A Man Without A Team: The Resurrection?

Update: The collected AMWAT posts are here with context and links from August, 2018 through to June, 2019.
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There's a cat that tries to get in our house regularly. He's a lovely lad. We call him Blue-head but I don't know what his real name is.

(I just asked him. He said Miaow).

It's raining out there; I wouldn't mind if he came in. But one of our Actual Cats, Ikey, does not like Blue-head, and hisses at him to shit him up til he runs off again. Well, it's Ikey's house. Sometimes they have a kind of rapprochement and peace descends - but never for long.

They never fight as such - just hissing and running away and the game of trying to get in when it's raining, to scran the food that's out. Sometimes Blue-head achieves entry unbeknownst to any of us. I've found him fast asleep, curled up on the bed. I've looked round from my computer and he's there, killing a catnip sausage toy. I've gone for a piss and when I've come back he's chomping away at a bowl of KitKat that clearly isn't his.

But he's a good little lad and quite friendly so - gah, life's too short. He's inside now; wet as hell, and a bit nervous. Ikey is staring at him. I doubt it'll be long before Blue-head is chased out again.

And, indeed, life is too short to stay down for long either.

Was it really only nine months ago that I finally reached the end of what I could take? The moment, in the aftermath of a racist comedian in the Nantporth Suite, in the shadow of the failure of the domestic license, after lie and lie again? The moment I became a man without a team?

And, yes, it was. The Bangor City I grew up with had gone, has gone, forever. Broken, broken, broken. Hijacked by owners so dumb they couldn't even cook the books properly. Well, we've been over that before.

And now, that club is likely to be relegated again - demoted, actually, for events off the pitch - cause they couldn't do paperwork properly. I mean, it's so ludicrous now that it's objectively funny. Funny haha and funny peculiar. The club has put an appeal in, of course.  What the outcome of that is going to be, who knows. And, in a sense, who cares. I try not to, personally.

Bangor City, or whatever strange and weird cuckoo is colonising the nest and the name, have signed lots of players from Italy, some via Malta.  Bizarrely, they have a new Director of Football, who has apparently had experience at Milan and Udinese. This chap's past is a bit murky, according to this article.

Who knows what's gonna happen next week when the appeal is heard? Not me. Not Blue-head (I asked him. He looked at me with his massive yellow eyes and said nothing).


A Man With A Team... soon?

And in any case, it's not important in the way that the new phoenix club is important. Because on Monday, Clwb Peldroed Bangor 1876 Football Club learns which level the Welsh FA is putting them at. A Tier 3-compliant ground has been secured, and management is ready to rock.

It's very exciting. It really is. I feel energised again. The sun's come out. Blue-head has gone out again. And - this never happens - the little black cat from next door came in to say hello too. A new day's beginning. A resurrection.

Nine months ago I was really at rock bottom as far as footy was concerned. I started writing about it. A few people liked the blogs. Some hated them. Such is life.

But you cannot keep a good cat soaking wet for long can you? This Cat will always come back. 

It can piss it down, but remember this wisdom (and one of the greatest comedy moments in my lifetime):

AMWAT: The Losing

Well, this is just getting silly now isn't it. And sad, of course.

Latest from my former team is that they've been deducted 42 points for fielding ineligible players. The punishment also includes a transfer ban til 2020. The club, or at least SVJ, says they're going to appeal against the 'humiliation'. Excuse me whilst I do a chinny reckon on that one. They've got form, baby.

One of the hilarious arguments seems to be that 'everyone does it'. That's a strong position legally isn't it.

Well, the 42-points isn't even the biggest deduction the Welsh FA/Cymru Alliance have made. Welshpool once won the CA and subsequently got relegated with a 66-point deduction. Check out that funky league table! It's mad.

Anyway that means on paper City are relegated again, or, rather, demoted. Relegation is dependent on what you do on the pitch. And, to be honest, on the pitch has rarely been a problem. SVJ is a very very good director of football in terms of sourcing players (and managers). The team of two seasons ago was bloody brilliant and ought to have had the chance to play in Europe, Scotland, and so on. That they've scattered far and wide instead is really a huge shame. Another season with Bangor - putting all financial nonsense aside - might well have made the careers of some of those great young players.

But instead this happened. And just to reiterate, for the sake of clarity:

ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS PASS THE FUCKING LICENSE.

I really cannot stress that enough. But hey ho, the jalopy staggers onward toward the inevitable. I suspect City might even appeal and perhaps get a suspended deduction - which will in due course be breached too and, well, yadda yadda yadda.

Daft. And depressing.

