocked and upset to hear that Rik Mayall has died at the stupidly young age of 56.
They say you should never meet your heroes, but I've never had any truck with that. When Rik Mayall did a support gig for the Miners' Strike at Lancaster Sugarhouse in late 1984, I reckon, I got to hang out with him and Ben Elton afterwards. As well as being brilliantly funny, he was also hugely generous and painfully shy. He chucked a ton of money in the bucket for the Blyth NUM lads after the gig, he signed autographs and posed for photos - as you can see - but he was totally unlike his character.
Let the tributes begin. We have lost a national treasure here.
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to present my own radio programme. I dabbled in Australia with my pal Adil Bux, now something of a tycoon in the cosmetics and health industry. Back then music was our life and the high watermark of our show on 6UVS FM was when we interviewed Kevin Sanderson from Inner City, I recall.
I've hung around BBC Radio Manchester and helped them out at the drop of a hat, but they never seem to take the hint that I feel this as a calling. I've enjoyed standing in for Frank McKenna on CityTalk and think I do a good job, but it's Frank's show in his city.
So, in the spirit of Manchester innovation me and Tom Cheesewright have done our own. It's called The Discuss Podcast, we've done three now. We invite guests with something to say, steer the talk around what's going on around us - culture, politics, civic life and we seem to be getting the hang of it.
Take a peek at this film about the closure of the Twisted
Wheel nightclub. Business journalist James Graham has done such a good
job of capturing the emotion of the Northern Soul scene. I hope there is some way to curate and protect these elements of our culture in a permanent way.
There are some more memories of the Wheel in our book Northern Monkeys.
This has been a great football season. I have really enjoyed watching my
favourite football team. I've enjoyed seeing the team get better and
better. The way the players have gelled as the season has progressed and
how their late burst at the end of the season resulted in a well earned
title win and a promotion.
Yep, watching Marple
Athletic Under 15s this season has been terrific. You didn't think I was talking about Blackburn Rovers did you? At any point?
I've fallen in and out
of love with junior football, as I have with the professional game. When it's good, there's nothing better.
When kids football at its worst is a very dark and ugly world. But that's
not for today. Actually one of the things that has impressed me most
about my son and his team mates is how they have dealt with the inbuilt
adversity that comes from playing in the Stockport Metro League - poor
pitches, gobby parents, swaggering opponents, bad referees, games
getting cancelled. They didn't play at all through December, January and
February. Unbelievable. But on the whole, they've just learnt to get on
with it.
The preceding seasons to this one were hard.
The team was a few lads on the wrong side of the teenage growth spurt
and they lost more than they won as they come off worst as games got
more physical.
More than anything though this season has seen all of that come together. It's about
them growing up as a group of young men. I say this hesitantly but there
aren't any dickheads in the team. They are all such good lads and they
work really hard for each other. They're different, they go to at least four different schools, aren't necessarily friends beyond football, but it works. They seem to talk more to each other,
apologise when they make a mistake and accept an apology when someone
else does. Sure, they get frustrated when a decision goes against them,
but they don't let it become the excuse. That isn't the case with a lot
of lads of their age.
There are boys playing with my
eldest son who have been together now since they were 6 years old. I've
seen them change over the years, obviously, but universally they have all
changed for the better. Lads have lost weight and got fitter because
contributing on a Sunday means so much to them. I've seen a free-scoring
forward dropping into midfield and play the best game I've ever seen
him play in midfield. I've seen hard, clean, brave tackles that you'd
stand and applaud if Vincent Kompany did it. I've seen long throw-ins, corners, free kicks, finger tip saves, last gasp clearances, holding the ball up, triangles, runs from deep, headers away. They can win in style, but they can win ugly too, and just three times, I saw them lose with grace. Pick up and move on.
I'm not ashamed to admit I have a lump in my throat thinking about it right now.
And
the managers. Good Lord you meet some grade A pillocks in junior
football. But we are blessed to have Jason and Padraig to run this team.
Even with bad directions to away grounds, I couldn't wish for better.
Here's the other thing about them now, they don't shout and rant and
swear. They guide, they manage.
I had to send the
managers my choices for players of the season and I was stumped.
Genuinely. The only name I couldn't submit was my own son, which meant
it was one less to perm from a squad of 14 or so. I so hope they carry
on, because they have the potential to achieve more and more together.
