football rambles

Well, it's been a funny old year with it starting up when football started up after the winter break in Ukraine with a trip to Kharkiv for a game between Metalist Kharkiv and Vorskla Poltava and finishing on Boxing Day with Cambridge United v Histon. In between I went to 43 games, 25 in Ukraine and 18 in England. Not a record breaking year in any account, but not bad given the financial burden of late, although it should be poited out due to ludicrous ticket pricing most of the games in England were step 5 affairs. Anyway, here's a quick review about which of my trips hit the highs and which hit the lows in a rollercoaster year in more ways than one. Highlights First of all obviously was the trip that spawned the website, a fine game between Metalist Kharkiv and Vorskla Poltava . Going on the train and drinking copious ammounts of alcohol in Ukraine is always an adventure, but when you get to the other end and hang out with lads like Han and Vasya and witness 3-0 win it alw

Well, I have a tradition with the lads from TVset Under Repair that each New Year we make a playlist for each other. Here's my playlist for this year: 1. Air France - June Evenings Electro indie pop from Gothenburg, this track was taken from their recent 'No Way Down EP'. 2. Squarepusher - The Coathanger a track taken from this year's album 'Just a Souvenir' by the Warp Records stalwart. 3. Cruyff In The Bedroom - Hakuchume Another track from an album that came out this year. This one is from everyone's favourite Japanese shoegazers and sees them return to form with their third album, 'Saudargia' 4. Gordon's Tsunami Week - Seldom Gordon's Tsunami Week are a German post rock band, I heard them first on Last FM at work. They've been going since 2001, as far as I know, but don't seem to be that prolific. This track was taken from a demo produced then. 5. Paavoharju - Alania This track by the Finish folk band comes from this year's al

Well I forgot to take my camera with me to the Boxing Day Derby between Cambridge and Histon, but here are a couple of videos. The first shows the North Stand, where I was standing, before the game started and the secons shows Scott Rendell's goal for Cambridge. Luckily for the Us he has just extended his loan period at the Abbey from Peterborough. Although you can't really pick it up from the videos the game was played infront of an impressive crowd of just under 7,000 in an electric atmosphere, it was nearly a sell out for the home fans whoe hadn't been put off despite a lack of public transport that had had me reassessing the situation on the morning of the game. Not surprisingly the players were also feeling the passion of the crowd and the tackles were flying in. However, the ref must have left his cards in his car as he didn't book anyone until the second half. Cambridge had most of the early play and on 15 minutes Ben Farrell played in Wayne Hatswell who drilled

The shirts that Blackpool started wearing in 1938 were the same design as those worn in the so called Matthews final of 1953, when the genius helped Blackpool win their only ever major trophy beating Bolton Wanderers in an epic final. Since then tangerine has been synonymous with Blackpool Football Club, but it has been a relatively new colour for the club. In 1923 Blackpool director Albert Hargreaves, who was also a referee, was that impressed with Holland's tangerine shirts when he was the man in black for a game between Belgium and Holland that he decided to introduce the colour to the Seasiders. Blackpool adopted the colours for the 1923-24 season, but then went back to wearing various versions of blue and white. In 1938 tangerine shirts were reintroduced and the club have stuck to the colours ever since. It was also the time when Blacpool were at their most dominant with Stan Matthews and Stan Mortensen leading the line. They were regularly challenging for the league and reach

Unione Calcio Sampdoria's crest might look like some weird shaped island, but the picture is actually the outline of a sailor, as I found out when I was leafing through some football books in Rome a few years back. The sailor's name is Baciccia, which can strangely be translated into John the Baptist in English or Giovanni Baptista in Italian. The blue comes from Andrea Doria and the white, red and black from Sampierdese. The 2 clubs formed on 12th August 1846 to form Sampdoria

The crest of Anderlecht is purple and white because they are the colours of the club. The SCA stands for Sports Club Anderlecht and the crown was added in 1933, when the club officially became Royal Sporting Club Anderlechtois. The motto of the club is 'Mens sana in corpore sana', which can perhaps be translated as 'healthy mind and healthy body'. The lad at the bottom of the badge is St. Guy or St.Guido of Anderlecht, who is the patron saint of the area. He was a businessman, who turned into a pilgrim after crashing his boat, and thinking it was punishment for being greedy he decided to go to Rome and then Jerusalem. He died on his way back from Jerusalem and many years later his grave was discovered by a work horse. Apart from being the patron saint of Anderlecht he's also the saint of workhorses, horned animals, epileptics, stables and protects people from rabies

