football rambles

....... Or in the case of Swindon Town it should be the reappearing robins. Swindon Town have used at least 5 different badges during their history, and most have them have involved robins, from their nickname or trains, their other nickname being the railwaymen and the town is famous for its locomotive history. The diamond shaped crest with the 'S' on it was from 1991 and was supposed to signify a successful outlook for the future, which never really materialised. To me it looks more like the logo of a geeky IT company, something which Swindon is more famous for nowadays. In 2007 the fans voted for the badge with quaters and a train and a robin in it. The towns motto was also reinstated 'Sulubrius et industria', and a very fine badge it is indeed. Funnily enough for a team who have the nickname of the Robins they haven't always worn red and white. They started off in black and white and then changed to red and white quaters when they entered the Southern League in

When the boys from ITV talk about the magic of nonleague football in their annual trip to somewhere crap in the pouring rain and say 'this is what it's all about', don't listen to them. They might have been wetting themselves down the road, as Histon knocked out the 'mighty' (their words not mine) Leeds, but up the road in Ely on Saturday in the freezing fog, nobody was feeling special. A few years ago Histon and Ely were together in the Eastern Counties League, but nowadays the gap is wider than it ever has been. Histon look like they could get into the league, whereas Ely will probably end up in a dogfight for survival in the Premier Division. Yesterda, Rod was in town and Sean fancied a trip to the football, but it was not exactly and advertisement for football. The freezing fog and heavy pitch didn't help, and I can't see the Great Shelford game which has been yet again rescheduled for Tuesday going ahead after today's heavy rain. We had a laugh

The Ely City game against Great Shelford was again off last night. It doesn't look like they will ever get it played the way things are going, especially with Ely due to face Yaxley away in the Hunts Cup on Tuesday night.

I finally met Phil in a pub in Milton before the game and went about drinking at a rate that wasn't safe. I reckoned that I deserved it after being messed around by bus drivers on the way there. The game wasn't that great and I must admit to having some regrets, especially with the £3 programme and £15 entry fee, when Mick phoned me up to tell me that Ely scored in stoppage time to win 2-1. The Cambridge goal came from a Ben Purkiss own goal, which settled the match, although it could have been a lot worse for the Minstermen. No wonder the travelling faithful were shouting 'Walker Out'. They got their wishes a week later and now have Martin Foyle the ex-Port Vale manager in the hot seat. I got sent the wrong way into Cambridge by a copper and didn't find very many friendly locals. In fact it was a German who finally helped me, so I probably got home later than those travelling up to Yorkshire. I have to admit that meeting Billy Brewer's best mascot mate in Yorki

Another break down with my computer has meant that I've been off line for a week, so I'll be catching up now. I only went to the Cambridge United v York match last Tuesday and since then a lot has happened. I was in Bonn at the weekend and had to settle for watching the Villa v United match in a bar and Dynamo get beat by a very desperate Arsenal in the Champions League last night. In my opinion the Arsenal goal was not against the rules of the game, but not very sporting. I mean it was a drop ball and Dynamo didn't even go for it, but that's the way it goes. It also got me thinking about the changing fortunes of Dynamo and Drogheda since that game in summer, but more of that later. Anyway, here comes a short, as it was a long time ago, photoless (I forgot the camera) report of that Cambridge v York game.

There has been a trend for a lot of clubs to upgrade their nicknames to sound harder. For example, the Biscuitmen of Reading are now the Royals and the Robins of Charlton are the valiants and the Glass boys of Crystal Palace are the Eagles. Unlike Eagles Robins are not hard, as although Ely still have a Robin on the badge, Swindon, Charlton, Cheltenham and Bristol City have all got rid of the Robins from their badges. Charlton Athletic have had the current badge with the hand holding the sword since 1968, although the original idea for the design was first announced in 1963 when it won a competition held by the club and they have had a similar design since this date. The original badge had the letters CAFC in the shape of the diamond, but after World War 2 chose a Robin design, which they wore in the 1946 defeat to Derby in the FA Cup Final. They have at other times also used the Greenwich Council symbol as their badge. When the current badge design was chosen the nickname 'The Rob

Top - the shirt that fans chose in 2004 bottom - this season's kit

Notes on the below shirt from top to bottom: 2002 - The ones with the dodgy chequered flag. 1974 - The ones with the Y that they wore when they got promotion. 1937 - The first time York appeared in red 1934 - The chocolate box kit 1922 - The original coloura