I
say all of this, of course, because us Dads have foolishly opted to
play them in an end of season Dads v Lads match. Two years ago we
battered them, but they were young boys. Now they are men. They are
about to subject us to brutal retribution. Please be gentle.
The local elections are upon us in Stockport, with the possibility of a change at the town hall. As usual the Liberal Democrats are pursuing their voter suppression technique. Tell the supporters of other parties that they are wasting their time and should stay at home, or vote negatively for someone they don't agree with. You'd expect them to hold both Marple wards, but these are strange times.
The three big issues to look out for in the local elections are these:
The UKIP surge. I see Stockport as prime UKIP territory, loose, white, grumpy and lacking tribal connections to the main three parties. This is partly why the Liberals have done well here. As the election is on the same day as the Euros, they could upset the pattern in a few seats at the expense of every party.
Dave Goddard. The former leader of the council is trying to make a comeback in Offerton after getting beaten by Labour two years ago.
Labour support rebuilding and adding to the gains of 2012. The Labour Party have had an injection of energy and are working hard in target wards around Offerton, Bredbury, Woodley and Manor.
Two years ago I almost wept at how toxic and depressing it had become at Ewood Park. A team of useless mercenaries led by a man of dubious credentials and no connection with the fans. We lost to Wigan and were relegated. I never wanted to come back until this horror had gone. I blamed the Venky's 100%.
Today we ended the season on an optimistic note. We may have concluded a game against Wigan in the knowledge we'll be playing in the Championship next season, but the change is seismic.
The owners are the same, but this young team and a decent minded manager have a good chance of winning this league next season. I look around at who else will be in this division and I think that has to be a realistic ambition. A team with the spine of Tom Cairney, Rudi Gestede, Jordan Rhodes, Matt Kilgannon and Grant Hanley need fear no-one. What it lacks, I fear, is mental strength; something that comes from experience, strong leadership and shared purpose. They need, and seem to have, a belief in something greater than the sum of its parts, that they are at Blackburn Rovers to achieve rather than to just drift. There's a tangible connection between the fans and this team too. That helps enormously.
Handing out the Allez scarves was a nice touch, but honesty and commitment will properly cement that relationship.
And we have to be grateful that all is quiet on the Indian front. They seem to have learned something in the last two years.
I'll be honest and admit that the fans seem to have learned a thing or two as well. Expectation, mainly. I'd be proud and happy to come back with my lads to Ewood next season. It feels like home again.
I didn't take this video, but I was there. It's Neil Finn of Crowded House and Split Enz topping a majestic and expansive two hour set with one of his mates popping along for an encore. How cool was that?
It would have been a great night without this, but Johnny Marr crowned it. I've already seen Morrissey do "There is a Light..." a few years back, and now Marr. Makes up for never seeing the Smiths, almost.
What does it say about me that my favourite music venue is now a cosy arts theatre. Already booked for Roddy Frame in December.
Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is a complex, tangential and often confusing book. Not only did it subvert a new form of literature before it had even really taken off - the modern novel - it has served to provide a new set a particular challenges for modern interpreters of other literary forms; the modern novel as the basis for a filmic treatment, or for a stage play. Many said it couldn't be done, so that a version of it became Cock and Bull, the Life of Tristram Shandy, adapted by Frank Cottrell Boyce, who then disowned this film within a film, which in turn became the basis for Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's The Trip, featured Tony Wilson playing himself, confronting Coogan as if he were Partridge. The only thing missing was Tristram Shandy, a gentleman, propelling into the immediate present, a narrative that speaks for the past and the future.
This has everything and nothing to do with Paul Morley's The North. Pause for a moment if you will and think about what I did there. I'd like to think I don't usually write in such confusing riddles. I would imagine if I were writing a book about the North I would do just that. I would talk to people all over the North, gather their recollections, piece together a narrative based on conflicting yet coherent streams. I may, in my limited way, project some of my experiences in a narrow sphere of my life. Maybe, say, my obsessions with male street fashions and teen cults. I could call it, at a push The North. I may even dwell with an unnecessary and unreliable memory on stories about bus routes around Lancaster. In order to make up for the fact I couldn't be arsed to get on a train to Newcastle, Harrogate, Carlisle, Barrow and Preston I'd pepper the text with cut and paste jobs from Wikipedia and a few facts you could otherwise pick up from hours scouring the internet. People may even like stories about Wittgenstein and Anthony Burgess in Manchester, or that karaoke was invented in Goyt Mill in Marple, or the time I met Dave Lee Travis on holiday in Italy. Or that my Dad moved around a lot when he was a lad. But I wouldn't do that. I'd get the name of Liverpool's manager right though. It wasn't Bob Shankly, you numpty. It was Bob Paisley.
