Tyrone Shoelaces

The best news I’ve had all day. Get in there Sir Gareth.

The FourTops - It’s The Same Old Song

Anybody see the try that St. Helen’s got last night in the game against Leeds ? Sensational, Rugby Union eat your heart out for handling like that.

Me too. I wonder what it cost back then ?

Same at my local club. If you didn’t get down there an hour before start of play you’d be lucky to get a seat. Becoming a member was really difficult. Ten years later they were begging people to become members.

Would you prefer the red card Greaves got to be wrote off as well then ?

You can’t make jokes like that mate. We all know they are capable of anything.

Fascinating bit of film. It’s another game altogether now. Rogers was a class act as were Summerbee, Hunt and Woodruff.

You’re joking surely. Hedges as playmaker ? Ribeiro on the left wing ?

Many years ago my local rugby league club banned the Rochdale Observer RL reporter for similar reasons. He still attended - in a disguise ! False moustache, the lot.

I just wonder wghy it took so long to come up with a decision in the first place ?

I’ve played on some really bad pitches. One in particular was a pitch where there were pools of water ( ie large puddles ) but given the un-evenness of the pitch other areas of the pitch were dry and quite playable. However I’ve never played on a pitch like the one at Ewood last Saturday. By the time the game was called off there was standing water all over pitch and there was no way the ball would run along the ground or bounce when dropped. I saw one of the blokes with a pitchfork sweeping large amounts of water away with his boot. You might have been ok playing rugby on it but playing football was impossible.

No, true apparently.

Mm, that’s a much more sophisticated valve than any I ever worked on. Basically the ones I worked on were designed just to prevent water flowing back up the out flow pipe.

Yeah, I was mixing the two up. I thought they were both equally ineffectual to be honest.

I’m not an authority on non return valves but I’ve fitted a few. How would yours work. If it shut’s off when the height of the river reaches the out let pipe where does the water on the pitch go ?

There’s all sorts of ways you can get injured on pitches like that. How many long distance sliding tackles did we see ? No way to control those. You go flying after a ball near the touch line and going sliding headlong into the boundary walls. You take an almighty swipe at where you think the ball is going to be and it isn’t there = muscle injuries etc. I would imagine most of the players were glad to get off. Plus the fact the non - swimmers among them could have been in danger of drowning.

That bit of the pitch where play broke down at the end of play was more or less in front of me and you could see the ball was stopping dead because of the water on the pitch. It had obviously become dangerous.

Re Gally, maybe that’s why they’re doing well ? I thought Vale played in midweek ?

Correct, I was looking at the wrong team ! For some reason I’d got it into my head he was playing for Peterboro.

What actually happened ? Did he pull a muscle lacing his boots up ?

I thought what the ref did when he came back on with his linemen was a bit of a joke. At least they could have tried passing the ball between themselves a couple of times. The end result would have been the same but they would have had a bit more credibility.

He came off at half time during their mid week game and he wasn’t in their match day squad yesterday. Make of that what you will.

When he got riled he could put in a hard a tackle as anybody.

Anyway to get back to what we actually saw. I thought we played quite well given the conditions. We seemed to have a pattern of play and a decent shape. I was expecting a lot more from Ipswich. They certainly didn’t look like a team that was playing in the Prem this time last season. Toth was my man of the match closely followed by Cantwell. We’ve got a good goalkeeper there. Miller did ok at centre back but I thought it was noticeable that Ipswich didn’t press him much, preferring to let him try to pass the ball out. Maybe they thought his distribution wasn’t up to much. The rest of the back four did ok. Alebioso had his hands full with their winger so he didn’t get forward as much as we would have liked. Cantwell looked our best player in midfield and he took a superb penalty under really taxing conditions. Regarding Ipswich booing him, somebody once told me- They don’t bother booing bad players Tyrone. Tronstad was just Tronstad, the new guy did nothing wrong out there but it was back to having two guys in central midfield who rarely get forward. Anybody know what happened to Tavares ? Up front I like the look of Morishita, he looked to be a threat. Hedges was quiet but steady. His good left foot is more useful out on the left I think. That brings us to Ohashi, I really like him and you can’t fault his effort but leading the line, especially in home games, is not his strength. I know he “ won “ us the penalty but I’d prefer Gudjohnsen there next time out. Bring Yuki on when the defenders have played 60-70 minutes.