Readers Warned: Do This Now!

The remit of a local newspaper is quite simple, to report on news and sport and other stories relevant to the paper’s catchment area. In recent years this has become increasingly difficult as local newspapers have been bought out by groups like Trinity Mirror (now known as Reach plc) which publish 240 regional newspapers. To offset cutbacks in reporting staff, these papers publish more and more syndicated articles, many of which lack local relevance.

Many print versions of local papers continue to do a sterling job in reporting local news and sport despite cutbacks, even if a lot does rely on members of the public providing stories. This is especially true on some sports pages where sports teams’ websites and blogs are relied upon for a good deal of the content.

Most local newspapers now publish e-editions where the print version is faithfully reproduced online, but will also have an online presence that consistently falls into the trap of publishing news that isn’t local, or isn’t news at all, and much of which is trivial or puerile.

As I scroll through my social media feeds, I see loads of posts from local newspapers that I follow with links to dramatic sounding stories, but when I click on them I find that the events that they describe have happened many miles from where I live; the story is not local at all.

Then there are the puff pieces thinly disguised as journalism, like “I tried Kent’s best ice cream parlour and now I’m spoilt for anywhere else,” or “Inside town’s fabulous house that’s a steal at £2million.” It’s little more than free advertising much of the time.

Much beloved of local newspaper websites are the stories of potholes, parking problems, school uniforms, and the perils of purchasing alcohol with a minor in tow.

Potholes, stories of which must be accompanied by a picture of a local resident (usually male, over 60, balding and wearing a drab anorak) pointing at the offending pothole, are meat and drink to local newspaper websites. It is mandatory to include reference to the age, occupation (or former occupation) of the person complaining about said pothole, as must any damage – or even potential damage – done to their vehicle. Extra kudos for describing failed attempts to get the local council to do anything about it.

Parking is another favourite, especially tales of motorists charged exorbitant penalties for some infraction of the regulations in some car park or other. A photograph should accompany the piece, perhaps showing the victim in said car park; failing that, a picture of them and their vehicle may suffice. It goes without saying that the offended party must vow never to return to the location in question.

Children sent home for school for wearing non-uniform clothing or shoes, or for having a haircut deemed inappropriate are other favourites. These must be accompanied by a picture of parent and child looking sad, along with offending item of clothing or haircut. The article must contain reference to how much the item of clothing or haircut cost and why the school’s ruling is blatantly unfair.

Selling alcohol or other age restricted products to persons under the age limit is of course a serious offence and can get shop keepers and individual shop workers in trouble if they breach the regulations. A story much loved of local newspapers features the parent who has a child under 18 in tow as they do their weekly supermarket shop, which includes a bottle of wine or some beer. The cashier refuses to sell them the alcoholic beverage even though they are clearly over 18 because they have a minor with them, the thinking being that they might supply that minor with said wine or beer. Often the parent will suggest that their child goes and waits in the car while the transaction is completed; this is refused on the grounds that the child may still be supplied with the booze. In a recent example of the story however, a spokesman for Tesco stated that shop staff should not refuse to sell alcohol to adults who are clearly over 18, regardless of the age of any child who may be with them.

Potholes, parking, and sales of alcohol being denied are old hat, however. A new breed of local newspaper story has begun to appear online and there’s no other word for it than clickbait.

We are already familiar with clickbait and headlines that look like these:

“You’ll Never Believe This _________ “

“How to Achieve Results Using This One Weird Trick”

“They Didn’t Know _________ . Then This Happened …”

By now most of us ignore these sorts of headlines but recently I’ve started to see a new breed, one that is more subtle, more intriguing, and more likely to pique our interest to the extent that we do click on them. They come in the form of warnings or commands and I confess to have become addicted to reading them, if for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity at the bonkers way something that is either well known or completely mundane has been used for an article with such a sensational headline.

For your delectation, delight, appreciation, and reading pleasure I have curated a few of them here. Most of them appear on the Birmingham Live website which, were it not for the genuine news stories that also appear on it, might be mistaken for a spoof site, so many are there. (Click on the links to see the stories in all their glory).

Drivers must keep wet wipes in car for 'three months' from this weekend

The long and short of this is that fuel pump handles at petrol stations may be a source of virus transmission and wet wipes may prevent the spread of things like colds or flu. It’s like Covid never happened.

UK households urged to put sheet of A4 paper in fridge this week

This one took two people to write apparently, and what it all boils down to is that your fridge may become less efficient if the door seal starts to deteriorate. The article describes way to check its integrity using a piece of paper.

UK households with soup in cupboards in September and October warned

Okay, this one looks important. Most of us have tins of soup in our cupboards as a standby to provide a hot meal, especially as autumn starts to give way to winter. This is a warning we need to read, surely? It turns out that this has nothing to do with any tinned soup we might have, instead it warns of the dangers of injury that may occur when using a knife to chop slippery veg like butternut squash and pumpkin. So basically, the message is, take care when using a knife.

Drivers must 'reverse onto their driveways' or face 'unlimited' fine

Wow, an “unlimited fine” for not reversing onto my driveway! Read the article and you’ll find that all the author has done is take a section of the Highway Code and write 400 words about it. Here is the relevant section. As you’ll see, it doesn’t say you must reverse onto your driveway, just that you should if you can.