I'm not a contemporary book reviewer, I got this for my birthday last July and it's been on my reading pile for ages. If you want to read a generous review, go and look up one by everyone's favourite cultural theorist Terry Eagleton.
In the end, even trying to review this mess of a book is making me irritable and tetchy. It has genuine, genuine gems. But it is not really about the North at all. It's a series of tangents, a product of a distracted mind, or someone able to frustrate and manipulate his publishers despite not delivering his much promised biopic on Anthony Wilson.
It also defiantly and arrogantly doffs a flat cap in the direction of Tristram Shandy with the rambling disconnections and the stubborn refusal to be what the author claimed he wanted the book to be in his original submission, which he even includes as a form of showing off. It takes brass balls to do that, or a brass neck. And we all know what's there where there's brass.
Made of Stone, the Shane Meadows film on the Stone Roses, was on telly last week. It brought back loads of memories about this important and totemic band. I never managed to see them live; I was living abroad the first time round and didn't fancy braving the flying bottles of piss at Heaton Park.
I don't actually think Ian Brown has a good enough voice to carry a big concert - he has the charisma and the Bez-like sense of timing that holds it together.
Anyway, towards the end of the film there's an interlude about the difficult days of recording Second Coming. Archive footage shows them arriving in a studio in Bury and hanging out at a house in Marple (above). Press cutting here and here pick up the story.
I froze the frame above and could recognise that view straight away - in fact, I narrowed it down to a small number of houses on Strines Road. Coincidentally, it's only a few hundred yards from where Tony Wilson grew up.
A little bit of digging has pinpointed the exact spot and that it was loaned to them by a guy called Derek Bull. There is no more to say, no more to pry. And there is no blue plaque.
Today
is Record Store Day. It's brought back a flood of nostalgia for the greatest record store that ever existed.
Anyone who remembers 'Ear 'Ere In Lancaster knows what I mean. It was a cosier and friendlier version of the record shop in Nick Hornby's Hi-Fidelity. It was also where you could get tickets for gigs at all kinds of places around the North of England.
But from my early forays in there after school, to look meaningfully at prog album
covers from the likes of Genesis and King Crimson, to the more serious record buyer I became it was the centre of my world.
I remember going in as a young teen one Saturday and looking through the racks. Some lad approached me and asked me what music I liked. He was probably just being friendly, but it seemed at the time to be the equivalent of the "got the time, mate?" question at a concert or football match. So I bolted and caught up with my Mum on Lancaster market. Back then there was a ferocious mob called the Marsh Mods who had lined up outside punk gigs and battered anyone in sight. Then there was the Morecambe Punks who would use belts and chains to mash anyone who crossed them. We developed myths and scare stories about the violence these gangs would inflict on you. Most of it wildly exaggerated, but it hung over you and was a caution not to stray too far from safety.
But in reality Ear Ere was safe neutral ground. As I became more confident (cocky?) I became a regular in there. You could listen
on the
headphones by the counter, get recommendations from the staff,
especially one character who worked there called Malcolm. The manager was Roger, or to most of us "beardie". A nostalgic Facebook post earlier has elicited the comment from an old mate that these guys had as big a stamp on his musical DNA as John Peel.
You could put your name down to pre-order records and it was the first time I'd use a nickname rather than my surname with adults. I remember a few of us sneaking out at lunch break from school to buy Going
Underground by The Jam in 1980. Swaggering back in with possession of the fastest selling single of that era.
I used to be in awe of people who would ask for rare records that they didn't have in stock, but would get the staff working hard looking through books and old stock lists and seeing if they could try and order it for you. They'd also sell fanzines, a few t-shirts and badges, some they'd even give away, but mostly it was shifting units in the golden age of pop music.
