More than once in the last six weeks I've made some remark, more befitting of an old-age pensioner, of "I haven't been outside in four days". Fortunately, Wednesdays are a good excuse to get out and about to watch the football team I played in before broken bones got in the way. Last night was the grand final of the "CSSC: Wednesday Recreational A" league, on the very same field that I became a cripple on, six weeks earlier. The goalmouth in question is on the right. Had I a better graphics program, I might have put a white outline on it as a bit of a joke, but I don't have Photoshop. I was even tempted to have some Phoenix-from-the-Flames type reconstruction made.
All of which is distracting from the serious business of the evening: the glittering prize of a winners t-shirt. I occupied my usual role of moral supporter, dog minder, and provider of pithy remarks. The opponents had seven substitutes to go with their six on the field, whereas team Hangover had the bare minimum two female players, with no subs. Three cheers for Julia and Alexis who played the whole game without a rest. Follow the twitter commentary here. The game swung back and forth, 1-0 down, 2-1 down, and 3-2 up before it finished 3-3, with the last ten minutes essentially the two goalies hitting it long to one another because no-one else could really move. So it was that penalties would decide the game. Fortunately, the opposition seemed to think the goal was actually a couple of streets away, so far over the bar were three of their attempts. Captain-ess (for the evening) MacGregor buried her attempt, which ended up as the winner. Yes, ten penalties, one goal. And we're all now a t-shirt better off.
The lady who lives in the flat across the hallway from me has a dog that incessantly barks whenever it hears anyone in the hall, or when it goes outside. Or when you're coming home from work, it barks at you from the balcony above the door. That's not to say I am anti-dog; friends have a golden retriever puppy that is very cute, and someone at work has one that is older and is equally fun. I am only anti-dog if they are irritants, and comes as no surprise than my bane is some pampered midget furball like the one in The Kipper and the Corpse episode of Fawlty Towers which got its comeuppance via bangers a la bang
It is annoying beyond words, and was so loud the other day that it was clearly audible to my parents thousands of miles away when they were on the webcam, despite it being behind two doors. I would like to forcibly introduce it to my crutches; despite it having lived there 18+ months, I don't think I've ever seen the owner, or what it looked like. Today, however, I heard it being taken outside, and then a few minutes later heard it barking outside. Here it is. Target acquired......
Yes, it's a suit. Not just any suit, but my 'lucky' one, having seen and successfully negotiated two succesful job interviews, a PhD defence, and a final PhD talk. The thing is, it's the better part of ten years old, bought when I was a much more streamline figure than I am now; so much so that I haven't been able to fit in the trousers for years. This meant all manner of carrying on last summer when I had to go back to Yorkshire for two friends' wedding. Couldn't find a suit here after a long search - try finding a suit in a menswear shop here that isn't blue or black - and eventually found one in the Next at the White Rose Centre which is not all that different a colour.
I'd noticed in the last few weeks of being sat on the sofa doing nothing following busting my ankle that numerous pairs of shorts and jeans were getting beyond the point of loose. I'm a lot less active, aside from what you can do on crutches, and so eating much less. I guess the body finally had find an alternative fuel source and decided to burn all those years worth of beer and bacon baguettes from the library cafe in Warwick. This afternoon I tried the suit on, and hey presto, a comfortable(ish) fit. I'm pleased, since I like this suit a lot, but blimey, knackering your ankle is an uncomfortable and dull way to go about it!
Postscript: the suit I bought in Ottawa in 2007 is now so poorly fitting it needs to be altered quite substantially, and the one I bought last year will probably need similar treatment if the rate of loss continues.
