[theo_luddite]

Alf McGalphSmiths Farm
A long way from Nelson Mandela House
Especially when you're all crammed in the back
Of Trotters Independant Trading Reliant Regal
Are the trains running this weekend?
HD1 6PX

Kick-off 15:00 UK Time
Saturday 09/12/23

Brizzle's Team Bus *

I'm not sure how the fixture computer works anymore. There once was a time when it sort of made sense but now I wonder? Town are on a run of fixtures where we play just about everyone (but Plymouth) who is as far away as possible, whether home or away. OK Both Ends and Blackburn aren't that far (relativey) but whether home or away, the travelling fans are knocking some miles up with Christmas and New Year just round the corner along with some big energy bills. I also noticed that Swansea are on a run of 5 games in 6 against Yorkshire clubs when we played them last weekend.
Why?

On the tellybox

Not showing anywhere at the moment other than iFollow

Latest news

For the benefit of those who have moved to a cave in The Dales, the water's probably cleaner and you won't be getting ripped off by British Gas, so I dont blame you, Sky and TNT, which was once known as BT Sports, have carved up the Prima Donna League TV rights again, paying a small increase (~4%?) on the current rights in exchange for a 4 year instead of 3 year contract.

At least the Beeb have kept Match of The Day highlights, though those dickheads at ITV insist on showing their EFL highlights at the same time, or an overlapping time, with the Beeb on Saturday night and for the Sunday Morning replay of the same programmes. There's always iPlayer I suppose or whatever ITV's version is.

Every live Prima Donna League game that doesn't kick off at 3pm on Saturday from next season will be televised. Several at the same time, so don't expect too many Prima Donna League games to kick off at 3pm on Saturday any more. Not that it will likely bother us or Brizzle or any of the fans of the other 70 clubs in the EFL for the time being. Well, maybe the 3 that go up will, but the 3 that come down will just have the usual last minute changes we're all used to.

Most of them will now be 2pm Sunday (up to 4), some at 4:30pm or 5:00pm Sunday (1 or 2), a few on Thursday 'appen (1) and Friday (1), something Saturday lunch-time (1) and evening (1 or 2) maybe and probably a Monday night game too (1). Think that more or less adds up to at least 10 games. At least the motorways and trains will be quiet on Saturdays so us proper fans can get to where we need to be.
International TV carve up still to be announced.

None of the "streaming content providers" even put in a bid for any available UK packages. Wasn't that "the future of TV" not too long ago?
Everything midweek this week was on Amazon. They've given up. Well, do they really expect us to pay yet another £10(ish)/month to watch a handful of extra games and "free delivery" on some socks and a new set of screwdrivers?

You may have noticed we've drawn The Blue Mancs away in the FA Cup. That should give the moaning minnies that couldn't get tickets for the Prima Donna League matches a chance go there at long last, depending on how many tickets we get offered and how much they charge to watch both club's B Team Squads in action. Anything over £10-£15 will be just down right cheeky in my opinion.

The Unexamined - aka Yorkshire Live published (on just about every website they own) a rant about the BBC website offering "free content" and regarding how costly "Live News" is to report. All printed with no irony what so ever by Retch, given they made our local football reporter redundant so now we get no pressers, no match reports and "so called news" about former player/coaches moving to Oz mined from other publications. Joy.

That would of course be the same BBC who's web presence, mainly in Sport but also in News, continues to be pared to the bone,
who's on screen news/text service (formerly Ceefax) is dying a death of a million cuts,
and whose one time award winning News programmes are also being slashed and burned by the Government's lack of funding (amongst other things) or actually coming up with a working alternative to the Licence Fee.
The Government has also just announced that the Licence Fee, that pays for that so called "free content" Retch are wittering on about, is going up by £10.50 from the current £159.

I suggest Retch pick another fight elsewhere and take a long look at what they are doing (or not, as it turns out) if they expect any voluntary additional contributions. I certainly wouldn't pay them £170/year for their pathetic ad infested output, would they pay my Licence Fee in return? Thought not.

Out Injured/Suspended/Isolating

When I last checked, this lot were still on the treatment table.
Centre forward Kyle Hudlin (vertigo, high altitude nose bleeds or something like that),
Goalkeeper Lee Nicholls (neck),
Defender Josh Ruffels (groin),
Midfielder Ben Wiles (hamstring)
Centre forward and rabbit chaser Kian Harratt (leg muscle), likely won't be fit until the New Year.
Midfielder Jack Rudoni (foot) and right-back Ollie Turton (knee) are both also expected to remain on the sidelines as long-term absentees.
Winger Pat Jones (leg - he's allergic to Wales really) added to the two above.
Ben Jackson (anywhere) has picked up a muscle injury

Back training but not oven ready/Back in the frame

Nicholls and Wiles both back training and likely to be in the squad.
Rudoni could be back later this month.

