What do you enjoy more concerning football?

JS account shares a LOT of similarities with some of my footy experiences. My dad really drove it in the early days, although nowhere near as many trips that JS seems to have had with his old fella.

Almost exactly the same attitudes to non-Saints footy today, except I like to keep abreast of everything else on podcasts. It takes a rare non-Saints (or England back when good) to get me excited.

JS’ old man is 10 years older than mine, they done more miles together and I don’t enjoy playing football that much, but that’s more to do with being shit at it than anything else. That apart, I could have written most of that.

Given many of our other shared interests, I’m semi-seriously wondering whether JS is actually a future version of me, sent back within his own lifetime*, to wind himself up. He’s probably not given us all winning lottery numbers to stop a universe destroying paradox or something.

It’s what I’d do :lou_sunglasses:

Actually seriously, top stuff sir. This is what we like.

* Starting to regret watchin Quantum Leap

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Just a few

Belonging.

A shared experience.

The one real link to home that can never be broken while I am alive

Pain & anguish interspersed with a moment of ecstascy every 10 years or so.

And, even going back to when I played, reminding me of the difference between an arrogant know it all cnut and a team player and why I should always stay away from the cnuts. (You know - you lay the ball off for a one-two, you are now unmarked clean through on goal and he does 14 step overs, goes back again to show he can do it again then blasts the ball 17 feet over the bar THEN says sorry, I stay away from them at every level

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You’ve played with The RaleighBoy then, Phil?

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I also remember missing a penalty for Boyatt Bombers under 11’s on Grantham Green in a six-a-side tournament semi-final.

We lost.

It’s the only penalty I’ve missed in a competitive match.

Shit penalty it was. Should have scored the rebound too.

Cunt.

not me Bletch, I wouldn’t have said sorry.

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Feel all those things to an extent too.

Some of my best Saints supporting days were when we had a small enclave of Sotonians in Liverpool at my second year of University. My best mate (sorry Fatso), Lee (some have met him) and Ste (loads have met him - used to drink at Farmhouse b4 games) were all living up in Liverpool during my second year. That was a lot of fun, especially the end of the season - going to Manchester to drink the tears of newly relegated City (we kept quiet about being Sotonian though).

Itchen North is fucking ace for the community. I’ve got schoolmates and family near me at most home games. and that’s not counting my bro, who stands next to me.

The one real link to home that can never be broken while I am alive

Completely agree. You’ve all seen me make shitloads of comparisons between Liverpool and Southampton, and in almost all cases, Liverpool comes out on top. Could never support either of their teams. Southampton was never up to date. It was the one non-negotiable clause in my transfer.

As much as a pain in the arse that the 500 mile round trip is, it’s shitloads more doable than your situation. As such, I get to do it far more frequently, which means I’m home in Southampton for at least 20 weekends a year. Now I’ll honestly admit that I can be a selfish, insular out of sight, out of mind bugger at times. I still make considerably more effort than others, but never enough to have anything more than an overview of what was going on down here.

We’re talking months, and sometimes several of them before I’d make my way back down. I’d have to get to know my youngest niece every time I visited. I’d be deluged with months worth of EastEnders Christmas Grade Family shit, often coming away with the impression that the whole place was going to explode the moment I hit the M3.

That doesn’t happen anymore. Great relationship with all the siblings, the nieces beeline it for me and fling their arms around my neck. They very much enjoy the knockoff version of WWE I do, which involves lifting them over my head and dropping them with speed and noise on a sofa.

People think you’re a fucking hero for doing the home games at that distance, but I tell them it’s no biggie, and I get to do a load of other shit such as see the family, etc. Football didn’t cause all of that, but it was the catalyst.

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I just love the magic of football. Ok I love Saints but I just love football as well. The real life drama no matter at what level.

Man City title winner in the last minute, Liverpool v Arsenal with Davis scoring the late 2nd to win Arsenal the title. Saints of course coming back to win 3-2 against Liverpool. But it does not have to be at the top level I refereed a game where a team were 0-3 down in a cup semi final with 79 minutes on the clock only to win 4-3. To see the faces of both sets of players was just crazy.

A few seasons back the English premier league champions to be were a penalty away from beating Watford in the championship playoff semi final 2nd leg, in the 6th minute of injury time at Watford. They missed the penalty and went straight up the other end and scored. The sheer joy of the Watford fans must have been huge, but on the flip side Leicester fans gutted, a trip to Wembley gone in a few kicks of a ball.

Today I have been watching all the live scores with the ups and downs closing in and I love it. Shame for Workington Town who were 1-2 up at Salford City with 10 minutes left in the playoff final, only to lose 3-2. Sums up what I have just been saying.

It is real life drama at its best. I LOVE IT!!!

Here is that Watford v Leicester clip! What finish.

