Blues Vs Charlton – A Report From Down Under

November 25, 2008 by Aff · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Life In Australia, Matches 

After staying up until stupid o’clock (3:30 AM to be precise) playing Xbox games at a relatives place the previous night, the 2 AM Sunday kick off time for Blues – Charlton was always going to be a big ask. I had planned to go to bed at around 7 PM on the Saturday night and get about 6 hours of shut eye so I could be fresh for the game when my alarm woke me up at 1:45 AM.

No such luck.

Have you ever played Football Manager? I suspect so. I found a copy of FM 2006 in a shop for $5 (about 2 quid) the other day and decided that, with the majority of my entertainment stuff still floating somewhere around the Atlantic on its way to Australia, it would give me something to pass the next few weeks. It’s beginning to cost me.

Have you ever seen the screen that tells you your Addictiveness Rating and it starts off ‘Just One More Game’? Well, this is where I found myself on Sunday evening having led an average Perth Glory team to the top of the A-League at the expense of the Dwight Yorke and Steve Corica inspired Sydney FC. 7 PM rolled by, I carried on playing. 8 PM rolled by, I carried on playing. 9 PM rolled by, I carried on playing, 10:30 PM came and I finally switched it off. I eventually got to sleep close to midnight.

My alarm buzzed and my first instinct was to throw it through the window. Then I remembered that I have a blog to keep and it would look unprofessional to sleep through a game. Actually, I just can’t stand the idea of missing a Blues game and so I leaned over to switch the alarm off before grabbing my pocket torch off my bedside table. It’s pitch black in the middle of ‘the bush’ and no street lighting means that a torch is the only way I can navigate to my dressing gown and into the living room without waking most of the house up. I’m dreading the day I’m mistaken for a burglar and shot.

By the time I’d plugged in the dial up cable, plonked my laptop on the table and found Fox Sports, I’d almost fallen asleep again. I fumbled around my favourites looking for Blues World. Eventually I found it. I started up the commentary for Blues – Charlton. I was greeted by silence. Nothing. Notta. Zip. Zilch. I cleared my cache and tried to reload. Still nothing. I got angry. Then I realised that it might be my PC. So I tuned in to Torquay versus York City via the same medium. Commentary came through loud and clear. Useless. Utterly useless. Blues World that is, not York or Torquay, both of whom I quite like. Although I suppose me liking them doesn’t prevent them being useless.

I listened for a while whilst keeping one eye on the Villa versus Arsenal on TV (and I know they’re our local rivals and I wouldn’t waste water if they were on fire but anyone who makes Arsene Wenger look like he wants to cry deserves congratulating) and watching a bit of Blues text commentary. Blues took the lead. I was frustrated that I’d missed it. Apparently it was a corker too – Championship highlights are on on Tuesday nights here in Australia, if I can ‘book’ the TV. Other people in the house watch stuff on Tuesday nights. Fingers crossed for tonight.

I was in a funny headspace. Blues were winning but I wasn’t particularly happy. I was annoyed by Blues World not working, annoyed by my own lack of self discipline in going to bed at a reasonable hour and annoyed that I’d found out that Blues commentaries are readily available online for free if you know where to look. Eventually – after twenty minutes had gone – the commentary kicked in. Success. I settled in for the long haul with Fox Sports on the TV and Blues – Charlton on the radio. Okay, I’d paid £20 for a commentary that people were getting for free but fudge it, Blues were winning and that’s pretty much the only thing I’d wanted when my alarm assaulted my ears just under half an hour earlier.

Only, then it went wrong. Shortly after tuning in, we conceded – twice. My bad language cup runneth over. All under my breath in case anyone had gotten up in the night and crept into the room behind me. Bad language isn’t appreciated in this household! Except, interestingly, the word tw@t because they don’t have such a word in Australia and my relatives happen to think it’s ‘cute’. Tw@ts!

