United or City?

Well, the soccer team that I have fervently supported since I was 6 months old (ahem!) has gone down the tubes. Norwich City, languishing in the hinterlands of the English Second Division, has now lost all hope of promotion back into the limelight this year, has fired their coach and, even worse, failed to beat our sweet, dear associates Ipswich Town, even though this time I was there to see them. Inconsiderate!!

In the meantime a new entity has been born, bloomed, expanded and is enticing us.

Atlanta United!

The newest MLS franchise. 55,000 fans at the inaugural game.
Excitement. Passion.
The chance to give those Red Bulls a good licking.
Just 3 1/2 hours down the interstate.
Hmmm.......City or United? Will allegiance here be threatened?.....

On the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare's Passing

                    Here's a modification of one of his better known sonnets;  documenting the current plight of one's favorite soccer team:

Ode to Norwich City

Shall I relegate thee on a Summer's day?

Thou art so pointless and so desperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And Premier time hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of City fans,

And oft now is their bright complexion dimmed,

As every loss from win sometime declines,

By chance, with City's downward plunge untrimmed:

But thy eternal yo-yo shall not fade,

Nor gain possession of that ball thou ow'st,

Nor Ipswich brag thou wander'st in their shade,

Tho’ thy eternal shots shall hit the post,

 So long as fans can breathe, or fans can see,

 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Why do we do it?

As some readers know, I am a supporter of Norwich City, the football team from where I was born and grew up. Today was a momentous day for City, as they gained promotion back into the English Premier League by beating Middlesbrough 2-0 in the packed National Stadium at Wembley. The match was worth about 200 million dollars to the winner, the richest single game in all of football.

 I actually think we have a better team than when we were  in the Prem last year and so one can look forward to next season with some anticipation. As long as Liverpool don't re-hire Suarez we'll be OK (he scored 11 goals against us in 5 games).

But it was hard to enjoy the playoff final today, and most serious sports fans know what I mean. You see, it was just too important,  with too much riding on it. The result really mattered, and when that's the case it's difficult to relax enough to actually derive the slightest pleasure from viewing. Of course, the opposite; being miserable and depressed when they lose a big game; comes easy to the serious fan. Crazy. You wonder why we do it.

On the cusp of the unthinkable

For the last three years Norwich City have been basking in the limelight of the Premier Division, while our arch-rivals Ipswich Town languished in the neglected backwaters of the second division  (called the 'Championship').  Of course, we reveled in this situation.  Moreover, as last year it looked as if Ipswich would even be relegated from the Championship to the third division,  City fans, polled as to whether they would like this to happen,  nearly unanimously voted 'yes', even though this may have condemned us to several years without derby games against them.

But, as things are right now, Ipswich are just one point from the play-offs for a place in the Premier League, while we look like we'll have to beat at least one of the elite clubs,  Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal, to stay up. So there's a significant chance that the unthinkable will happen - THEY WILL GO UP AS WE  GO DOWN. 

My future job

Mr. Neil Doncaster,

Chief Executive,

Norwich City Football Club,

Carrow Road

Norwich NR2 3EW

Dear Neil,

After the debacles against Hull and Spurs, whereby in both games the lads managed to reduce themselves within 5 minutes to lurching after the shadows of the opposition like blinded zombies, it’s clear that Carrow Road needs some big changes.

So I am hereby applying for the obviously-soon-to-be-vacant position of manager of Norwich City FC.

You’ll probably want to know what experience I have in running a football club? The answer is: none whatsoever!

So what? I’ll run the show using a three-point principle broadly inspired by the athletics department of my current employer.

Firstly, I’ll get rid of the best players. This will engender an unprecedented level of solidarity in the remainder, leading to their being psychologically solidly impenetrable.

Anyway it’ll be quite easy to do because my predecessor Hughton has already voided the club of all but a couple of the good players – there’s only Hoolahan and the lad Redmond left. They’ll have to go!

Secondly, in a revolutionary step, I’ll remove the goalkeeper from the team! Knowing that our goal is gaping and unprotected will give our outfield players tremendous incentive to never let the opposition have the ball.

Thirdly, I’ll stop all training sessions. This will make the players so keen to play so that, come Saturday afternoon they’ll all run around like demented threshing machines, reducing even our dear friends from Ipswich to a bunch of whimpering blue babies.