Three songs for today:

This week a hero passed to the other side to bless the departed with his sweet, sweet love. One of Alabama 3's greatest songs is from the wonderful La Peste. It seems apt here:

As ever with Alabama 3, there is a message of hope in there. Even in our darkest days, there will always be a light. Always one of my favourite Bible quotes, that. Some parts of that book of short stories are wonderfully-written. The Song of Solomon is so full of love it's incredible. Rather racy, too. The gifted and sublime Rumi echoed it hundreds of years later. Love, maybe, is not all you need. But fuck me it's a good start.

Talking of which, Elbow also hit the nail on the head. 

RIP Jake, and long live comradeship.

And, lest we get too maudlin, let us always remember the sage words of Sham 69:

Peace and unity to all, folks. 

The smoke from the burning will soon clear - and the phoenix will rise.

We've Got No Chance

Ev’rybody’s talking about

Fascism, Leftism, Rightism, Racism, Eurovison

This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m

All I am saying is we’ve got no chance

All I am saying is we’ve got no chance

C’mon

Ev’rybody’s talking about Rebellion

Extinction, Affliction and Contradiction

Marches and Churches and banners and strikers

And spiking writers

All I am saying is we’ve got no chance

All I am saying is we’ve got no chance

Let me tell you know

Ev’rybody’s talking about

Fake news, fake boobs, film crews,

Pustules, new rules, bank fools,

Nodules, food queues, union dues

And fuck yous.

All I am saying is we’ve got no chance

All I am saying is we’ve got no chance

Ev’rybody’s talking about

Donald Trump, Farage cunt, Yaxley-dump,

Brexit bastards, dogma retards, snowflakes, milkshakes,

Magic granddads, traitor splitters

Leave means leavers, fucking wankers

Fucking, fucking wankers

All I am saying is we’ve got no chance

All I am saying is we’ve got no chance

All I am saying is fuck all this shit

All I am saying is fuck all this shit

AMWAT: Cretinous charges

The Internet is very silly sometimes.

Specially when you get into anonymous message boards, where people spend at least half their time trying to doxx each other. Not always all that successfully, it must be said. I've been called a cretin several times by someone aggressive, which is funny.

To be exact, it was someone calling me a cretin, although the person online they thought was me, wasn't me. So I observed for a bit then kinda set em straight. Silly sausages.

It did remind me that The Ramones are ace though (as if I needed that reminder). Hope it works better on your system. I need a new lead from the computer to my amp, and I'll go and get one soon enough.

A little more seriously, there are two things that have come up this week too.

1. The Welsh FA have actually done something and put City under a transfer embargo, related to unpaid wages. There's been no official response from the club about it as yet.

2. The club has also received yet another High Court summons. It's not the first time. Eventually they've all been paid. But bloody hell, it's awful PR isn't it.

3. Also see the link for overflowing bins, uncollected for unspecified reasons. Rats, rats, rats everywhere. Which reminded me how ace The Stranglers are, too.

But of course, if you happen to chance upon the message boards, at least half the posts there are from the same people (maybe two, or three, or four) trying to deflect again on their favourite themes:

1. Blame the BCFCSA.

2. Blame the previous board.

3. Blame Canada. Which reminded me how great South Park is.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Sing With Me Softly

Click here to hear the tune.

Sing with me softly, I’m feeling alone.

If I could only hear once more your song

If you remember, just whisper the words.

But I sing solo. I sing for what’s gone.

Pour me a whisky, a Talisker fine,

Bring me another glass of blood-red wine.

We would be silly; play poker with friends.

Your glass stays empty. And my throat is dry.

Put out an album: this could be the one!

Argue with agents, bands spending vast sums,

Fix up the tour bus with new DVDs.

Drive down to London. But nobody comes.

Years fall so swiftly: our dog days are brief.

Play them out wisely, make mad memories.

One day we all die. It’s time when it’s time.

And we leave only songs sung soft in dreams.

The Legend of Giuseppe Terremoto

Sit down, my friend, and crack a beer. You’ll need it whilst you listen

To feats incredible and rare. A tale of luminescence,

Adventures of a man with an extraordinary presence

You won’t believe me

But it’s completely

Accurate and truthful, well, according to the legends.

Friend, I give you

Giuseppe Terremoto.

Never has there been a human like him, let’s be candid,

Samson came close, Thor did too, but neither were to standard.

Stronger than a thousand men, as clever as a hundred

Mathematicians

That’s the position

Established by the many stories whispered and demanded

Since he landed.

Giuseppe Terremoto.

He spoke a thousand languages, so Giuseppe was able

To bring a thousand warring tribes together at the table

To meet, to eat, to sing, to add their stories to the fable

Of creation.

It was amazing.

A walking, breathing tower that taught everything to Babel.

Incredible.

Giuseppe Terremoto.

Sometimes he was the virus and sometimes he was the cure.

