End of season review - football 2023-24

Going to the Wales women's international at the very end of May marked my last live game of the season. So, so here is my review of the year. The Futbology app gives a useful summary:

65 games is a new personal season record. I wasn't expecting to set a new record at the start of the season and the achievement was unintentional. That's more than a game a week, and a bit silly really. 

However, my number of new grounds was lower than previous seasons. I achieved a decent geographical spread, though. (Map from Futbology)

On my season round-up, I listed Barry's away win at Caernarfon as my favourite game of the season. It was a game with 5 high quality goals including a late rocket shot that settled the game in Barry's favour. It was also my debut as a radio commentator. 

The game with the most goals - Swindon Supermarine v Poole Town - was right at the start of the season. Former Barry defender Luke Cooper was playing for Supermarine who unfortunately conceded seven. 

I didn't see any games with more than ten goals this season (unlike 2022-23) and my overall goals total was noticeably lower than the previous season, despite going to more games. 

My stand out memories are Shrewsbury taking the lead against Leeds at a packed Elland Road, being in with the Leverkusen fans at West Ham, the Caernarfon and Supermarine games I've already mentioned, completing the Cymru Premier at Colwyn Bay (with my nephew Zac), Shrewsbury's hilarious three goals at Notts County, and Truro City playing a "home" game in Gloucester against Torquay United. I was also in the crowd at a sold out Meadow to see Shrewsbury renew rivalries with Wrexham for the first time in 15 years, after they were drawn together in the FA Cup.

There weren't many matchgoing disasters, although getting on a train at Cardiff Central to go to a Newport County game and then discovering the next stop was going to be Reading was stressful!

So, it's been an enjoyable 11 months! Roll on next season!

Fýra, fimm, seks, sjey

I have joined a new Welsh class, refreshing my knowledge of the language by redoing some of the course that I finished back in 2020. I am enjoying it, but I have hit a snag a few times when trying to remember numbers. 

I get started alright - un, dau, tri - and then something funny happens. An old memory of numbers in a foreign language overwrites the Welsh. The next numbers that come to mind are fýra (pronounced foira), fimm, seks, sjey (shay). Then my brain stops counting because it knows these numbers aren't Welsh.

I blame my Grandma.

Me and Grandma, Cardiff Bay, 2006

My Grandma, Ragna, came from the Faroe Islands to the UK when she was 19. She lived the rest of her life on the outskirts of Wrexham until she passed away aged 89. Despite living over three quarters of her life in North East Cymru and having a greater English vocabulary than many people born in this country, she always counted in Faroese. And when she counted she often counted out loud. 

I was grandchild ein

If she rolled a six in a game and was moving a piece she would count ein, tveir, tríggir, fýra, fimm, seks. I'd forgotten ein, tveir and triggir. 

Clearly there were also times she was counting up to seven because I automatically go up to sjey. I'm trying to think when she would have been counting to sjey. She used to count the plates on the table to make sure she hadn't forgotten to lay a place for anyone. That could have been when she used to count to sjey. We often took friends to see them. We crowded round her tiny table no matter how many we were in number.

Fýra, fimm, seks, sjey. I remember when I was a teenager, playing a card game with Grandma, my mum and some of my friends. It was a game called Racing Demons where you have to get rid of your cards by putting them on piles in the middle of the table. Suddenly Grandma disrupted the flow shouting "Sex! SEX!" She was trying to put down a six. My friends were traumatised.

I haven't interrupted a Welsh class by shouting "SEX!" at least not yet. I have apologised for not remembering saith when all I could think of was sjey. I explained it was all my Grandma's fault. 

But I'm grateful in a way that she embedded those numbers so deep in my brain. It's a legacy she left me along with so many other memories. 

BONUS family photo - after my Grandma passed away we went through her photo albums. I found this photo of her with my Grandad at a wedding before I was born. Grandad is trying to sneak a cheeky kiss. I love this photo so much.

The melancholy magic of the FA Cup

I watched the FA Cup final on Saturday. The timing worked well for me to watch it as I have been confined to the house isolating after being infected by covid.

A generic picture (by me) of the Wembley Stadium arch...

I have actually made more of an effort to watch the FA Cup final in the last few years. I enjoyed last year's game when Leicester won the Cup for the first time in this history. This year's contest was less exciting on paper, with both Liverpool and Chelsea winning it multiple times in the past and also being two of the really big teams in the league. FA Cup finals are always better when the less successful clubs get a tilt at winning. 