Finally, another motoring headline:

Drivers must 'completely' empty their car in October due to new Labour rule

Again, wow! The Labour party are bringing in a rule that I must empty my car of everything in October! Well, no they haven’t. There’s a rumour that Labour’s upcoming budget may see an increase in fuel duty and driving around with an overladen car increases fuel consumption; the idea behind the story makes sense even if the headline is way over the top.

These are just a few of the stories that I’ve come across that pair sensational headlines with mundane stories – I found ten in an hour browsing Apple News alone – and now that I’ve brought them to your attention, I reckon you’ll see them everywhere too.

 

 

 

“Your Call Is Important To Us”

The recorded voice on the other end of the phone insists that your call is important to them. Not important enough that they are going to answer it anytime soon though, because they are “experiencing higher than normal call volumes,” as if there were any other type of call volumes.

It didn’t used to be this way, but once upon a time we didn’t have to ring our energy provider, our cable TV provider, our internet service provider, or our mobile phone company to fix some problem or error on their part. My parents were supplied with electricity and gas by the nationalised London Electricity Board and North Thames Gas; the landline telephone (and they didn’t get one till I was a teenager) was from the General Post Office and TV channels were free (TV Licence apart) and came through the aerial in the loft. My mum and dad didn’t have a bank account until sometime in the 1970s, before that whatever money they saved went into the Post Office.

Bills came in quarterly and were paid in cash at the Post Office. The rent was paid in cash to the rent man who called each week, likewise instalments on insurance policies. Problems were few and far between; if the power went out it was because the whole area had a power cut. There was much less to go wrong and years would pass before my parents had cause to contact anyone with a problem about anything.

It’s different today.

There’s a whole raft of different energy suppliers eager to sell you gas and electricity at a bewildering array of tariffs. There are cable and satellite TV companies, who may or may not be the same company that provides you with broadband; there are numerous mobile phone companies, and any number of banks and other financial institutions offering a wide range of different savings and loan products. And that wide range of highly sophisticated and specialised services and products means one thing: There are more things to go wrong, and go wrong they do, all too frequently. It’s bad enough that things go wrong because getting them fixed is always a challenge, but the first hurdle to get over is actually getting in touch with someone who can help.

You know how it goes; you’ve got a problem with one of the companies that supplies you with something, gas, electricity, cable TV, the internet. They’ve done something wrong. Typically, they’ve charged you incorrectly and you need to speak to someone to fix it, so you go on their website and click the link that says “Contact Us.” What you now see are barriers to actually communicating with them going up.

“Chat to us online,” they offer. So you do. What you get is a bot that wants to direct you through a very narrow and limited set of options and which is really no more than a sort of interactive version of their FAQs. Want to chat to an actual human being? No chance. Perhaps you would like to email them. There’s likely not an actual email address, more likely a web form which, in my experience is no more likely to produce a response than the chat bot does. Ideally, you’d like to phone them but there are plenty of websites that don’t list a phone number under Contact Us, so you Google it, and lo and behold, there’s a number that some previously frustrated customer has found and published, so you ring it.

Back in the days before Call Centres were a thing, ringing a bank or a utility company either got you through to someone straight away or you got an engaged tone, in which case you kept redialling till you did get someone. That was frustrating in itself, particularly in the days of rotary dial telephones that had no redial facility, but eventually you got through. Now you dial the number and listen to an interminable menu of options and, having chosen the one you think most closely resembles the one you need, you listen to the announcement: “Your call is held in a queue and will be answered by the next available operator.” If you’re lucky, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes or more later, a real person says, “Hello,” if you’re unlucky then you’ll encounter something that seems to be happening frequently now and which is completely unacceptable in my view.

I first encountered it with Scottish Power. It wasn’t even my problem. My late mother-in-law had been receiving emails from them even though she didn’t use Scottish Power. Someone with a similar email address had obviously set up their online account incorrectly. There wasn’t really any responsibility on my part to do anything but I thought I’d be helpful and bring it to Scottish Power’s attention, so I rang – several times. I never got to speak to anyone because their automated response was to the effect that they were very busy, too busy to take my call in fact, and that I should try again later so they were disconnecting the call.

Twitter and Google eventually connected me to someone in the CEO’s office. We spoke on the phone and she offered me a telephone number, different from the Call Centre number, to call in the event of further problems, which there were. When I called the number I got the Call Centre, the message, and a dial tone.

This week Val had reason to call P&O Cruises. She wanted to speak to Customer Services. No one answered the phone of course, instead there was a message to the effect that all their agents were busy and that it was unacceptable to make customers wait. She should call back “at a later date,” the message said, then the call was disconnected. More acceptable to simply cut people off than ask them to wait in a queue, it seems.

Finally, Virgin Media. A slightly different story here as I’ve had to call them on a number of occasions recently after we accidentally subscribed to Netflix and wanted it cancelled. On the plus side, on the three or four occasions I’ve called, I’ve been connected to a real person within an acceptable length of time. The downside has been that the people I have spoken with have been universally hopeless – in one conversation I was actually told that I should have been aware of how Virgin Media’s internal processes work, even though the person I had previously spoken to clearly didn’t! Virgin actually phoned me after one call, not to sort out the problem of course, but to ask further questions about the less than complimentary answers I had supplied on an online feedback form about how my problem had been solved – or not solved, I should say.

The long and the short of it is that we are now living in an age when communication should be quick, easy, efficient, and achievable through a variety of channels. What we have are organisations that erect barriers to communication, leaving customers frustrated and often out of pocket while they try and get their problems sorted.

