robin hood tax

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/video/2010/feb/09/bill-nighy-robin-hood-tax

Love that.

humble pie

Torquay blew another early goal advantage, but Inter and Loko are really sucking the air out of the six yard box. Last night Loko went 1-0 up with a fantastic Nick Espiritu goal - certainly his best - but squandered at least 9 other opportunities and ended up drawing 1-1 after the ref gave Sentinels a penalty they didn't deserve.

Our finishing though has been horrible and it's crazy that normally Mr Reliable Chris Juhlin missed two open goals, and Brian Krogmann missed another.

So two games in and we finally have a point. I'll have my pie warmed over with a little ice cream if you don't mind.

simple pleasures

I have very fond memories of listening to match commentaries on the radio back in the UK. Whether it was Radio Devon or BBC Radio Lancashire or BBC Radio Sheffield & South Yorkshire, pottering around the kitchen or the garage with the radio on keeping in touch with the local match, with updates on everything everywhere else.

I subscribe to Gulls Player now for about $40.00 a year, and apart form the feel good bit about supporting the club, you get a live feed of audio direct from BBC Radio Devon of all Torquay games.

Chris Zebroski just scored for the Gulls against Crewe, as I type this ! And Julian Gaunt poetically notes that if it were the Premiership Alan Hansen would have been crowing about that one !

Radio commentaries are the black and white movies to the Sky big screen presentation of Premiership games - radio is The Loneliness Of A Long Distance Runner to television's Avatar.

Speaking of which, a couple of us watched the ManchestUnited / Arsenal game on Sunday - a game that was being test broadcast in 3D to select venues. Cracking game of course, with an inspirational performance from Wayne Rooney. As entertaining and passionate as that game was, I was still really looking forward to listening to the Torquay / Crewe game from Gresty Road.

Let's see if the lads can't atone for the Bradford result. After this, I'm most looking forward to the Loko game tonight - it's a late one 8:55 - but it's at Griffith Park, so we'll definitely play.

there's only one greavesie

...and that's Chris Hargreaves.

Chris scored the winner in the play-off final, and played in every game of our last campaign. Everything runs its course, and Chris is 37 or so but it chokes me up that he'll be pulling on an Oxford shirt this weekend.

Chris is the first Torquay Captain in 10 years that I didn't shake hands with, but the one I've most admired since Wesley Saunders.

Chris joins the list of Dayle's favourite Alumni. I can't type any more though the tears.

reign

It's been very annoying, and the weather has spoilt it all lately. Me and the lads have turned into fat bastards, missing two Tuesdays and a Sunday, and now our partners in Rec & Parks have snaffu'ed and the lights went off before we could even start practice.

In the old days I'd have got all righteously indignant, but I know our mates have furlough days, three day weeks, overtime ban's and supervisor only shifts, and so in the season the club is carrying more 'scholarships' than ever, I feel everyone's pain.

North Hollywood Valley Muni Office probably didn't get the permit to Reseda Rec in time, and so there was no staff, no lights, and consequently no practice.

A bunch of fat bastards turned up - but no lights, grumbling, went home.

No such concerns for Dinamo Sputnik though, three points already in the bag a 4-2 win over Hart Of Mid-Wilshire and the Union Football League was all to the good. A flashlight in the otherwise dark week.

quite a bit going on I suppose

As well as the first week's action (a rather inauspicious beginning for everyone other than Zenit and Turbine) there was the Sputnik / Inter friendly, the machinations of the Union Football League and the rain.

I went down to Ferraro 5 - newly reseeded, and site of Inter's first game/loss of the season - and enjoyed probably the most entertaining game of football outside the play-off finals in 5 years. The women were terrific, and in spite of this being their first game, Dave had done a bang up job of knitting them all together, and it was very evident that the team had worked really hard on passing and moving.

There were some breathtaking highlights too - Jenny Lucas' goal was one of the most supreme individual efforts I have ever seen - it was up there with John Barnes for England against Brazil in the 1984 World Cup (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SCyXGiJ-jc) a truly exceptional moment.

