Croeso

Ex Stokie Hooligan has taken to writing poetry

A selection of Ian's poems

Fortress
The Britannia is packed to the rafters,
Young and old, meek and bold, but everyone’s sold on Pulis’s grafters;
The loudest fans in the country scream,
For 23 seasons this had just been a dream;
Now it’s here for real in its cold-stark reality,
It’s backs to the wall with a siege mentality;
Go on Stoke Go on Stoke, the Boothen End roars,
And for many, tears in eyes, they take it in and they pause;
Multi-million pound players in red and white shirts,
Putting heads where only feet dare go;
All up for the fight, don’t care if it hurts,
Only one aim for us for now;
Survival and pride,
This is our fortress, where no-one shirks or hides;
The mighty will fall here, bemoan our style and their rotten luck,
So to Wenger and the others, OI! This is the Potteries, duck;
For we are Stoke City and though many of them slate us,
We’ll put our lives on the line for our Premier League status;

The Wizard of The Dribble
The wizard of the dribble, that’s what they called our Stan,
A son of the fighting barber, and there wasn’t a nicer man;
A star that glowed, a genius to the core,
And everyday he spent on earth the people loved him more;
Gracious as a racehorse, clean as a new pin,
If Stanley was on our side, then we would surely win;
The all-time greatest winger that the human race produced,
The way Sir Stanley lived his life must have given God a boost;
He wore his heart on his red and white sleeves,
Now the nation mourns and his home town grieves;
An ordinary man full of good from young to old,
If you’re making anymore angels God, Stanley Matthews fits the mould.

A Beautiful Friendship
I was four foot tall and I was climbing this wall,
So I didn’t get sucked into the sea;
It swelled and swayed,
And rushed a wave, that damn near swallowed me;
As I reached the top someone pulled me up,
And I slumped exhausted safe on high;
It was the start of a beautiful friendship,
The Boothen End and I.

http://www.whydelilah.co.uk/news/15_May_2009/Potters+poet+has+internet+fanbase.html

need I say any more

Zigger Zigger Zigger

It's just so exciting when your footy team are doing well especially just after the rugby, isn't YouTube wonderful for giving minorities a media outlet

Social Networking to run a football club

I heard about www.Myfootballclub.co.uk ages ago and signed up immediately, the idea of many fans paying 35 UKP a year to join together and to buy an actual football club was too good an opportunity to miss.

Well we've just got to 53,000 members and we ahve bought a majority holding of club in the 5th league in  England Ebbsfleet United. The members will vote on player selection, formation, and all matters to do with the club.

If a player is old or the club makes a profit, then we do not profit from that as all money is re-invested back into the club - so no cashing in if we get an Micheal Owen or a Micha Richards as if we sell we do not profit only the club does.

What a fantastic idea, I do hope the die hard Ebbsfleet United fans are not too scared (I would be if we had bought Stoke)

Now a certain RSS feed will have an extra bite to it soon, my vote on who should play on Saturday, and in which formation.

Of course it has a full social networking site with forums, friends, profiles, feeds, voting - it i'll help very nicely with my research into these things, and this one is for real (a cool 2 million pound in the bank, a real club paying real wages, playing real matches) talk about Facebook that matters.

So When Saturday Comes is now doubly exciting

Gee - makes you feel old when one of your football heroes dies

BBC SPORT | Football | My Club | Stoke City | Stoke's record scorer passes away

Stoke's record scorer passes away Stoke City 1972 Ritchie was a member of the victorious 1972 League Cup squad Stoke City's all-time leading goalscorer John Ritchie has died at the age of 65.

Ritchie had been living in a nursing home after suffering poor health for several years.
His scoring record for the Potters stood at 176 goals in 343 games during two spells with the club, from 1962 to 1966 and 1969 to 1975.

Stoke manager Tony Pulis said: "He was a top, top player. It is tragic for a person to pass away so young."

Pulis added: "Everyone here at Stoke City will remember John for what he was, a great player for this club."

Ritchie was in the Potters attack when Stoke beat Chelsea in the 1972 League Cup final at Wembley.

The Kettering-born forward's career was eventually brought to an end by a double leg fracture.

A minute's silence is likely to be held before Stoke's next game against Barnsley on Monday evening

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hanging with the A listers

My wife and I returning from the UK on Saturday, having just attended a friends wedding (well done Brad & Sara) bumped into Edgar Davids on the plane.

What was nice was he was flying Easyjet from Luton to Amsterdam, and he, nor we, did not cause a fuss.

Now I could never imagine Becks doing that (Easyjet or lack of fuss) - imagine what the Citadel of Evil (The Sun) would say about Becks flying Easyjet!! And he is in my opinion a much better footballer than Becks (equally decorated)

I must say although I see why we had to do it, the checking in of our hand luggage as it contained various liquids (cosmetics, deodorants etc.) was a bit of a fuss, will air travel ever be the same again ??

Still the finest player of his generation

Now what was it that provoked him to do that, quite intriguing, still the magician and we will all forget about it soon enough.

Thanks for the mastery displays Zinede

I rank him up there with Pele, Maradonna and Cruyff, just ahead of Van Basten, Gullit, Keegan and Daglish and Banks.

Click foto to see the video!

Odd feeling

Here I am in Germany again with my clients, we've wrapped up the workshop early so we can watch the Germans play Ecuador, 2-0 half time. What is odd is we are all watching the game in our meeting room, and all the guys go back to their notebooks during stoppages. Even the celebrations are subdued, I guess here in basement everyone might here you scream !

Wouldn't you credit it

Here at Frankfurt Airport (bad food by the way) they have loads of table football games to keep us amused. I joined in the winners stays at the table session and after 3 straight wins I was on a roll (zigger zagger). Then stepped up a lady wearing a Frankfurt Airport uniform and whooped my arse 15-2, then she winked at me and stated in German "and I can explain the offside rule"

Bloody priceless.

Gee she must do that 5 times a day

Testing The temperature of the World Cup

Well I'm in Germany just flown into Frankfurt for the day to visit a client. And I must admit the whole World Cup scene was missing from the airport. South Korea are playing Togo in Frankfurt today and no sign of groups of happy expectant fans at all. Maybe if it was the day of a Netherlands Germany match, all would be different. 74 n all that!

Differing points of view

Now this is interesting, I've just read on the train 3 reviews from 3 countries on the Netherlands Serbi-Montegro match, the brits said Wesley Snijder ran the mid field, the Dutch said Philip Cocu ran the show, whilst the Italians stted Mark van Bommel was the midfield anchorman . Mind you that report did stretch my Italian. Hmm did they all watch the match I'm wondering? They all agreed Arjen Robben was the star despite Robin van Persie's grumblings about lack of service. Just goes to show you the mainstream press always get it wrong and the collective intelligence of us Web 2.0ers get it right.

Footy fever

Sat in the train, heading home to watch the World Cup opener, surrounded by Oranje people - wondering will poor Anke survive the month? Hmm