AMWAT: Another GM

So there is gonna be an Annual General Meeting, and it looks like it's been called properly in plenty of time. Which is a start isn't it.

I expect all shareholders will get the agenda in due course. The interesting part will be when it's discussing the ratification of the loan-to-shares that the notional owners decided to give themselves about six months or so ago. Should that happen to be rubber-stamped then they will truly own the majority shareholding, legally, and - well - the implications of that are fairly obvious.

The interim/caretaker manager might well stay on I guess. He's pursuing his UEFA badges and might decide to do that with the first team rather than the U19s. He does talk the talk, but the financial side entirely overshadows everything else.

Talking of the age groups, there are rumours that kids are being asked to pay for trials with the academy system. No idea if there's any truth in that, but what is undeniable is that on falling from grace and being ejected from the Welsh Prem the club lost funding assistance for the academy. So that cash - £19k was mentioned but I've no idea if that's true - that cash has been lost. What happens next is again unclear.

So the mire and the swampy tread continue to sink the club.

We might have been challenging for the Welsh Prem this season. It was all going in that direction. Maybe we'd have progressed in Europe. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

And now?

AMWAT: I see the future and it is called hope

No comment needed. Love and unity will bring us through this strange and difficult time.

O noes Xmas cancellated omg wot omg ffs

Christmas has been renamed

Winterval

Halloween has been replaced

By Autumnval

Poppies have been banned

For shame

Bonfire Night has been slammed

For its name

This year Jesus will not be

Allowed in school

No angels on top of trees

It’s PC rules

Does anyone really ever believe this shit?

Does anyone really ever believe this shit?

Does anyone really ever believe this shit?

Does anyone really ever believe this shit?

Does anyone really ever believe this shit?

Does anyone really ever believe this shit?

Does anyone really ever believe this shit?

Does anyone really ever believe this shit?

Never mind PC

It’s Racist Cunts gone mad

Can’t blame social media really

Just people

The next generation will see

Right through

This shit This shit

This shit This shit

This shit This shit

This shit This shit

Because if you live online

You know

That mostly it’s all lies

And so

It’s only us older fuckers

That read

A Facebook update

And seethe

The young ‘uns won’t believe this shit

The young ‘uns won’t believe this shit

The young ‘uns won’t believe this shit

The young ‘uns won’t believe this shit

The young ‘uns won’t believe this shit

The young ‘uns won’t believe this shit

The young ‘uns won’t believe this shit

The young ‘uns won’t believe this shit

With luck

They’ll see it off, thank fuck

Virtual worlds will matter

And so

Personality will shatter

And so

Bring it Bring it

Bring it Bring it

Bring it Bring it

Bring it Bring it

We’ve had our chance and look at the fucking state

Of it

We’ve never really understood the fucking shape

Of it

Bring it Bring it

Bring it Bring it

Bring it Bring it

Bring it Bring it

Bring it Bring it

Bring it Bring it

Bring it Bring it

Bring it Bring it

The kids are alright.

AMWAT: Stockholm Syndrome

I can't help but like our Director of Football from his interviews. This one, for example, he comes across as pretty articulate and honestly committed to the club.

I mean, his signings have nearly all been pretty excellent over the last few years.

But the problem was never on the pitch was it? Until now, at least.

It's a strange old situation this isn't it. Very strange indeed.

Ay carumba. Amidst all the absolute nonsense maybe this can be turned around yet.

Can it?

Or have I had too much Henry Westons?

Is there such a thing as too much Henry Westons? I mean. It's not exactly Frosty Fucking Jack is it. This shit is tasty. Henry Westons was clearly made from actual apples, rather than counting as cider because one of the cousins of one of the workers in whatever chemical plant they mix Frosty Jack in once saw a magazine article about Apple Computers. I like to think of it as Trampagne. But then that makes me a hypocrite doesn't it, given the amount of Frosty's I've drunk over the years. Although the seventh post here makes me a bit worried.