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I like watching fit, young men in shorts getting sweaty.

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My mate Helen used to go to the Milton Road end and sing “We love Timmy’s bottom” with her mate.

Isn’t even a Saints fan.

Originally posted by @pap

Given many of our other shared interests, I’m semi-seriously wondering whether JS is actually a future version of me, sent back within his own lifetime*, to wind himself up. He’s probably not given us all winning lottery numbers to stop a universe destroying paradox or something.

It’s what I’d do :lou_sunglasses:

Fuck! Damn you Pap, and your (my) over-inquisitive mind! You were never supposed to realise this! :lou_surprised:

Now – everything is completely fucked!

That terribly ominous rumbling clattering sound that you just heard in the heavens above, was not a simple passing thunderstorm – alas, rather you’ve just ripped a hole in the fabric of space-time! :lou_facepalm_2: At least I do hope you heard it at any rate, or things are now even worse than I feared, and the current timeline I came back on has been completely severed! In which case, I only have until midnight to make the necessary repairs, or the universe will instantaneously and catastrophically implode! I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you – that nothing good would come of this.

I’m going to have to now travel back further in time to when Sotonians was all fields (was quite beautiful actually, if you appreciate a poignant sense of solitude, [as I know that you (we) do]) – and make some vital adjustments to your (our) memories.

If all goes well, everything will be fine, and you’ll simply have no recollection of this conversation. If it doesn’t – we’ll all be back on Fiver Central, paying Steve Grant for the dubious privilege of getting trolled by tedious twats and a handful of genuine fucking lunatics! Pray that this does not happen, and wish me (us) luck!

Regardless, it was a pleasure to briefly make our acquaintence in real-time. I wish you a long and happy life, for obvious reasons. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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I have similar fond memories of my own youth footballing days. But I never missed that penalty, you useless cunt. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: (100% record from the spot in competitive games. :lou_lol:)

This also ties in nicely with it all being part of that connection with my dad. He used to ferry me all around Southampton in my days of tearing up the Tyro League. Ahh, all those times he’d stand patiently and encouragingly in the pissing rain on the sidelines, as I tried to single-handly fire the worst Mansel side in living memory to avoid relegation. Ahh, the 36-0 defeat away at Winsor in the Cup, what a day that was! :lou_facepalm_2: The Manager who insisted on playing his utterly shite son in goal, despite his having the reflexes and agility of a hippopotamus fed on a diet of Big Macs and Strawberry Milkshakes. :lou_eyes_to_sky:

The upturn in fortunes over the following two seasons leading to a top half finish, and my multi-million (chocolate buttons) transfer to Lordswood United, the massive inter-city (and inter-school) rivalries with City Rangers and AFC Solent; smashing Itchen Saints 27-2 and scoring sixteen goals myself in the process.

Awesome days, that a dislocated knee and severed medial ligaments later, robbed me of my electric pace, and the shell of a player that was left behind’s dreams of oneday playing for the beloved Saints, all amounted to nothing.

Tis good to reminisce those days when everything was all still stretched out before us, and those dreams were all still possible.

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At the back of the Milton, everyone used to sing, ‘Timmy Timmy show us your bum’. Must have been Helen who started it!

You could still turn out for the Old Blokes, Jack.

Even if your medial ligament was never reconnected, you’d still be odds on man of the match.

PS everyone loses to Winsor.

PPS as for goal memories I once went in goal for the school team and let in 9 goals against Brookfield School in a 9-0 loss.

We were from Gosport and being held responsible for losing to the Toffs from Sarisbury Green was a burden I had to carry all through school.

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Winsor were a good side when I played in the Tyro.

I played for Fair Oak Earls from 8-15.

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I loved playing…from the time I could walk until the age of 43 when a neck injury stopped me heading the ball…my Ron Davies days were over. :lou_sad:

I so identify with Jack and a few others too, going to The Dell with my Dad…squeezing two though the tunstiles under the East Stand as there were no concessions for kids in that section. Being pushed down through the crowd onto the retaining wall so we 7 year olds would have a view of the game…asking my Dad if he could see OK later in life when the tables were turned. Picking my Mum up when we scored a late vital equaliser in our '66 promotion season…Mick Channon scoring on his league debut. Singing dry eyed “Abide With Me” at my Dad’s funeral in 1990…crying, singing the same in Cardiff. Being interviewed by Radio Solent on the pitch at the end of the last game at The Dell…asked about my memories…just remembering my Dad and Mum who never lived to see that day.

My Dad’s name is on a paver outside St Mary’s 1917-1990 “Forever With Saints”…like father like son.

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Thats an amazing post :laughing:

Lovely post that.