The pretence of solving customers’ problems is now slipping:  By not even taking calls, organisations are crossing their fingers and hoping that people give up, go away, and accept whatever errors and poor service is being foisted upon them. We mustn’t let them get away with it.

 

 

 

Recycle, Reuse, Reduce…Reform?

The first General Election in which I was able to vote was in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first female Prime Minister. With the exception of the 1997 election when Tony Blair’s Labour Party swept aside the by now tired and scandal struck Tories (sound familiar?) and the 2016 EU Referendum, there has not been a political event so intriguing or fascinating as the lead up to next week’s General Election.

 

It seems that more people are taking an interest in politics than ever before and if that translates into footfall at Polling Stations on 4^th July, we could be in for a record turnout. But social media – Twitter (I really can’t be doing with calling it X) in particular – is not the real world and if the number of canvassers that have come to my door, the number of posters I’ve seen in windows, and the number of promotional leaflets that I have received (which are zero, zero, and one), are any guide, then in my local area, the apathy is overwhelming.

 

In contrast, I was in Eastbourne recently and the number of posters and placards supporting Liberal Democrat candidate Josh Babarinde in evidence suggest that the Conservative majority of 4,000 at the last election will probably be overturned.

 

The only poll that counts is the one on Thursday, but opinion polls have consistently placed Labour ahead of the Conservatives in recent months, to the extent that a complete wipeout of the Tories has been predicted, and their plight may become even more desperate after the recent arrival in the election of Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

 

This YouGov poll may be a realistic indication of how the election will pan out – or then again, it might not be - because a week is a long time in politics (Harold Wilson, 1964, allegedly). Some opinion polls suggest that Reform UK are hot on the heels of the ailing Tories, while anecdotally, Farage’s party are said to be gaining the votes of people who might have been otherwise inclined to go for Labour.

 

This poll would, if translated into crosses in boxes, mean Reform UK forming a government. But it’s a Twitter poll, so it’s about as authentic and accurate as surveying the customers of your local pub at closing time. More realistically, Reform UK are predicted to win somewhere between 3 and 18 seats, although even that latter figure may be optimistic.

 

 

YouGov’s poll may less accurately reflect the national mood now than it did when it was taken, but the notion that Reform UK are in power come 5^th July is even more fanciful than the idea that the Tories will only get 4% of the national vote as this Twitter poll suggests.

 

Any party that is in power for as long as the Tories have inevitably succumbs to scandal, infighting, fatigue and the desire on the part of the electorate for a change, hence the lead that Labour hold in YouGov’s poll.

 

There have been many depressing aspects to this election campaign, and although many of them have featured in the run up to previous elections, they haven’t been as prominent before, nor have all of them featured before.

·        Negativity: The campaigns of all the parties have focussed a great deal on negativity: It’s less a case of how we (insert name of party here) will help you if you elect us, but rather this is how you will suffer if (insert name of an opposing party) get in. It’s also interesting that when a Twitterer asked whether Farage could become PM, a lot of replies were not that respondents hoped so because they thought Farage would do well in power, but that his victory would upset those of a left wing persuasion.

 

·      Manifestos: How many manifesto pledges have been fulfilled by governments in the last fifty years? I have no idea, but I’d guess that the number is vanishingly small. Manifestos are a bit like a 10 year old’s Christmas wish list, ambitious but ultimately unrealistic. Manifesto pledges are probably less important than the personality of party leaders and local candidates.

 

·        Left v Right: Reform UK complained about being labelled far-right. There are suggestions that the Conservatives are now a left-wing party. Those who we traditionally think of as right-wing think nothing of throwing out insults to “loony left liberals” while resenting the description right-wing made of them. Right-wing, left-wing; small ‘c’ conservative, lower case liberal, all becoming blurred and increasingly irrelevant labels, especially given the uniparty idea, or the notion that all parties are under the control of the Word Economic Forum, among others, which is where Nigel Farage has broken the mould somewhat.

 

·        Lies, lies, and more lies: All politicians lie, that’s a given, albeit some more egregiously than others. A major problem today is that lies, even when debunked, continue to circulate and repeated. For every person who hears the lie and the rebuttal, there are a dozen who don’t hear it refuted so continue to believe it. More than ever, it’s best to treat with suspicion anything a politician says that you don’t already know to be true and then get it fact checked.

 

·        Even more lies: Unlike some of their more docile colleagues, journalists like Michal Husain, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, and Victoria Derbyshire have been holding politicians to account in interviews – and the politicians don’t like it much. From Richard Tice being upbraided after falsely claiming that the Office of Budget Responsibility had costed Reform UK’s manifesto pledges (sorry, contract terms) – a task the OBR are prohibited from performing for an opposition party-  to Richi Sunak’s tetchiness when questioned about the false claim about Labour’s tax plans that he said would cost every Briton £2,094 and his early departure from D-Day ceremonies, to Sir Keir Starmer’s inability to define what is a woman or whether he would use private health-care, to Nigel Farage’s sulk when Nick Robinson pointed out an error about foreign student’s dependents, all the leaders have come under greater scrutiny than usual, which can only be a good thing, no matter how much they hate it.