Last time out

A rare Town foray into Swansea's half, 3 minutes after kick-off, by young Mr. Headley resulted in a cross that Swansea defender Cabango kindly looped into the net on our behalf. O.G. is now our 4th highest scorer, on 2. So successful was this tactic, that we then kept in in reserve for Saturday's match. You can get too much of a good thing. Whether that counted as a shot or not I don't know but in total we managed 5 with 3 supposedly on target. Swansea had 22 but only 5 on target. The only one that mattered happened 4 mins into added time.



Brizzle were at home and were in for a win, then for a point until Norwich scored 5 minutes into added time to snatch the points.
That seems to have a familiar ring to it for some reason?



A faltering Both Ends side presented QPR with their 2nd win in two games on Friday night, the 'R's closing the gap to us. Wayne's World 11 could only pick up a point v Rotherham. Watford pulled off a surprise win at Hull. Well maybe not as they also beat Brizzle the previous time out, scoring a late winner after going 0-2 down in that game (is there a pattern developing here?) plus Norwich the game before and with that, back to last time out. Wendies finally won another game. The top 4 all won again.



The Sack Race

In memory of Denny Laine and a nod to all Managers and Coaches handed a P45 instead of a Christmas Bonus this week.



Championship Chairmen appear to be starting a new trend, sacking their manager/head coach after they've played us rather than just before.
I prefer this new trend for some reason.

1st December - Matt Taylor, formerly of the Parish of Rotherham, turned up for his first day at school for Brizzle Rovers.
4th December - Tony Mowbray (Blunderland) and Mickey Duff (Swansea) were handed their early Christmas Cards
5th December - despite the Graun claiming it would happen the day before, it took The Blunts until Tuesday to hand Paul Heckybum his cards and their somewhat skint Shiek owner pressed the Chris Wilder panic button, 3 years after sacking him for getting The Blunts into a similar position as they are now in, but back then he didn't sell their best players first.
Odds on Neil Warnock being there by the end of February? Mind you, as much as he loves them, Shirley even he can st a pig-in-a-poke when he sees one.
6th December - Neil Harris turns up for work at "The Wembley of the Fens" - as described by a Cambridge fan with a vivid imagination.

The Blue Mancs are on a run of 3 draws and a defeat - surely they wouldn't pull that trigger before they play us, ...... would they? 

Musical Interlude

YouTube are becoming a pain with what you can link and embed in sites like this from their advertising infested website, so apologies for any tha don't work as they normally. It's not what they do, it's the way that they do it. It's what they think gets results.

The Moody Blues with Denny Laine struggled to follow up Go Now with another hit, so Denny left and Justin Hayward and John Lodge turned the Brummie ship around and into a global (sort of) overnight success. Denny went onto help out Paul McCartney with Wings and kept Macca's Mrs. quiet by singling backing vocals as well as playing lead geetar. The Sound Techs turned off her mike feed to speakers for the most part, just fed it back to her so she thought she was joining in.

Steve Bruce later tried to emulate the success of both bands as Brum City Manager, but eventually with the usual predictable results (and not just at Brum). That was after he'd honed his money spending skills at The Blunts and at ours.

Meanwhile down in the south west ....



That one didn't get much radio play for some reason, well not on Radio 1 anyway at the time

Bananarama formed in September 1980 when teenagers and childhood friends Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward moved from Bristol to London and met Siobhan Fahey.



Ironically, they ended up with more UK hits than The Supremes.
Quite.

"Will it be Rovvrum, Sunderland or Swansea?"
"He said no, it'll be Luton Town" .... when they move the current guy on again.



He'd just signed a new contract to 2027 at the time of that photo. That worked out well.

While we're on the kitshy pop stuff ...

The Korgis also had a couple of hits, once upon a long time ago ...



Not the only bands from The West Country and Brizzle - more saved for later threads.

Tables, Form

That win for L666s v Boro put them top of The Yorksha League.



That draw at Swansea put us only 10 points behind 6th place Hull, I may have mentioned it on another thread, but only 4 above 22nd place QPR.