Here's a load of pictures from the Turbine debut:

Sputnik promises much more this season than last, with virtually the whole team being overhauled Fabian, Moggsy, Malcolm remain, and then there's the 19 new blokes. Union Football League is supposed to be on a par with the Municipal Metro level and so the fact that Sputnik beat Inter in Sunday's friendly isn't a great surprise really, but Inter had three bad minutes and conceded a couple of goals up to that point it had been all square at 1-1. Of course (here come the excuses), Chris Adams was out, Greg Shull was out and Scotty Hutz has been to beaten up at work he thought the game was Monday.

new

Inter got beaten yesterday, 3-0. It was one of those games where we lost by the number of chances we didn't convert, with at least 7 shots from within the 18 yard box going over the bar. Greg made two uncharacteristic errors in goal, and so we were on the back foot.

For better or for worse, I decided to go three at the back to get three up top in tha last 15 and we conceded the third when I couldn't get to their over lapping striker by the back post.

But, I'm really looking forward to the Loko game tomorrow night - it'll be a debut for Sep and Martin, and it will just be the couple of tweaks the team needs after we cam down the home straight with nice unbeaten spells last season. Jon will be there, so it'll be nice to catch up with the dad to be. Overall though, a weird kind of start to the season - Dinamo Red Star drew 5-5, Dinamo Shakhtar drew 1-1 and Dinamo Zenit got out of the blocks with a nice 2-0 win.

cards, cups

Had my nose to the grindstone this last week or so. It's that time of year when I get to have the fun of registering everyone, making sure I have head-shots, address details and so on.

That bit is not so bad, since we have to many returning players - but the Muni League players now have to provide a copy of their Drivers License and inevitably that means the chasing and the cajoling.

But with the season starting on Sunday (no snow-outs for us !) it's almost done , and we can concentrate on kicking balls around Municipal Parks. The Bash first though, Atlantis Sports Bar & Lounge in Encino, Saturday night at 8:00 should be a blast.

My dream Fourth Round of the FA Cup wasn't to be as Brighton beat Torquay United 1-0 at Plainmoor and Leeds beat ManchestUnited (it always sounds like that when Lou Macari says it) at Old Trafford. For Torquay, an away gig at the Theatre of Dream would mean enough revenue to pay the whole club for a year or more.

In our own more modest (though equally 'cup-upset-shocker-probe-pictures-at-nine' kind of way) manor Monday night, FK Dinamo drew with Cloverfield and then got beaten on penalties. I'm not going to go into it, but a perfect storm did for us - nothing to do with refs either.

Looking forward to getting out there again.

David

David Copeland-Smith is a really good friend of mine.

He was a LA Vale regular, and in addition to his on field appearances was a behind the scenes stalwart, kit washer, dish and bottle washer, jolly upper and subs collector. He's a UEFA 'A' badge owner, and he works hard at Harvard-Westlake, at FK Dinamo as first team regular, at Hollywood United Over 30 Tuesdays, and as Head Coach of Dinamo Turbine.

Dave is a great bloke, and his alter ego Jetski is a blast. Jetski and former FK Dinamo regular Matt Davis run www.thefinalthird.com - it's my new favorite site. The interview with Jill Oakes is hilarious (not just because I'm in the background putting up a goal...) and Dave's coverage of Ali Riley and the women's draft is brilliant. If you read this (all 7 of you) check out thefinalthird.com.

Peace

Took a few days off with the girlfriend and kids - and while they played in the snow, I thought I'd finish up my stack of David Peace novels - having sailed through the 1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983 Red Riding Quadrilogy I still had The Damned Utd and GB84 to read.

For whatever reason - and I may have mentioned it before - this last couple of years I've become even more nostalgic, I think it's my age. 'Life On Mars' (the Simm / Glenister version) set me off actually, as I re-watched all The Sweeney episodes and got drawn into the Channel 4 Red Riding trilogy - and then of course - the books.

The Yorkshire Ripper parts of Red Riding resonated as if they were yesterday and the whole paranoia, distrust, incompetence and confusion seemed again very real to me. The smoking and drinking, the casual contemptuousness and the lack of empathy of journalists were stickily and icily poignant. When I was in my first Cinema General Manager post, my best friend worked for the Lancashire Evening Post and there was always the sniffing for something that might be a story.