And these plastic bags were such a status symbol
around school. You'd cart your school books to lessons in an 'Ear 'Ere bag, the height of cool, but woefully impractical for such a purpose.
I don't buy much music these days, but I fervently stick to the principle that the local record store is a totem of a civilised culturally advanced society. So when I want a new album by a band I still follow slightly slavishly - Elbow, Manics, etc - then Piccadilly Records in Oldham Street, Manchester get my custom. I also love their devotion to new music and always sample something new from their top 100 of the year. It's hit and miss, but those moments of serendipity are what makes life interesting. It's what has always made life interesting - so on this day of all days, I raise a glass to the greatest record shop ever - Ear Ere in Lancaster. May perpetual light shine upon your memory.
All football fans have their own culture, their own stock of stories and their own memories. These drip through Kevin Sampson's Extra Time - A Season in the Life of a Football Fan, which has been lurking in my reading pile and I've just finished. His club is Liverpool.
First up, it's entertaining, honest, funny and really well written. You'd expect that from Kevin Sampson and I'm on record of liking the cut of his jib.
We've been reminded this week how much Hillsborough is etched on the psyche of Liverpool's loyal core of fans.
But reading a book that details the experiences of a group of fans through 1997 and 1998, I was struck by how little Hillsborough seems to feature in their thoughts and pub discussions. It was written 9 years after the tragedy and merits only a few scant paragraphs during the trip to watch the Reds at Sheffield Wednesday, where home supporters are wearing novelty hats produced by The Sun newspaper. On that observation the anger bursts through. The sense of injustice grows, then Jack Straw says there are no further grounds for an enquiry. But then no more. It simmers, one imagines, rather than boils over. I guess grief does that.
That we're only gripping the importance of justice now, 16 years later, is staggering.
We had a Downtown Leaders Lunch today. It’s part of a series of lunches where we ask leaders from the city to speak - that’s why there’s no apostrophe, my grammar pedant friends.
The speaker was billed as Sir Howard Bernstein, the chief executive of the city council, but he was unwell. He sent Sara Tomkins instead. Once I’d got over the disappointment and concern over Howard, I must admit I was really quite pleased. Not that Howard was ill - but that we can expose another civic leader to the very people who are drawn to the magnetism of Howard.
I wish I had a pound for every time I get told that Manchester would be lost without Sir Howard and Sir Richard Leese, the council leader. The theory goes that there is a talent vacuum beyond the two knights, and that their eventual retirement will expose a chasm. In a sense they are a remarkable double act, but I have hopefully seen enough to recognise that there’s something else going on.
It’s actually one of the mightiest forces of their leadership that they lead from the front. But also that they lead and inspire the small army of policy creators, delivery teams and political campaigners.
Sara is one of those. As the assistant chief executive for communications, customer and IT, her brief covers some crucial aspects of the council’s work. She spoke about the leadership of the local authority today - how a municipal culture of hard pragmatic politics (and Politics) encourages younger executives and officers to take risks and be innovative.
She also didn’t shy away from issuing a few challenges - property developers and planners need to think much, much more about the kind of digital infrastructure their buildings need. She also faced up to some tough questions over broadband vouchers, disruption caused by the Second City Crossing and traffic congestion.
I think everyone at the Grill on New York Street this lunchtime will have enjoyed what she had to say - they will have also left a little more confident that there are a generation of articulate younger leaders around with the right levels of intelligence and pragmatism to lead the city in the future.
Happy commuters, pic stolen from Northern Rail's website
I am no fan of the shoddy service offered
to commuters in the North of England by Northern Rail. The joint venture
between Serco and Abellio has brought nothing to the experience or helped
economic development in the region. But change is going to come – the clock is
now ticking down towards the next franchise period, just as this one has been extended for a couple more years. Hopefully the terms of the next deal will look very different indeed – a longer period and the benefits of the
Northern Hub investment.
The Rail North plan envisages a larger
franchise integrated with the local transport authorities of Greater Manchester and
beyond – that should have the benefits of integrated ticketing, electrification,
better rolling stock and more services – in short, a service fit for purpose.
It is surprising how little political traction this has. It remains a bold move - an important devolutionary step. Longer term it could also lead to franchises being run by a consortium of local transport authorities.