And.

I just realised I said 'our' again in that first sentence.

Once your team has got you it's for life really isn't it.

I am very confused at the moment.

I started with Jack and I'll end up in the shit one way or another I guess. Selah.

A Man Without A Team: A Team Without A Man(ager)

Well, well, well.

Something of an inevitability about the fact that Craig Harrison has taken his delicious decolletage to warmer climes, that is to say, Connah's Quay.

Now, the reason given is that Mooby-boobies wanted to take a full-time job on. That's understandable. It's non-league football isn't it. And, yes, I know the Welsh Prem is on paper the top league in Wales, but it's still about the standard of the bloody NPL at best. Anyway, City are in the Cymru Alliance which is non-league in those terms too.

SVJ - who has been a footballer, at least, and seems to have decent contacts for players - has taken over along with Alan Lewer (who two years back came to us, went to Southport, came back, went again, had a testimonial vs Liverpool U23s) and Luke 'Persil' Purcell, who apparently is general manager at the club.

There are rumours players weren't getting paid. Rumours are rumours. Nothing you can do to stop them, and nothing to stop speculation apart from clear and frank communication. Which has hardly been the strong point round those parts for three years or so, has it.

So yeah. Usual names will be linked won't they. Mark Wright, Neil Young, probably fucking Zebedee from the Magic Roundabout. Alan Morgan was our assistant boss to Nev in some of the early successes, so chuck that into the ring too. And, of course, Phil Baker has just retired from playing. Well, take your pick.

So The Most Successful Boss In Welsh Domestic Football (yeah, yeah, I know) has gone. He followed GTF and Kev Nic out the door just a few months after being hailed as the saviour to lead us back to the promised land (trips to the Franchise eight times a season). GTF followed Ian Dawes, who was gonna do great things when they went full-time (and got sacked for not being on a course for the Pro License). Dawes followed Andy Legg, who lasted two months before departing (no real reason given aside from talk he couldn't commit to full-time, specially living in Nottingham). Legg followed Nev Powell, who'd initially been told he was given a budget and would be backed 100%.

I did write a while back that it was the definition of a poisoned chalice, and Harrison's got the hell outa Dodge soon as he realised exactly what was going on around him.

Hardly a shock that this has happened again, is it. I'm not surprised, but I am a bit sad that this merry-go-round of malignancy is still whirring and chucking out dogshit at all that surround it. Sooner the gears break and it's condemned by the council, the better.

And yeah fuck all those metaphors. What an absolute joke that club has become.

In the real world, things still happen. We lost a great comrade this week. Someone whose passion and heart and support took him all round Europe well into his eighth decade on the planet. Small mercies I guess that he missed out on this latest piece of nonsense.

RIP DR.

Whoops Oedipocalypse

Oedipus Rex

Whipped off his kecks

And plopped the thing between his legs

Into his wife,

Which they both liked

So they did it night after night.

He was the king;

He beat the sphinx.

He solved the riddle she’d asked him:

Once voice, one life

But who at times

Has four, then two, then three feet nigh?

Oedy-lad

Knew it was man

And smugly gave his answer back.

He was correct.

And off he went

To marry Queen Jocasta next.

The couple did

What couples did

As then, as now: they had four kids.

They all survived

As Thebes thrived

Until plague struck the city’s lives.

The Oracle

At Delphi knew

How to hold off the city’s doom.

King Laius lost,

His killer must

Be brought to justice. Oedipus

Sought counsel through

A prophet, who

Let slip that Laius, in his tomb,

Lay dead because

Out in the dust

Our Oedipus had bashed him up.

It came out that

He’d killed his dad.

He didn’t know, because he had

Been stitched up:

Been brought up

By Polybus and not killed off

Which was the plan.

But a herdsman

Had saved the baby way back. And

Jocasta cried.

Jocasta died.

And Oedi poked out his own eyes.

Oedipus Rex

From birth was hexed.

His life laid out, his future wrecked.