Notts County were formed in 1862, and although Sheffield FC, Hallam and Cray Wanderes are older, Notts County are the oldest league club in the World. Their black and white striped kit, shown above was first used in 1890 and became famous all over the World. In 1862 teams didn't wear kits and when they were introduced in 1872 Notts County turned out in black and amber. Between 1880 and 1890 they wore chocolate and light blue halved shirts. This kit has been resurrected as the away shirt this season. They also wore the light blue and chocolate number when they became founder members of the league in 1888. However, it was in the black and white striped kit that they made their debut in the FA Cup final and in these colours that they became the first second division club to win the FA Cup in 1894 and promotion in 1897. Notts County wear black and white stripes to this day, as do Juventus. In 1903 Juventus decided that they should change their pink shirts, for some starnge reason! They

The most easterly club in England and known as the Trawler Boys were founded in 1884 under the name East Suffolk. In 1887 they merged with Kirkley and became known as Lowestoft before adding Town to their name in 1890. From 1897 they played in the Norfolk and Suffolk League and won the league in 6 of the first 7 seasons. The season they didn't win it was in 1899 -00 when they reached the final of the FA Amateur Cup, where they lost to Bishop Aukland. In 1904 Lowestoft along with Norwich City were accused of proffesionalism. Norwich went on to become proffesional, but Lowestoft paid a fine of 2 guineas to remain amateur. Whereas Norwich went on to become if not a dominant a well respected team in the league Lowestoft continued to play in the Norfolk and Suffolk League, where they found it hard to sustain the same level of success they had enjoyed before. In 1935 Lowestoft became one of the founding members of the Eastern Counties League and again merged with Kirkley. This saw instan

Yesterday Ely City took on top of the table Lowestoft Town in the Ridgeons League, and not surprisingly were beaten 2-0. The game was low on quality and high on bad tempers with Lowestoft having a player sent off for a two footed tackle in the first half and Ely also having a man sent off in the mele of players waving handbags around after the foul. Lowestoft also had another player sent off late in the second half, but the Robins never really looked like matching the trawler boys in this one. That said the difference in wealth of the 2 clubs means that Ely weren't embarrassed, after all Lowestoft recorded a crowd of 842 a few weeks back, which is higher than some Conference teams. Fair play to their fans yesterday, as regarding the distance and the fact it was the last game before Christmas they bought quite a few fans. I just think they probably deserve better. This time it was Ely's defence that looked suspect rather than the forwards who can sometimes look lightweight. Let&

This shirt is probably not a classic to anybody else and was probably Villa's biggest break with tradition since in 1969-70 when Tommy Docherty introduced a shirt without blue sleeves. This shirt went even further in that not only didn't it have blue sleeves it also didn't have a lion badge, instead it just had AVFC written on it. Mind you, it prepared Villa fans for the pyjamah kit by Hummel that followed. At least this one was unique. It was made by Icelandic firm Henson, who still make sporting equipment, but whose biggest news of recent years was a Man United shirt commemorating the Munich air disaster anniversary last year that was available in Iceland and Denmark. It was a special shirt for me, as although it was worn in the era of under achiever Graham Turner and manager of disaster, Billy Mc.Neill, it was during the period when I started going regularly and I even had a subbuteo team in the kit. It was also a unique design that will always be a classic to me.

Last month I looked at Ninja Tunes and Kompakt Records and this month another dance label is in the spotlight, Warp records. Warp were founded in Sheffield in 1989 by Steve Becket and Rob Mitchell who worked together at the FON record store. They were joined in their venture by producer Robert Gordon, who produced their first record. The first release was called 'Track with no name' and was funded by the Enterprise Allowance Scheme and sold out of the back of a car. The second release by the now internationally famous Nightmares on Wax was called 'Dextrous' and sold 30,000 copies despite a complete lack of promotion. Warp records were now becoming well known on the dance music theme and their fifth release LFO's eponymously titled single sold 130,000 copies and resched number 5 in the UK charts. In 1992 several more acts from the genre that is sometimes called 'Intelligent techno' were added to the label icluding Aphex Twin, Black Dog and Autechre. They were

Yet another week where the non league football programme was seriously disrupted and saw me without a match to go to again. It surely is time that the idea of a Winter Break for clubs out of the league and in Scotland, where the weather tends to play serious havoc with the fixtures was though about.

