Andy Adcock
Worst person on Birdforum
We've just come back up from the National League, that wasn't fun!
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Birding and football (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter wolfbirder
- Start date
wolfbirder
Well-known member
I know, its all relative isn't it.
lockbreeze926
Well-known member
Re Evan Williams,goalkeeper - yes, Welsh name but was actually Scottish. Played mostly for Celtic, including in a European Cup final. Just turned 80 a couple of weeks ago.
On another football/birding note, remember the Eagle Owl that perched on a crossbar during an international match?
On another football/birding note, remember the Eagle Owl that perched on a crossbar during an international match?
Selsey Birder
Well-known member
Portsmouth Season Ticket holder for 37 years, saw my first game in 1975 at home to a then relegated Manchester United (0-0) and yes as to your theory I was born in Portsmouth. Highlight has to be two FA Cup Finals in three years (one win, one loss) and we knew it would not last. Used to travel all over the country in my twenties and have seen them at over 60 league grounds.
Ian
Ian
wolfbirder
Well-known member
Fair play.
Andy Adcock
Worst person on Birdforum
I first went to see Notts County v Doncaster in c1968 with my Dad and Grandad, my first away trip was to Hereford in 1976, we won 1-4.
Back in the good old days when you could get tickets on the gate, on the day, I went to watch Forest beat Liverpool at the City ground in the European Cup but even before that, I was getting tickets off a work mate to go and watch top flight football at Derby, I was there when Norman Hunter and Frannie Lee went at it and got sent off.
When I worked at Boots, we had our own England supporters club, so big was the number of employees and I used to go to most games at Wembley, I was even at the notorious England v Scotland game in 1977.
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kb57
Well-known member
Born on Westgate Hill more or less within sight of St. James's so inevitably a Toon fan, for better or worse. My first game with my grandfather was (I think) a 0-1 defeat to Aberdeen in a pre-season friendly - I still regret the fact I was deemed a little too young to attend the Inter-City Fairs Cup games in 1968-69, still the only trophy we've won in my lifetime - although I remember the excitement of 'Ujpest Dozsa 2- Newcastle 3' flashing up at the bottom of our screen on Tyne Tees TV, after being 2-0 down at half time.
In my early to mid teens birding certainly took precedence over anything else, and the first competitive game I went to was when I was about 16 - an FA cup 3rd round tie with Scunthorpe Utd. - 30p to get in to the Gallowgate end, and genuinely scary as drunks on the upper part of the terraces lobbed brown ale bottles over our heads in the direction of police dragging people out of the crowd. Weren't the 1970s great!
After going to a few games that season (in the relative safety of the East Stand) I had a long hiatus from football until my son was old enough to go to games from the 1999-2000 season - CSKA Sofia in the UEFA Cup was his first match, in the Bobby Robson era - Alan Shearer, Warren Barton, and the sadly departed Gary Speed all playing. Very difficult to get a ticket for a league game in those days unless you were a season ticket holder, but we saw a lot of European ties and domestic cup games.
I've never been a die-hard supporter, football is always secondary to other things in life for me, but my son and my second wife are both sports fans and more than happy to come to games - although its getting a lot harder to get tickets again! I know there is a lot of negativity towards Utd. because of the Saudi ownership, but I'm afraid to say I and most other fans don't care - after the long-term depression of the Ashley era I'm just pleased we are able to compete and play attractive football again.
In my early to mid teens birding certainly took precedence over anything else, and the first competitive game I went to was when I was about 16 - an FA cup 3rd round tie with Scunthorpe Utd. - 30p to get in to the Gallowgate end, and genuinely scary as drunks on the upper part of the terraces lobbed brown ale bottles over our heads in the direction of police dragging people out of the crowd. Weren't the 1970s great!
After going to a few games that season (in the relative safety of the East Stand) I had a long hiatus from football until my son was old enough to go to games from the 1999-2000 season - CSKA Sofia in the UEFA Cup was his first match, in the Bobby Robson era - Alan Shearer, Warren Barton, and the sadly departed Gary Speed all playing. Very difficult to get a ticket for a league game in those days unless you were a season ticket holder, but we saw a lot of European ties and domestic cup games.
