Wales fight back for draw and the games keep on coming for City Under 18s and Under 21s.

8 Responses to Wales fight back for draw and the games keep on coming for City Under 18s and Under 21s.

1. Dai Woosnam says:

   March 25, 2016 at 2:29 pm

   Fine, thoughtful piece Paul on a game I saw on TV here in Grimsby.
   And you were kinder on the game than me.
   I found it largely a yawn.
   I do agree with you though on the one bright spark of the night…no, not George Williams, but the decision to close Vincent’s Vision, and thus remind us of our national colour.
   Due to Platini’s political nous (or lack of it), we have this extraordinary number of countries making the finals this year…and it seems easier to get OUT of the opening groups than ever.
   And so probably both of these poor teams will.
   But then they will both hit the wall.
   Yes Wales too…even with our one and a half superstars.
   I have never been persuaded by the manager’s tactics, even though Cookie is clearly a very nice fellow and a fine man-manager.
   DW.
2. The other Bob Wilson says:

   March 26, 2016 at 6:16 am

   So currently, even Wales cannot fill the Folly Dai – it’s become a pointless decoration, nothing more, nothing less.

   I’m not that hopeful of us qualifying from the group, but, if we do, then I’d say it’s mission accomplished for Wales – I can see us maybe drawing a couple of our games, but I’m not sure where a win will come from.
3. Dai Woosnam says:

   March 26, 2016 at 11:48 am

   Fair play, Paul…you make a good point about Vincent’s Vision.
   All I would say though in defence of the missing Welsh fans is that …
   1. The game was live on BBC TV…in contrast to all the home qualifying games, which were on far-from-free satellite.
   2. It was a meaningless game against a team even more unattractive in its tactics than…(wait for it…)
   …than CYMRU.
   3. We lacked the only two players who could get into an England x1. (I say two…but in truth there is only one…Bale. Ramsey though is a strong possible…and Ashley Williams a remote possible.)
   4. It was pouring with rain.

   With those factors taken onboard, I think it amazing that 21,000 masochists turned up.
   As for those red seats on display…
   It has always puzzled me why soccer stadia need seats the colour of the club. I have been on official tours of a few stadia in the past 6 years.
   Arsenal, Man Utd, Man City and one or two others.
   I found that the soccer stadia’s seats always mirrored the shirt colour.
   But, that said…
   The stadium tour I enjoyed most, was that of a rugger stadium.
   Twickers.
   (Maybe because I loved the droll humour of the public school wallah conducting the tour, and his good natured quips at my expense when he realised I was Welsh !,)
   That though, is by-the-by.
   I mention Twickenham for a reason.
   Just guess what colour the seats are in Twickenham?

   No…not white…
   …but GREEN.
   I suggested to him that when Ireland come and their team has a pre-match stroll on to the pitch, with the stands still largely empty, they must feel they are playing at home.
   He laughed it off.
   The laugh told me everything.
   It was code for “well, if they are simple-minded they do”.

   And there Paul, we come to the nub of something…albeit, I am not sure of WHAT exactly.

   I guess it is the difference between the two lots of supporters of the two codes of UK football.
   I see that this week, West Ham United are busy putting claret and blue seats into The Olympic Stadium …(gee, are THEY going to be paid for by the UK taxpayer too…? *)

   I cannot imagine a rugby club doing that, unless it was a newly-built stadium.

   And rugger fans do not need segregating and can sit watching the game with a pint of beer in their hands.

