Spytty - The Mutt's Nuts.



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Newport County 2 Mansfield 0

In their previous game, Mansfield Town won 8-1 and their manager was awarded a sparkling Aston Martin as a show of gratitude by a gratuitous chairman.

Everyone knew about it. It was in all the papers.

When the Mansfield away support at Rodney Parade was announced as "90", a ready wit in the crowd shouted, "Did you all come in the Bentley!"

It was symptomatic of an evening where the crowd were by equal measures rabid, noisy, easily angered and only partially informed. All the necessary ingredients of a 'good atmosphere."

Early in the game, a ball was smacked into touch with such force that, had it hit someone, it would have qualified as attempted murder. It was met with the words, "Beautiful, beautiful football."

In all fairness, this might have been the same bloke as before. It was shouted with the full conviction of a spectator who readily confuses the concept of 'whole-hearted support' with shouting something totally wrong about football every time they open their mouth. All grounds have one.

The rest of the ground had a more 'realistic' assessment of the County and chipped in with a rendition of "We're by far the greatest team in football the world has ever seen." By far?

This is why Wales will never qualify for the World Cup finals; our supporters often lack the objectivity required to quantify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the team in comparison to  their opponents that is necessary to correctly predict the likely outcome of the contest.

In truth, County were far from the worst football team the world has ever seen (Cardiff City with Russel Osman in the team win that one) and deserved the win.

They featured shaven headed, talentless talisman and  'crowd favourite'  David Pipe. The crowd constantly bayed for him to get forward and create 'something'.



David Pipe - seriously



He responded by rarely crossing the half-way line and got a telling-off from the ref when he did.  His contribution to the game seemingly measured by the fearsomeness of his grimace. He rated highly in this area.

Christian Jolley, wittily referred to as 'Bambi' (by you know who) each time he lost his footing, lost his footing and Newport were awarded a penalty. They scored.

Jolley  then scored the decisive second goal. He celebrated his excellent but slightly greedy effort by running to a corner of the ground populated by imaginary fans to share his moment with no-one.

Jolley  was one player, along with goalkeeper Lenny Pidgeley, you felt might develop well at a higher level club.  But as he came from a higher level club in the first place this feeling may well have been illusory.

Lenny Pidgeley will probably remain confined to non-league by dint of his silly name.

Keeping the crowd entertained during the boring bits was Spytty the Mutty.



The mirror test of self awareness



Spytty has the perfect combination of personality traits required to become a first class club mascot or nuisance on the Corporation buses. These include:

• A complete lack of self-awarenes.
• Fanaticism (in a bad way).
• The inabilty to distinguish between good attention and bad attention.
• The propensity to react to a football match in a manner unlike any other person in the ground.
• A basic mastery of mime.

Indeed, Spytty's miserable and disconsolate slow walk around the pitch with his head in his hands after a County near miss was so moving I genuinely felt like putting an arm around him to comfort him.

As he sank dramatically to his knees, I wasn't sure if he was reacting to some bad health news he'd had earlier in the week or a corner awarded to Mansfield. It was impossible to tell.

The problem was Spytty's mime session was that the pace was somewhat slower than the game. In fact, he was still shuffling around the pitch shaking his head forlornly because Jolley was flagged offside when everyone else was celebrating County's second goal.

At one point he looked so emotionally hurt, dabbing at imaginary tears with his oversized ears, I thought  that perhaps one of the Mansfield players had said something mean to him in an off the ball incident.

 

It wasn't difficult to imagine Spytty being on suicide watch had County lost the match.

Fortunately, they didn't. 

I would sincerely love to see County back in the Football League and the sooner the better. From this showing, everything is definitely 'going in the right direction' and much of the infrastructure is 'in place'.



Heavy pitch at Rodney Parade



One criticism is the rodney Parade pitch which was a little heavy in places.

However, If Newport make the play-offs, they will be the team everyone will want to avoid.

 

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Bobbing Along Issue 1

Bobbing Along Issue 1 Commentary

Bobbing Along Issue 2

Bobbing Along Issue 2 Commentary

Bobbing Along. Issue 3. May 1989

Bobbing Along. Issue 4. August 1989

Ninian Park's First Executive Box

The Executive Box

I first went to Ninian Park in March 1974. My father had decided that we needed to spend some ‘quality time’ together after I was nearly killed in a traffic accident.  What better way than a sporting event? After ignoring my pleas to go to a Rugby match, Dad chose football.