On Tuesday night big Phil will be in town for the game between Cambridge United and York City. I was getting a bit bored with the club focus format, so here is a more visual and even more potted history. York city were formed in 1909, but were disbanded and reformed after the first world war and wore the maroon and white shirts at the top. In 1929 they got into the league at the expense of Ashington who were relegated and Mansfield who won the Midlands league, but got less votes than York, who finished ninth. They also changed to brown and white shirts as a reference to the town's confectionary history. They then changed for red shirts, as the brown and white stripes were said to clash too often with their opponents. In 1974 they got all the way to division 2 and released the shirts with the big y to celebrate the fact. In 2002-2003 they almost went to the wall after being taken over by someone who didn't really have any cash and who was a car racing fan, hence the daft chequer

This week I bought the retro Hamburg SV shirt (the blue one pictured above), which was perhaps a bit of a strange purchase as they are in the same group as Villa in the UEFA Cup, but it's a good shirt and they seem like a decent bunch, although i might not be saying that next month. The 'Bundesliga Dinosaurs' are the only club to have played in every season of the Bundesliga since its inception in 1963. They were formed as an athletics club in 1887 when Der Hohenfelder and Wandsbek Marienthaler came together to form Sports club Germania, they started playing football in 1891 after having it introduced to them by some Englishmen. After World War I Sports Club Germania, Hamburg FC and FC Falke found themselves in a weakened position and decided to get together and form Hamburg SV. The red and white shirts come from the colours of the city and the blue and black crest is that of the oldest of the three clubs Germania. The first 'success' of Hamburg came in 1922 when th

Ely's atrocious run of late continued on Saturday as they made it only one point from the last 15. They lost 3-0 to a strong Whitton United team, but the result doesn't really tell the full story. Ely went 1-0 down when Duane Wright put them ahead on 28 minutes, but Ely particularly in second half seemed to have most of the chances, but never looked like actually putting them away. It looked for most of the second half that Ely would get an equaliser, but on 83 minutes Ronald Wright made it 2-0 when the goalkeeper fluffed the ball to allow him to get a pretty straight forward tap in. Duane Wright got his second on 98 minutes! There were a lot of stoppages including an injury to the Whitton goalkeeper in what was an entertaining, but bad tempered game. At least Villa managed to cheer me up by beating the Gooners away.

On Saturday Ely should play host to Whitton United. Whitton United's official birthday is 1926, although there is evidence of a club existing before the start of the 20th Century. In 1927 they made it to the miinor cup final of the Suffolk and Ipswich league, where they lost to Bungay. In their early days they played their football in fields behind a couple of pubs and at one time they shared a field with a few cows, who were moved for the football. They finally settled at King George V Playing fields where they play up until the presnt day, although there are plans to move to a more modern facility. A lot of their history from this period has been lost in time and the next record of major note was a game infront of 8000 at Ipswich's Portman Road in the Suffolk Cup Final in 1948. Unfortunately, they went on to lose 2-0 to Lowestoft Town. They went on to win the cup 2 years on the trot in 1959 and 60 by beating Bungay and Long Melford. Up until the late 1980s the club played in

A couple of years ago I started the group 'Johnny Metgod's Unpopable Balls' on Last FM. Yeah, I know it should be Unpoppable! It was named after those balls that didn't pop obviously, and they really didn't , thorns, dogs, nothing could pop them and Johnny Metgod endorsed them. The only problem was that if you played with them in the rain they turned into concrete. Johnny himself is 50 years old and started his career at HFC Haarlem in the 1970s. He then went on to play for AZ67, Real Madrid, Forest and Spurs. At Forest he became famous for his free kicks at Forest despite being a defender. I presume he got used to kicking the ball so hard from practising with those unpoppable balls after they had turned into rainfall medicine balls and not the 'Pure animal physics' the commentator in the video above is talking about. He must have been shmoking some of the stuff Johnny's home country is famous for. Johnny also managed to get 21 caps for Holland and score

.... Or does it just seem so. I should have been at Ely City v Great Shelford tonight, well if there hadn't been a blackout in Ely in the 88th minute the game wouldn't have been rearranged. The reason I wasn't at the game tonight was that it was postponed, this time for a water logged pitch. Thank God Mick from the club popped round to tell me and thus saved me a trip down the road.

