The Sound of the crowd

For those of you who follow this blog and don't know, each blog title is also a song title. Clever huh?

Most of the time I have the subject of the blog first and then fit the song to it. Occasionally though a song title jumps into my head and the blog then writes itself. This is one of the latter type.

Every World Cup game this tournament will sound like a swarm of angry bees are loose near to the effects microphone. The reason for this is a trumpet like instrument, widely available in South Africa called the "vuvuzela". This has led to wide scale debate on whether this is adding to the experience or ruining it. Most comment seems to be against the noise they make. Indeed Bill Turnbull on BBC Breakfast this morning even had a conversation with the sound engineer as to whether the feed from the stadium could have the crowd noise "turned down"? Simple answer – no it can't!

There has been talk of having them banned, but the SA economy is likely to be c$2m better off through sales so that's fairly unlikely. If someone throws one at a player then that could change, but let's hope that doesn't happen.

I actually quite like them; after all during the first England game I didn't hear the entirely inappropriate "Great Escape" at all!

Back home

So we put the wall chart up at work this week, the excellent Baddiel & Skinner podcast has examined the squad (main question – "Will Peter Crouch suffer more from playing at altitude as he will be higher up than the rest of the squad or as he plays at a slightly higher altitude than the rest of the squad all the time, will he be less affected by it?") and shops from "99p stores" to Waitrose have a special section of merchandise!

The BBC & ITV cannot have a gap between programmes without having a trail for it and programmes "remembering previous ones" have been commissioned. Last night Radio 5 live had "the 1986 squad" looking over the current squad and reminiscing about their tournament.

Most offices have drawn their sweepstake and twitter is full of posts along the lines of "I got Algeria in the sweepstake so that's me stuffed"

As we have no official song for this tournament, lots of quite dreadful remakes or new songs are about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

And the boy who was the shock inclusion in the last squad is the shock exclusion as a young man for this one.

Ladies & gentlemen the 2010 Wold Cup is a week away...enjoy.

Where the streets have no name

This is meant to be a regular blog, but of late, dear readers, it has been little more than a weekly (if that) look at the world.

What are the reasons for that? Well firstly work is keeping me overly busy. Banking has never been the easiest of jobs but of late it has demanded most of my brain power so that by the time I get to sit down and could put a blog together my head is full of scrambled egg. Yes I know it seems strange but I do put some thought into this!

Secondly, I have an eldest son with glandular fever which also has meant that at weekends my time has been focused on him. He's doing well but it is a rollercoaster of an illness so we have some steps backwards but overall he's heading in the right direction.

Thirdly, I've found twitter has enabled me to mini blog. You would think 140 characters wouldn't be enough but it's amazing what you can get across.

Anyway I hope that this will be a more regular blog in the future, but I have said that before.

I'm writing this watching U2 on Sky 1 and the opening riff of "where the streets have no name" will always make me feel a slightly better person for hearing it.

You’re gone

I have just deleted both the Daily Mail and Southern evening Echo websites from my favourites and plan not to read them anymore. I also won't be buying the papers either.

There are two main reasons that I've done this.

With the Mail it's the Lord Triesman story that has "broken the camel's back". On last Sunday they published a story about Lord T, the then Chair of the FA and the England 2018 World Cup bid, who had allegedly said in a private conversation things about the Russian FA & the Spanish FA colluding over World Cup refereeing and hosting the 2018 competition. The conversation was recorded and the Mail obtained a copy. Now the Mail at that point had a choice. Firstly they could have gone to the FA and said "you have a problem, sort it out" and told the informant where to go. That you might say would be the right thing to do and as a British newspaper, the supportive thing to do.

They however chose to do the other thing. That was publishing the story that brings the England World cup bid to the attention of the worlds press in a very bad light. Yes Lord T shouldn't have said what he said to anyone, but it was a private conversation and he wasn't told by the young lady involved that she was recording it. It seems to me to be very doubtful that this was "in the public interest". Whether or not this saga will have long term repercussions on the2018 World cup bid remains to be seen but the Mail had a choice and they chose the wrong one.

The Echo banishment is over their publishing stories about Alan Pardew, the Saints manager, and how he was allegedly "fighting to keep his job" Their source for this story was "a national newspaper" which it turns out was the Daily Mail! The Mail had a small piece about how the Saints Chairman wasn't happy with the clubs performance after the money given to Pardew in the January transfer window. This in itself appeared to be a "retread" of an old story from March time and was dismissed by the Saints at that time.

The Echo also said that a "clear the air" meeting between the Chairman and Pardew expected to take place on a Wednesday had been postponed to the Thursday.

On the Thursday morning the Saints web site published a long article by the Saints chairman that basically said that he and Pardew were working closely together, having fun doing it and that comments by both ex players and the local paper were not helping. So clearly they had met! The Echo published a new story reporting the article and that the Chairman had criticised ex players. No mention of the stinging broadside aimed at the Echo at all. Unbelievable! The comments from fans below the article were numerous and the main theme was this very point, that the paper had completely failed to acknowledge its part in the "non-story". If that is the level of reporting that they think is acceptable then good luck to them, I for one don't need them.

