Post by Dave on May 28, 2010 18:46:33 GMT
Seeing a bright twinkle back in Carol’s eyes this week has really lifted my sprites and for now it seems a great weight of worry I have had concerning her health, has been taken of my back for a while and once again it’s back to living and enjoying as much as we can each and every single day.
My Carol is never going to be like the Carol I first met ever again and she is never going to be the way a lady of her young age should be, the cancer and the drugs have made sure of that, but the real caring and loving person Carol is inside will always shine through the pain and suffering she has to endure and that is what makes her so special.
The last six years has not been easy, but you know what I still feel I’m the luckiest man on earth as I got to marry Carol and I get to share in her life and that’s why things like our days out are so very important to me and why I write about them and put up pictures as these are days that are just ours that no one could ever take away from us.
Mind you I don’t want anyone to ever take the TFF away from my life, just like Carol there has been times it has given me plenty to worry about and when there has been problems they have always seemed to happen at the very worst times, but that’s just the way things happen in life and you just got to get on with it and hope things will improve and get back to how they were. But it has also given me so much to smile about and treasure and remember for always.
The TFF always amazes from time to time as you never know what great new member might just be reading the forum and them they go and start posting and their posts are simply brilliant and so worth reading.
I remember so well thinking one new member (Barton Downs) might have been some young kid from Barton and then one day he made his first post about a Newton Abbot Football club and the rest is history as what great wonders he has contributed to the forum since that fist post he made.
We had a new member join using the user name mememe, after having to lose a member for the good of the TFF, I found myself wondering if the said member had returned and was waiting for a post to be made so I could see if that was the case.
I did not have to wait to long for that first post and I knew straight away the TFF had another quality member join and then it was just a case of waiting for the next great post. The member mememe decided to change is user name to rags and you all sure loved the posts he made enough to make him a very clear winner this week.
So this week’s winner is Rags, well done and hope to see many more great posts from you.
Two posts made this week by Rags.
Post 1
I really don't wish to be critical of such an impassioned cry of support for our football club, especially as it illustrates the very reasons we are all on this forum: because we are proud of our club, because its successes make us giddy with happiness, because its failures make us inconsolably miserable and because we can watch real players who are part of our community play real football at any game we choose to.
We don't have to pay £300+ per season for a card that gives us the right to pay £40+ for a match ticket, we don't have to put up with watching our team on the telly because we can't get a match ticket and we don't have to cross out most of our diaries because we never play on a Saturday anymore.
BUT...
I have a friend who is a Chelsea season-ticket holder and has been for 40 years. He sits with his Dad who has been a Chelsea season-ticket holder for over 60 years. My friend remembers the days of "watching Norwich at The Bridge in the Second Division in front of a 5,000 crowd". He doesn't like the rich, bandwagon-jumping Johnny-come-lateley's of the Premiership anymore than I do.
I know two Manchester United season-ticket holders who were both born in Manchester, one goes with his Dad the other with his son. They both know a lot about Torquay United, possibly because of me.
I know a Fulham season-ticket holder who has been bursting with excitement and pride about their Europa League adventure, and loved every second of the Final even though they lost; but sometimes misses the old days of Div 3 and Div 4.
I know a Manchester City season-ticket holder who drives from Hertfordshire to every home match, and has done for years, even when they were in the Third Division.
I also know a Spurs season-ticket holder who can only be described as a cad and a bounder, for calling him what I want to call him would get me banned from this site, so soon after joining.
There are true football fans for every club, including Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal, Spurs etc. Thy know about us and they know about a lot of lower league clubs. Our memories fade with age but every one of the above claims to have been able to recite all 92 League clubs, their colours, nicknames and grounds when they were at school. Various pub discussions prove they still know a lot of that information.
We should support our club because that's who we went to watch when we were impressionable kids, and that's who we should support for all of our lives. It doesn't matter what level that club plays at, my friends are all as passionate and proud of their clubs as I am of mine.
