Thoughts on This and That

City have announced that this seasons £138 season ticket offer is to be repeated next year, as long as you buy your ticket before December 31.

While many seem to be celebrating this as great news, a brilliant offer I’m more inclined to worry that the club need to get some cash in quickly for one reason or another.

Cynical? Moi? We’ll see, but I’m not about to start doing cartwheels at the news,

After three wins in a row there was disappointment at Valley Parade yesterday, as City could only manage a 1-1 draw with Stockport, who had been through a gruelling cup tie less than 48 hours previously, which had resulted in extra time and penalties.

Of course it wasn’t our fault Stockport equalised in the last minute to deny us a win, even though at no point did we ever really take the game to them, and we decided to bring off threatening attacking players in the last few minutes and attempt to hold onto what we had.

Nope, it was the ref who sent one of our players off (at 0-0) and was, according to City fans, totally biased against us. That is, of course, no surprise - as the guy who sits in front of me said at full time “the refs are looking to even things out for the opposition because we’re a big club in this league, and that’s what they do”.

Football has obviously changed dramatically in the last few years if this is the case as, a few years ago when we were in the Premiership one of the oft heard complaints was “the smaller clubs never get anything from refs, all the decisions go to the big boys”.

Or maybe it’s just that refs aren’t biased in either way after all? Just a thought.

Yep, the manager was crap and, belatedly, it appears that the public maybe beginning to realise that the so-called “golden generation” of superstars aren’t all that after all.

But when the analysis offered by BBC pundit Alan Shearer, one of England’s better players of recent times, and someone strongly linked with the vacant England managers job, was this….“We need to get stuck in. We need to let them know we’re there. Play like Englishmen. If we need to commit a foul to get the crowd going then so be it”, you know that there isn’t much hope for football in this country until a lot of attitudes to the game get changed. The sad thing is I’m willing to wager that most “fans” sat watching would have been nodding their heads and agreeing.

Until England learn how to respect the ball, and use it intelligently, they’ll continue to do nothing on the world stage and, unfortunately, that’s something that needs to be instilled from an early age into players, will the powers that be ever wake up? I doubt it.

Having said that the opportunity to watch a football tournament without a load of know-nothing fuckwits hijacking it and constantly giving their ill-infomed opinion can only be a good thing!

Pakistan to me is not really anything more than the country my dad was born in, I don’t in any way feel Pakistani and I’ve got no real links there, I’ve never visited the place and I don’t have a particular desire to.

In view of that I can’t say I’ve been paying any particular attention to what has been going on there with the military rule imposed by General Musharraf, a couple of people have asked me about it, but I’ve been pretty indifferent, however that all changed today when I read that Imran Khan had gone on hunger strike, primarily because he was one of my first sporting idols when I was growing up.

Obviously a bit of reading doesn’t make me an expert, and I’m not going to offer any deep thought on the situation, but if anyone’s wanting to find out more about what’s going on the Pakistan Blackout and The Emergency Times might be worth a read.

Former Great Britain Rugby League captain Mike Gregory died today, aged just 43, after a four year battle with a form motor neurone disease, picked up from an insect bite while coaching the Great Britain academy side on a tour of Australia, the disease cut short what looked to be a promising coaching career for Gregory, who had led Wigan to a Super League Grand Final from 3rd place, and a Challenge Cup final in only a year in charge of his home-town club.

I’m not one of these professional mourners who comment on anyone and everyone who passes away but this one has struck me a little, he was one of the first RL players I can recall from when I started following the game on television and he’s one of those rare people involved in professional sports who you will struggle to find someone who’ll say a bad word about him.

Mike leaves a widow and two children, one five years old and the other nine - no child deserves to lose a parent at such a young age and if thoughts should be with anyone at the moment, it should be them.

Funnily enough I watched this clip during my youtube day yesterday, Mike is the last try-scorer on the compilation, which harks back to the days when GB used to produce a few more skilful players…

I feel like I need a holiday, which isn’t surprising as I’ve only recently come back from one, and that’s the way I always feel after I’ve been away.

I’ve actually been back a couple of weeks now but, as I’m so busy, I’m only just getting round to writing about it - it won’t surprise anyone who reads this blog to find out that I went to Spain again, and it will surprise you even less to hear that I started and ended in Madrid again, I won’t write about that though, it was as fun as usual, I drank a lot, spent a lot of time in the Retiro, met up with old friends and made some new ones while having lot’s of fun - so just the standard trip to the city then!