And speaking of, Blues seemed like they were playing like it. Half time came and quite how I managed to stay awake through those fifteen minutes, I’ll never quite know. I don’t actually remember the half time break but I remember half time coming. It’s possible that I fell asleep. It’s also possible that I wandered around completely naked. I might’ve done coffee, I might’ve gone out onto the balcony and belted out Keep Right On, I might’ve updated my Facebook status with something tw@t related. I genuinely have no idea. This is how those murderers on God-awful shows like NCIS must feel when they swear they blacked out the second they caused ‘blunt force trauma’ on the back of the poor victim’s head.

No matter, Blues were losing – again.

The hardest place to be in the world is away from St Andrew’s on match day. You have no idea of the shape of the team, how individuals are performing or even what the crowd is like. Sure, commentary gives you an idea but I’ve been at matches when I’ve had different opinions to others on pretty much every single details of the game – including atmosphere. It all depends on where you watch the game from and match reports really are tricky to judge because you don’t get a sense of what a player excelled at or what he struggled with. Highlights aren’t much better out here because they try and squeeze the League Cup, the Championship and Leagues One and Two into a half an hour slot. Might as well attempt to dunk a Travel West Midlands double decker through a basketball hoop – impossible.

For example, they showed Quashie’s (or Squashie as he’s become known in this house) second booking but not his first. Superb considering the first incident is shrouded in so much opinion. I’ve read people say there was no contact, people say he headbutted the Charlton player and people say that he simply chested him in a squaring-up sort of motion. I’ll never know. Which annoys me. But it was 25 degrees and gorgeous yesterday so I’m not regretting missing out on Nigel Squashie possibly or possibly not headbutting someone just yet…

The team for Saturday was a bit of a mystery. Was it 4-4-2 with McFadden out wide left or was it 4-3-1-2 with McFadden having a free role? Again, I’ve read both. Considering where McFadden scored from (and what a goal although Fox Sports gave Goal Of The Week to Stewart from Derby) perhaps it was a free role? Although in a post-game interview, McFads says that he is put there at corners to shoot from range. Answers on a postcard for where he played (and perhaps I should add here that I started writing this article before Tuesday’s highlights show – I finished writing it afterwards hence me having seen McFads’ goal.)

Not much to say about the second half, really. Mostly, I battled to stay awake with the commentary little more than background noise. Thankfully, we scored both of our goals early so I managed to get a couple of celebratory “YESSSSS!!!!”’s in before I went off to the land of ARGHSTAYAWAKE! About the last thing I heard was Squashie’s dismissal. Pretty much my last thought was that he’d get stick after the game and probably a lot of Blues fans hoping that we send him back to West Ham sooner rather than later.

It’s typical that according to most, we threatened to play some nice stuff in the second half before we were reduced to ten men and that after the sending off, the crowd really came alive. The web-stream here runs at a dreadful bit rate and it sounds as though it’s been broadcast from the middle of a very echoey shed – that’s underwater – but still, the strains of Keep Right On are a joy and a much better stimulant than coffee.

We remain second and from my point of view, there’s not much to complain about. After reading the match reports, trying to debate tactics and chewing the fat about Alex McLeish’s decisions, we’re still in the automatic promotion slots. This got me thinking about points versus performance and just how the views of exiles might differ from those paying their dough week in and week out. God knows, I’ve walked out of St Andrew’s complaining – even after we’ve won but this soon simmers down a little by the time I’ve reached town – but when I get up at 2 AM to listen with a cup of steaming coffee, I just want three points and though it’d be nice to hear us knocking it around like Real Madrid, all I want is for us to succeed and bag three points at the end of the ninety so I can go back to bed with a smile on my face.

It’s food for thought and probably something I’ll come back to and explore a little bit more in the coming weeks. As far as Charlton goes, we won, I’m happy. Promotion is still on.

Tags: ,

Forest Vs Blues – Avoiding A World Of Pain!