I know a Chelsea fan who never goes to see them, who rarely knows who they are playing next and can only name their famous players: Drogba, Lampard, Terry, ACole and the like. Never heard of Sturridge, Ivanovic or Kalou. That's not a fan, but neither are the people who don't go to Plainmoor anymore, who can't name any players, who don't know who we are playing next; but were at Wembley to see us win promotion: Come On The Gulls!! "How did we get on today?"
The Premier League has dealt smaller clubs like us a massive financial blow both directly in terms of the television money we don't get and the transfer fee we don't receive, but also indirectly in terms of the televised games on cold winter nights which keep potential spectators in front of the telly rather than on the Plainmoor terraces.
But that's not the fans' fault. On May 8th 2004 at about 14.40 I had a phone call from my Chelsea friend: "Good luck, mate - I hope you win and Huddersfield lose". I know that he felt the same at full time of the Chelsea home game 6 years and one day later, as I had at full time on that day in Southend.
I mix with a lot of "real" fans of other clubs and they all feel the same way as you describe how you feel for our club. And so they should.
Just a couple of things by way of pedantry: Roberts was a parasite of our club in the 2006/7 season and Muzzy Carayol's potential is now being realised at Lincoln City.
Don't forget that it was Ferguson who came to Plainmoor to sign Lee Sharpe; he certainly knew who we were, where we were and what we had of any note!
Post 2
Why is it when ever such a story breaks we have some who want to start shouting as loudly as they can “I told you so, I knew this all along” why is it that some are trying to work out where every single penny has been lost? The board do know where the money has gone, it knows the club has to stop losing that money, let them get on and do what needs to be done to ensure our club has a future.
My personal view on this is that it has its roots in the media-saturation culture we live in. If this was Manchester United, there'd be film crews camped outside Old Trafford, the training ground, Colin Lee's house etc. Myriad reporters would be desperately trying to get the latest story and all the fine details and conjecture would be pumped into our homes via Sky Sports, BBCi, Twitter, online newspapers, blogs, e-mails, TalkSport and Radio 5 Live to name but a few media sources.
Financial experts would be taking the figures apart, legal experts would be taking the contract apart, business experts would be taking the club's structure apart and football experts would be trying to analyse its effect on the team.
But we don't have any of this. Colin Lee has been high-profile this week with a radio interview and a video interview, if he were a Glazer, that would be considered low-profile, almost publicity-shy.
Many fans want the same level of detail for the Gulls story, they don't say "Oh its Torquay, I'll wait a week and see what happens", they apply the same demands that they are used to seeing met with major football stories. When that fails to happen, they worry and start to fill in the gaps themselves.
Yes, there are many who don't worry about the club, trusting the Board and waiting for the situation to be resolved, but there are plenty who don't understand finance, business and the inside machinations of the football world and they worry about the implications of this large deficit; they see Chester, Portsmouth and Stockport and wonder if Torquay United are about to be added to that list, or if we won't be able to afford to keep our better players.
There are, of course, always the attention-seekers who want the publicity and the ego-boost of being right with their forecasts in a "told you so" way, and the smug who like to belittle other posters in a self-righteous, "you don't understand" manner. They, unfortunately, come with the territory of public forums. Go back 15 years and newsgroups came with the advice to treat them like a virtual pub: lurk for a while to get used to the characters, then enter a conversation politely with respect for others. That advice doesn't appear anywhere anymore, and new entrants are led by the behaviour of the posters they read.
The truth is that very few of us understand or have access to the information that will help us fully understand what is going on at the club this week. £600k is a lot of money to suddenly discover is missing, unless it wasn't a sudden discovery at all, or unless it can easily be covered by the Board. The Club Statement was poorly worded from the fans' point of view, but I don't know how many times it had been through the legal wringer before being edited down to the bare essentials.
As simonb has said recently, the problem is the information stream out of the club. We are all stakeholders in the club, we have no legal right to the information until the Annual Report is published but we are part of what makes the club work and as such, we expect to be kept informed as much as we can.