 

·        Immigration: The Rwanda scheme and the Bibby Stockholm barge are astronomically expensive gimmicks dreamt up by an increasingly desperate Tory party to control a problem of their own making. They claim that the Rwanda scheme would be a deterrent to the migrants crossing the channel in small boats, but since the scheme would take over 300 years to clear the current numbers of claimants given its minute capacity that clearly isn’t true. A better deterrent would have been processing asylum claims in a timely manner over the last 14 years rather than letting the backlog build to unimaginable proportions.

 

·        The betting scandal: You think that there’s nothing new under the sun in terms of political corruption and then comes the news that Conservative party workers started placing bets on the date of the election just the day before it was announced and that some conservative candidates are placing bets on losing at the election. Given that footballers and club officials in England are banned from betting on any football related matters from the Premier League down to their eighth tier– not just games involving their team but also the result of the World Cup Final and who is going to be the next manager of Chelsea – it cannot be right that party figures and candidates can benefit from insider information or gamble on events that they can influence.

 

 

This General Election campaign has been eventful and some might say, exciting, but I’m not sure that politics and government should be eventful and exciting; it should be efficient and effective. It would be nice to think that whoever wins on 4^th July, that’s the type of government we will get, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

We’ve Only Gone and Done It! – Romford Win The FA Vase

If you support a team that is regularly involved in games at Wembley Stadium you might get a bit blasé about visits to English football’s national stadium. In fact, what with kick-off times dictated by broadcasters, the cost and inconvenience of getting there, especially if there’s industrial action on the railways, and then the costs once at the stadium, you might find it something of a chore.

 

If, however, you support a team like mine the chances of getting to see them play at Wembley are slim, so when they reach the Final of a national competition the whole thing takes on an unreal aspect. In an earlier blog, There's Only One F In Romford and We're Going To Wemberlee!  I said that even Romford reaching the Semi-Final of the Isuzu FA Vase was surreal. Knowing we’d be at Wembley on Saturday 11^th May to play fellow Essex Senior League side Great Wakering Rovers was even more unimaginable.

 

For a club run entirely by volunteers – the lifeblood of non-League football all over the country – and with an average gate this season of just 100 (boosted by crowds of 561 and 424 for the Vase Semi-Final and the Essex Senior League Play-Off Final respectively), the prospect of the organisation and logistical effort required to play the game was daunting. Club chairman Steve Gardener and secretary Colin Ewenson were faced with numerous tasks that are not normally associated with running a club at our level and along with manager Dan Spinks and club captain Kris Newby – who has done a hell of a lot of work off the pitch since we moved to our new home at Rookery Hill – were suddenly faced with new media demands not previously encountered, including radio and TV appearances.

 

With that average gate of just 100 this season a big question was how many tickets could we sell? Well, we sold more than 2,500 and probably would have sold more had West Ham not been at home that day. Regular supporters, fans who haven’t been for a while, and lots of people who don’t normally watch us but were caught up in the excitement of Romford going to Wembley bought tickets. Even my wife, who’s not been to a game with me before, wanted to go. And there was a surprise in store for her when I told her that we’d been given tickets for the Royal Box!

 

I mentioned in my previous blog that I have been preternaturally calm throughout Boro’s cup run, and Val was surprised at how tranquil I was on the day of the Final. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that that unlike my usual matchday attire, I had to wear a suit and tie for this match. Getting ready and going to Wembley didn’t seem like going to football, more like going to a wedding or a similar event.

 

It started to get real once we got to Wembley Park Station and started walking down what I still think of as Wembley Way (it’s actually Olympic Way) and saw the merchandise stands (half and half scarf, anyone?), fellow Boro supporters – all with soppy grins, unable to believe that this was actually happening - and the electronic signs welcoming the fans of all four clubs taking part in Non-League Finals Day (the FA Trophy Final between Gateshead and Solihull Moors followed our game).

Entering the stadium wasn’t like a normal matchday experience either. Up the escalators and into The Atrium, which was like being in a hotel or on a cruise ship. We were fed and watered and shown to the Royal Box.

Here I must pay tribute to the staff at Wembley, all of whom were friendly, efficient, and extremely helpful. I said to the chap who showed us to the Royal Box that he must get a bit blasé about working there, especially at a game involving two non-League sides. Not at all, he said telling me that he had worked there since the new stadium opened in 2007, and still got a buzz out of it every day. All the staff we encountered were brilliant and our experience was mirrored by everyone else’s. Our kitmen, Keith Preston and Paul Adams (who had seats on the bench with the substitutes and management) were highly complimentary about the Wembley staff in the dressing room area. 

Our club photographer Bob Knightley was allowed free rein to take a brilliant series of photos that captured the day, and our fans who had mobility issues also praised the staff that helped them to their seats. Nothing was too much trouble for the stadium staff, who all deserve high praise.

One of Bob Knightley's many pictures from the day with Boro manager Dan Spinks in the changing room

The first half was somewhat disjointed. There’s a tendency for players to play the occasion rather than the game, although Romford had a trio of players – Scott Doe, Remi Sutton, and Sam Deering – who have played at Wembley before, and their experience was invaluable. The occasion certainly seemed to affect Great Wakering more and they didn’t really show what they are capable of.

