Where's Wally?

More about that in a moment, but first,

 2022 is upon us, and it has started with the selection of my successor as Wallasey Golf Club captain. Tony Davies is the gentleman to whom I will hand over in March. The selection process is a two meeting affair. In November 2021 the ex-Captains met without me to put together a shortlist of names for consideration and after some toing and froing we were presented with a shortlist to consider in a meeting before lunch s a few weeks ago.

After the dinner, myself and SWHBO drove to the new Captains home to offer him the gig. Luckily he said yes and he was then announced to the members at a presentation evening the following Monday. All a bit of cloak and dagger but huge fun.

Then, last Friday we had our annual ball. Three times it had been rescheduled and it was renamed The Frost Ball. It went really well, with a good Soul band, excellent food and good company. The only down side was that a few guests contracted COVID subsequent to it, but luckily nobody seems too unwell.

The following Sunday I then trotted off to Anfield with my cousin to see the mighty Bees take on Liverpool in their first league meeting for a long time..Brentford unfortunately were a bit off the pace, and while they had chances to put some pressure on the home side, they won at a canter. The day was not dissimilar to a rugby day, with a few beers before and after and the match really only being the reason to get out.

It's not Wally you looking for but two West London titans having their 15 minutes of fame on the Brentford FC web site, fan zone....

 

Good news to report is that my new golf net has arrived and I will be trying to assemble it tomorrow. The first attempt did not go too well as there seems to be a number of difficult operations which the netting does not allow to work, so i am waiting for the manufacturer to come back to me with some help.

So there we go, half way through January, the weather is glorious and I still have two dinners to look forward to. The weight loss programme will kick in in due course.  

Park the bus

Yesterday I was at Anfield to watch the mighty Green Army take on Liverpool in the 3rd round of the FA Cup. It was 0-0 so Liverpool are now forced to travel to Plymouth for the replay next week.

I was lucky enough to be in a box in the Centenary Stand with a variety of commercial and professional people, all but one were supporting Liverpool. It is quite interesting how people who are good ( or excellent) at what they do seem to become so one eyed when they enter a football group!

At half time the Liverpool fans and pundit Steve McManaman were complaining that Argyle were not giving it a go, and were, therefore, spoiling the game as a spectacle.  Clearly nobody told Argyle the were supposed to attack in a kamikaze manner, allow Liverpool to score five goals and send everybody home happy!

No, this was the equivalent of  Argyle's first leg away from home in a major European Cup competition. Imagine they were Red Star Belgrade. Their only objectives were to be still in the game at half-time and ideally take Liverpool back to Home Park next week for the Second Leg. It is one thing for a manager to set out the tactics and strategy, but another altogether for the players to execute, especially when they are 66 positions and three divisions between them.

Argyle and their 'spoiling' tactics were not the problem. The young Liverpool team did not play with any pace or imagination and were almost like a fly trapped in a spiders web.

The two games will be worth almost £1m to Argyle. They have only recently paid off all their remaining debts from their period in administration, they have attracted new money through an additional director and a share/bond redistribution and that has allowed them to purchase their ground and now announce plans for a new grandstand and associated  revenue earning facilities on the fourth side of the pitch.
Argyle have one of the last surviving Archibald Leitch main grandstands, and an elegant Art Nouveau entrance to the ground. Plans are said to include both these features in the new stand. That is a noble gesture these days, when so much heritage is demolished in the name of progress.

Things are definitiely looking brighter for Argyle now, they must just ensure they get promoted this season so that the Green Army waggon can keep on rolling.

Just the ticket

We were fortunate to have a very enjoyable  2016, albeit we lost some dear friends and relatives during its course. We now enter 2017 hoping to experience new and rewarding adventures at home and abroad, while maintaining our health and that of those closest to us.

The first thing I have to look forward to is a trip to Anfield on Sunday to see Plymouth Argyle take on Liverpool, and to see how the Green Army fair against the Kop. Argyle see themselves as a Championship side at minimum, but some of the build-up surrounding the game, and the ticketing in particular has been non-league at best.

I appreciated I did not have first dibs for away end tickets as I am not a season ticket holder, nor a regular attendee. but as a registered member I was able to obtain tickets when they went on general sale on Tuesday. Now, up until Tuesday, the tickets were available via the club website hosted for them by Ticketmaster. As of Tuesday though they were only available to the general public by telephone. Five hours I tried to get through before I managed at least to get in a queue. when I got through there were only restricted view seats left but at £11 each I could not really complain.

Subsequently I have been invited into a box to watch the match, so I will do a bit of Green Army and a bit of corporate as a mix 'n match.

