Huddersfield

You don't need a country...my most hated teams in sports I can think of: Football - Leeds United. Non-league football - Leeds City & Leeds FC (they actually play in Kent but they can do one anyway for choosing the b***ards name) Rugby League - Leeds Rhinos Rugby Union - no idea who plays it, but I'll opt for Leeds Whoever They Are Cricket - Yorkshire came bloody close to getting dumped when they suggested renaming one of the one-day teams Leeds summat or other. Luckily most YCCC fans hate Leeds as well so that idea got binned. If there's a Leeds crown green bowling team, they're in there. Ditto chess, basketball, beach volleyball & whatever else there is to chuck in. It's easy if you try

Yes we're keeping well thanks & hope you are too. Good to be getting out a bit again. I just got my first ticket to see Town in 16 months...Southport away in a friendly. Sod England; I can't waitfor this one!

I haven't been on here so much lately but thought this was worth commenting on. It takes me back to Paris in 1975. Not in a Thin Lizzy sort of way, but the joy I felt of watching Leeds get crapped on. My main non-HTFC footballing aspiration is to see the skip-dwellers relegated so far they end up using jumpers for goalposts in Roundhay Park, & this was a rare opportunity in those days to get back at all the so-called fans I knew who never clicked a turnstile in their lives but would never shut the f**k up about how brilliant they were. For the record, Town's most recent game at that time had been a 0-0 draw at home to Tranmere Rovers in a 23rd v 24th place, 3rd Division game after which both of us dropped. The reason it reminds me though is my mother...for the life in her, she couldn't understand why I'd support "The Germans" over a Yorkshire team. "Your Grandad would be turning in his grave"; ignoring the fact he'd been cremated. She even went around telling the neighbours, who clearly concluded there was something not quite right with the lad at no. 2. Much like with England at the moment, the hype is aimed at folk like my neighbours who I know for fact have never set foot inside a football ground but are turning up with crates of crap Aldi lager & going ballistic every time we score. They are easy prey to get stupid & as a result spend money. Football rivalry is part & parcel of the game. If you don't hate at least one team almost as much as you love your own, then you're not really trying. England fans were cheering when news came through that Scotland were losing v. Croatia, not from arrogance but from basic, old-school rivalry. Much like Leeds pretending the Mancs are their big rivals & they aren't interested in us, but getting an extra several thousand there whenever they play us, it's much the same with England & Scotland. We can pretend the real rivalry is Germany but we all know there's something a bit special about playing Scotland. It pisses me off beyond belief when anyone whose great granny one went to Eyemouth on holiday is forced to say who they will support. Just bloody tell them you're ABE; go for it; we love it. Finally onto Ramy...you know what, you're the sort of bloke I'd have a pint with. Heart on your sleeve & if I knew you, I'd have been texting you every day asking who you've got in the next round. I don't really think everyone born in Leeds is a 6-fingered knuckle-dragging moron, but you'd never guess that to talk to me half the time.

That's more or less the size of it, although we'd just been relegated & there's a school of thought that Worthington wanted a big club move anyway. He famously had a medical at Liverpool that summer (1972) but showed up high blood pressure. Shankly sent him for a holiday in Spain for a week to try & get it down, but after a week of booze & women, he came back with even higher blood pressure & so the move fell through. I think Greaves was of the view that with Gowling alongside him, we'd be in a good position to bounce back up again but instead we just kept plummeting through the divisions.

I hadn't thought about it but yes, you're quite right. Greaves was obviously keen on getting the two of them together. That was, of course, a top flight game...in a great example of 'this is what you could have won', we were scraping our way out of the bottom half of the 4th division when that game took place.

It’s interesting that the other player that is mentioned on that commentary is Alan Gowling. Our manager in the early 70s, Ian Greaves, wanted to sign Gowling to play alongside Worthington but the board basically said he could have one or the other. As far-sighted decisions go, it’s up there with refusing to let Bill Shankly sign Ian St John which prompted him to quit & drop down a division. Some Scouse team or other he ended up at from memory 😕

Frankie played in the first match I ever saw live, against West Ham in a cup game in 1972. My abiding memory all my life of that game was of him putting us 4-1 up with a far post header. He lived not too far from me & was a ST holder for many years at Town. The last but one game I was at before lockdown was against Charlton. I was walking with one of their fans that I’d got chatting to in the pub when we bumped into him in the car park...the Charlton lad was absolutely made up that he’d seen him. Even though very ill he was still lapping up all the attention & signing autographs!

It's always sad to read about great players suffering in this way. I saw him play on odd occasions down the years...obviously not one of the most popular players in this part of the world in his heyday but I think we'd all wish him well. He gave me one of those funny memories you always remember. I think it was probably late 70s when he was at York...the ball fell for him on the edge of the box; perfect Lorimer territory & we all just waited for the back of the net to bulge. Instead, he mishit it & it bobbled out of play somewhere near the corner flag. Cue a spontaneous chant from the main terrace of "Ninety miles an hour..." as he ran back upfield.

These are images from other Mars rovers, but there's some stunning picture on here which look especially good if the video is set to the highest resolution.

One of the local GPs up the road from me is a Dr Crippin. True story 😊

I’ve got an iPhone & Adblock Plus works well enough. It messes up live streams of the football a bit but you can switch it off of need be.