Was he to blame?

Could he have changed

The world once things were put in place?

Laius was

A filthy sod

Who’d cut holes in his little lad

Just cause some fool

Had said: Whoa, dude,

This baby’s gonna, like, kill you

Justice was served:

Laius deserved

All that befell him, all we’ve heard.

A twisted tale

Of love that failed

Of death and weirdness, lives curtailed.

Oedipus Rex

Took off his kecks

And put the thing between his legs

Into another,

And discovered

He was a fucking motherfucker.

Moral: If a weird dude tells you that your newly-born son is going to one day kill you, don’t leave him out on a mountain where anyone could find him. In fact, tell the weird dude to piss off and bring the kid up yourself so he knows right from wrong. Jesus, I mean. Come on.

Wearable Poem: Snowflakes

AMWAT Supplemental: Message Boards

There's still one that's active. People are posting there, but some have been put off by the latest shenanigans.

The accounts are out and they don't make great reading: a big hole of where a certain amount of cash has actually come from exists. This may well be the reason the auditors couldn't sign off the paperwork and why the club failed its license.

Anyway. Whilst grubbing around in the dungy effluence of the Internet I found a previous message board, which is technically still alive but from which there was a mass migration elsewhere in about 2015.

It is very informative, and goes back to about 2013/14. This is what discussions largely were:

* Nev Powell has done his best but it's time to go.
* Nev Powell is paid too much.
* When other people point out that success deserves positive promotion and attendant rewards, they are referred to the previous two points.
* The board are useless and don't put in any money.
* The board has stolen 30k for a tax bill.
* The board must go.
* Nev must go.
* I am banned from other sites because I say Nev should go.
* The Nev Lovers are heads-in-sand ostriches.
* The Nev-Loving board is deluded.
* Player X is injured and should not be being paid.
* The BCFCSA unilaterally handed over 30k to the board without asking the people that raised it.

I say discussions, but it was generally the same three or four people under various aliases repeating themselves and getting hot under the collar when they were caught talking to themselves. Some other themes:

* X is gay and does gay sex.
* The franchise posts links to franchise stories, trying to drive traffic there (shameful isn't it).
* X is not a Bangor fan.
* Where has the money gone?

And, disgruntled and mischievous/annoying people also did things like:

* Posting the same message in a flood of different languages, taking two or three pages up with drivel.
* Posting song lyrics over two, three or four pages.

It's kind of how to kill a message board isn't it.

What does this all mean? Well, in retrospect this is what was going on, pre-the current regime getting involved.

* Bangor had gambled on getting into Europe again, but when they didn't, there was a huge hole financially (the club was actually in profit in the early 2010s)
* The league-winning team was not added to effectively in a particular January transfer window, and lots of money was wasted on a couple of dodgy signings that didn't help.
* Rent on Nantporth was and is absolutely crippling, as are running costs of the facility. Farrar Road in its latter years was being paid for by the developers so that eased the purse strings and we won the league.
* The 30k tax bill was down as I understand to the fact that travel-to-work (training, games) was not in fact exempt from taxation, and therefore this mistake needed rectifying. Talk was that a certain midget had grassed City up, but there's no proof.
* There really was no other option but for the terrace money, the 30k, to be given to keep the club going at all. It was either that or a club that went bust. (In retrospect that might have been a better option, and we'd have a terrace and a team untouched by... well we all know who... and we might be in the Welsh Alliance, but damnit it would be honest).

So things were far from rosy before the current regime took over. And, in fact, when the consortium was announced it was almost miraculous. Until the news about who they were came out, of course.

Things were in dire straits a couple of seasons back. Something needed to happen.

It was the wrong choice with whom to get involved. Plain and simple.

And the person that engineered it is to blame.

Maybe the rest of the board got sideswiped and conned. Maybe they knew. I don't believe they or the BCFCSA as major shareholder (shares issued for that 30k) would ever have voted it through had they known. No chance.

Ay carumba.