I've never been a die-hard supporter, football is always secondary to other things in life for me, but my son and my second wife are both sports fans and more than happy to come to games - although its getting a lot harder to get tickets again! I know there is a lot of negativity towards Utd. because of the Saudi ownership, but I'm afraid to say I and most other fans don't care - after the long-term depression of the Ashley era I'm just pleased we are able to compete and play attractive football again.
wolfbirder
Well-known member
I get that KB
Good post.
We’ve had much the same at Wolves( on a lesser scale as we are a considerably smaller club) but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the 2-3 excellent years provided by our Chinese owners, when morally I might be criticised.
Jeff Hopkins
Just another...observer
As an American fan of football and a birder, I may be an anomaly here, but I've been a Man U fan since the early 70's. Never been to Old Trafford though. Someday. Also been to a match in Buenos Aires between River Plate and Belgrano Cordoba in the 90's, a few Women's World Cup matches when it was here in the 90's, and some CONCACAF Gold Cup matches a few years ago in Philly.
wolfbirder
Well-known member
Know the town quite well as my first wife was from Hallifax (Brackenbed Lane I think, near Mixenden).
Been to watch the Town a few times, I think you could walk between sides by paying a small amount, that might be a figment of my imagination though
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wolfbirder
Well-known member
Yes mate that’s the one. Small world isn’t it!
kb57
Well-known member
Women's football certainly took off a lot earlier in the States, although you came late to the game you don't seem to have had that attitude of it being a man's sport. This was obvious during the 2012 Olympics in UK - I called at the St. James's Park ticket office in Newcastle to collect my Brazil vs Honduras men's tickets and the town was full of USA supporters for the USA vs New Zealand game which was being held there that day. I regret not buying a ticket, there were still a few available at the ticket office on the day - of course reflecting the lower profile of women's football at the time in Britain.
Women's football is catching up now - the women's Euros last year were very well attended, helped by the fact that England actually won.
Andy Adcock
Worst person on Birdforum
I'm not a fan of women's football generally but the Lionesses were brilliant today. A couple of the goals were 'Worldies' and I've been impressed that they don't go to ground (had to stop myself there from saying 'don't go down like men do'!)like the men do and actually stand up to some pretty, robust challenges that would see most of the men squealing and falling to the ground as if shot.
The women are still, naively maybe, honest and oddly, the only women's team I've seen that employ, dishonest tactics like the men, is the USA under the hideous Rapinoe. There are several videos of her going to ground and being called out by her opponent, happily, it's still uncommon in the womens game.
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Frank van Drogen
Not so important
I found this one brilliant....
Richard Prior
Halfway up an Alp
I found this article in today’s Guardian very well written…
Welcome to Wrexham – but what about us?
Simon ChildsThe club’s Hollywood ‘fairytale’ highlights the predicament of grassroots clubs trying to survive in the modern game
In future generations, bright-eyed, football-mad children on their first visit to the Racecourse Ground in north Wales will ask: “Why are we Wrexham fans, Mum?” And they’ll be told: “Your father was a Wrexham fan, and your father’s father, and your father’s father’s father … well, your father’s father’s father watched Welcome to Wrexham with Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney on Disney+.”
As a fan of a club playing in the same league as Wrexham, the unfolding hype has been an uneasy watch. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with random people from around the world deciding to support Wrexham, but you do have to wonder if some of them are a bit gullible if they’re choosing their team after watching a celebrity-fronted docu-commercial.
The second series of the show starts with a piece to camera where Reynolds and McElhenney pretend to be lost for words as they deliver news that King Charles is coming to the north Welsh town, and will pay the club a visit. The players and fans seem baffled at the circus of money and power that has descended on them. “You’ve got two Hollywood actors, you’ve got the royal family in Wrexham. How do you even put them together? I’ve no idea,” says a perplexed Wrexham striker, Ollie Palmer.
The answer to how this all came together has to do with two celebrities attaching themselves to the rapidly accelerating global commodification of football. The apparent authenticity of football culture in its native home is now a highly marketable product. It’s red-carpet glamour meets terrace culture. This particular synthesis has been successful in creating bingeable content for the highly competitive streaming market.