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Originally posted by @Jack-Schitt

:lou_sunglasses:

Fuck! Damn you Pap, and your (my) over-inquisitive mind! You were never supposed to realise this! :lou_surprised:

Now – everything is completely fucked!.

You haven’t heard my theories yet, which I’m sure the esteemed paradox department of the space time continuum will take even less seriously than yourself. Forgive me if I ape the style of the Wayne’s World movies. All these theories are predicated on future me (past you) getting access to a time machine, which is presumably in the Sotonians mansion.

Bad ending
Sotonians lies in ruins. bletch is dead. Complete Bollocks Fry is posting under his preferred moniker, He-who-must-not-be-named has fully reconstituted from the Screaming Mann horcrux. Goatboy’s van-denter wins the Euromillions and dents Goatboy’s van as often as he damn well pleases. Due to undiscovered financial irrregularities, Saints are investigated by the FA, who make the inexplicable decision to appoint Paul Merson as adjudicator. He orders that St Marys be dismantled and repurposed into ramps for to meet the 30-something motability demographic. With all seemed lost, future me (past you) stepped into the time machine, desperate to put right what once went wrong.

Scooby Doo Ending
Sotonians has been losing posters at a rate of knots, due to a spooky monster scaring all the posters. We have enlisted help. but two of their number have spent the majority of the investigation in the Sotonians Pantry making unfeasibly tall sandwiches. Despite repeated attempts to determine the spooky miscreant, future me (past you) has drawn a total blank, except for one thing. There’s a nagging feeling that one time, this bloke wasn’t too careful about covering his tracks one time, except he deleted the post and you’ve rinsed the logs. It’s destroying the site! You have to go back in time, get the address and find the traitor in our midst. You travel back a bit further than you need to because you can’t remember precisely when it was posted, then a bit further back still to put a few bets on (please tell me we made money off that Liverpool game!).

Time passes, and fuck all happens. No new posters in spooky monster form. Not only have you needlessly travelled through time, but everything is a repeat now, Sotonians in particular. The JS persona is good for a bit, but it’s not caused the ripples you wanted. You think, “you know what could be cool? Scooby Doo on Sotonians”. And to think, you’ve gotten away with it if not for this ridiculous theory.

Super Happy Ending
SarniaSaint signs up on Sotonians, and claims that he has invented a viable teleportation device. We say he’s bollocks. He materialises in a spare chair at the Rockstone, screams “watch this, limey fucks”, clicks his fingers and teleports the entire drinking party to Sarnia. Unhelpfully, he hasn’t provided any chairs, so arses hit the snow as soon as we arrived. Collectively stunned, the first words to leave anyone’s mouth are “He wasn’t bullshitting!”.

“It’s actually a lot easier than you think”, he says. “It would fucking have to be”, comes a reply. Despite that, the face to face does the usual magic, and not only does he teach us how to teleport (it is fucking easy) we also get assurances that he will not use his powers for ill, and nor do we.

Sotonians save the world. We use our powers to rapidly fabricate housing, food production and distribution is revolutionised. We end world hunger, make oil and war redundant. Distance is no longer a constraint, no-one has to commute. With free time multiplying a kind of utopia emerges, and we finally figure it all out (it wasn’t as hard as we thought).

An old man now, you travelled back in time to see where it all began.

If all goes well, everything will be fine, and you’ll simply have no recollection of this conversation. If it doesn’t – we’ll all be back on Fiver Central, paying Steve Grant for the dubious privilege of getting trolled by tedious twats and a handful of genuine fucking lunatics! Pray that this does not happen, and wish me (us) luck!

Regardless, it was a pleasure to briefly make our acquaintence in real-time. I wish you a long and happy life, for obvious reasons. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Told ya before. You’re safe :slight_smile:

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Originally posted by @saintbletch

You could still turn out for the Old Blokes, Jack.

Even if your medial ligament was never reconnected, you’d still be odds on man of the match.

Cheers mate. I would love to, and I often feel a tinge of jealousy reading your thread, when you’re all off playing. I wish that I could join you, but alas (poor Yorick, I knew him!) the knee is the least of my concerns injury wise. I can still play with that. It is the fucked back that’s currently keeping me out of action.

Originally posted by @saintbletch

PS everyone loses to Winsor.

Indeed, they were an unstoppable force back then.

Originally posted by @saintbletch

PPS as for goal memories I once went in goal for the school team and let in 9 goals against Brookfield School in a 9-0 loss.

We were from Gosport and being held responsible for losing to the Toffs from Sarisbury Green was a burden I had to carry all through school.

If it’s any consolation, I once banged four goals past Sarisbury Sparks for you, when we stuffed them 10-1 away with Lordswood Utd. They played in yellow and black if I recall correctly.

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pap, two questions…

One, what the fuck are you on?

Two, in Scooby-doo Ending and Super Happy Ending, am I still dead?

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