 

Romford had the better first half chances, but couldn’t score. After the break however, Boro found the net three times. Hassan Nalbant scored after 52 minutes, Sam Deering made it 2-0 three minutes later and Nalbant bagged a third in stoppage time (for a full report, see https://www.romfordfc.com/teams/8433/match-centre/0-5923533/report)

 

The sight of the Romford players climbing the steps to the Royal Box to receive their medals and the FA Vase itself was a marvellous one, although despite the obvious pleasure of watching from there, a small part of me envied the fans on the opposite side of the stadium where the players next went to celebrate. But as much fun as that would have been, the chance to watch the game from the Royal Box was one that I could not pass up, and I know that Val thoroughly enjoyed her Wembley experience, not just the game, but meeting people I’ve mentioned to her, and the post-match meal. Obviously, I’ve told Val that if she comes again it will probably be a little different (a wet Tuesday night at one of the Essex Senior League’s further flung outposts is a tad more basic).

Just as we were about to leave, the trophy itself made an appearance in The Atrium, so naturally I had to have a picture with it, a souvenir of a brilliant day!

 

Left to right: Colin Ewenson, Lee Dorling (Essex Senior League chairman), Steve Gardener

Everyone’s experiences at Wembley were different: From Steve and Colin, who were able to move freely from Royal Box to changing rooms and onto the pitch at the end; Keith and Paul, who are more used to the cramped dressing rooms they find in our normal football and had the wonderful experience of the all mod cons Wembley facilities, to the couple of thousand fans watching from the sidelines. Everyone will have stories that they will tell to everyone who will listen, and none of us will ever forget that marvellous afternoon in the Wembley sunshine. Even the trackside fire at Neasden that closed the Jubilee and Metropolitan Lines, making our journey home a little convoluted, didn’t detract from a brilliant day, the best I have ever had in the 50 odd years I’ve been watching Romford.

 

And when I got home, I grabbed a beer and watching it all again, having recorded TNT Sports’ coverage of the game, another surreal experience because while Premier League fans get to see their teams on TV all the time, this was another first for me! TNT's coverage also enabled our daughter, holidaying in Cyprus, to watch the game and see Val and me in the Royal Box!

 

On Sunday morning there was proof that this wasn’t just some wonderful dream; there it was, in black and white, in The Non-League Paper: Romford had won the FA Vase!

Perhaps we’ll get the chance to do it all again at some point in the future, but if we don’t, I will still have memories that will last me a lifetime.

 

Photos in this blog are either mine, or were taken by Bob Knightley. I think that the superior quality of Bob’s betrays whose is whose!

 

 

 

The Wrong Type of Football

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola’s rant after his team’s FA Cup Semi-Final win over Chelsea about how unfair it was that his squad of 25 highly trained and extremely well rewarded professional athletes should have to play on Saturday afternoon having already played a game on Wednesday was typical of the Premier League managers’ mindsets.

 

“Unacceptable,” he called it, "I don't understand how we survived," he added, and all the while, up and down the country, non-League footballers, managers, officials, and supporters howled with laughter at a club complaining at playing three games in eight days while many teams below the Football League would look at that schedule as quite benign. Take National League South side Truro City for instance, in the time that Manchester City played those three games, they played four. Between 1^st April and 20^th April, Truro played ten league games; Manchester City played six matches.

 

Pep Guardiola
Picture - Football.ua, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

 

Even more extreme is the schedule faced by Colne FC of the North West Counties League who will play 14 games in April, six more than City will, and Colne are by no means unique. Thanks to postponements, it’s not unusual in non-League football for teams to play almost half of their league fixtures in the last two months of the season, and these are players holding down full-time jobs and driving themselves to away games after a day at work, yet the ones we are supposed to feel sorry for are the Premier League guys whose full-time job is playing football and whose every whim is indulged.

 

The fact that Guardiola’s complaint was about playing an FA Cup tie was significant. The FA Cup used to be the jewel in the crown of English football but it has become debased and devalued over the years; to be blunt, it’s an inconvenience for Premier League clubs. The demands of the vastly over inflated Champions League make FA Cup replays an inconvenience, especially since Uefa’s demand mean that they can’t be played on Champions League dates, hence their abolition from the Fifth Round onwards during the 2018-19 season.

 

This week, The FA announced that from next season there would be no replays in the FA Cup from the First Round onwards, a sop to the Premier League clubs (although since they don’t enter until the Third Round, replays in the First and Second Round are an irrelevance to them). Other than their proposal in 2014 to introduce B teams into the Football League, I don’t think that any announcement made by The FA has met with so much opposition and outrage.

 

At this point I have to say that despite many years of believing that FA Cup replays must be preserved at pretty much any cost, I’m beginning to become a little less vehement about that. It is in the first four rounds of the competition proper that replays have value; non-League or teams from the Football League’s bottom two divisions getting draws against higher level opposition and setting up money spinning replays have always part of the competition’s attraction, but in the competition’s early and later stages, the arguments for their retention are more difficult to sustain.

 

As we know, from the Third Round on, arranging replays can be difficult because of European football getting in the way, but in the qualifying rounds is there really much magic in a Preliminary Round replay between two Step 5 teams? This season for instance, Buckhurst Hill and Brantham Athletic met in the Extra-Preliminary Round. The first game, at Buckhurst Hill, attracted just 88 people and the replay drew in only 58 spectators. Gate receipts would not have covered the match officials’ fees and with it being 70 miles between the clubs’ respective grounds, travelling costs and the like would have resulted in both clubs losing money.