In the lull before the apparent new investor/takeover, there's one snippet of Bantams news today, in that David Wetherall left the club today after 12 seasons to take a job as the head of youth development at the Football League. Signed from L***s U****d in the summer of 1999 following promotion to the Premier League for what was a club record fee at the time of £1,300,000. Unarguably, his headline moment came at the end of that season:
I was sat right in line with the trajectory of the ball and it was a goal from the second he made contact. That moment, just 12 minutes into the win-or-else game with Liverpool was sporting theatre of the highest degree; the small club with a team full of ageing journeymen defying one of the giants of English football, with a novice coach let go by Liverpool as a teenager. But in that moment, along with Gunnar Halle's goalline clearance as Michael Owen rounded Matt Clarke and rolled the ball toward an unguarded net was the beginning of the end for the five or six years of progress the club had made. The 1-0 win, after hanging on for the next 80+ by their very fingernails (though Isaiah Rankin could have made that last five minutes far easier had he not missed a very presentable chance), assured Premier League survival at the expense of Wimbledon (who lost at Southampton). The result set in motion the infamous "six weeks of madness" which pretty much bankrupted the club two years later after relegation in 2001, from which the club has been struggling to recover ever since.
Following two spells in administration, Wetherall was offered more than once chance to leave to play at a higher level as the club slid down the divisions, but it was his choice to defer wages and renegotiate his contract over a longer term. As the years passed, what little pace he had evaporated, but his reading of the game and his dominance in the air were second to none, and you could lay very little blame at his door playing-wise for the two further relegations the club suffered in 2004 and 2007, though in the latter case he had been put into a near impossible situation as caretaker manager following the dismissal of Colin Todd. Latterly, he worked as youth team coach, helping the club survive by selling on talented youngsters to Premier League academies, and for which work he has been recognised by promotion into his new job.
He appeared in 304 games from Bradford City, and another 202 for L***s U****d. Best wishes to him in his new position.
Last night saw the final game of the 2011 Stanley Cup final. After nine long months we finally found out who would win the best looking trophy in sport; for so much of the season it looked like it would be Vancouver that would win, given their dominant performance in the regular season. But the playoffs themselves are another two months long, and it's an arduous course to get to the sixteen wins required to hoist the trophy. Vancouver narrowly won the first two games, thanks largely to the resistance of Boston goalie Tim Thomas. Boston had to therefore win four of the five remaining games. The series pretty much turned on one incident: the head injury to Boston forward Nathan Horton in the early stages of game three, leaving him with a concussion and Vancouver defenceman Aaron Rome with a four game ban, the longest in finals history. Vancouver had no answer to Boston's aggression and hitting, losing 8-1 and 4-0 in successive games in Boston, thus planting the seeds of doubt in the mind of notoriously flaky-when-the-chips-are-down Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo.
Vancouver won game five 1-0 very late on through a goal from the generally objectionable Maxim Lapierre, before Boston once again routed the Canucks in game six by a 5-2 scoreline. Look at the scorelines: in Vancouver, the Canucks played 3 won 3, 5 goals for, 2 against. In Boston, the Bruins played 3, won 3, scored 17, conceded 3. All six games won by the home side. Would that pattern continue in game seven? In a word, no. A frantic opening period saw clear-cut scoring chances at a premium, but Boston scored late in the period and thereafter looked in little danger of losing; the truly back-breaking moment would come via a freak ricochet off the glass, an almost exact replica of the decisive moment in the Canucks favour in the conference final against San Jose. Instead of a defensive clearance along the boards, the puck cannoned out sideways to Patrice Bergeron who broke away short-handed to grab his second and make it 3-0 on the Canuck powerplay, crashing into the net with goalie, checker, and puck. Just over a year ago, he'd been relegated to pretty much the bit-part role of face-off specialist in the same building in the Olympic gold medal game, but was critically involved this time. Vancouver tried to rally in the third, but a team missing players - some more important than others - through injury, and other key players playing injured had no answer. The Sedin twins, so dominant for most of the regular season, and who were expected to carry the team, were brutally shut down by the Bruins second line of Marchand, Bergeron and Recchi and both ended -4 on the evening. Recchi had announced before the series that he would retire, aged 43, after 1,652 regular season games, another 189 in the playoffs, and three Stanley Cups. He made his debut for the Pittsburgh Penguins when I was still in primary school. What a way to retire.