November 8, 2008 by Aff · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Life In Australia, Matches 

I had been promised a match preview by a well known and often well liked member of the Joys & Sorrows forum. So far it hasn’t arrived and as I type this, it’s 5 AM in the UK*. He’d better be up doing it or have a written note from his mother as to why it’s not sitting in my inbox yet! Actually, it probably won’t arrive before the game but if I mention that he’s let me down here, it doubles my chance of getting a match report. Or possibly means he’ll leave the forum and not offer another article favour ever again. Ah well, you got to be a gambler.

I’m still unsure about the format to take with the blog. Do I do match previews? Do I do match reports? Do I just blog when something interesting happens? Do I just blog when I want to get something off my chest? Do I just blog what I want and when I want? For example, if a big season ticket holder thing crops up and the fans are at war with the board, do I talk about it? As an exiled Blue, I’m pretty removed from it and although some might think that I should stick up for my fellow fans as a matter of course, I’m not so sure. Issues with season ticket holders and the like have never, unfortunately, affected me, hence why I’ve never really talked about them up until now either.

When I thought about a new format for the blog, I did say that I would blog what I want and when I want. I also said that if I missed commenting on some news or if I missed a match report or match preview, that’s okay. I’m think I’m going to stick to that. Hence, you should probably look elsewhere if you’re looking for in-depth team news or a place for a comprehensive Blues news stream. Maybe I’ll link to all that stuff soon enough. Maybe I’ll put together a blog chocked full of information on how and where to follow the club if you don’t live in Brum. It’s an idea.

Anyway. Nottingham Forest. No match preview as such, just my musings on how I’m feeling about the game and perhaps some insight into what it’s like to follow Blues from abroad.

I’m on 56k dial up internet at the moment. I pop by my sister-in-law’s place most days to use her wireless broadband (sometimes, if her three kids are screaming, I’ll pull up, quietly sneak onto her deck and use it from a distance on my laptop without saying hello! I hope she isn’t reading although that, of course is a joke and I love my niece and nephews-in-law lots!) and it’s been invaluable for keeping up with Blues news since opening multiple tabs of news from Newsnow takes hours on dial up. On broadband, I can do an hour’s worth of reading and research in about 15 minutes (or should that be ‘It takes me an hour to do 15 minutes worth of reading on dial up’?) Today, I went over there and did just that. Although today, I surfed to somewhere I hoped I’d never have to surf to again – the purchasing page for Blues World.

I have trepidation. The last time I spent a prolonged period away from the UK, I bought Blues World – just the radio commentaries. The majority of commentaries were from BRMB / 1152 and whilst many back home slate Tom Ross and his team, they do a passable job at communicating the excitement and occasion of the match across the globe in a way that I always felt Radio WM struggled with. So long as I didn’t rely too much on what he said to form my opinions of how Blues – and individual players – were playing, it was – dare I say it – enjoyable. In fact, it made me feel a lot closer to home and a bit more involved. Somehow, text commentary in the eerie 4 AM silence doesn’t really help one connect in the same way as three thousand ‘noses singing Keep Right On through the radio speakers. It was good – when it worked.

In my experience, the service was, to put it mildly, average. Upon connecting, it would regularly be dead, it would stream commentary from the wrong game and it would chop in and out (and I’ve had it confirmed by others that it was zero to do with my dial up connection) meaning that I’d regularly miss key moments and renditions of Keep Right On. It drove me to despair. However, despite my – and many others – complaints, the service didn’t improve and from what I’ve read from other people who still subscribe, it’s just as bad as it’s ever been. In fact, if you have access to BRMB versus Forest today, tune in and listen for Tom Ross talking to his back room team about 30 minutes into the game – “Are the Blues World people hearing us? Are we connected? Can you check that for me? Thanks.”

The problem is that Blues fans away from the UK – Birmingham specifically? – have no other choice. Last week against Queens Park Rangers, I trawled the web for radio links but the best I could do was Sky Sports’ live studio audio broadcast accompanied by text commentary on bcfc.com. Sure, it was passable for information but there was no sense of Blues playing. There was no nails being chewed, no Ohh’s! or Ahh’s!, nothing to suggest that nerves were being frayed, that we were falling from the top of the Championship tree. I hated that and I felt disconnected. I WANT to feel like I’m a Blues fan being put through the mill like my fellow Brummies 12,000 miles away.