I hope a clearer statement will be released on Monday which will alleviate the concerns of the fans who understandably worried about the future of the club, and for those of us with a large amount of respect and admiration for Colin Lee who don't want to see his name tarnished by these events.
My Carol is never going to be like the Carol I first met ever again and she is never going to be the way a lady of her young age should be, the cancer and the drugs have made sure of that, but the real caring and loving person Carol is inside will always shine through the pain and suffering she has to endure and that is what makes her so special.
The last six years has not been easy, but you know what I still feel I’m the luckiest man on earth as I got to marry Carol and I get to share in her life and that’s why things like our days out are so very important to me and why I write about them and put up pictures as these are days that are just ours that no one could ever take away from us.
Mind you I don’t want anyone to ever take the TFF away from my life, just like Carol there has been times it has given me plenty to worry about and when there has been problems they have always seemed to happen at the very worst times, but that’s just the way things happen in life and you just got to get on with it and hope things will improve and get back to how they were. But it has also given me so much to smile about and treasure and remember for always.
The TFF always amazes from time to time as you never know what great new member might just be reading the forum and them they go and start posting and their posts are simply brilliant and so worth reading.
I remember so well thinking one new member (Barton Downs) might have been some young kid from Barton and then one day he made his first post about a Newton Abbot Football club and the rest is history as what great wonders he has contributed to the forum since that fist post he made.
We had a new member join using the user name mememe, after having to lose a member for the good of the TFF, I found myself wondering if the said member had returned and was waiting for a post to be made so I could see if that was the case.
I did not have to wait to long for that first post and I knew straight away the TFF had another quality member join and then it was just a case of waiting for the next great post. The member mememe decided to change is user name to rags and you all sure loved the posts he made enough to make him a very clear winner this week.
So this week’s winner is Rags, well done and hope to see many more great posts from you.
Two posts made this week by Rags.
Post 1
I really don't wish to be critical of such an impassioned cry of support for our football club, especially as it illustrates the very reasons we are all on this forum: because we are proud of our club, because its successes make us giddy with happiness, because its failures make us inconsolably miserable and because we can watch real players who are part of our community play real football at any game we choose to.
We don't have to pay £300+ per season for a card that gives us the right to pay £40+ for a match ticket, we don't have to put up with watching our team on the telly because we can't get a match ticket and we don't have to cross out most of our diaries because we never play on a Saturday anymore.
BUT...
I have a friend who is a Chelsea season-ticket holder and has been for 40 years. He sits with his Dad who has been a Chelsea season-ticket holder for over 60 years. My friend remembers the days of "watching Norwich at The Bridge in the Second Division in front of a 5,000 crowd". He doesn't like the rich, bandwagon-jumping Johnny-come-lateley's of the Premiership anymore than I do.
I know two Manchester United season-ticket holders who were both born in Manchester, one goes with his Dad the other with his son. They both know a lot about Torquay United, possibly because of me.
I know a Fulham season-ticket holder who has been bursting with excitement and pride about their Europa League adventure, and loved every second of the Final even though they lost; but sometimes misses the old days of Div 3 and Div 4.
I know a Manchester City season-ticket holder who drives from Hertfordshire to every home match, and has done for years, even when they were in the Third Division.
I also know a Spurs season-ticket holder who can only be described as a cad and a bounder, for calling him what I want to call him would get me banned from this site, so soon after joining.
There are true football fans for every club, including Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal, Spurs etc. Thy know about us and they know about a lot of lower league clubs. Our memories fade with age but every one of the above claims to have been able to recite all 92 League clubs, their colours, nicknames and grounds when they were at school. Various pub discussions prove they still know a lot of that information.
We should support our club because that's who we went to watch when we were impressionable kids, and that's who we should support for all of our lives. It doesn't matter what level that club plays at, my friends are all as passionate and proud of their clubs as I am of mine.
I know a Chelsea fan who never goes to see them, who rarely knows who they are playing next and can only name their famous players: Drogba, Lampard, Terry, ACole and the like. Never heard of Sturridge, Ivanovic or Kalou. That's not a fan, but neither are the people who don't go to Plainmoor anymore, who can't name any players, who don't know who we are playing next; but were at Wembley to see us win promotion: Come On The Gulls!! "How did we get on today?"