This series was all about the Boston goalie Thomas. In seven games, he conceded just eight goals. That's a level of performance Superman might feel envious of. Hard to believe it took him till his thirties to get a regular game in the NHL. Look at his career history on the right, taking in the ECHL in Alabama, the IHL, three spells in Finland, one in Sweden, and then, finally the AHL affiliate of the Bruins. That's a very, very long road to the top. From Flint, Michigan, a small town fallen on hard times, having to claw his way up by his fingernails. Thirty-seven years old and he hasn't played 350 NHL games, and lost his place in the team to Tuukka Rask last season. He's unorthodox, to be sure, and it sometimes costs him goals (such as the game winning goals in games two and five), but he's generally hugely effective. He will be a certainty to win his second Vezina Trophy in three seasons, on the back of a modern-day record save percentage. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP which was pretty much a given, probably even if the Bruins had lost the game. In hindsight, Team Canada should be very glad that he didn't line up for the Americans in the Olympic gold medal game in the same building in 2010.
As for the Canucks, the team as a whole just ran out of steam and fit players at just the wrong moment. I can't help but think sometimes that in the last year or two the team's numbers are artificially inflated somewhat. They play in a division in which the other teams finished 10th, 12th, 14th and 15th of 15, which was the knock on the Washington Capitals for the last couple of years. Shut down the Sedins and a lot of the offence disappears. Kesler did a fine job in the first couple of rounds of carrying the team almost on his own, but eventually he wore down under the strain. It comes to something when a third line of Hansen-Lapierre-Torres is your most effective line in seven games of a Stanley Cup final.
So that's all done with until mid September when the exhibition games start again. Just time for CBC to sign the season off in the usual way. It contorts my mind that they can be so good at things like this when they continue to employ a certain completely tone-deaf oaf in loud suits.
You go weeks without a football related post and then two appear in the same day, though the last one was actually written yesterday. It's been superceded by the news today that there is a would-be buyer for the club. Logistics magnate Steve Parkin, who once tried to buy his hometown Leeds United has made an offer to the football club, and is making overtures to the Bradford Bulls to become a sporting club with pooled facilities in a similar manner to Wigan and, once upon a time, Huddersfield Town.
The owners of the club have turned down the initial offer as too low, which is their prerogative given the amount of money they have poured into the pit in the last few years, but doesn't really reconcile with their remarks of (to paraphrase) "we'd like to go back to being fans only; if someone makes an offer we'll gladly step aside". The really puzzling thing about the whole thing is the proposal to build a new, shared stadium. There's a perfectly serviceable stadium in BD8, which has almost been rebuilt in its entirety since it reopened in 1986. Why spent tens of millions on a new stadium, land purchase, infrastructure costs and so on, when the main stand could be extended to run the full length of the pitch and the Bradford End redeveloped?
I haven't posted about the travails of the once-mighty Bantams for a while. The problem with the off-season in an odd-numbered year is that there's no meaningful football to get you through the summer; a problem magnified when you have to sit here all day with a broken ankle not able to do anything. Baseball and hockey (and latterly the NBA basketball final) help to pass the time but there's nothing like some news out of BD8. So a bit of a roundup.
Firstly, Peter Jackson did get the permanent job after acting as interim manager from February. Fourth Division survival was assured in the end, but far too close to the end of the season for comfort. The 1-5 home drubbing by Crewe on the last day of the season seemed to spell out just what a tough job any manager would have for the 2011/12 season. Jackson's response was all you would hope it would be; ten players out of contract players released and an admission that offers would be entertained for any of the others. This was the club's worst finish for 45 years after all. I hope Jackson does well; he has an affection for the club given his captaincy of the 1984/85 Third Division title-winning team, and then leading the team in 'exile' as Valley Parade was rebuilt following the fire. He's not just another failed-somewhere-else manager turning up for the pay.