   Are they further up the EVOLUTION LADDER than us soccer fans, do you think Paul…? I am not saying we are Primitives or Pond Life exactly, but gee I reckon we have a lot to learn.
   And do not get me started on Football UK’s attitude to Ched Evans…!!
   Even if guilty, he has served his sentence.
   Yet they will not allow him back.**
   Contrast that with that West Bromwich Albion shaven headed striker (name escapes me…was it Hughes? …a common surname anyway) …with a particularly irritating goal celebration jig.
   He kills another driver. Does not ring an ambulance, but rings a pal to pick him up and thus does a runner to avoid the breathalyser.
   A heinous crime in anyone’s book.
   After his prison sentence, he is immediately allowed back.
   Yet Ched is seemingly a pariah…who if Foitball has its way, should walk into the sea with stones in his pocket.
   Deep shame on Football UK.
   I have studied this case closely, and know him to be innocent of rape, but guilty of huge disloyalty to his fiancee. And – black humour here folks – commiting the cardinal sin of not ensuring you are first in a consensual gang bang…and instead being a poor second, when the footballer groupie is more drunk and tired perhaps.
   Maybe the Court of Appeal who reviewed his case on Tuesday, will side with the status quo. It will not surprise me if they do. I have very little faith in British justice.
   And I – as someone who in 1999 was once foreman of the jury at Cardiff Crown Court – well know the power of the role of a jury foreman, and am sure in my bones that a twisted foreman browbeat his jury in the Ched case.

   But I tell you this…(imitating Kevin Keegan here) …I would LUV it, really, I would LUV it, if Ched was found innocent just to take that smug smile off our Golden Girl’s face.
   And then, were I a Blades fan, I would INSIST her name came off that stand at Bramall Lane.
   Talk about kicking a man when he is down…
   [End]
   * i reckon WHU should be the second team of all of us, sice we have all heavily subsidised West Ham’s peppercorn rent for its long lease.
   ** Good on the Shampoo Kid who has just been pictured with Ched and their accompanying partners, all going away on holiday together.
   DW.
4. Dai Woosnam says:

   March 27, 2016 at 6:51 am

   PAUL,
   With regards to my second country in this year’s Euro Championships…
   Praise the Lord !! I cannot believe it.
   The second half of the Germany v England game was something we have been praying for, all these Hodgson years.
   Two men playing CENTRALLY up front…one just can’t beat it.
   And the whole team playing the ball forward…not square.
   True, there’s still a disturbing tendancy to play the ball out from the back, when the likes of Cahill and Clyne are so lacking in basic ball control, but we’ll forgive them that.
   Hopefully the penny has finally dropped with him. Must be Gary Neville’s influence.
   Now Cookie and our beloved Welsh team …please take note.
   4-4-2 has never been beaten…it is what I grew up with all those years ago…albeit the two full backs now push on, and the midfield wingers fall back to cover, but it remains 4-4-2.
   DW.
5. The other Bob Wilson says:

   March 27, 2016 at 10:32 am

   I must be one of very small number of football fans who does not know much about the Ched Evans case Dai – if I had to vote in a jury based on the little I do know about it, I’d probably opt for not guilty, but I’d rather abstain.
   As for Twickenham, my only visits to the ground were back in the days when all of the stands were that dirty green colour and so I’ve always thought that the current seats were the colour they are “in honour” of those old stands. I was told that the stands were painted that colour during World War 2 so the German planes wouldn’t see the ground – not got a clue if that’s true, but it would make some sense because it’s always been a mystery why the RFU selected that colour.
6. Dai Woosnam says:

   March 27, 2016 at 4:33 pm

   Paul,
   I love your basic decency. It shines through all your writing. And I thank you for your response.
   I want to say two things: one on a lighter sporting point, and one on a much heavier matter.

   First the sporting matter, and that is about Twickers. Interesting point you make about the seat colour being in honour of the old stands! I had not thought of that.

   Some say that it is that emerald green colour because the stadium was built on the site of what had been Billy Williams’s cabbage patch!
   Surely that reason must be apocryphal?
   When I asked the guide on the tour, he was good enough to say that he did not know the answer. When I responded with “Well maybe the RFU had a good price on a job-lot of green ones”, he had the decency to smile and chuckle slightly (though in truth my joke went down like a lead Zeppelin amongst the other 20 or so in the tour party).

   Whatever…

   One thing is for sure. If that “cabbage patch” explanation was the reason, then judging by the shade, Billy must have grown Savoy cabbages !!

   http://media.ents24network.com/image/000/019/717/236402e31d021ffd2af13c5fe94ed738eb00b14a.jpg

   Before leaving this subject and the bizarre desire for soccer clubs to have seats in the club colours, let me add there was a very recent exception, of club colours vis-a-vis stadium colours .
   You will recall that tour-de-force of a performance from our fellow countryman Michael Sheen in The Damned United. Now, when shooting the movie in 2008, the football scenes were nearly all filmed in a stadium that was thought to be closest to The Baseball Ground of the early 1970s. And coincidentally it turned out to be closest GEOGRAPHICALLY too: viz. the decrepit SALTERGATE Stadium in Chesterfield.

