On the day of the initial Stockport postponement
Merse made a wise point ;)which, if I’m reading him correctly, implied that postponements come with the territory of football being an outdoor sport played in the winter. And, if you're a supporter who travels, you have to accept you will occasionally be inconvenienced.
You certainly did read me correctly Nick and it seems to me you are one of the few who took a common sense decision today as opposed to a heart overriding the head one.
Of course coming from such passionate beasts as football fans in whom such a basic emotion as passion is the dominant emotion, it is the very thing that leads to tiny gaggles of humanity travelling the length of the country to watch some pretty mediocre entertainment in even more mediocre surroundings.
I am fast approaching my sixtieth year, and it has taken me until now where I've
been forced to prioritise things in my life where watching football, and particularly Torquay United; has slipped a long way down the list of necessities so that I'm afraid I now countenance a season of single figure live experiences and so far (almost half way through the season) I've only been to three (the first three as it happens) and been able to watch one other game live on TV.
I emphasize
"been forced" because having three young children to support
AND the economic recession allied to alarmingly increasing fuel prices have devastated the quality of my social life and certainly totally destroyed my disposable income whereby regular racing, betting, football and music gigs are a thing of the past and I wonder when if ever they will return.
I'm certainly not moaning about the first factor ~ the children, but I definitely am going to bang my tub about the latter ~ rising fuel prices as in this country, as they are a direct legacy of the political will of the people who derided my and like minded people's struggles against the wholesale slaughter of our basic fuel industries (coal and iron, steel and North Seas Gas) by the cynically corrupted greed and profit motives of the Conservative Party of thirty years ago.
Yes, you took the bait of getting your hands on your council houses and deserted socialist policies in favour of a carrot that men in grey suits dangled before you and fronted with a blond female and took that bait like a nation of stupid mackerels or turkeys voting for Christmas.................even derided and despised those who continued to stand and fight for our national riches. Well now we are a nation of those who can no longer afford the simple pleasures in life and the daily question of whether or not to turn on the central heating is a
FACT for the working, let alone the old and retired as it always was.
Now you may think at this stage that
"Mad Old Merse" has wandered off his trolley again, but he hasn't, because those very legacies have left us with football clubs like Crewe Alexandra (who in the scheme of things are probably as average a football club in the professional size and scale of things as one could find) who
could fit the technology to overcome weather like today's, but can't because the economics of under soil heating do not add up. You get the average football fan who would gladly give up his Saturday to follow his team from one end of the country to the other but cannot because the extortionate train fares (the direct result of privatisation) mean that his economics do not add up either. The result is that as the red lettered economics of the individual multiply by the year, so too do the economics of the football clubs implode on an annual basis.
Crewe Alexandra will no more welcome having a week without income through the gate as Nick House or Gypsy Gull welcome paying out all that money on what turn out to be errant journeys.
Interrupted cash flow is as damaging to small businesses like League 2 and BSP football clubs as anything else, yet today only
ONE managed to stage their game today,and that probably through a freak of nature.
Dave's call for summer football in this country is just pie in the sky I'm afraid, and I'll tell you why. Not because it doesn't make sense in
THIS country, because it does ~ to some. But
OUR domestic football needs to fall in line with the rest of World Football and taking a line downwards from the peak of the World Cup Finals and the game in the majority of other countries in the world; who would have to change their seasons too (European Champions League?) in countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal and
ALL of mid to Southern Europe and North Africa, Asia and the North Americas ~ it just ain't going to happen my friends; it ain't going to happen.
That Nordic and Russian countries play a summer season is one thing but they aren't seriously big hitters in the League of Football Life like England are. Nonentities like Scotland and Wales could "go Nordic" and no-one would even notice, but that's another thing) so that I'm afraid brings us back to pitches that
CAN cope with freezing and water logging and those pitches are?
You see,
"MoM" might be Merse and he might be old; but he certainly isn't mad ~
artificial or semi artificial pitches it must be and then people can travel to their hearts content safe in the knowledge that the game will be on and only having to worry about the wrong type of snow on the line to stop their train even turning up to get them there, let alone leaving them stranded on windy and freezing old New Street on the way home tonight!
It dropped to minus eight on Alex's pitch last night, I only hope it doesn't get as cold on the hard shoulder of the M6 or some desolate railway platform tonight for those poor buggers on yet another pointless trip home this evening.