 

Brantham Athletic v Buckhurst Hill FA Cup Replay – Picture: Brantham Athletic

 

Phil Annets – the man behind the FA Cup Factfile Twitter account – has said, “Everyone talks about FA Cup replays being important for financial reasons and that's been the case for a small number of clubs, but the real reason replays are needed is for competition integrity. Replays give clubs disadvantaged by being drawn away a chance to take game to their ground.” While that’s an understandable point – and Cray Valley PM and Horsham, who earned replays against Charlton  Athletic and Barnsley respectively this season would undoubtedly agree -  a one off game could actually give lower league or non-League sides a better chance of progressing. Charlton won their replay at Cray Valley 6-1 while Horsham were beaten 3-0 by Barnsley (Barnsley were subsequently found to have fielded an ineligible player and Horsham were reinstated), but had those first games gone to penalties the playing field would have been levelled; there’s no reason why an Isthmian League side shouldn’t be able to beat a League One team in a shoot-out, even if they couldn’t over 90 minutes.

 

There have been angry suggestions that Football League and non-League clubs should boycott next season’s FA Cup, but that isn’t going to happen. Despite my increasing ambivalence towards FA Cup replays, what I do object to in The FA’s announcement – and many of the clubs that have issued statements expressing anger at replays being done away with seem to hold a similar view – is that a competition with more than 700 entrants is having its terms dictated by a tiny number of clubs, the 20 Premier League clubs, who largely view the FA Cup as an inconvenience.

 

The fact that the abolition of FA Cup replays from the First Round onwards is proposed from next season is no doubt driven by the increase in the number of entries in what we might now call the Not The Champions League next season when instead of 32 clubs in the group stage, there will be 36 in a rejigged league stage. Instead of it taking 13 games to win this bloated competition, it will take 15, at which point it’s worth remembering that for a Premier League team to win the FA Cup they need play only seven games.

 

When managers like Guardiola, or Jurgen Klopp, or Eric Ten Hag, complain about their teams having to play too many games, it is always the potential FA Cup replays that vex them, and I say ‘potential’ because Manchester City have had only 10 FA Cup replays this century, Manchester United have had 9, and Liverpool have had 12, so not exactly an onerous schedule.

 

Looked at logically, if the elite Premier League clubs are concerned about fixture congestion then the target for their objections should be the Champions League, but apparently a hypothetical FA Cup replay that might involve a 100 mile round trip once every few seasons is considered more taxing than travelling a couple of thousand miles several times a season for European cup games. How about increasing the number of teams in the Champions League to 64, but make it a straight knock-out with no group stage; it would take only 11 games to win the competition, freeing up some midweek dates to reinstate FA Cup replays

 

And there is the rub; the problem isn’t too much football, but rather the wrong type of football. The Champions League is more lucrative than the FA Cup, and the bottom line is, well the bottom line on the balance sheet.

Addendum 2nd May 2024:

Since I published this blog, the Premier League and the National League have announced a new competition for 2024-25 involving 16 clubs from the National League and 16 Premier League Under 21 teams, hence the National League's willingness to give up on FA Cup replays in the First and Second Rounds. In addition, the Premier League have once again floated the 39th Game idea - an additional fixture in the Premier League programme - to be played in the USA. Further proof - if we ever needed it - that there aren't too many games, just the wrong type.

There’s Only One F In Romford and We’re Going To Wemberlee!

At around five o’clock in the afternoon, on Saturday 6^th April, my Fitbit bleeped at me. My heart rate was apparently 131bpm and the device couldn’t detect me being active. Frankly I’m surprised it was only 131bpm because I was watching my team taking part in a penalty shoot-out with a place at Wembley Stadium in the Final of the Isuzu FA Vase at stake!

After eleven penalties apiece, the score was 9-9. Lincoln United’s Matthew Cotton – who had scored from the spot a week before in the First Leg of the Semi-Final, but who had had his first kick in the shoot-out saved by Romford keeper Jake Anderson – missed the target to hand Boro the advantage. Up stepped Jamie Hursit, who had come on as a substitute just minutes from the end and had scored his first spot-kick in the shoot-out. Hursit scored and for the first and possibly only time in my lifetime, Romford would be playing in the final of a national competition at the national stadium.

Jamie Hursit tucks away the winning penalty at Lincoln.

When I started watching Romford, back in the 1960s, their chances of playing in a Wembley final were zero. As a non-League team, there was absolutely no chance of getting there in the FA Cup, and as they were a semi-professional club, the FA Amateur Cup – in which Romford had played at Wembley in the first final there in 1949 – wasn’t open to them. Even after The FA abolished amateur status in 1974, replacing the Amateur Cup with the FA Trophy and the FA Vase, the best that Romford had done was in 1996-97 when the last sixteen of the FA Vase had been reached.

 

How did we get here? Well, last season Romford made it to the 4^th Round of the FA Vase before being gored by the Jersey Bulls in St Helier, but reward for that was an exemption from the first three rounds in this season’s competition, which started with a fairly low key 2^nd Round game at home to Crawley Green. The Spartan South Midlands League side were despatched 2-0 with the first goal after just 52 seconds from Michael Turner and another just 12 minutes later (a Kris Newby penalty), although Boro keeper Jake Anderson did have to save a late penalty to preserve his clean sheet.

Michael Turner (number 6) heads Boro's first goal against Crawley Green

Next to come to Boro’s new home at Rookery Hill (more on that later), were Mildenhall Town, second in their league and with a miserly defence according to their statistics. They went home beaten 3-0 – Ash Siddik, Hassan Nalbant, and Bradley Mott scoring Romford’s goals.