When it comes to form, we could both do with some.




Brizzle have been consistently inconsistent again this season. A reasonable start had them just outside the top 6 in September, but they've yet to win back to back games, though they've lost back to back games 3 times. They have a habit of winning after losing a couple of games. They just lost a couple of games. 



Innies and Outies

Alex Scott won a lot of Prima Donna League admirers last season when Brizzle went on a bit of a Cup run, losing to Citeh in the 5th Round. They also lost at home to Lincoln in the EFL Cup 3rd Round.

When the top half clubs dithered, Bornmuff stepped in and snapped him up for ~£23m. Owner Stephen Lansdown allowed (then) manager Nigel Pearson to spend about £5m of that income on new recruits. Growing tired of seeing the money he was pouring in resulting in lower half of the table finishes, he pulled the plug on Pearson at the end of October. Liam Manning has come in and the mid-table mediocrity continues. 'Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose' as they say in La Belle France. The natives are getting restless.



Who's banging 'em in

Top scorer is Sam Bell on 4. Nahki Wells didn't play last weekend.
He's out with an ankle injury, so I think I need a change in my Prediction League forecast (done).



They can't all lose

Coventry play Wayne's World 11 on Friday, with neither side in scintillating form. Down amongst the dead men, Wendies go to Stoke, Rotherham are at home to Swansea, with neither side having a full time manager (yet), QPR are home to Hull and Millwall go to Cardiff.



We've played 'em before

Town still have their noses in front in the head2head. Most recently, apart from last season 0-0, we've been on a run of win one - lose one in the home fixture.



Next up?

Both Ends on Tuesday

Pressers

Hoggy's 14 Minutes of Fame and Moore's Mumbles



Hoggy starts about 3:50 in and Moore comes in at 36:30


The views from the top of Nelson Mandela House


Del spots something upon the horizon.
Del (cont’d) – Where are them binoculars?
Rodney – There.
Del – Ahoy – full ahead both Mr Christian.
Rodney – Why?
Del – We’re going to Hudders Rodders, we’re going to Hudders.

https://www.bcfc.co.uk/video/interviews/...iers-trip/



Kwiz of the Week

How many subs will Moore name for Saturday's game?

A) a full bench
B) 7 or 8
C) 6 or less

PS - *Peckham was mostly moved from Larndan to Brizzle for filming from Series 6 onwards, if you weren't aware.

[Lord Snooty]

I saw some support for our national broadcasting company in an unusual place yesterday. Went for a nice relaxing poo in Birch services and written on the bog door was "I love BBC" with a number to phone. 

[theo_luddite]

[Lord Snooty]

Nice one theo.

Another must win game. Especially with the teams below winning last weekend. Six points from this and Preston should see us nicely through to the next two away games.

[theo_luddite]

Picking through the Pressers, I've updated the Out Injured and Back in the Frame sections and added the Hoggy and Moore pressers (same video) to the relevant section.

I've noticed some video's don't show properly on my laptop browser but do on my phone, so I'm assuming this is maybe a cache/browser issue rather than just YouTube playing sllly sods. I use Chrome on both but obviously the OS's are different.

[theo_luddite]

Going off-topic for a second (like I ever do that on one of my threads ) as I've not searched too hard for an Olympics thread.

IOC to admit athletes who have not supported war in Ukraine

Russian and Belarusian athletes will be allowed to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics as long as they have not supported the war in Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee has decided.

How the hell are they going to police that when they struggle to police their performance enhancing drug taking habits for a start?
"Sorry but it wasn't me. My 10 year old hacked my Instagram account!!"

However athletes who do qualify in individual sports will have to compete as “neutral” athletes – with no flags, emblems or anthems allowed. Meanwhile Russian and Belarusian teams will remain banned for the Games. So that's alright then.

Meanwhile, back in football land ..... Sky Blues v Waynes World 11 tonight. Riveting.

[Lord Snooty]

According to Mr Chicken, Sorba the Taff is suspended.

[theo_luddite]

Er, yup. That didn't come out in the pressers.

He picked up his 5th yellow in the 86th minute at Swansea, our 19th game.
If he'd kept his powder dry for tomorrow he wouldn't have picked up the ban.
The cut off point is 19 games.

[Lord Snooty]

Rotten weather forecast for the match. Heavy rain and 50 mph winds.

[theo_luddite]

Sounds like an evening in a curry house in Bradford. Or the morning after ...