It’s time the Canaries opened up a can of Norfolk Whoop Ass on the Premier League.

On the Ball City!

Let’s get to work!

Yours,  Jeremy C. Smith. 

Exceptionally Talented Kids

Well on New Year's Day I had the pleasure of driving down to London for the West Ham v Norwich game with Dave Jordan. I hadn't seen  Dave since 1976, when we were both 16 and pupils at Earlham High School. Now, the school itself managed to get itself recently ranked among the bottom 1% of UK high schools and was thence demolished (snif) but our footie team in the 70s wuz magic, and we were both in it.

Dave was a midfield dynamo with a cultured and accurate left foot, and later he coached a successful set of village youth teams in Norwich.  Now,  in our days there were very few scouts for the pro clubs at games, but, apparently Dave's Taverham kids team were constantly sniffed out by the sinister agents from Norwich City, who wanted to identify talent for their 'Academy'.  Now, an Academy is the route to stardom, or at least a living wage doing what you love, and a few prodigies can even be signed to million-dollar contracts in their early teens. But after a while the reaction of Dave and his fellow coaches when they saw the scouts arrive was to pull their best players off the field.  Why would they do that?

Well, signing for an Academy means leaving your friends,  the environment you're used to, and becoming the 'property' of the local pro club. Too may times Dave saw enthusiastic, talented kids snatched by the Academy then returned used, hollow shells of what they were. So he wanted to resist the uprooting and hence his reaction when the sharks were spotted.

The answer must be that there should be a middle way, a way for the most talented kids to receive expert coaching from the academies without giving up having fun with their mates, playing for the local teams as well. And the same goes for any walk of life, not just soccer.  Pro soccer clubs are right - the earlier you can get hold of a kid the better, and the same goes for science - but this needs to be done without uprooting kids from what they know.

Up the City!

Well, I've kept my trap shut concerning Norwich City since the unlikely day of their ascension to the Premier League. Why? Because it has all been too much, too nerve-wracking, despairing, elating, rousing, deflating and inspiring.

We didn't belong here, you see. At the beginning of the campaign we were 8/11 favourites to go straight back down. After all, everyone knows that to shine in the world's most-watched arena you had better avail yourself of a $200M team of silky, experienced, speedy World-Cup Ghanaians, Brazilians and Ukrainians, not a cut-price gaggle of crass, verdant British amateurs uprooted from the lower leagues.

But today we beat Tottenham Hotspurs 2-1 away. Our little team of country yokels stauched the supposedly unstoppable flow of flair and brilliance in London - the vaunted Spurs: Adebayor, Modric, and Gareth Bale, the last of those men himself alone valued at three times the cost of the whole Norwich team. And we didn't simply score 2 to their 1, we robbed them everywhere on the pitch. Throughout the whole match we were first to the ball then quicker thinking when we had it.

Paul Lambert, the gaffer, has mixed in some systematics he learned with Borussia Dortmund in Germany. But perhaps more tellingly he has assembled a kit of hungry lads. Football mirrors life: you can have whatever pedigree you like, whatever past successes, whatever mega-salary, whatever fame, but if, like Spurs, you lose that edge, that hunger, that raw desire and intent, you will lose the game.

And now we're safe, more than safe, we're even perusing a top-half finish, and I can finally breathe, relax, pour a glass of red and enjoy the Summer.

Extraordinary!

On 8 August 2009 Norwich City, who had just sunk to the doldrums of League One (the English Third Division) were hammered 7-1 at home, the worst home defeat in their 107-year history, by the tiny minnows of Colchester United. That day of humiliation will ne'er be forgotten. However, the hitherto useless Board then miraculously saw the light, as they then summarily sacked the Norwich coach and (ahem, illegally) stole the Colchester coach, Paul Lambert (below), instead!



..............................Tough Glaswegian................


Now, 21 months later, Lambert has steered City not only to the League One championship but, today, to the English Premier League. Back to back promotions, on a shoestring budget, and trashing Ipswich twice (4-1 and 5-1) along the way! Surely the greatest achievement in City's history? Although 23 million pounds in debt, the club will now receive a slightly obscene 90 million pounds for joining the big guys.