I do find it laughable that the Rail
Minister Stephen Hammond has set Northern Rail short term targets for improved customer
satisfaction. The first thing the management should do is measure peak time punctuality separately from the empty rattlers ambling along on time during the afternoon. Then they should massively rethink the brutal
approach to ticket checking at most stations by their G4S bouncers – it is
humiliating, unfriendly and intimidating.But they will argue it catches fare dodgers effectively. I believe it is counter-productive.
I also worry when I read the managing
director of Northern Rail, Alex Hynes, saying efficiency and service are his
priorities and those dreaded words – “more with less”.
The Department for Transport must also insist
there is no further running down of trains to the South as First TranspennineExpress have had to give trains to Chiltern. I have noticed more and more trains are made up of just
two carriages in the evenings. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but it has to stop.
This is John Niven's best book and marks his real maturity as a writer. The strength of Kill Your Friends was the laugh out loud portrayal of the horrors of the music industry, building on that as a backdrop for a story about busking it and depraved ambition.
This goes further. You still root for a flawed central character - Kennedy Marr a self-centred and hedonistic writer who turns to English academia. But while Stelfox in Kill Your Friends is utterly beyond redemption and without a shred of a scruple, Marr never particularly does harm. Success comes relatively easy to him, even though he runs away from his responsibilities and is led by his urges.
But the skill of the book is to change pace and mood - to remain consistent to the character and how he thinks through his crises, but it is also incredibly tender in its final third when he tells stories of his family and of death and how Kennedy confronts the misery of his own recklessness. It's a delight at times and I genuinely couldn't put it down. John Niven is definitely one of my favourite writers at the moment.
We rattled through season two of House of Cards and finished it last night. Yes, the conclusion was inevitable, yes, Kevin Spacey is truly brilliant as Frank Underwood. And yes, like everyone else who has reviewed it, it wasn't as good as the first series.
For me, the big problems lie in the rushed script and storyline. So many questions are left unasked, never mind unanswered.
Characters behave in irrational and erratic ways with no attempt to explain - like the President resigning, like the FBI doing a deal with the ludicrous hamster-stroking Gavin, like everything to do with Doug and Rachel. So much time and effort is expended on storylines which go nowhere - Christina getting fired for example, it was like they just forgot about her. The constant presence of a noisy and lively demonstration outside the Underwood residence added another hyperreal layer of nonsense.
Just about all characters had lines that you actually laugh out loud at, because they are THAT absurd. Jackie explaining why she has all those tattoos. Claire, well, pretty much everything she says.
A lot of the politics didn't ring true either - not that I'd know - but it had a feeling like it was the West Wing, but with scumbags. Series 3 will be more of the same with the added presence of the Assange-like Gavin. Yes, we'll watch it, but it won't be worth the wait.
There are two problems for all mini-series now, which House of Cards has helped bring home. First, they simply suffer from a poor comparison to Breaking Bad, The Wire and The Sopranos - the High Concept, the powerful characters, the acting. But secondly, because it's on box sets, you tend to binge watch these days. On old fashioned TV, there's a lingering when something is left hanging, a number of stop-you-in-your-tracks moments that you'd collectively dissect the next day. I don't think House of Cards would scrub up to that level of scrutiny to be honest. You just want to rush to the end to see what happens. Did I do that? You may think so, I couldn't possibly comment.
I've just been on BBC Radio Manchester talking to Mike Sweeney about whether Salford should call itself Manchester.
We covered a lot, summing up I'd say: The University of Salford attaching Manchester to its brand was wrong and wasn't thought through properly. The BBC, however, should make far more of the fact that Media City is in Manchester - a part of Manchester called Salford Quays - just as White City is in London, a part of London called Shepherds Bush.
Manchester's local leaders are in France this week at a show called MIPIM, promoting a global metropolitcan city - not Tameside, Salford, or Trafford but Manchester, which is known globally. There is a global football brand known the world over - they are Manchester United, not the Trafford Red Sox.
If you were a Londoner from Islington, you'd be proud of it. But you'd be a Londoner first.
Mike asked me where I'm from and I said: "Marple - where Manchester meets the Peaks." It's a question of identity I think we need to consider. Notice I didn't say Stockport.