Back in 2019, I blogged about how the first FA Cup final after my Dad died was an unexpected moment where I keenly felt his loss. That feeling has diminished somewhat over the last couple of years, but it's still something missing from the occasion. Dad would always watch the cup final and talk to me on the phone about it afterwards, even when for several years I wasn't particularly fussed about it and hadn't bothered watching. 

People talk about the "magic" of the FA Cup and really what they mean is nostalgia. As I watched Liverpool and Chelsea punch and counterpunch their way to a 0-0 draw, extra time and penalties, I remembered watching the various cup finals when I was a kid. It made me feel melancholic as the nostalgia washed over me. 

Cup final day was always a big day in our house. In the 1980s it was one of those very rare times that a football match was broadcast live on TV. It almost seems silly now - my time off isolating has been spent watching live football from almost every level in the top five tiers of English football - but back then there was the Cup final, and that was about it.

It was also on both main channels, BBC1 and ITV, so it felt like a real moment when the nation stopped to watch the football. (They did that again this year, but we have way more than 4 channels now so it dominates the schedules less.) We always used to watch it on the BBC, often starting with the build up before lunch time. Some years we would switch over to ITV for the bit presented by "Saint and Greavsie" (Ian St.John and Jimmy Greaves, who had a weekly football chat show on Saturdays). But normally we ignored the ITV output. 

Those were halcyon days for FA Cup finals. I don't remember the one from 1984, when we had just moved into our house in Shrewsbury. But I remember watching Manchester United v Everton in 1985 - notable for Kevin Moran becoming the first player sent off in an FA Cup final, and Manchester United winning in extra time through a goal from wonder-kid Norman Whiteside. I wanted Everton to win and was disappointed that they lost. 

I don't particularly remember anything from the 1986 final when Liverpool won the FA Cup and became the first team to win the League Title and the FA Cup in the same season (the "Double") in my short life-time. Everton were the losing finalists again.

I have vivid memories of the final in 1987 when Coventry City won the FA Cup for the first and only time in their history, beating Spurs. Firstly, there were lots of goals, including a great diving header by Keith Houchen, and a looping own goal that sliced in off Spurs defender Gary Mabbutt's knee. But it was also played in brilliant sunlight and the Wembley grass was bright, bright green. We had a video recorder and taped the game. My brother and I rewatched that match several times, which is probably why it burns so bright in my memory.

And then in 1988, there was the famous win by Wimbledon over Liverpool. Nobody gave Wimbledon much of a chance, but they nicked a 1-0 win. By then I was fed up with Liverpool winning everything and all the gloryhunters at school, so I was very happy that Wimbledon won. 

Those are the finals I really remember. I'm sure I watched others. I remember Gazza being stretchered off after injuring himself with a ridiculous tackle in 1991. But other memories are hazy. What I mainly feel when I think about the FA Cup final relates to the whole family sitting down to watch the game, my father's infectious excitement, the sheer novelty of football on the telly, and this marking the end of a football season and in its own way the beginning of summer.

The other thing I remember is the family sweepstake. Once the team line-ups were announced, my dad would write all the player's names on tiny bits of scrap paper and we would take it in turns to draw them. Whoever had the piece of paper with the name of the first player to score a goal won. The prize was picking a box of chocolates afterwards, when we would walk across the park opposite our house to the little paper shop near the school, where there would be a small range of boxed chocs behind a glass screen. 

It felt like my mum won every year, even when she picked unlikely players to score first. This might be a trick of memory as I have no record of who actually won each year. It just felt like it was always my mum who was lucky in the sweep. It didn't matter anyway because the chocolates got shared. 

That vignette in itself is wrapped in nostalgia, like all these memories. The paucity of television channels. The simplicity of a sweepstake with very little at stake. Just those little family traditions that made the day special. That's where the magic lay, if there was any magic at all. Not on the field at Wembley, but in our living room. We made those moments happen and then froze them in sunlit amber as happy-sad memories. 

Maybe Dad was trying to keep those moments alive, with those phone calls after the game all those years after I left home when we didn't watch the game together any more. I understand that now. Now that the phone calls have stopped. 

Outsourcing memories

Various apps are annotating my life. I've blogged about the Futbology app previously. Recently it has started pinging me reminders of football matches I attended, and have logged on the app. These are similar to 'Facebook memories' that often come up related to stuff I posted dating back to 2007 when I joined the site.

My Futbology reminder on 5 September is for Newport v Wrexham in 2010. 

That's not a photo from the game in question - it's their generic photo for Newport Stadium where Newport were playing at the time.