You lie down with dogs, you're gonna get fleas.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

Uncestry.com

AMWAT Xtra: Message muddle

EDIT: The way things are moving, most of this was out of date and some of it inaccurate mere minutes after it was posted. I've left it as is because I think it shows quite well the way things are going and how it makes me, at least, feel. Sad times.


The former team has two active message boards. One has a password and is kinda more sedate and considered whilst the other is more unruly and libellous.

The unruly one often has people starting fights with people on the sedate one. This goes way back to when Nev Powell was in charge. There were two factions:

1. Those who loved the bloke for his record of three Welsh Cup wins on the trot, a league championship against the odds, many European adventures and one season where City went to the last game of the season only to lose 6-0 to the Franchise in the league decider, plus losing the Welsh Cup Final. The seasons after that weren't great, and honestly the money was frittered away on chasing the dream, but he stayed around to fight relegation and succeeded twice. Nev was also a player in the 1980s who has a real affinity for the club, having played in Europe and also nearly got promoted to what is now the conference (losing out by one point after topping the league much of the season.) 

This faction supported Nev staying and trying to rebuild. I mean, I was amongst them. Can't stand chopping and changing, new boss every season, hundreds of players passing through, all that crap. Hey ho.

2. Those who saw all the above and concentrated more on the aftermath of the dream; the relegation battles and the empty coffers; even the wages the manager was paid. This faction considered Powell to have been the architect of all that was wrong about the dodgy seasons, and wanted him out so someone else could have a go. New players, new board, all that.

So there was always tension. Of a sort, anyway. At the end of the day it was all quite tame stuff.

That's until the regime began to start its shenanigans. Then, it was more like this:

2. You lot were all for them and we always said they were dodgy. You are collaborators.

1. Yeah, not really. That's not actually true is it.

2. You lot were all for them... etc

To the extent of actually calling out individual fans - long-term fans at that - for their perceived apologism for the regime. Always, this was erroneous. Naughty, really.

Even then though it was all just about within the limits of reason.

Last week, Message Board 1 suddenly had threats, multiple posts, weird vibes about it. It had at some extent been hacked.

Seems that someone had locked the administrator out of the email account they'd used for the board, and in doing so requested a change of password, and therefore took control of it.

I mean how fucking petty can you get.

The background to all this is the now, nearly-quaint situation where a certain midget connected to a certain franchise was rumoured to send threats of legal action to the admins of various different boards that had been used over the years. A series of message boards started up then went silent under these threats; maybe four or five. But the fans still found another one to use, until threats happened and the whole circus went round and round and round again and again and again.

This, though, was and is different.

This is what we've come to here is it? Hijacking a message board to try and smoke out people from underneath their alias? To do what? 

Instead of just, ya know, enjoying the ride and handling things professionally like paying bills and doing accounts properly?

Is it really the case that hacking into one of the few gathering places for demoralised fans is the way to get everyone on the same side again?

Fuck me, this is as far from my club and my team as I could imagine. What a load of absolute nonsense.

The password board is back up - ostensibly from the original admin - but the trust has gone and I won't be posting anymore. Lurking, maybe. Posting - what's the point?

Scorched fucking earth.

AND IT IS ONLY FUCKING FOOTBALL ISN'T IT

Agafuckingdoo Batman.

UPDATE: Literally as this was being posted the Message Board 1 has been closed, with the following text all that is left:

Due to the lack of interest this guestbook is now closed.
I opened this forum 5 years when 2 other well known forums were forced to close. People wanted a forum password protected to stop trolls and troublemakers having it shut down. I set this one up and have paid a yearly subscription to enable me to password protect it and to keep it ad free. Bangor city blues was also closed down in 2015 while we kept going strong. I am no longer willing to do this if people are not willing to use it. 
I only hope that when the chat forum gets closed down someone else is willing to put the time and expense into opening another protected platform. 
I would also like to add I was approached yesterday asking if I was the admin of the chat site or if I could give any details as to who runs it. As this came from a legal source I can not give any further details.