But is Welcome to Wrexham really about football? It seems to be as much about the celebrity of Reynolds and McElhenney, who are executive producers of the show, and the bromance between them. There are self-deprecating jokes about midlife crisis; there’s a cutesy subplot where McElhenney feels left out as Reynolds goes to a game without him; there’s an entire episode devoted to their first visit to Wales.
At times, the documentary feels like a corporate video. At the end of the first series, the dramatic tension of a crucial playoff game is interrupted so that the celebrities can wax lyrical about their executive director, who is also a consulting producer on the show. At other times, it’s just very Hollywood. “I can’t believe this is my life,” says McElhenney at one point, standing on the pitch he owns, marvelling at a situation that he paid to contrive.
This is where we are now. As the money involved in football becomes ever more absurd, clubs are finding it harder and harder to simply exist, let alone compete. Some get lucky and become the subjects of cringey documentaries or multibillion-pound sportswashing operations for autocratic petro-dictatorships, while others fight for their lives or get stripped for their assets.
My own club has been on the dirty end of this particular stick. In what Disney+ subscribers call “series one”, and what real, authentic football fans like me know as the 2021-22 season, Wrexham bought the aforementioned Palmer from AFC Wimbledon. Palmer went on to become pivotal in the Welsh side’s improved late-season form, but the move deprived cash-strapped Wimbledon of our only recognised striker and, ultimately, formed part of the story of our tragicomic relegation from League One. Nobody made a documentary about that, but they should have.
Palmer later revealed that he had reluctantly accepted the “irresistible” terms offered to him by Wrexham. The Hollywood duo’s money had gazumped Wimbledon, a club I part own, as I have one share, for which I paid £25. This fan-owned model was what Wrexham used to have too, before it got pumped full of Hollywood cash, like a celebrity’s behind full of filler.
Reynolds and McElhenney clearly really care about the club and the community, and it would be churlish to deny that their purchase of Wrexham is a lesser evil. Imagine, for instance, a series called Saudi Mags, where Mohammed bin Salman takes a break from ordering the murder of dissident journalists to go to Newcastle and eat a stottie with Peter Beardsley in Granger Market. And yet that seems like a low bar.
Clearly a savvy businessman, Reynolds tells us: “I’ll lie awake at night for hours just thinking about how we can better centre this club on the world stage.” The fact that this happens during a scene in which he films an advert for an online password management brand at the Racecourse, using Wrexham players as actors, suggests he may not be thinking of the kind of global acclaim most fans dream of that comes with great football.
The Disneyfication of football is no fairytale. It’s part of a wider shift that will have consequences that are hard to predict but seem unlikely to be good. In other words, game’s gone.
hookem2010
Well-known member
We're approaching my favorite time of year, when the weather finally cools off (not yet this year. 100 degrees F forecast for Sunday!), fall migration is in full swing and American college football enters its middle third, when hope is still alive and many teams are still in the race for the playoff.
Before our baby came, when my wife often worked weekends or was studying for grad school, I'd get up early on Saturday to target a birding Hotspot farther from home, spend 3-4 hours in the field, and return home for the first round of kickoffs at 11 AM.
Not quite how things work anymore, but I can still take the little one for a walk in the morning and chase him around with the games on in the background the rest of the day. And the Texas Longhorns may have a legitimate team this year!
Before our baby came, when my wife often worked weekends or was studying for grad school, I'd get up early on Saturday to target a birding Hotspot farther from home, spend 3-4 hours in the field, and return home for the first round of kickoffs at 11 AM.
Not quite how things work anymore, but I can still take the little one for a walk in the morning and chase him around with the games on in the background the rest of the day. And the Texas Longhorns may have a legitimate team this year!
David Ferguson
Well-known member
I am a Coventry City supporter. I was at the Coventry v Wolves game of April 1967 which decided who would finish top of Div 2 (as it was then). There were 51,500 people in a ground that was supposed to hold 45,000 and there were people on the floodlight pylons and on the roof of the stand. Both teams played brilliant attacking football. It was the most memorable game I have attended. Coventry won 3-1.