And therein lies my trepidation. Firstly, will my connection handle Blues World now? Has it been upgraded (does it stream quicker now?) and I don’t know about it? Secondly, and more worryingly, will I be paying for a service that STILL isn’t up to scratch but I can do absolutely nothing about? I can’t help but feel that tonight, I’ll be frustrated and it’s a case of those in charge knowing that the football fan can go nowhere else to get his ‘hit’ and that poor service will be gotten away with simply through a lack of choice.

(I must point out that I complained to Blues many, many times about poor service. They were sympathetic, polite and appeared to try and get something sorted. They were not at the time, directly responsible for the commentaries Blues World provided – in fact a lot of official team sites seems to use the ‘World’ service and from what I’ve read, a lot of exiled fans are not happy with the service. However, it is not necessarily the fault of the individual clubs when commentary etc goes wrong. Although, that said, I would imagine that clubs could go elsewhere for their official sites.)

I remember when bcfc.com first started over 10 years ago. Audio commentary was, amazingly, free! It was regularly rubbish but it was free and so there was a sense of shrugged shoulders and a “We’ll put up with it” attitude from exiles. I was around the official forums quite a lot back then and I remember reading a lot of threads. I didn’t realise back then just how frustrating it must’ve been though – so close yet so far from a link back home. I just hope that at 2 AM tomorrow morning, I am hearing my fellow ‘noses sing Keep Right On and not the sound of frustrating silence – or even worse, a game I have absolutely no interest in.

And speaking of my night, it starts at midnight. Arsenal versus Manchester United is being screened live here and I’ll stay up and watch that and then tune in to try and listen to Blues away at Forest. I’ve read quite a bit today and I must say that I’m feeling typically optimistic. Calderwood and Forest are talking about their last two results and how they may well be getting back onto a sound footing – but I’m thinking that this is a positive for Blues. Forest will get a big crowd for this one and with results picking up, there’ll be expectancy. With expectancy comes pressure (ask any Blues player!) and if Blues can take that pressure and use it to their advantage by starting well, it’ll hopefully cause frustration from the home stands. Couple this with our strength on the counter and with them hoping to fly out the blocks… well, it might play into our hands.

Both sides have injuries to contend with and our list made me smile when I saw it. Could any other side in the Championship be missing so many good players and still be such heavy favourites away from home? I’m thinking perhaps not. Murphy, Kelly, Parnaby, Johnson, O’Connor, Nafti, McSheffrey all missing and yet we’re still able to put together a formidable side with options.

I’d expect Quashie to start tonight and I’m backing him to do well. There’s something in his character, something in his make up that says that he’ll be a success here and after the prolonged loan negotiations and underwhelming welcome from the Blues fans, he’ll have something to prove. Anyone who read up about him in the Mail upon him joining will see that he’s busting a gut to get a move here as well as prove himself still capable. You don’t put all that in just to let it all slip. I like the guy and anyone who can pass the ball and fire the side up is someone I want next to the best midfielder in the division in Lee Carsley. I’d also like to see Bent given a proper chance alongside McFadden with Quincy given the nod to start on the left with Larsson on the right. I’d also like to see Austar add Sky Sports News to its channels package because I’m missing Georgie Thompson!

Seven hours to go here in Australia. I’ll be counting them down, minute-by-minute, second-by-second.

* It was 5 AM in England when I started typing this article. By the time I’d finished, it was 8:15 AM. However, it didn’t take me three hours worth of work. In the middle of the article, I had to pack up my laptop, drive home, look after a headachey Mrs Aff and then read a couple of chapters of ‘Survival Of The Dumbest’ by Wil Anderson before I could continue… as always, when I got home and got out of the car, I had a quick look at my bedroom window. When I did so I pumped my fist and muttered “Come on you Blues” as I spied the mini scarf that hangs there. Come on you Blues.

Tags: , ,

Theme Tweaker by Unreal
AWSOM Powered