Also just for the record to stop the rumour mill that is going round. The change of email address lately to request the password has been changed because I ME MYSELF got locked out of the previous one. The email address was only used for people requesting passwords nothing to do with this forum and the set up just for the passwords so people can stop with the conspiracy theories now!
Thanks

Admin

AMWAT Wk7: Roofs and bins

I live a few doors down from a roofer. He's a good lad, and fixed some flashing for us in a massive rainstorm once. It's a very neat job, too.

At the moment he and colleagues are busily restoring an entire roof for him and his neighbour. So I keep thinking someone's knocking at the door, when actually it's the sound of them hammering. They're fixing it properly, so that when it does piss it down - which is inevitable in the UK - the house won't get wrecked and flooded and fucked and be useless and not fit for purpose and condemned and all that.

Fix the roof when the weather's good. It's an old saying isn't it. And, well, you can't argue can ya.

Every Monday is bin day round here; it alternates between the less-popular Brown Bin, which is for garden stuff, and Grey Bin, which is household waste. Recycling is also the same week as Grey Bin. So every Sunday evening I do the bins, cos it's my job to do the bins whilst the First Mrs Shoo watches Strictly on Ice or whatever fucking rubbish is on. I don't mind really. It is a bit of a smelly job, but it needs to be done. (And that's just watching X-Fuckers LOLOL*)

I think the evening's the right time to do bins, personally. If it's out all day it will stink and make the street look rubbish and attract pests and bits of errant Aldi's Finest Sausage Roll packaging will dance devilsong down the street on the rampaging wings of a mutinous breeze.**

Not everyone thinks like I do.

Next door likes to do the bins soon as they get up on a Sunday, and thus they have a very, very good chance of Winning Bin***. They're usually in the top three on the street, anyway. There's another house quite near the top of the road that is always well early, too. It's a fascinating battle that I observe on my travels to and from town to wander about looking for weird kitchen gadgets in charity shops.

But because the roofers have had to access the back and front of the house, seems to me that they've had to move the bins out the way. So, yesterday - Saturday - at about 2pm, when me and The First Wife went for a promenade to Aldi to seek out 50% offers on rapidly-wilting spinach, we noticed that magic had happened.

There was a single Grey Bin out.

Plus associated recycling boxes.

The roofers had Won Bin - and won it by quite some stretch. So, as they'd started at about 9am, I calculate that the bin was out about 48 hours before it was to be collected. That's some impressive Bin Winning isn't it?

It's kind of how it feels these days to look for my former team's results on Twitter. They went 2-0 up then let in two quick goals. Extra time saw them win a crappy league cup game 4-2 against another crappy side who we used to play in a higher league that we got kicked out of because the roof fell in.

___

* This is a brilliant joke, fuck off.
** Proper writing here.
*** Grey Bin is the prize really. Winning Brown Bin doesn't mean all that much. Not everyone joins in with Brown Bin every two weeks. It's very mulch-dependent, is Brown Bin. One for the connosieurs. Maybe the futsal version compared to the 11-a-side Cup Game that is Grey Bin.

Mens insania

Mens sana innit

(I mean, it isn’t.)

Thick-thick-thick

Sludgy-pudgy-fludgy

There seems no point

Or end to it.

Healthy mind? Oh, well

I think that went away a while

Ago. Ago. Aggro.

Cider-lager-vodka

There always was more

And that did it.

I forgot to turn on the power

To the ol’ washer-dryer

Stink-stink-stink

Gruds-shirts-socks.

It’s chugging on now

And that is it:

The zenith of my productive

Ability today. But who gives

A fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks

And all the other swears

And fuck this shit.

Mens sana? What about it?

I’m not sure I even want it.

Tick-tick-tick

Hours, seconds, minutes

The end is gonna come along

So why fight it?

A Man Without A Team: Week Six/Keeping My Hands

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