   The town’s team were still there then: they moved exactly two years after filming to a newly built home, currently called The Proact Stadium.

   But that old Saltergate was famous for the peeling dirty green paint which was …EVERYWHERE. All the walls and woodwork were painted that colour…a bit like a cheap and impure version of the green we see in the stands at Wimbledon tennis courts.
   Now, I will take some persuading that a giant consignment did not fall off the back of a lorry 20 years ago, as so far as I know, blue has been the club’s colour since the present Pope was an altar boy.

   Right. Levity over.

   Let us get to the serious matter. The Ched Evans case. I regard it as a serious miscarriage of justice.

   You say you would abstain. Fair enough: abstention can a noble position…especially in general elections.

   But I suggest to you that when you know the undisputed FACTS of this case, there is only one verdict. NOT GUILTY.

   Will the Court of Appeal so find? I doubt it. As I say in my earlier posting, I have little faith in British justice. Appeal Court judges do not want to overturn jury decisions: after all, the juries were often LED by judges into making those decisions.

   Which may have happened in this case. ..but I have not read a transcript of His Honour’s summing up, so cannot say.

   But having been a foreman, TRUST me, if the foreman took a dislike to Ched’s demeanour, or rather just had a hate for super rich footballers, that ALONE, could explain him leaning on his fellow jurors to find the “non star” Port Vale player innocent and Ched guilty.
   From the getgo I queried this verdict. Then I looked into it. And it became clear.

   A massive miscarriage of justice had occurred.

   And I think all soccer fans have a bounden duty to investigate the undisputed facts. When they do, they will mostly arrive at my opinion.

   One thing for sure: they will be ashamed of the way that the game they love has so bowed to Political Correctness*. Of course rape is a very serious crime, and a person should face a lengthy prison sentence. But when he comes out? It clearly is against all EU employment laws to deny him his lawful employment, especially since his job was not that of a photographer for Playboy and the likes, where nude girls might cause him to be a recidivist !!
   And then for the Nation’s Sweetheart to grandstand like she did (pun unintentional, but I will take it, for its useful serendipity!) by threatening to take her name off the stand, well … she should have been ashamed of herself even if Mr Evans WAS guilty!!

   What a Christian attitude of forgiveness on her part, eh? True shame on her.

   Apparently, she was upset that he had not apologised to the “victim”. Why should he, if he was innocent? Remember, the very great Nelson Mandela could have left his tiny jail cell many years before he did, had he only apologised. But he refused on the grounds that he had nothing to apologise for: all he had done, he had done in the name of removing the stain of apartheid.

   So I will love it in the unlikely event of Ched being cleared, just to see what she has to say for herself. Whatever she says, whilst I might still think her the most handsome physical specimen I have seen since Mary Bignall-Rand in her pre marriage days (with the same physical feature being pre-eminently beautiful: I won’t say more to avoid allegations of my indulging in sexism!!), the fact is I will now always loathe her for a kicking a good man when he was down.

   If a man who committed a most heinous crime like Lee** Hughes can be rehabilitated, then I am sure that a footballer who committed NO crime (other than to have drunken sex with a girl who wanted to bag a professional footballer or two), can also be so rehabilitated.

   And if they clear him – Please God that they will, even though I doubt it – then The Bluebirds must sign him immediately. I still recall that goal he scored against us for The Canaries !!

   Right. I have been slaving over a hot typewriter for too long !! Time for a delayed siesta.

   Please everyone read this webpage most diligently. And click along the left hand side of the page. Amazing stuff. Look at the photographic gallery especially.

   http://chedevans.com/key-and-undisputed-facts

   * What happened to Malky Mackay was assuredly not Political Correctness, any more than what Mr Mackay was indulging in was “mere banter”. But the reactions to the Ched Evans case is PC to the power of one hundred !!
   ** I have remembered his Christian name now!
   DW
7. The other Bob Wilson says:

   March 28, 2016 at 6:08 am

   Morning Dai, first thing to say is that it needs to be remembered that the seats in Tan’s Folly are the colour City wore at the time of it’s construction.