I know it wasn't really the start of the FA Cup yesterday, as I had already been to qualifying games at Rocester and Cambridge City, but it was the first round proper and there was no local football, apart from Histon who beat Swindon in the cup, so I was perched in front of the TV. Unfortunately I am going to miss the Havant and Waterloovile v Crewe game, which I expect Havant to win due to promising to go to the swimming pool. Obviously, the big stories so far have been Curzon and Ashton, Histon and Blyth knocking out league opposition, with the Blyth win over Shrewsbury being the most impressive, but there were some other interesting results. Notts County, who knocked out Sutton United and the commentator saying 'Notts County's quality shone through', it must be a long time since anybody said that! Macclesfield also got called the 'romance killers' when they beat Harlow, which is funny as I remember being at the Moss Rose when Hartlepool knocked Macc out whe

The kids made me do it, honest. I'll get back to football after this interlude

....... and then we can get back to the football. Live session from the label's founder, Reinhard Voigt. It was recorded at Dry Rock in Naples in 2006. There is a double CD available here, but again it isn't my link: www.ponticelli.com/voigt.zip

This was the 8th release from Kompakt records and continues the Kompakt records special, that has temporarily moved the website away from being a football site, but don't worry there'll be plenty of football related stuff soon. Anyway, although it's 8 years old it still sounds great: Tracklisting: 1a Wolfgang Voigt Diskoschleifen 2000 A1 (Intro) (0:56) Written-By, Producer - Wolfgang Voigt 1b M:I:5 Maßstab 1:5 (4:17) Written-By, Producer - Wolfgang Voigt 2 Sensorama Star Escalator (5:42) Written-By, Producer - Jörn Elling Wuttke , Roman Flügel 3 Superpitcher Softmachine (5:13) Written-By, Producer - Aksel Schaufler 4 Freiland Rot (5:29) Written-By, Producer - Wolfgang Voigt 5 Eight Miles High In This Place (5:57) Written-By, Producer - Roman Flügel 6 Christian Morgenstern Gem Club Pt. 1 (6:49) Written-By, Producer - Christian Morgenstern 7 Thomas Gwosdz Reinaufwärts (5:21) Written-By, Producer - Thomas Gwosdz 8 Doppel Galoppm

I seem to be going completly off topic this week, but as I like music a lot as well and I started off the mixtape and Kompakt records thread, it seems like a good idea to carry on with some other good stuff from Germany's greatest record label. Here's the track listing, which includes the fabulous Mexican artist known as Drugs Made Me Smarter, who I first came across on a net label. 1. Andrew Thomas - Groove 3 2. Tilman - Live Hood 3. b twisted - Tempo Injection 4. Lackluster - 111080702 (Tumbling along) 5. Audiossey - Songtitles Are Ridiculous 6. Craque - Licht 7. Kontrast - Vision and Tradition 8. ZVUKBRODA - ts 9. Drugs Made Me Smarter - I Wanna Feel your Soul Download it here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KQCRV0TN All tracks are available free from Last FM

I've just come in from the evenings back yard pyrotechics, which weren't exactly on a par with anything FC Seoul would do and realised that there are no live games on what can be termed as normal telly, so I decided to catch up on the old web site here. A few months ago I wrote about the problems of Ukrainian, Russian and the Cyrillic and Roman alphabets throwing up some strange linguistic concoctions, but now I have another problem and the problem is English. The other day I read a report about a CRC game, CRC being a team in the same league as the mighty Ely City which linked what happened at their home game and what happened at Ely's home game as 'further up the road in Cambridgeshire'. Now I took this to mean that CRC were a team from Essex or Kent or somewhere like that and they meant further up the road in another county (Cambridgeshire), but on more research and the fact I saw a bus going to CRC from Cambridge train station I found out that CRC are a kind of

Not much live football apart from on TV tonight, so I am going to look at another record label that I have enjoyed in the past - Kompakt. I had a ton of Kompakt stuff on my hard drive before it broke and I aim to try and get some of it back and hopefully make a mix tape. Kompakt records were formed in 1989 and have a lot in common with the English label Warp. The Cologne based label, like Warp is famous for its minimal techno although it also represents other genres, it also works as a record store and distributor. The label, which is home of 'the Cologne Sound', was formed in 1989 by legendary techno artist Wolfgang Voigt, Jurgen Paape and Michael Mayer. It is also the parent label for 2 of Voigt's other project labels, Auftrieb and Profan. There is also the Kompakt Pop label, which despite its name is often the vehicle for the label's flagship acts like Gui Boratto, where as Kompakt tends to specialise in compilations, although the Orb have appeared on it

Yesterday I went to Ely City v Walsham Le Willows, and again the weather was fairly bad. Ely went one down early on, but managed to get an equaliser through Lee Dixon on 44 minutes. The second half saw Ely come close on a number of occassions, but they weren't able to nick the win in the end. a bit of a short report this time and again apologies for no photos