Dance on a volcano

So now that the dust has settled (or at least drifted away) from the Icelandic volcano and most people are back from where ever they were stranded, what was the travel chaos all about?

Was the ash ever seriously in danger of turning jet aircraft into gliders or was the whole thing an over-reaction? Certainly when it kicked off, various "experts" were on the media saying that it wasn't safe to fly and everything was grounded. Then for the best part of a week the skies remained empty, and herculean tasks were undertaken for people to get back from places that they had only taken 2 hours or so to fly to at the start of their holidays.

Then financial meltdown for the Airline industry started to get discussed (although to my mind if your aircraft's not flying, you're not paying for fuel or landing duties?) and compensation was muted and hey ho "it's a much less dense a cloud than we first thought". Cue planes flying and everyone's happy.

I'm left with two thoughts. Firstly we've a long way to go on climate change, if the number of flights we take for an Easter break, are anything to go by. Secondly, if the volcano's big brother goes off, will that create dense clouds of ash that will put everything back on the ground??

It’s over

So Saints will get the chance to defend the JPT next season, as today Huddersfield went to Stockport and won 6-0. As a result of this, Saints cannot now get in the playoffs and therefore we will be in league 1 again next season.

It's too easy to say that the 10 point deduction is the reason that we will not get the chance to go back up to the Championship and that may be true, but in reality having got this close, the real chance was lost when we had such a slow start to the season.

Anyway it's been a great season and we did something that few fans will get to do in going to Wembley and winning a trophy.

Next season the pressure really starts, no point's deduction and much more expectation.

Extraordinary thing

I think that the lowest point was about 9 months ago when it looked like there was a real chance that Saints wouldn't find a buyer and the Administrator was talking about "winding up orders" and similar nasty legal arrangements.

Then into the spotlight stepped Markus Liebherr and his big bag of cash and since then to paraphrase Yazz "the only way's been up".

This has involved appointing Alan Pardew as manager and funding the purchase of some better players, including Rickie Lambert, who at £1m was a bargain. We have climbed the table and now sit outside the top six but close enough that with the correct combination of results we could still end up in the end of season play offs. If we did and won the first two games then the play off Final is at Wembley in May and we've already know what going there and winning feels like, because that's what we did last week-end!

Sunday March 28^th, saw 44,400 Saints fans travel up from the south coast to see their team play Carlisle Utd in the final of the Johnstones Paint Trophy Final. As regular readers of this blog will know, my sons and I went to Wembley in August 2008 to watch an England game, so the oohh factor had already been experienced, but seeing your team play there was a whole new ball game. We travelled up with my friend Paul (cheers mate!) and his son Joe, to Ruislip, where our friends Adrian (Norm) and Dawn had prepared a fantastic brunch for us. Kick off was 1.30 pm so we had left Southampton at 8.30 for brunch at 10 am and then fully fed walked to the tube to arrive at the stadium at about midday. We had already had texts from other friends telling us that the atmosphere was spine tingling and indeed as we left the tube stadium the wave of emotion that hit me was fantastic. I have walked up Wembley way before but when it's your team badge on the side of the stadium it makes it a whole new experience. Around the stadium was a sea of red and white (and some blue and white for Carlisle, but we outnumbered them by 2:1) and while it was very busy everyone was singing and waving flags and generally making a lot of noise.

The tickets had arrived a week before and while I had asked for seats in one corner, somehow we ended up in the top tier but on the half way line. So it was an escalator ride to the top and then we stepped out to see the whole of one end (and in places a bit more) covered in red and white, again a truly remarkable sight. While the JPT final may not have the status of even the Carling Cup final, one thing it does allow is for both clubs to fill half the stadium (if they have enough fans). We do have enough and due to the fact that other finals have to give tickets to county associations and the like, I can't think of another occasion when a club side will take as many fans to Wembley as we did (44,400).

The game itself went better than can be expected with Carlisle deciding to give us a head start by one of their central defenders palming away a cross, with Lambert putting the resultant penalty into the top right hand corner of the goal. Then just before half time we got out the Stoke City play book and a long throw was headed on to the far post where Lallana rose to head home, 2-0.
After half time we went 3-0 up when a Carlisle defender hesitated before trying to clear a cross, in stepped Antonio to shoot at goal which hit the keeper and then rose up for Papa Waigo to head into an empty net. Cue mass celebration.

The final goal came when Antonio picked the ball up outside the box, moved it to the left and then put it past the keeper with his left foot. Best goal of the game.
Thereafter the game faded and we even allowed Carlisle to get one back, but the final score showed we had won 4-1 and yet more celebration followed the presentation of the cup and the obligatory fireworks on the pitch.

Seeing your team at the royal box being presented with a trophy is something all fans dream of, but only a few are so lucky, whatever the competition.

An amazing game and an amazing day finished with the reverse journey home, by now in pouring rain.

Now let's just hope we can go back again in May.

My friend Paul has produced a wonderful video of the day you can find it here