Now in 2009 I did write a bitter, angry poem to accompany them on the way down to oblivion. But somehow poetry excels only in times of grief so there will be no lines of verse this time round.

But, ahh, the heart could sing like a Norwich Canary!

Watch out Chelsea, Arsenal, Man U: you're all in for a serious pecking next season!

Update: this is why teams have difficulty in scoring against Norwich.

They're the Champions...

Norwich City just won the League One Championship.

Hence I should keep my promise and again lend them my support.

BUT

Let us not forget the team's 2005-2009 elegant swan dive from the heights of the Premier League to the sleepy backwaters of England's third division, which at times drew serious comparison with Britain's Official Worst Football Team (AFC Aldermaston, who recently scraped a draw after 40 consecutive losses).

Hopefully, the return to the second tier signals the swan dive was in reality just the first half of a sweet sinusoidal bungee jump back to the very top.....

To be or not to be...

..a Norwich City football supporter.

On May 3rd 2009, when Norwich were ignominiously relegated to League One, I announced that I was no longer a fan...and marked the occasion with a bitter, fractious poem.
Now, given recent exploits of the lads on the field there here have been raised eyebrows as to why my green and yellow scarf is still studiously banished to the attic.

Well,

it is true that..

- Norwich are presently top of the table
- The misers have taken 44 out of the last possible 47 points
- They have shattered the club record for the consecutive number of home wins (11 and counting)
- They are packing them in Carrow Road to a point where even flocks of migrating geese have been reported to pause and perch upon the Barclay Stand to take in the spectacle.
- Manchester United's manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, after his team's comprehensive defeat by second-placed Leeds, was rumoured to have said: "Lucky we weren't drawn against Norwich otherwise we would have got a real hammering."


However, one's support should not be pledged lightly.

Therefore, under the following conditions only will I formally resume with the Canaries:

- Norwich are promoted this year.
- Ipswich are not relegated. [Yes, not. This may sound strange given that Ipswich are Norwich's sworn lifelong arch enemies, but there would be little point in them plunging down past us as we are flailing past them on the way up, would there? The existence of the local derby is quintessential. Perenially one place above the relegation bracket is the ideal purgatory for Ipswich.]
- (optional get-out clause, to be invoked facultatively): Norwich City win the World Cup in South Africa this Summer.

However, even were the above conditions to be satisfied, there would, of course, be no guarantee of a celebratory poem.....

This is Simply Ridiculous

Above is the 1992-1993 strip of Norwich City Football Club, frequently voted in the 'worst kits of all time' lists - it looks like a flock of gulls circled overhead for a couple of hours before the game. However, that team finished third in the premier league.......


Now, I know that since Norwich City Football Club were relegated to "League One" (in reality the THIRD division) on that fateful day of May 3rd 2009 (see here for appropriate poetry marking the occasion) I am no longer a supporter and care not one tinker's cuss about how they do. However, I did accidentally click on a link that happened to give me the result of their first encounter in the nether reaches of English soccer yesterday - a 7-1 defeat at home to Colchester!
25,000 flag-waving fans giving them a thunderous welcome as the team walked out to play a side whose complete national support consists of one 87-year-old ex-postman who keeps mistaking them for Ipswich, the manager's farm-boy nephew who gets a free season ticket and his rosetted horse, Kenneth,.. and then... Two City fans marched onto the pitch at 0-4 and flung their season tickets at Bryan Gunn, the manager. What a load of rubbish, and that's putting it politely!

Inspired to Quickly Write a Short Poem:

...by Norwich City's relegation today.

Also posted it on the football poets' site: 'Swapping shirts with Shakespeare".

Oblivion

Out with the rust, the has-beens! Torrid reckoning now is due,
Green and Yellow still their colours, but both indicate anew,
A lack of chops and lack of bones as they did lose and lose again,
To Reading, Forest, arch-foes Ipswich, and all else ‘till season’s end.
Long receding Bayern awe, and wins before the Spion Kop,
Kept us a throng for far too long as Norwich slithered to the drop.
‘League One’ nomenclatura: take no heed of false bravura,
As Sunday May the Third sends City Reeling to the Third!

Crunch match at The Valley

..against Charlton on Sunday that could send my home town soccer club, Norwich City, down to the British Third Division for the first time in 40 years. A few thousand supporters like those above will travel to London for the final push.....