On the Carlisle United Message Board a mysterious new poster named Ultras Carvetti has issued a call to fans to generate louder (and better quality) vocal support at Carlisle games. The majority of respondents seem in favour of this, so hopefully it will lead to something. I am one who has felt that our vocal support has become fractured by unrhythmic drumming and poor quality adopted chants and songs. It is not beyond the wit of Cumbrians to come up with some good quality chants and sustain them through games. There was also a call for more flags and banners, with several designs being suggested. On this point I disagree with Ultras Carvetti, in that I see nothing wrong with there being a variety of flags and banners. I don't think we need to stick with a single design. I, for example, like my Cumbrian flag and will be sticking with it. However, it did lead me to post an earlier design for my Cumbrian flag which met with some approval:
I did prefer that raven design myself, but a strawpoll amongst some friends showed the coat of arms tri-colour to be more popular. However, I am now tempted to get a large raven flag made up for use in my garden as an awning.
I've not done well with my away trips this season, with games being postponed or moved due to weather or other fixtures, and missing some due to illness. One such game was Exeter, and I decided to take a couple of days leave and go to the rearranged game on a Tuesday night. I planned to make a long weekend of it, and stayed on the Sunday night at a friend's in Cornwall. On the Monday I decided to go to the Eden Project, but discovered that it was closed for training. My day then went from bad to worse as I inexplicably became depressed and started dwelling on my late wife and our trips together. At this point I realised I wasn't in the right frame of mind to stay down in the south west for another couple of nights and so I drove all the way back up to Carlisle. Such is life. There are more important things than football. As it was, it sounded on the radio like I missed an interesting game, as we went 2-0 up, conceded two in the last eleven minutes, then won 3-2 in extra time!
Overall, though, January was a good month for us with good performances in the FA Cup (as mentioned last issue) and the PaintPot. We've got the second leg of the Northern Final to look forward to in February, and we go into it on the back of the 2-1 win at Elland Road in the first leg. Worryingly, this was the situation going into the second leg of the play-offs against Leeds a couple of seasons ago! We do seem to do well against Leeds, and hopefully this time we can go a step further and secure a place at Wembley.
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