The Damned Utd was a little before my time - I only was aware of the Leeds period afterwards, it was Clough at Forest that I remembered - and though I know Brian Clough didn't smoke - there was a truth to him smoking in the novel. Therein is the incredible power of Peace's work for me. It really is a conceit to continually point out that it's fiction (as all the Leeds message boards do about the book and latterly the film) - DP captures a greater truth in the fiction.

GB84 is a different matter, personally. It was before I went to college in Sheffield and I was living in a bedsit (studio apartment but with less space, maybe an 'efficiency'/ 'bachelor' ?) on Amherst Park, Manor House not far from Stamford Hill railway station. With a bunch of mates we'd collect food for the striking miner's families at the Safeway (now a Somerfield) on the corner of Amherst Park and Stamford Hill. We'd get everything in there - and the community was very generous - and reflected the make up of that community - we'd get chick peas, gefilte fish, pasta, cous cous, all the veg (canned), pita, the lot.

My Dad is from Huddersfield and his Dad used to knock stuff off from work as a stainless steel toolmaker and I always wonder how my granddad would have taken to gefilte fish and cous cous had they been on strike for a few months and being starved out by the tory bastards. It was eye wateringly humbling to think that a community so completely different from the pit towns of Yorkshire was metaphorically standing shoulder to shoulder with you.

I confess to a 'breach of the peace'. Few know (sorry Mum) that I was dragged by coppers into a transit van and gobbed a couple of times on May 14 1980 for throwing a carrier bag of baked beans onto the the doors of Lancaster Town Hall. Ironically and hilariously, the investiture of the new city Mayor coincided with the TUC Day Of Action. A caterer tipped us off what the celebration lunch menu was, and cost. Pretty much the same as the daycare for tots programs that had been cut.

So in 1984, of course I went to Tilbury to picket the import of foreign coal to keep the power stations fired up, to keep the steelworks furnaces burning, to break the strike. I got a knee in the knackers for telling a copper to 'bollocks', and felt a bit of a pseud as a Time Out & Guardian reading, Hackney Marsh Footballing, North Londoner where the Our Lady's Convent RC School and the Yesodey Hatorah School were practically next door to each other in N16, with the fresh hummus and the late night / all night movies walking distance at the Rio Dalston Junction were never deeply or seriously threatened by the systematic destruction of community as political revenge, and even though we weren't the buckets were filled up with coin on Saturdays at The Arse and Spurs.

I was fueled by an idealistic naivety, a fired up passionate better-but-I-don't-know-what-it-looks-like-ness. I sold the papers, the pamphlets, I picketed the National Front recruitment campaigns (in London, Sheffield, Kendal, Lancaster, Morecambe) went to the Red Wedge gigs, wore the shirts, marched, and got drunk on the drink of collective human possibility and beer.

Latterly and cynically, I can consider the possibility of a false flag operation. It's all out there - Northwoods, 9/11, Mukden, Operation Ajax. In 1984 I never considered the possibility of a government sponsored private security detail painting or killing scab pets (cats, dogs) or smashing scab residence windows, slashing scab tyres or killing scabs to implicate striking miners. That the (never caught) 'kids' who dropped a breeze block through a scab's windscreen on the M6 from a bridge might have been government agents. It bothered me at the time that the TV footage was all from the police side of the line, but I never felt it was all horribly orchestrated, that we were all just pawns.

Peace does that to you. The simple truths you never saw, you see, but through 'fiction'. The thoughts you didn't think - you think. Brian was just trying to play the right way - the beautiful way - the honest way - without cheating. And with every earnestness, we were equally trying to do the right thing. Brian, Arthur, the miners, the food donors, the pickets, the nurses, the dockers, the students and the Time Out & Guardian reading sad bastards, Hackney Marsh Footballing, Stainless Villa loving, naively idealistic, Amherst Park bedsit dwellers 1984. Los Angeles 2009. Thanks.