   As far as Ched Evans goes, my mind always goes back to the interview he gave on Sky after his hat trick had helped Wales Under 21’s beat France 4-2 in a brilliant televised match at Ninian Park in 2007 I think it was (a 16 year old Aaron Ramsey played). I say “interview”, truth is he was so shy, he was barely able to string two words together and I find myself feeling sad at what his life, which seemed so full of possibilities then, became.

   I would like to think that if it is as obvious that he’s not guilty as you believe it is, then the verdict should be a simple one for the Appeal Court judges to arrive at, but, and maybe I’m completely wrong here, I would be concerned that the announcement of their decision has been put back a few weeks if I were Ched Evans or a member of his family/legal representatives because I find myself thinking that if they were going to quash the conviction, they would have just come out and said it without the delay.

   Two things I agree with you completely on are the inconsistency between the not guilty verdict against the other player involved and the Evans verdict and the Lee Hughes case. That goal celebration of Hughes’ was embarrassingly naff, but that wasn’t the reason I felt sick whenever I saw it. Luke McCormick is also back playing for Plymouth, he was in their side on Friday and has captained them since his release from prison after causing the death of two children while driving with excess alcohol in his system around nine years ago – his reintegration into football has been more painless than it was for Hughes I believe (in terms of supporter reaction at least), but, you’re right, it’s hard to equate their treatment with that of Ched Evans once he had completed his sentence.

   I’ll finish by asking if you remember this man

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Streltsov

   who played against City in the Cup Winners Cup for Moscow Torpedo in 1968?
8. Dai Woosnam says:

   March 28, 2016 at 2:05 pm

   PAUL,
   Thanks for your very illuminative response.
   A word on the Plymouth goalie.
   Yes, I remember that case. I did not cite it, only because he had the decency to stay there did he not…and not phone a pal to drive him off, before the cops came?
   He was I seem to recall, unforgivably driving at a colossal speed, while boozed up and short of sleep.
   And it was right that they threw the book at him.
   But why I reckon the Hughes case was worse, was that he left a man dying, and rang a mate instead of an ambulance.

   Huge thanks for the Eduard Streltsov piece. It came as a total revelation to me.
   I have just shown it to my wife Larissa. It came as news to her too. I should perhaps add that she is not a football fan.
   But she is not shocked by the contents.
   When she was a kid, it was quite common for people in her city to be sent to gulags. They were the lucky ones. A few years earlier under Stalin, people just “disappeared”.

   Re this disturbing case…one can see the similarities with the Ched Evans case. Especially since Ekaterina Furtseva was involved.

   You won’t believe it Paul, but for the 23+ years of our married life, when she teasingly bosses me about, I always jokingly say, “Okay Furtseva…go easy on me!”

   Why do I do this? Because Furtseva is a name synonymous with heartless cruelty in Russia…such was that strong woman feared by the populace.

   Poor Eduard made the mistake of jokingly calling her daughter a monkey to one of his pals, and disrespecting the mother…poor blighter. The walls have ears in Russia, and it quickly got back to the mother. And it looks to me – after years of studying the Russian psyche to the point that I can hold my own with the average Kremlinologist – that the mother arranged for that groupie girl to cry rape.

   Golly….it is sooo redolent of the Chedwyn Evans case, eh…?
   Except – thank God – Mr Evans was not sent to a gulag and forced to eat dangerous pigswill.
   But that said, his life has been wrecked by his foolish drunken behaviour and far worse, a malicious groupie.
   Btw, Larissa – who is so anti-rape that you would not believe – is even more convinced than I am that Mr Chedwyn Evans has been massively wronged.
   And when I once recently was unwisely sexist enough to involuntarily shout out at my TV when the Nation’s Sweetheart momentarily stooped forward, exhausted after winning her race…”what a sublimely beautiful derriere!”, my wife quickly interjected with “but has she got a beautiful SOUL …?”
   And my answer to that is…emphatically NO, she has not.
   DW.
   .

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