What Futbology doesn't know is that the game was moved from the Saturday to the Sunday but I didn't know so I ended up at the empty stadium on the Saturday wondering what was going on. This was long before I carried a portable computer connected to the Internet in my pocket.

I had totally forgotten that aspect of the game, except that I got an aforementioned Facebook memory on 4 September that cryptically mentioned driving to Newport on a fruitless trip, and then the reminder today revealed why!

Facebook then handily provided me with these reminders of the action from the game, including a missed penalty.

There were more updates about the game, with details I didn't remember. It made me think about how so many of our memories are now preserved online -  we are effectively outsourcing them. These are the memories of my "cloudgangers", as Douglas Coupland termed them. These digital versions of my life, stored on servers around the world, retain knowledge of the events that shape who I am long after I have forgotten them. 

This does make me wonder if there is a statute of limitations on our cloudganger memories. We change as humans, but our preserved content does not change. Can it truly be seen as representative of us, when we are new people?

This question might seem trivial, but this week a professional footballer was disciplined by the Football Association for the content of a social media post made in 2012, when the player in question was 14 (and long before they became a professional footballer). 

This made me feel slightly uneasy. Firstly, should we judge anyone as adults based on what they said or did as 14 year-olds. Most of us were dickheads when we were 14. Secondly, should we really hold people to account for opinions they held 9 years ago without checking in with them now? This blog has been running since 2006 - I have changed my mind about a number of things since I started.  

The choice seems to be whether we delete the record and lose the richness of who a person is, their faults and failings in their history. Maybe we should seek to expunge everything that does not represent who we are in this moment, recognising that everything we commit to the servers now might be deemed expungeable in a few years' time. 

But if we radically revisit our past selves and seek to remake them into versions we can accept, then we lose the sense of development that enabled us to reach the point we are at. We learn more from owning our past mistakes and explaining why we would do things differently now, than from pretending it never happened at all. 

Otherwise our cloudgangers may be highly accurate replicas of us, but have no memories. 

Nostalgia Triggers from 90s Choons

I usually listen to the radio when I'm doing stuff in the kitchen. With the world generally being pretty dreadful I've been avoiding news-based stations and so have retuned the radio to Absolute Radio 90s, which just plays songs from the 1990s, triggering memories from two thirds of my life ago.

Photo taken in Paris in 1993 or 1994

For example, when The Size of a Cow by The Wonderstuff comes on, then I'm transported back to sitting at the heavy lab desk at the back of Mr Dorricott's science classroom. My desk-mate, Tim, was really into The Wonderstuff and a lot of other music. He used to go on the train to Birmingham to buy "choons". He pirated me a cassette of Nevermind. I remember once at my house my tape player chewed up his tape of Achtung! Baby and when we cut and pasted the tape back together we put one bit back in the wrong way round. Unintentional remixes of our time.

(This will all mean nothing to anyone under the age of 30, probably. Tapes? What are those?)

Another song that is on heavy rotation on AR90s is Parklife by Blur. I have a very specific memory related to this. Back when that song came out I used to go to a church that met in an upper complex of rooms above a pub. During Sunday evening meetings you could hear the music playing in the pub downstairs. Sunday evening meetings were generally informal, and I remember one evening we had moved the chairs round into small circles to pray in groups. Through the floor came the thudding beats of Parklife. I wasn't the only one in the prayer circle mentally singing along.

All the people
So many people
And they all go hand in hand
Hand in hand through their
(beat)
Parklife

I know I wasn't the only one singing along because a few of us mouthed the word 'Parklife' in time with the song. We saw each other do it and grinned.

And then I left Shrewsbury to go to university, just as the Britpop bubble exploded. Anything by Oasis or Shed 7 or Elastica reminds me of university days. Basket Case makes me think of my digs in the first year when one of the first things I bought was a CD player that I cobbled into my hi-fi amp and double tapedeck. But those are later days and moving to Cardiff for Uni, to living here afterwards is more of a continuum. When I left Shrewsbury to go to university I ended up never going back there to live, not even for a summer holiday. So that is the one clear page break in my story.

It's the songs from the early 90s that are the real nostalgia triggers, but that's not to say I particularly want to wallow in that nostalgia. Looking back it's a wonder I got through those teenage years as I was barely coping with undiagnosed depression, was a fervent religious fundamentalist, and had the weight of expectations on me to go to university and achieve great things.

That last one is hard to reconcile with the great love I had (and still have) for my father, but he did tell me how he thought I could follow in his footsteps and study medicine, and one reason I went to study theology is because I knew Dad would approve of that choice when medicine was closed off to me (more on that later).