Cardiff City’s reputation for violence and hooliganism was fully established by 1974. To ease me in to the Ninian Park experience, which I fully expected to be vaguely traumatising and possibly ending up with stitches, we sat in the Grandstand close to the Grange End (also known as the ‘Boys Enclosure’). Common consent was that you had to be bordering on psychopathic to watch your football from that enclosure.

Middlesbrough were the opponents and City won 3-2. Cardiff were, to my utter disbelief, frankly excellent and I loved every minute. I was 10 years old and ‘The Goodies’ were on telly that night so it was pretty much a perfect day.

The game was not 10 minutes old and Cardiff 2-0 up before I realized my father was not a typical football fan. He appeared to be on an unspoken mission to be awarded the accolade of being the most undemonstrative man in the crowd. His expression and demeanour did not change during the entire match, no matter how thrilling or controversial the action.

There were no replica shirts in the Grange End; only scarves, flared trousers and Dr Marten boots. As I was dressed head to toe in polyester and didn’t own any of these items, I didn’t think the Grange End was the place for me. In fact, I considered it noisy and evil as it was full of ‘bigger boys’ with knives. I thought that going in there would lead to my death.

Smaller boys, foolish or brave enough to go in the Grange, were robbed of their sweet money, mugged for their shoes and bullied for their scarves by bastards.  Years later, I was accused of being from Swansea by a Grange End ‘thumper’ because I did not have any City tattoos. I ended up showing him my Cardiff Buss pass as proof of allegiance. He may have recognized it by sense of smell as it is unlikely he could read. Only partially satisfied, he went away. His punishment is being him. It’s true that you will find violent cretins everywhere but also true that they have a tendency to congregate at football grounds.

Despite the nascent hooliganism, the only fences at Ninian Park in 1974 were those to prevent you gaining access to more expensive areas of the ground. The only segregation you heard about was in South Africa. Within two years, there were fences everywhere to prevent violence and pitch invasions, each one a permanent reminder of some act of hooliganism or other.

I was directly responsible for one of those pitch invasions.

My father and I never went in the Grandstand again. One-off treats aside, 50p was considered too expensive for a football match; instead I had my own ‘executive box’ on the Bob Bank.

I wasn’t very tall, so I stood, or more accurately, balanced on a small wooden box my father knocked up at work in order to see the action. This box combined three design points in a unique way; it was at once practical, impractical and embarrassing.

It was practical in that I could now see the match. It was impractical in that falling from a foot high, 10 inch square box was never my preferred way to celebrate a goal. Furthermore, it drew laughs from bystanders when I first unwrapped it from a Tesco carrier bag and got on it. When you are a child, it's natural to feel like everyone is watching everything you do. In this case, they were.

In truth, the box’s Ninian debut was postponed for several weeks as I ‘forgot’ it a couple of times and, even when my father reminded me, succeeded in leaving it in the car once or twice, too.

Cardiff City went in to the final game of the season against Crystal Palace needing a point to avoid relegation.

I went in to the final game of the season against Crystal Palace with my box. All went reasonably well (there were no major falls, not even when Tony Villars equalised) until the final moments as it became apparent a pitch invasion to celebrate City staying in Division Two was brewing. 

As the final whistle blew, I was rudely shoved aside and my box used as a stepping stone off the terrace and over the perimeter wall by hundreds of jubilant fans.  They swarmed endlessly like ants on to the pitch where they jigged in the centre circle, waved scarves above their heads and mimed scoring goals at the Grange End. 

When they had all gone, I looked down to see my box had been splintered to matchsticks by the pounding of countless heavy boots.

It was never replaced.

Available from Amazon Kindle

Bobbing Along Issue 1

Bobbing Along Issue 1 Commentary

Bobbing Along Issue 2

Bobbing Along Issue 2 Commentary

Bobbing Along. Issue 3. May 1989

Bobbing Along. Issue 4. August 1989

Bonus Badmouth - Len Ashurst

Meet the Manager: Len Ashurst Answers your questions, Cardiff City Matchday programme 1991 (Mansfield Town, Lost 0-4)

Name: Leonard Nimroy Ashurst.

Football Honours: Mostly imaginary.

Managerial style: Scouse with nous!

Best moment in football as a player: April 21^st 1959. Newcastle vs Sunderland. 53rd minute. Managed to sneakily kick Jimmy Scoular in the bollocks and cheekily call him a “poof”! We laughed about it later.

Worst moment in football as a player: April 21^st 1959. Newcastle vs Sunderland.  54^th minute. Out of the game for nine months after being savagely kicked in the bollocks and told to “f**k off” during an unprovoked assault by Jimmy Scoular. He laughed about it later.