Action from the game against Mildenhall Town

Stanway Pegasus – who play one league below Boro at Step 6 in the Thurlow Nunn League Division One North – were next and Boro’s margin of victory should have been much more than 2-1 as numerous chances were created but not converted. A combination of narrowly off-target shots and good saves by Stanway keeper Sam Felgate restricted Boro to a two goal lead, and when Pegasus pulled one back eighteen minutes from the end, it meant for a nervy finish in which both teams were reduced to ten men. Finlay Dorrell and Charlie Morris (with a penalty that Pegasus vehemently contested long after the game had ended) scored the Boro goals.

Finlay Dorrell nets Boro's first goal against Stanway Pegasus

 

The draw for the Fifth Round pitted Romford against Hilltop of the Combined Counties League and immediately the draw was made it became clear that this wasn’t going to be an easy game to arrange, let alone play. Hilltop share at Hillingdon Borough, who were at home on the date of the Fifth Round. The rules of the competition state, “If for any reason a tie is unable to be played on the ground of the first drawn Club on a Saturday, the tie must be played on either the day before, i.e. on Friday, or the day after, i.e. on Sunday on the ground of the first drawn Club.” Hilltop announced that the game would be played at Uxbridge’s ground on the Sunday but after some wrangling, it was moved to Cobham FC’s ground and switched back to the Saturday. After conceding an early goal, Romford equalised through Ash Siddik just before half-time and two second half Charlie Morris goals clinched a 3-1 win to take Boro into the Quarter-Finals and a trip to North Greenford United, uncharted territory in every respect.

 

Charlie Morris (partly hidden) scores against Hilltop

A week before the North Greenford game, Boro were dealt a body blow when two players – leading scorer Hassan Nalbant and defender Junior Luke – were sent off in a 2-0 league win at Barking resulting in their being suspended for the Quarter Final. Add a suspension for influential midfield player Kris Newby, and preparations were by no means ideal. As it turned out, a virtuoso performance from defender Darren Phillips, thrust into an attacking role, helped Boro to a 1-0 win thanks to a goal by Remi Sutton.

Darren Phillips celebrates the Quarter-Final Win

 After the game every Romford supporter was wearing a soppy grin and using the word ‘surreal’ a lot. Talk inevitably turned to who we would draw in the Semi-Final: Our Essex Senior League rivals Great Wakering Rovers? Bookies favourites Worcester City? Lincoln United were the name drawn out after Romford’s and on a thankfully warm and dry Saturday at the end of March, a season’s best crowd of 561 turned up at Rookery Hill for the First Leg.

 
Rookery Hill has only been Boro’s home since November 2023 when the club took over the lease from East Thurrock United, who had sadly folded in August 2023. A home of the club’s own and the income from bar and catering that was missing in the groundshares the club has had over the years was certainly a benefit, but the game itself started in horrendous fashion. Within ten minutes, Romford had had a player sent off and conceded a goal to a penalty; hardly ideal. A second half goal from Finlay Dorrell drew Boro level only for Lincoln to score again right at the death, but in time added on Boro equalised through Ash Siddik: 2-2 going into the Second Leg.

Ash Siddik receives his team-mates' congratulations after his equalising goal against Lincoln

 
The sun shone for the second game and Romford dominated proceedings - especially in the second half despite playing into a strong wind - carving out some decent chances but being thwarted by the Lincoln goalkeeper on a number of occasions. It ended goal-less, and the penalty shoot-out seemed to favour Lincoln, who had already won seven shoot-outs including four in their Vase run.

 
Which is where we started, as wonderfully, incredibly, Boro won the shoot-out (thank God for the Hursits, we said afterwards as they had scored three of Boro’s ten penalties) but despite objectively knowing that we were going to Wembley, did we actually believe it? No, of course not, and even now it’s hard to accept.

 
Naturally, Lincoln were mightily disappointed, but it says a lot for the character of their players, officials, and supporters that they were gracious in defeat. The two Semi-Final ties were a brilliant showcase for non-League football, two cracking games played in good spirits, two sets of fans mingling, chatting, and drinking together.
 
The other Semi-Final took an extra week to settle as the game at Worcester City was postponed, but after a penalty shoot-out of their own, Great Wakering Rovers made it through. The last time an Essex Senior League team reached Wembley was 1984 and it’s only the fifth time in 50 years that two teams from the same league have contested the Final.
 
Unusually, considering how tense I can sometimes get before even the most routine of league games or mundane cup ties, I have been preternaturally calm throughout this cup run. At no point have I gone to a game expecting anything other than a Romford victory. Okay, it’s easier to feel that way when your team are winning more often than not, which Romford have this season, but even so, it has been remarkably out of character for me. How calm I’ll be when I see Romford step out onto the Wembley turf on Saturday, 11^th May, remains to be seen.

 

Some useful links:

Romford FC website: https://www.romfordfc.com/

Romford FC Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/RomfordFC

The FA – FA Vase page: https://www.thefa.com/competitions/fa-vase

Non-League Finals Ticket Sales: https://www.wembleystadium.com/events/2024/Non-League-Finals-Day-2024

 

 

 

The Green Ink Brigade

In September 2022, Nigel Smith, landlord of The Fleece Inn in Bretforton, Worcestershire, held a ‘Nigel Night’ in an attempt to revive the fortunes of his name, which is in danger of dying out. Data from the Office of National Statistics revealed that no babies were given the name Nigel in 2016 or 2020, and Nigel Smith’s gathering attracted 372 other Nigels, some of whom had travelled from as far as the USA, Zimbabwe and Nicaragua.