He kept his body wild and free, his motives strong and pure.

Took baubles from the rich and distributed to the poor

Clothes and wheat,

Cash and meat.

He had no time for politics: he knew man would endure

For evermore,

Giuseppe Terremoto.

An old man said to me one time that all of it was true.

Giuseppe’d made the cornfields grow. He’d scared the sky to blue.

In the Great Flood he’d carried Noah’s ship and saved the crew

Of beasts and men

To thrive again.

He drank and drank and drank until the flood-water withdrew

To pastures new:

Giuseppe Terremoto.

Some said the man went to Japan, and there he studied Sumo.

He stomped on all they sent him from Osaka to Kyoto,

He faced down the Yazuka gangs from Nishin to Kazuno

And left them reeling,

Bruised black and bleeding.

Godzilla came up from the depths to roar and take a photo

With his hero:

Giuseppe Terremoto.

They said he would be quickly dead out in the Wild West

They boasted that they’d take him down: a sap like all the rest.

They came; they tried. They failed. They died. A lake of tears shed

By grieving mothers,

Widows, and lovers.

And Wild Bill trembled cause he knew that he had nothing left

He’d met the best:

Giuseppe Terremoto

The stories say he drank one day with mighty giant Andre

Forty beers for breakfast, five steaks each before the entrée

A vat of wine mixed with the moonshine from the Devil’s pantry

Til Andre slumbered.

But unencumbered

Giuseppe polished off another lake of finest brandy

For a nightcap.

Giuseppe Terremoto.

He plays eight hundred instruments, from clavier to cello,

Sometimes he makes it metal and sometimes he makes it mellow.

Largo and legato or vivace and allegro;

Basso profundo

Up to soprano.

It’s Mozart and Vivaldi, Motorhead and deep electro

In his solo:

Giuseppe Terremoto.

He calculated Pi down to a million million places,

Solved Feynman’s Last Theorem and many other cases,

Taught Newton physics, beat Darwin and Wallace in the races

To the new one:

Evolution.

His dialogues with Plato formed the backbone and the basis

Of all debates.

Giuseppe Terremoto.

He is a beast at football games, man, no-one has his power.

His shot is harder than ten men (or one Tony Yeboah).

It cuts the grass so fast that there’s no need for any mower.

He whacks the ball

Toward the goal

And scores. The crowd go wild and erupt like Krakatoa.

What a player:

Giuseppe Terremoto.

It’s even said that he protects the earth from all invaders.

He spins the rings of Saturn, making dizzy any raiders

Who dare to wave their tentacles toward his friends and neighbours.

Maybe it’s true

Cause me and you

Have never been enslaved by aliens. Maybe he’s saved us?

The famous

Giuseppe Terremoto.

He’s worshipped as a deity from London to Lesotho

His statue stands in distant lands from York to Orinoco

Look closely and you’ll see him peer back from the stained-glass windows

Of medieval

Cathedrals.

It’s rumoured that he wrote the gnostic gospels for a joke, oh

We hope so.

Giuseppe Terremoto.

Well, some are leaders, some are not, but none are born to follow

So listen in, we’ll learn from him, Giuseppe Terremoto.

He wouldn’t want you to kowtow to any other mortal

And you know

That it’s so.

Bow down to none and chase your dreams. That’s all there is in life, oh

We are all

Giuseppe Terremoto.

Giuseppe Terremoto.

Giuseppe Terremoto.

AMWAT: A Team, Awaiting...

I've always hated this time of year, specially since the rubbish League of Wales was invented. Doubly so since the stupid playoffs. It's bitty, shitty, weird and boring.

And you always get nobbers online saying things like, "WHY HAVENT WEE SINGED ANY PLAYORS YET EVRAYONE ELSE IS LOOK THAT IS RUBISH WE NEEED TO SIGNY PLAYARS WHAT FREENDLIES IS IT? WE ARE NOE GOOD WHY O WHY O WHY ooo my head is broke gumby gumby"

Well, usually those Brains of Britain are content with just message-boarding, but this year there's a really really nasty undercurrent too.

But then there's this, which is movement and news about a new club.

Which is good.

But there's still nobbers and collaborators saying things like "OOO WE CAN SINE PLAYARS NOW WE HAVV ARE LIUSENSE!"!!"

To which I replied that achieving the Tier 2 licence is the bare minimum, and equates to learning how not to shit in your own dinner.

I suspect it's the same people that keep saying things like "The new club will never get off the ground" and "It isn't Bangor City" and "WHERER DID THE STAND MUNNY GO OOO THE OLDE BROAD OF DIRECTERS IS A BAD".

What a fucking mess it all is.

All they had to do was make sure the accounts were in order. Literally all they had to do. 

My brain hurts.