1 June 2008
What, no football?
The fat lady has sung and the season is finally over.
The fat lady has sung and the season is finally over.
In the end, we lost out to Leeds by two last minute goals, one in each leg of the play-off semi-final. Such is life, and I think this is something which we have to take on the chin and learn from. The fact is that we drew 7-7 over the four games we played against Leeds this season, and Leeds are a club with money to spend on resources. Now, compare us with Swansea - they missed out in play-offs in 2006/2007, but are up automatic 2007/2008.
John Ward and his staff have done well this season, despite much of the criticism made of him on the message board. I have always said that you need to give a manager a full season before judging him, so the 2008/2009 season will be the one to judge him on. Nothing less than promotion can be seen as success this time. Key to promotion will be the signings Ward makes over the summer.
The Pre-season friendlies are up, and hopefully will be added to soon.
I must praise Fred Story and the board for continuing to steer the club on sound commercial practices. The only criticisms I would make are for the ticketing arrangements at Brunton Park. I would therefore like to suggest the following:
Hmm, someone comes to the club with a lot of money, (plans to) build a big stadium, etc....... then they lose interest and we find out the money was only loaned to the club. Can anyone say "Mileson and Gretna"....?
We have a sustainable club which is now making steady year-on-year progression. I would not want that threatened. I would hope that any change in ownership of the club would continue with a sound business plan which had the best interests of the club and its fans at heart.
Reading and Blackburn are examples of how a club can be built up by a benevolent owner and then sustained.
I believe there are still some fans with "post-Knighton intertia" that are there to be lured back. That would give us home crowds of over 10,000 regularly. Add in another 3,000 away fans for a lot of Tier 2 (and occasionally Tier 1) teams when we get up there, and we can be sustainable, if run well and developing a lot of good players.
There was a conversation in my office not long ago about the football grounds we'd visited over the years, and so I produced the following list of Grounds I've been to. Hopefully I've not missed any out.
I hope to add to this list next season, only repeating those clubs that I've enjoyed visiting.
It all started out with a need for me to have a new banner for games. My old one (Carlisle United Deckchair Army) was deteriorating badly and was also very big, so I decided that my new one should be durable and something I could hold up on my own, if need be. I therefore decided on a flag and went looking for the official Cumbrian flag, only to find that there was no such thing. This set my creative juices running and after a couple of versions were run past friends and colleagues, I created version 0.1:
What I really wanted was to have a coat of arms in the middle of the white band, and so with the generosity of a Workington Reds fan known as RedChina and some of his Chinese friends, I got my hands on version 1.0:
I took it to a few away games over the 2007/2008 season and also started to put it in the Waterworks as well. People are beginning to recognise it now, and I've had a few fans come up and say hello to me at games. This has pleased and amused me during the season, because it is a nice and disarming way to meet up and chat with old and new friends. It is a bit like a friendly version of how troops would rally to their Colours in a battle :-)
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