I see Big Col Quaner has signed for St Mirren. A bit of a legend in these parts for his exploits in the play-off semi at Hillsborough a few years back. He can definitely be a real handful when he’s on his game.

Stolen from elsewhere: One sunny day in late January 2021, an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Trump." The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr Trump is no longer President and no longer resides here." The old man said, "Okay", and walked away. The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Trump." The Marine repeated, "Sir, as I told you yesterday, Mr Trump is no longer President and no longer resides here." The man thanked him and, again, just walked away. The third day, the old man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying again, "I would like to go in and meet with President Trump." The Marine, understandably irritated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you've been here asking to speak to Trump. I've told you each time that he's no longer the President and no longer resides here. Don't you get it?" The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it!" The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, smiled, and said, "See you tomorrow, Sir."

I don’t know about Scotland or the EPL, but according to what people are saying around here, the EFL have agreed that points per game could be used to finish the season if every club had played at least 75% of its games.

Personally, I'd go back to the carpet fitter & ask them to correct it. If it had been stretched correctly that shouldn't have happened as far as I know.

I got hold of a bottle of Benriach Smoky 10 just before Xmas by way of trying something a bit different & it's very good. I've also been shopping around to find something that I haven't tried before, ideally smoky although I'm not totally locked into it having to be. I was going to go for the Kilkerran mentioned above but everywhere seems to have sold out. Has anyone tried any of the Smokehead brand? I can't make my mind up if it's worth forking out £50 or so or if it's just a bit gimmicky.

It was the same here. Different time I know but I grew up on the edge of the Pennines & we’d always get one or two heavy falls a year at least. My dad worked in a factory across town & just wouldn’t have got paid if he didn’t get there. I can’t ever remember the buses not running & that’s up & down some bloody steep hills I’m sure it probably wasn’t quite as rose-tinted as I remember it but I’m sure the general attitude was shrugging the shoulders not world falling apart. My only memory of the snow causing me any real problems was when I couldn’t get into town in time to catch the coach for Portsmouth away one year & lost the £5 I’d paid. And we won, which we never bloody well did down there. A snow day at school meant sorting out the big snowball fight between the secondary school & 6th form college next door. Most of us wanted to get to school those days more than any other. Cut & pasted from my post on grumpyoldgimmers.com.

I think I might have shared my experience earlier on here & with the obvious caveats that I'm not a financial adviser, everyone is different, blah blah... However, I started to become seriously ill when I was in my early 50s & by 54 realised that my days were numbered being able to hold down any sort of serious (as in earning enough to pay the bills) job. I'd paid into various pensions all my working life & totted up that if I took no lump sum at all, I'd maybe get £7 or £8K pa (the job I was in at the time paid about £25K pa, & that was big a drop from where I'd been pre-redundancy, & I was still carrying debts as a result of that happening), plus some benefits I'd been awarded due to the health issues. Obviously if I took out a lump sum to get rid of my mortgage & other loans then you could knock a grand or so a year off that. By pure accident I ended up talking to an IFA & eventually took a decision to shift the whole lot into a private scheme. For obvious legal reasons, the advice on paper was not to leave a guaranteed income scheme, but really I was faced with a choice between a lifetime on the breadline or clearing off everything I owed & having a reasonable disposable income but with the risk of it running out at some point. All I can say thus far is it's the best decision I ever made. Apart from March/April time, the policy has thus far tended to make up what I draw out each month, I've cleared the mortgage & done a few grands-worth of essential house repairs that I'd put off for years. Given that my chance of ever earning anything more than peanuts is about zero, I feel like I've got a guaranteed quality of life at least into my mid to late 70s; & although my life expectancy doesn't go much beyond that anyway, all the calculations on the policy are built around a presumption that I live to be 100. I will admit when the whole thing crashed back in spring, I was in a bit of a state of panic, but it's recovered well.

“There’s only one of my kids that’s kept up the royal traditions of abuse, greed, and debauchery, so I’ve decided I’m leaving the country to him.”

I hope that works out for you soon. Our newest grandson recently arrived & is in the unfortunate position of having one set of Leeds supporting grandparents so I feel your anxiety on this matter 😂

The 'tie-dye' shirt is legendary...you still see people wearing them! It's so bad it's brilliant. I remember when it came out it was one of those 'head in your hand' moments but we all kind of fell in love with it. There was some sort of marketing thingy by the club a while ago about which retro shirts people would buy if they started reselling them & I'm pretty sure that one did well. It also coincided with 2 legendary HTFC seasons: 1991-2; finished third, f***ked up in the play-offs (our first go at them) by conceding a last-minute goal at home to Peterborough & the following year being an epic tale of mid-table mediocrity. As for the goalie shirt...I think that was a brilliant defensive idea. The opposition forward, bearing down on our hapless keeper would be so distracted by a bloke wearing a shirt that looked like a unicorn had puked all over it that he'd blaze it wide. We actually made it to Wembley that season (EFL Trophy final) for the first time since 1938, so it worked like a charm. Except in the penalty shoot-out at Wembley. When it didn't.

To be fair, it made me smile.

Yep reappeared now! Odd.

I don't get it 😕

I was left back. In the dressing room as a kid & in the pub when I got older.