Understanding depression more as an adult, I can see how it affected me quite a bit as a teenager. I know I'm not unique in finding teenage life hard. Recently I have reconnected with a few people I knew in school and realised that I wasn't the only one who was presenting a brave face. Some of the people I most admired have told me they felt constantly on edge, or were hiding an eating disorder, or were bullied as badly as I sometimes was, if not worse.

I think it would have been good for my fragile, nervous self when I was younger, if I had known that the people who seemed to have got their stuff together were actually feeling just as desperate on the inside.

For me, my depression has left me with some regrets. I dropped friendships that I wish I hadn't. It affected my concentration and my ability to focus on schoolwork, and dampened down my love of learning. I barely read some of my textbooks at A-Level. It's stuff I sometimes wish I had actually learned. It also stopped me from learning new skills. I was very keen to learn how to play guitar, went through a depressive phase, sold the guitar to a classmate, and I still occasionally wish that I had been in a mental place where I could have actually learned to play it.

I had almost zero self-confidence, which was also linked to the depression. Here's a story that illustrates it. I was planning on studying science at A-Level, with the end aim of applying for medical school. I went on an open day to the VI Form College and went to the science labs. My school had switched that year from single subject science GCSEs to a "Double Science" course that covered all three subjects and gave you two GCSE grades at the end.

When the science teacher heard this, he was very dismissive. "Oh," he said, "you won't be able to do A-Levels unless you've done single subjects at GCSE. Most people find the step up really hard anyway, so it will be almost impossible for you!"

I remember feeling absolutely shocked by that. There was no point trying if it was going to be impossible. So I went and did three other subjects instead.

For a long time I was angry that my school had made me do double science, because that had prevented me from going on and potentially becoming a doctor like my dad. But it wasn't the school, and it wasn't even that discouraging response from the A-Level teacher who was to blame.

It was only recently I thought to myself, 'Why did I let someone I had never met before shape my choices in such a way?' Without sounding disrespectful, he was just a bog-standard teacher in a run of the mill VI Form College in a half-horse town. In what way was he an authority? He had never met me and he had no clue whether I was any good at science or not.

That encounter could have gone another way. I could have ignored him and had a go. I got Double As in my Double Science (despite mainly talking to Tim about music) so clearly I had some ability.

Besides, every A-Level teacher reckons their subject is really hard and requires a lot of work. If I turned up in that class and I was behind the curve, then a good teacher would find a way to bring me up to speed, rather than writing off my chances before I'd started the course.

But when you're depressed and you feel that everything is a struggle, you don't respond to negativity like that in a positive way. It doesn't spur you on to try hard and prove them wrong, which is how I wish I had responded.

You have to be careful with wishes like that though. If I hadn't been so discouraged by that guy, I wouldn't have ended up studying theology. Even, if I hadn't been depressed and had studied and got the A-level grades I wanted to get, I wouldn't have ended up studying theology in Cardiff. My life would have had a very different trajectory and although I was in a pretty tough place then, I'm in a good place now. Happier than a lot of people, and, I hope, doing a bit of good in the world.

It all worked out. It could have been an easier route, though.

I'm going to stick with listening to Absolute Radio 90s because in a strange way hearing those songs has helped me rearrange some mental furniture and appreciate my journey from then to now.

Shrewsbury Town v Manchester United - FA Cup 5th round review

The hype levels before this game were high. Shrewsbury had won their fourth round game against Sheffield Wednesday with a dramatic seventh-minute-of-injury-time winner. Manchester United have had a tricky season, including a Europa League defeat the previous Thursday to Danish champions Midtjylland. Manager Louis Van Gaal was "under pressure". They had a lot of injuries. Town fans could be forgiven for hoping for an upset - like my Dad, who was interviewed for the Shropshire Star as he queued for tickets last week.

Dad gets internet famous

The ground was packed, as it had been for the Chelsea game back in October 2014. Outside, dubious purveyors of hastily produced half and half scarfs and other souvenir tat were touting their ways in the retail park we walked through to the ground. We had to queue to get in through the turnstiles a good half an hour before kick off. Such things are almost unheard of at the Meadow.

It was a cold night, but there's always something magical about a packed evening under the floodlights. This was the 50th Manchester United FA Cup game in a row that had been live on TV, and the third televised game I'd been to in a row, including Shrewsbury's round 3 win in Cardiff. The back of our stand had several cameras set up and the three sides opposite us had temporary electronic advertising boards set up - another novelty for Town fans.

