Someone didn’t see David Webb’s Southend side which won successive promotions from Division 4 to Division 2 (in old money).

By FAR the greatest team, the world has ever seen 🦐🦐🦐

But in the middle of all this you won the Euros and looked amazing doing it. That’s what I can’t get my head around.

It’s actually starting to get quite sad for the sport itself. World Cup’s without Italy just aren’t the same.

As lover of World Cup’s and its history the thought of a third successive finals without Italy is mind blowing.

And in Brisbane (well, SE QLD as it extends to both Gold and Sunshine Coast) we have 50 cent fares permanently. They even survived a change in State Government because it’s so popular to scrap it would be electoral suicide. Just as PUBLIC transport should be.

👏👏👏

I’m obsessed with it, it’s truly beautiful and so moving. The fact he’s allowing his voice to sound fragile just adds to that.

He’s Paul freaking McCartney and doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone. Yet still at 83 he’s making stunning new music. Just astonishing.

…but everything around the games themselves I can’t get excited about. Which is usually a big part of it. Not this time.

I’m numb to it. Which is so sad because I’ve always described it as like Christmas (or whatever other religious/cultural festival you prefer) for football fans of it only happened every 4 years and then went on for a month.

MAYBE once the actual football starts that will win out….

That makes sense. Definitely nods to the 90s

Standard trick on TV apparently. It’s why on panel shows they drink water out of mugs not glasses, so if they do pick ups etc it doesn’t mess with the continuity.

No, it’s new to me. Have it on whilst I cook dinner 👍

Will report back.

Yeah, never really got the American one and usually attempts to translate things across the Atlantic (in both directions) are rubbish. So I had low expectations - but they have good and funny on it and…yeah…was actually ok.

The first episode of SNL UK was….not shit. In fact at times it was funny.

I’m as shocked as everyone else to be fair.

So give me NPL QLD where I’m going tonight, take me to Scunthorpe/Tamworth/York/Braintree etc etc as I did over Christmas and New Year. They still feel rooted in place and community, which to me is why I love football.

I sort of hanker after a time when you’d watch Serie A and it obviously looked and felt Italian, La Liga was quintessentially Spanish and yes the old First Division was very English. Now it’s all homogeneous and the PL is the biggest, blandest shopping mall full of multinational ‘brands’.

But also at the top level because it more and more feels like the Premier League is a global competition that just happens to be HOSTED in England with the participants are drawn from all over the globe.

And I rail against that not in a Reform/Farage/Brexit way. More because it lacks soul.

Yeah. Suppose my point was more that it can’t be because of an English football DNA. Because largely I don’t think there is one anymore (even non-league teams play out from the back like everyone else, sometimes infuriatingly so).

Basically…fuck ‘em 😂

The Premier League as a whole generates more than double the nearest other major league. In a sport where basically money buys you the best players and coaches from around the world they should do better than they do.

And my petty hatred means I’m clinging to that and thinking they’re all crap 😉

Underperform I mean. They definitely don’t underpay 😂

Thing is based on the fact they are the richest clubs and players are global they should have the fittest AND most technical players (as an average) overall. And they probably do. And coaches aren’t English either so not that. So don’t know why they underpay. I’m just petty and glad they do.

AND if Tottenham, one of the so called Big 5 who started the whole idea of a breakaway leading to the Premier League in the first place, were to get relegated I think I’d die laughing. But fucking worth it, what a way to go 😂

…as time goes on and they double down on hoovering up all the money in the game whilst clubs like Bury went under for what would be peanuts to a mid ranking Premier League team (and indeed my own club nearly went the same way too) I actively want them to lose. All that money and still shit in Europe

In the past I’ve been broadly ok with English clubs doing well in Europe (with one or two exceptions - the 1999 European Cup Final was heartbreaking) but not with any great enthusiasm, more a shrug of the shoulders and saying “yeah, fine I suppose”.

But…..

Or “no, it’s fucking hilarious”?

Oscar Pi-crashed-ri

Am I right? 😂

Great stuff mate, good to see you got a game in. She’s a beauty ain’t she?

🤮

But then I found my perfect pub in York and will forever be looking to replicate that but may never find it…