Best moment as a manager: Yet to come! Let’s be honest, even my promotion winning Newport team were crap.

Best personal trait: Realist.

Worst moment as a manager: Yet to come! No, seriously. Sometimes, I reckon I could relegate any club, Man Utd, Liverpool. I haven’t got a clue, really. I’m flying by the seat of my pants half the time. I lie awake at night thinking about it.

Worst personal trait: I’m too honest.

Nickname:  'Len'.

That's an interesting nickname, how did you get it: At Newport County. The players started using it. It's short for, "That twat, Len Ashurst". It’s stuck ever since.

If you could invite four people to dinner, who would they be? Fred and Rose West, Bruce Forsyth and Dracula.

Hobbies: Pets and gardening, which I like to combine by burying cats

Favourite song? 'Don't Fear the Reaper' which due to a printing error on my copy I mistakenly thought was called 'Don't Fear the Raper!" Great song but terrible advice.

What was the last book you read? Can't remember the title but I literally couldn't put it down. I think after suffering some sort of seizure.

Biggest achievement in football? As a player, I’m credited with perfecting the 'banana shot' in Subbutteo.

What would you do if you won the lottery? I would buy popularity. So hopefully, it's a rollover that week.

Dream Holiday destination: The players at Sunderland famously offered to pay for a 12 month world cruise, if I agreed to go.

Claim to fame: Once appeared on 'Ready Steady Cook'. I took a cooked chicken, frozen peas and oven chips on the show. Oh, and a tin of pineapple rings.

What's your favourite part of your role as Cardiff City Manager so far? None, sick of it, if I'm honest.

Available from Amazon Kindle

Bobbing Along Issue 1

Bobbing Along Issue 1 Commentary

Bobbing Along Issue 2

Bobbing Along Issue 2 Commentary

Bobbing Along. Issue 3. May 1989

Bobbing Along. Issue 4. August 1989

Bonus Badmouth - Wales Rugby International Day

This is how BBC Wales will be covering the forthcoming Six Nations tournament. Excerpt courtesy of the Radio Times.

BBC 1 Wales

10:00 – The Big Match Preview.

Join us as we meet the crowd gathering in the Capital City of Wales and celebrate the sights and the smells of Cardiff on International Day.
Viewer discretion advised: may contain scenes of women in pink cowboy hats and close-ups of vomit.

11:00 – Rugby Recollections. (Repeat)

Ex-internationals boast about their achievements whilst criticizing the current squad. Features archive footage of when Wales were good.
Viewer discretion advised: contains scenes of Max Boyce. Not suitable for children.

12:00 – The Big Match. Another Preview.

As kick-off time gets closer it gets more desperate, join us as we once again look ahead to the Big Match at Wales' Lenyum Stadium.
Viewer discretion advised: contains the same archive footage of old matches as featured in the previous programme.

14:00 – The Big Match.

Live from the Lenyum Stadium. Can Wales overcome the old enemy or is this blanket media coverage an expensive waste of time? In English, Welsh, subtitles, Braille, semaphore and Eddie Butler.
Viewer discretion advised: may contain images of graphic violence and torture.

16:00  - What Went Wrong?

Wales rue another defeat. Analysis of this afternoon’s International.
Viewer discretion advised: may contain scenes of gloating ex-Internationals.

17:00 – Sports Round Up.

Another in-depth look at this afternoon’s International.
Viewer discretion advised: may contain scenes that some viewers find disturbing.

17:45 - Football.
Viewer discretion advised: blink and you'll miss it.

 

17:46 – News, Weather and Sport.

The News from around the world and Cardiff's Lenyum Stadyum .
Viewer discretion advised: may contain scenes that some viewers now find tedious.

BBC 2 Wales

20:00 – Scrum V Inquest.

How Welsh Rugby supporters reacted to this afternoon’s defeat.
Viewer discretion advised: may contain scenes of domestic violence and spousal abuse.

10:00 – The Big Match Revisited.

This afternoon’s match in full for Mr Harry 'Harry' Harries of Abertridwr, the one person in Wales who missed the game and refuses to own or operate a video.
Viewer discretion advised: Stay tuned 'Match of the Day' follows.

Available from Amazon Kindle

Bobbing Along Issue 1

Bobbing Along Issue 1 Commentary

Bobbing Along Issue 2

Bobbing Along Issue 2 Commentary

Bobbing Along. Issue 3. May 1989

Bobbing Along. Issue 4. August 1989