I was down in block 18 where the more shouty fans stand at the back. There were some good chants, but unfortunately we were in front of a very loud mouthy bloke who just wanted to swear at the United players. In the first half he shouted racist ("Pikeys!"), sexist ("Get up you girl") and homophobic ("You ponce") abuse at them, along with generous use of the word "wankers". He was seriously draining and I was relieved that he turned out to have a small bladder and needed to keep going to the toilet. Having to put up with tiresome bogits like that makes football a drag sometimes. In the end, I ended up laughing at him with my brother and the friend we were with. It's just so ineffectual - what difference is spewing rage to the point of giving yourself an aneurysm going to make, I mean, really?

The away end was full. The 'Shrewsbury Reds' and 'Telford Reds' banners attracted a bit more ire from the crowd and chants of 'We support our local team.' I didn't join in with that chant as I'd driven 110 miles for a 'home' game and so I don't support my local team. (Not that I want to see them do poorly, or anything, but, you know how it is, they aren't the team I support.)

For some reason Manchester United opted to wear a white change strip. Our guess was it was for commercial reasons rather than a kit clash. Even though they did look like a knock off Tranmere Rovers, it was painfully clear they were a cut above within a few minutes. Juan Mata, in particular, oozed class. They passed the ball through Shrewsbury and had forced a clearance practically off the line and couple of good saves before they finally got the first goal about ten minutes before half time. Shrewsbury couldn't cope with the pace and the overlapping and a ball diagonally upfield was thumped home by Chris Smalling, the central defender who had stayed in the Shrewsbury half after a corner with nobody tracking him.

At this point there was all to play for

Just before half time Juan Mata dinked a free kick from just outside the box over the wall and into the unoccupied side of the goal and that was effectively game over. There's been a bit of a discussion about the Manchester United players standing behind the wall. Were they offside? Were they interfering with play? It doesn't really make a difference. You shouldn't trip opponents on the edge of the penalty box and give away free kicks.

Town only had time to kick off before the ref blew for the break. In the second half, Town switched to 4-4-2 and showed a bit more fight, even creating a chance in the United penalty area. Unfortunately then the visitors broke downfield and Jesse Lingard hammered in a third goal for them at the end of a lovely weighted pass.

After a couple more squandered chances, United also hit the post, although the substitute who struck the woodwork seemed to pull up with a groin strain after his shot and limped off soon after. So for the last fifteen minutes or so United were down to ten men as they had already used all their substitutes. This made the game slightly more equal and Shrewsbury had a couple of chances in the final ten minutes or so, including a free header from Abu Ogogo which went wide when it looked easier to get it on target.

Realistically, though the game was long dead as a contest and United saw out the game the way you'd expect from a top five team, completely regardless of the pointless bloke in row P's opinion regarding their self-pleasuring habits.

A blurred action shot from the second half

So, what went wrong for Town? Compared to the Chelsea game back in 2014, I felt this showed how the team this year is poorer than last season's, despite going up a division. Town had quite a clear out in January with experienced club captain Liam Lawrence moving to Bristol Rovers and several other more senior players moving on. Realistically, Town missed a wise head like Lawrence's in the middle of the park.

The young lads Town sold in the summer have not been replaced with players of similar quality and this game showed actually how good players like Ryan Woods and Connor Goldson were. Jack Grimmer and Junior Brown both played very well, and I thought Andy Mangan had a decent game, but like the rest of the team they were chasing shadows most of the time, second to the loose ball and unable to cope with a fluid opponent who kept moving and finding space.

So it was bit disappointing. It didn't feel like Shrewsbury gave much of an account of themselves and the scoreline may even have been generous to them. They could have lost by more. Of course, other teams with fewer stars and less quality than Manchester United have found Town pretty easy to beat this year - at one point the Shrewsbury fans sang "You're nothing special. We lose every week." It's just a shame they couldn't lose more gallantly.

Karaoke

Went karaoke with our book group tonight. Great fun. Birdhouse in your Soul is a much faster song to sing than I or Cathy realised.

Singing in front of your friends is quite a brave thing to do. Mind you it's also quite brave to go hear your friends sing. Two of those present tonight had already witnessed this:

California flashbacks

I'm currently munching my way through a box of Hot Tamales - the cinnamon candy you can't buy over here. I discovered them in California and every time I bite into one and close my eyes I can see sunshine on the surf as we cruise down Highway 1 from San Fran to LA. The beaches are pristine, the road is winding and fun to drive, the trees are huge and evocative of an untameable land, the pampas grass flutters in the breeze, and life is good.

In my heart I think I'll always be a little bit in love with California. And the taste (and smell) of Hot Tamales will always take me there.