Most of my trip was spent in a small town in Andalucia called Cazorla, the reason I ended up there as I did another Pueblo Inglés program, just like the one I did in La Alberca last year and, despite some reservations, and almost dropping out, I’m very glad I went as it was just as much fun the second time around, though it was very different.

The town itself was typical of small town in this part of the world, surrounded by olive grove after olive grove, with the usual surprises you unexpectedly seem to encounter in these parts, a seemingly unspectacular and little-known town just happened to have a castle and the ruins of what must have once been a large cathedral, back in the day.

It was a nice enough place to walk around, with a couple of nice shady squares and would be worth a day or so if only for the walking possibilities in the surrounding Sierra de Cazorla, and the national park - which we paid a visit to on an excursion from the course. Like all towns in this part of the world the threat of over-development for the needs of foreign second home-owners is hanging over the place, with newer buildings springing up around the centre but hopefully it won’t suffer for it like some places have.

A few pics I took of the town and the national park can be found here.

As a British Rugby League fan, and one who is far more concerned about the game as a whole rather than my own solitary club, I should be ecstatic at the fact that we’ve won our first test series since 1993 by beating New Zealand 3-0 over these last few weeks and, in some ways, I am - but I’m not so ecstatic about how some people are getting ridiculously carried away by the whole thing.

Maybe it’s just a reaction to being success-starved for so long, and people just want something they can crow about but, if you scratch beneath the surface a little I’d say there isn’t too much to get excited about just yet.

New GB coach Tony Smith is being hailed as some kind of coaching genius for inspiring the series win, yet in the 5 previous tests on home soil against this opposition GB have won 4 of them, so it’s not exactly out of the blue that we’ve been able to defeat them so convincingly, and that’s before getting started on the “strength” of the side that was sent over.

The Kiwis always seem to have problems of one kind or another when trying to put an international outfit together, suffering from multiple withdrawals and clubs not wanting to release players, and they were further hampered this time out by the retirements of two true Kiwi RL legends in Ruben Wiki and Stacey Jones, the sides biggest two players and leaders over the last few years, and it has shown on the pitch - not only over here, but before that when they were thrashed 58-0 by Australia, who were missing one or two of their top stars themselves. This year they have also been hit by the departure of coach Brian McClennan, with the inexperienced Gary Kemble having to come in and try and pick up the pieces.

Another thing that has to be questioned is the commitment of some players to the Kiwi cause, we’ve seen players unwilling to battle their clubs to be allowed to play in test matches in the past and, with the world cup coming up next year, we’ve now got a succession of players who have played for the Kiwis deciding that they actually want to play for Samoa, where they have roots either themeslves, or through family, though I wonder if that will change if Samoa don’t qualify, no doubt it will and the likes of David Solomona will come crawling back, but you can hardly expect such players to be relied upon when they are willing to chop and change their loyalties every other year.

It was a real boost for the game when the Kiwis defeated the Australians to win the tri-nations back in 2005, but it’s all been downhill from there with only 2 wins in 13 tests subsequently for the sake of themselves, and for international RL hopefully they’ll be able to get themselves back on track in time to ensure next years World Cup is truly competitive.

Although the Kiwis were bad GB can obviously take some positives and, if nothing else, our players should now have a bit more confidence after experiencing success on the international stage but the brigade saying “now bring on the Aussies”, “Tony Smith is an international coaching guru” and “Rob Burrow is the scrum half we’ve been lacking for 20 years, if only he’d been playing against the Aussies these last few years” are obviously a lot easier to convince than I am. Let’s see how a half-back pairing of Rob Burrow and Leon Pryce cope with the Australians, when they won’t be playing with the momentum GB have been able to build against this poor Kiwi outfit, let’s see how Jon Clarke does at dummy half in a similar situation, and let’s see how we can respond to letting in soft early tries against them and a stronger Kiwi side before we declare that Tony Smith has turned a team of also rans into world beaters.

I’ve seen and heard Bradford City being compared to many things over the years, most unfavourable, and most probably justified, but even I was dumbfounded by what amazon.co.uk decreed a “related search” when I bunged the club’s name into it’s search facility yesterday….

If anyone can think what the comparison is, please let me know!

I knew I hadn’t blogged much recently, but having just had a look at how infrequently I have updated it recently even I got a bit of a shock.

Strangely enough I seem to have switched over to actually writing things down on paper, pretty much keeping a journal, over these last few months, which is strange as it’s something I’ve never done before - and it’s not as if most of the things I write are especially private.

I’ve recently downgraded from lots of digital TV channels to the standard 1-5 too, whatever next?