On the subject of Valley Parade, the club announced that they would indeed be staying at Valley Parade and not moving to Odsal. In early May they managed to purchase back the block containing the ticket offices, club shop and so on. Evidently the money borrowed to do this has to be repaid at a lower amount than the £370,000 it supposedly cost to rent from the company it was sold to in the early 2000s. In hindsight, paying the rent for that block was a far harder thing to understand than it was to pay the same rent for the stadium. The cost of staying at Valley Parade was therefore cut by a considerable margin, and presumably the money saved can now be spent on the team; essentially the fifth separate team the club has fielded since relegation in 2007. As was also expected, stadium landlord Gordon Gibb and the trustees of the Flamingoland Pension Fund didn't budge in the face of the club's requests to renegotiate the rent. You can't help but wonder if the whole thing was just some huge smokescreen while they negotiated with the owners of the office block. I do hope that some of the people involved have reflected on their catastrophically bad PR and the effect it had on the morale of the supporters, and more importantly, the playing staff.
Today's first signing of the off-season proper (if we discount Ross Hannah's signing at the end of last season) shows that Jackson has at least some understanding of the team's problems. Guy Branston might not be most people's cup of tea, especially after seeing him play against us in the past, but he might be what the team has missed for years. A physical, imposing, vocal, no-nonsense central defender of the very old school, his early career seemed to be blighted by red cards galore (or at least that's my recollection). The constant recurring theme over the last five years is that the team is just too 'nice', and frequently a shambles, defensively. If he can make us less agreeable to play against, that's a good start. In recent years, perhaps the hot-headedness of Branston's early years seems to have mellowed to some degree, and was selected in the Fourth Division Select XI at the PFA awards in April following a fine season for Torquay United, in which they set a team record ten consecutive shutouts (and blanking BCAFC twice). If he can begin to knock those rough edges off Steve Williams and get him to concentrate through the game for 90 minutes, then even better.
(As an aside, if you'd said to me 10 years ago that signing him from Torquay would even happen, let alone be broadly welcomed amongst the support, I'd have laughed you out of the room. But such has been the last 10 years to end up in this position.)
The letter on the right is my ambulance bill for my trip to hospital nearly four weeks ago. I think, all things considered, it'd have been cheaper to get one of my teammates to drive me to hospital. The only drawback would have been a lack of morphine in the glove compartment.
I'm more annoyed that until I get a receipt back, I can't claim the sum back on my work insurance. Which, given the current postal strikes in these parts and their three-day weeks, will take even longer to get here.
So after nearly three weeks since my mangling of my left leg/ankle, today was a return to the hospital. On the agenda today was removal of the temporary cast, inspection by the surgeon and replacement with a new lightweight cast. Along the way was the previously unexpected removal of about 40 staples that were holding the scars together which was a bit ticklish to say the least. I now sport a two-inch scar behind the knobbly bit of my left ankle and a four inch one down the right hand side of my shin. Two plates and seven screws hide beneath, presumably for good. The surgeon said that everything seemed to be going OK, the new x-rays that I had taken were OK, and that I should be in a cast for another four weeks before I can begin to learn how to go about things two-legged again.
All that remained was to choose what colour I wanted my new fibreglass cast. It's much lighter than the giant leaden thing I had been wearing for the previous three weeks. White, black, purple, blue, bright orange and neon green were all eschewed for the bright red you see on the left. My date with two legs: Wednesday, July 6th, 8:30 am (!). Twenty-nine days and counting.....
Thirty-something former research chemist pondering important matters, including (but not limited to) Bradford City FC, the Calgary Flames, chemistry, immigration, films, Canada Post, beer, movies, gin, broken ankles, running, beer league goalkeeping, the obscene price of cheese in Canada, how crap Peter Taylor was, crashes in the price of oil, and other iniquities of life, the universe and everything.