Following on from Anfield we have a stamina building weekend in Snowdonia before our skiing trip later in February, then it's off to Portugal for the El Tel Cup before a couple of weeks warm weather training in Barbados. Slot in a few rugby internationals and that is the first part of the year taken care of. Decorating and gardening might have to be delayed for a few months!!

One sad piece of news emanating from Wallasey Golf Club, however, was the notice informing members that Neville Thompson passed away earlier in the week. Neville was 104 and up until the last couple of years had been a regular figure in the Club at lunchtime.

Neville was the last surviving Wallasey member who can recall watching Bobby Jones play the links in 1930 on his way to qualification for the Open finals at Hoylake. He won there and went on to complete the grand slam of golf in the same year, a  feat which remains unique to this day. 104 is a good innings. Golfers always hope to one day shoot a gross score lower than their age, many never do it, some do it with regularity, hopefully Neville was one of the successful ones. Either way he remains a modern day legend in the Club, in the way Bobby Jones was in the world of golf,  all those years ago.

The Tremeloes

We are fast approaching another anniversary, that of the Munich air disaster, which decimated the Manchester United football team, referred to at the time as the Busby Babes.

Rememberance activity includes a minute silence at the Manchester derby next week, and the forthcoming England v Switzeland game at Wembley on Wednesday. It is truely amazing how degraded working class (or the unemployed) values have fallen, that both these memorials have been in doubt because the authorities cannot guarantee the minute silence being observed.

If the event were at Twickenham, The Odsal Stadium, Wimbledon or the NEC, then I am sure the same nervousness would not surface, so what is it about this event? Are Manchester United hated that much these days, that this oafishness rises to the surface, even though press and public with no connection to United were killed in the crash as well?

The crash happened at a time when values were different, when parents and families commanded respect, when arguements at school were settled with fist fights, not knives, when kids in pubs sat in the beer garden with a bottle of pop and a straw, and when they could walk to school safely with their chums. These values are long gone in many societies and probably can't be reintroduced, but lets hope a little bit of credibility can be restored to the beautiful game on these two occasssions in much the same way as it was at Anfield, when they played the Everton theme tune, 'Z-Cars' for the memory of the murdered schoolboy, Rhys Jones.

On a lighter note, on Monday the youth team of Plymouth Argyle beat Birmingham City to reach the quarter finals of the cup, the first time they have got that far since 1956. On that occassion they were drawn away aginst the Busby Babes at Old Trafford. They lost heavily, with Bobby Charlton scoring six, and Duncan Edwards, who subsequently died in the crash, played having already been capped by England.

Smoke gets in your eyes.

An article in the Daily Telegraph at the weekend indicated that Stuart Hall was nearly 78. He will be remembered by most people as the linchpin of the 'Its a knockout' television programme, a roll he shared with Eddie Waring . Eddie was primarily a rugby league commentator and made such phases as " he's off for an early bath" and "an op and under" into household sayings.

Stuart, however, has been something of a cult hero since the programme ended as he continues to provide summaries on Radio 5 Live for Saturday afternoon sports listeners. He has been providing commentary for almost 50 years, and will be continuing that service during the coming season. In the article it mentions that his first ever game was Sheffield Wednesday v Leicester in 1958, a match which ended 4-4, and was played almost entirely in fog. He had no idea what was happening so made everything up. It clearly served him well.

Fog has also played a part in embellishing the folk law status of the Kop terracing at Anfield, home of Liverpool FC.. A match was played there once and visibility was so bad that when Liverpool scored at the other end the Kop had to chat "Can you tell us who just scored, can you teeeelll us, who just scored?" A reply came back through the fog "Kevin Keegan, Kevin Keegan" to which the Kop replied paraphrasing the famous Scaffold hit single "Thankyou very much, thankyou very, very, very, very much".

Years before that at the time Stuart Hall was just starting out, England rugby teams used to be selected after a traditional game at Twickenham between the Probables and the Possibles. On this occasion fog again conspired to play a part to the extent that the selectors needed to run along the touchlines trying to see who was doing what, or listening out for shouts of encouragement to help them decide on their international side.

Throughout the game they heard such phrases as 'well played Johnston-Taylor', or 'good tackle Johnston-Taylor, or even ' excellent play Johnston-Taylor. Faced with such comments the selectors had no hesitation in selecting said player for the upcoming Five National Championship. It was only some years later that Johnston-Taylor was gracious enough to admit that it was indeed he who had called out praising himself throughout the match. His cunning stunt being rewarded with several subsequent caps.