Those of us of a certain age and of a certain political persuasion will have had some run-ins with the far-right. Marching against the National Front in the 1970s and 1980s was an important part of your political education. Those of us who took an even more detailed interest in the people and personalities of the struggle will remember the name Joe Pearce. He was the leader of the Young National Front and the editor of Bulldog. One of the enemy.
I was a subscriber to Searchlight magazine for many years and rather enjoyed seeing the far-right fragment as bitterly as the far-left was capable of doing. It was also good to read of whistle-blowers and further startling revelations from deep inside the beast. Former fascist street warriors like Matthew Collins and Ray Hill properly turned the tables on their former comrades. Other names faded from view. One was Joe Pearce, who later resurfaced a biographer of GK Chesterton and had undergone a journey to the Catholic faith.
At this point some have thought that journey isn't a particularly long one. Indeed, Gerry Gable in Searchlight doesn't believe Pearce is for real. There's a piece where he describes the christian thinkers that Pearce has written about as notorious anti-semites. Frankly, this is bollocks.
Personally, I enjoyed most of the book. I wasn't impressed with how he referred to those protesting against the Front as "Marxists". The leadership of the Anti-Nazi League may have been, but most people who hated what he stood for were just ordinary decent youth.
One of the best tales was when Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers took Pearce for a beer and tried to talk a bit of common sense to him. By showing him a bit of human love, he lit something in a life consumed by hatred and prejudice.
I'm a Catholic, but I can't claim to understand theology or the liturgy in the way Pearce does. Instead I do rather respect how he's chosen a path of life that boils down to the simplicity of the message.
I remember him speaking at the 2012 North West Football Awards about the disgraceful treatment of Steve Kean by the Blackburn Rovers fans. Hopefully as his stated aim is to "engage" with the fans, he will have the opportunity to understand recent history a little better.
He said: "One of my first tasks will be to engage with the Rovers fans. I think it’s fair to say they’ve had a difficult time over the last few years, but that is changing now and I want to be part of that."
Maybe he could pop into the Darwen End and meet with the BRFC Action Group, who I was amazed to discover have an office in the Enterprise Centre, maybe that's where Shebby Singh is hiding.
I keep being asked if things have settled down at Rovers. Whether the Venky's have stabilised the ship. On one level, they have. There's no sign of Shebby Singh, loads of dead wood and high earners have been shipped out, though Rovers are still paying their wages, I hear. But the cost base is far in excess of any projected turnover. There will be a day of reckoning for all of this at some point.
Performances are patchy. Beating Reading offers a false dawn, but then losing to Bolton draws the curtains on that again.
I just hope Alan Myers doesn't have to open the excuses draw for anyone this weekend. There's an important game to win on Sunday. Quite how a new spin doctor is going to help us achieve that is beyond me, but it's the only meaningful game left this season.
When I reviewed Kevin Sampson's excellent move into crime drama, I applauded him for developing the layers and foibles of an important central character - the city of Liverpool. MJ Hyland does the exact opposite with this powerful and stark story of a young man. It isn't timed or placed - but I put the first part in Lytham and the second in a large institution in Manchester. You quickly realise once you've done so, that it really doesn't matter.
Without spoiling the plot it has a big turning point about a third of the way in - and essentially hinges on the first person account of the central character Patrick Oxtoby, an early twenties loner on the rebound from a break-up and distant from his parents.
Stripped to its raw dialogue, with sparse descriptions of places only as
they enter two very narrow worlds as the central character sees them
(high functioning autistic?) - it is a remarkable book.
Maria's writing style is direct, tight and relentlessly focuses on the state of mind of Patrick. Good writing takes you through that range of emotions - irritation, sympathy, disgust sometimes, but you do root for him.
A showreel for Michael Taylor, versatile and energetic events host,
journalist and producer. Includes interviews with Lloyd Dorfman of
Travelex, Fred Done of BetFred, Dame Eliza Manningham Buller former head
of MI5 and author Cass Pennant. Clients include: Deloitte, ICAEW,
Downtown in Business, GrowthAccelerator, Ear to the Ground, Rapport
Events, Journey9, Daisy Group, Grant Thornton and Insider Business TV.
As a day out it was also good to visit Cardiff again - a city centre that has improved massively in recent years, but still could do with a bit of love in places. The St David's Centre is good as far as sterile shopping centres go, even Chip Alley (Caroline Street) seemed to be a bit smarter.