Had Nigel Smith chosen to refuse to serve any of the Nigels, or deny them entry to his pub, he would have been perfectly within his rights to do so. A licensee has the right to refuse entry to whomever they wish, so long as the reason is not unlawful, for instance refusal cannot be on the grounds of sex, race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or belief.

In much the same way, banks have always had the right to close a customer’s account, although like our publican, they should not do so for reasons that would constitute unlawful discrimination. Infringing the terms and conditions of the account is legitimate reason - failing to maintain a minimum balance, or deposit an agreed minimum amount per month, for example - or because of suspected fraudulent activity or money laundering. In those latter instances the bank would not be able to cite those as reasons for the account closure to the customer on the grounds of ‘tipping off.’

The issue of banks closing customers’ accounts has become hot news following Coutts & Co’s decision to close the accounts of former MEP and UKIP leader, Nigel Farage. The reasons for the bank closing Farage’s accounts, and the rights and wrongs of that, have been done to death elsewhere; it strikes me as probable that Coutts were looking for a reason to end the relationship, and found one when he paid off his mortgage, regardless of what happened subsequently.

What is interesting, is what has happened after Nigel Farage went public with the news of Coutts & Co’s withdrawal of his banking facilities.

Firstly, there’s the idea that as soon as anyone errs, or does something that the popular press and Twitterati don’t like, then they should be sacked. In the last year or so there have been calls for teachers, junior doctors, nurses, railway workers, and workers in a score of other professions to be sacked for exercising their right to withdraw their labour in pursuit of pay claims, or – in the case of civil servants – simply being perceived to not be working hard enough. In the Farage farrago, there have been calls for not only Nat West CEO Dame Alison Rose to resign – which she has done (correctly, what with the customer confidentiality she breached by discussing Farage’s relationship with Coutts with a BBC journalist being sacrosanct) - but for the whole board to go. This whole ‘sack the lot of them’ culture has gone way too far.

Secondly, there’s the idea that the Nat West board should be sacked is justifiable because about 40% of the Nat West Group (of which Coutts & Co are part), is owned by the taxpayer. Weirdly, there’s also glee on the part of the same group of people that the Farage affair has wiped £600 million off Nat West's share price: It’s a strange shareholder that relishes the price of their holdings plummeting. That share price tumbling was good news for hedge fund Marshall Wace though, as they made a significant sum shorting Nat West shares. By random coincidence, Marshall Wace’s co-founder Sir Paul Marshall jointly owns GB News, the TV station that employs Nigel Farage. Small world, isn’t it?

While Dame Alison Rose was indiscreet in talking to the BBC about Farage, he published the full details of the document that Coutts & Co provided him with after he made a subject access request. What has been interesting has been some of the comments in the media - mainstream and social - about the document, which exposes a trend that has been increasingly noticeable - especially on Twitter - in recent years, and that is of the uninformed expert. 

Whether it is Brexit, covid, climate change, immigration (especially so-called illegal immigration), and now banking, it is astonishing how many people are vociferous in denying the views of people whose day jobs are working in those fields and are instead enthusiastic in promoting alternative views that have little or no facts to back them up. Emboldened by having a platform that allows gibberish to be disseminated to a wide audience, these people have become ‘expert’ in the last few years in trade deals, geopolitics, epidemiology, climate science, and now banking, all on the basis of ‘research’ that consists largely of bouncing around echo chambers watching weird YouTube videos and reading niche websites. When they start spouting nonsense about a subject you know something about, it casts much doubt on their pronouncements on other topics.

The Coutts document that Nigel Farage gave to the Daily Mail, which appeared in print and on their website, accepts that Farage has been 'professional' in his relations with the bank. Having learned during my thirty odd years working in banking however that it is unwise to put anything in a note on a customer’s file that you would not want read out in a court of law, one wonders if this was perhaps erring on the side of discretion over accuracy. Of course, I know nothing of Mr Farage’s conduct when dealing with his bank, but his public persona suggests that he might have been a customer with quite exacting standards.

Everyone should be entitled to expect their bank to behave professionally when dealing with them, but in my experience, some customers have unrealistic expectations. During my time in banking, particularly in branch banking, there were certain customers whose name being mentioned would provoke groans from members of staff who habitually had to deal with them. 

These customers would be the sort to march in without an appointment and demand immediate access to their safe custody items, then loudly complain if made to wait more than a few minutes. There were customers who would unreasonably demand huge amounts of information within unrealistic time frames – “I need a complete breakdown of all the interest earned on my deposit account between 1974 and 1992, and I need it in fifteen minutes” – and would not take no for an answer. And that’s before you start to consider the customers who would make requests for things to be done that were either impossible, contrary to the bank’s regulations, or even illegal. Some customers would think it perfectly acceptable to arrive five minutes before closing time and tie staff up with protracted but not urgent transactions.

Finally, there were The Green Ink Brigade. These customers would write long rambling letters in green biro on numbered pages torn from duplicate books, the sort used with carbon paper. Letters that would continue, spider like, up one margin and down the other once the bottom of the page was reached, and which were almost indecipherable to read and incomprehensible of purpose.

There are many legitimate reasons why banks can close a customer’s account; writing letters to them in green ink should be one of them. I wonder if Mr Farage owns a green biro?