The Premier League has dealt smaller clubs like us a massive financial blow both directly in terms of the television money we don't get and the transfer fee we don't receive, but also indirectly in terms of the televised games on cold winter nights which keep potential spectators in front of the telly rather than on the Plainmoor terraces.
But that's not the fans' fault. On May 8th 2004 at about 14.40 I had a phone call from my Chelsea friend: "Good luck, mate - I hope you win and Huddersfield lose". I know that he felt the same at full time of the Chelsea home game 6 years and one day later, as I had at full time on that day in Southend.
I mix with a lot of "real" fans of other clubs and they all feel the same way as you describe how you feel for our club. And so they should.
Just a couple of things by way of pedantry: Roberts was a parasite of our club in the 2006/7 season and Muzzy Carayol's potential is now being realised at Lincoln City.
Don't forget that it was Ferguson who came to Plainmoor to sign Lee Sharpe; he certainly knew who we were, where we were and what we had of any note!
Post 2
Why is it when ever such a story breaks we have some who want to start shouting as loudly as they can “I told you so, I knew this all along” why is it that some are trying to work out where every single penny has been lost? The board do know where the money has gone, it knows the club has to stop losing that money, let them get on and do what needs to be done to ensure our club has a future.
My personal view on this is that it has its roots in the media-saturation culture we live in. If this was Manchester United, there'd be film crews camped outside Old Trafford, the training ground, Colin Lee's house etc. Myriad reporters would be desperately trying to get the latest story and all the fine details and conjecture would be pumped into our homes via Sky Sports, BBCi, Twitter, online newspapers, blogs, e-mails, TalkSport and Radio 5 Live to name but a few media sources.
Financial experts would be taking the figures apart, legal experts would be taking the contract apart, business experts would be taking the club's structure apart and football experts would be trying to analyse its effect on the team.
But we don't have any of this. Colin Lee has been high-profile this week with a radio interview and a video interview, if he were a Glazer, that would be considered low-profile, almost publicity-shy.
Many fans want the same level of detail for the Gulls story, they don't say "Oh its Torquay, I'll wait a week and see what happens", they apply the same demands that they are used to seeing met with major football stories. When that fails to happen, they worry and start to fill in the gaps themselves.
Yes, there are many who don't worry about the club, trusting the Board and waiting for the situation to be resolved, but there are plenty who don't understand finance, business and the inside machinations of the football world and they worry about the implications of this large deficit; they see Chester, Portsmouth and Stockport and wonder if Torquay United are about to be added to that list, or if we won't be able to afford to keep our better players.
There are, of course, always the attention-seekers who want the publicity and the ego-boost of being right with their forecasts in a "told you so" way, and the smug who like to belittle other posters in a self-righteous, "you don't understand" manner. They, unfortunately, come with the territory of public forums. Go back 15 years and newsgroups came with the advice to treat them like a virtual pub: lurk for a while to get used to the characters, then enter a conversation politely with respect for others. That advice doesn't appear anywhere anymore, and new entrants are led by the behaviour of the posters they read.
The truth is that very few of us understand or have access to the information that will help us fully understand what is going on at the club this week. £600k is a lot of money to suddenly discover is missing, unless it wasn't a sudden discovery at all, or unless it can easily be covered by the Board. The Club Statement was poorly worded from the fans' point of view, but I don't know how many times it had been through the legal wringer before being edited down to the bare essentials.
As simonb has said recently, the problem is the information stream out of the club. We are all stakeholders in the club, we have no legal right to the information until the Annual Report is published but we are part of what makes the club work and as such, we expect to be kept informed as much as we can.
I hope a clearer statement will be released on Monday which will alleviate the concerns of the fans who understandably worried about the future of the club, and for those of us with a large amount of respect and admiration for Colin Lee who don't want to see his name tarnished by these events.