Paris Saint-Germain were created in 1970 when 20,000 subscribers who wanted to see a top flight club in Paris after the demise of RC Paris, Red Star Paris and Stade Francais came together with Saint Germain, who had been formed in 1904. In 1970 the newly named club played in the second division, but gained promotion. However after a dissapointing season in the first and with mounting pressure from the city council to drop the Saint Germain reference the club found themselves in the 3rd division. Ironically in 1973 the new FC Paris and Paris Saint Germain swapped places and PSG were welcomed to the new Parc De Princes where they have competed in the top flight since. Apart from a period when Canal + had control of the club the crest has always been a cradle and Eiffel Tower symbol (oh, and a strange badge for the Olympics in 1992). The reference to Paris comes through the eiffel Tower, but Saint-Germain-en-Laye is known as the 'burceau royale' or 'royal cradle'. The fleu

Recently I've been looking back over the history of football shirts in England, especially and one thing that struck me as unusual was the fact that managers in the 1960s and 1970s were always meddling in kit design. Nowadays, we can't imagine the influx of overpaid foreign bosses thinking up shirt designs and derivating from the latest adidas template, but it's infinitely more imaginable that they would rather than the blokes who dominated football yesteryear. Quite often these are the types of blokes who now talk about football losing its traditions, but in the case of Aston villa (albeit for one season only) and Crystal Palace this in the 60s and 70s saw a complete trampling on traditions. So, hats off to football's most unlikely designer - Jack Charlton. Jack Charlton who made his name as a tough tackling centre half for England and the team fomerly known as 'Dirty, Dirty, Leeds', came up with one of the all time classic football shirt designs. On taking ove

Over the next few weeks I'll be looking at some of the classic shirts from the UK and then hopefully extending the series over Europe, so let's get the ball rolling...

First of all apolgies for the crap photo, but I couldn't actually believe that the floodlights were on and that this game between Ely and Great Shelford was going ahead. As you may remember the game in October ended on 88 minutes with Ely 1-0 up when there was a powercut in the town. In some ways it seemed a bit harsh at the time as Ely had most of the play in that game and the chances of Shelford getting an equaliser had been thin. That said it could also be argued that the Cambridgeshire FA were right to replay the game, as it was only 1-0. Last night though the chasm in difference between the Ridgeons Premier and the Cambridgeshire Senior League were made apparent though. The first half was pretty much like the previous encounter between the 2 clubs with Ely having much of the play, but not making the most of the chances. Therefore it was a relief when Richard Chadwick put the Robins ahead on 25 minutes, but a shame that they didn't capitalise on their lead before half time.

Notes on shirts from top to bottom: The 1973-4 shirt, when the Glaziers became the Eagles and Palace started to wear red and blue. The 1976-7 shirt, the first time Palace tried out the sash design. the 2005 Centenary shirt that was unfortunately used in a few friendly matches. This season sees a return to the sash, but none of the players seem to be modelling afros

Crystal Palace started in claret and blue shirts in 1907 and remained with these colours until 1938 when they decided to change to white kits in an attempt to improve their rather poor fortunes. From 1949-54 Palace went back to claret and blue and then wore white shirts with some claret and blue until 1963. In the 1963-4 season Palace showed their supersticious side again by changing to their yellow away shirt, as it had been lucky for them (Many years later Palace would be ridiculed for having a yellow and blue away kit modelled on Brazil.) As well as being supersticious Palace are obviously impressionable as in 1964 they played Real Madrid in a game to celebrate the opening of their floodlights and decided to adopt the all white kit of their illustrious guests. After a copule of seasons in the all white of Real Madrid, Palace continued to play in claret and blue until Malcolm Allinson arrived in 1973. In the bullsitadabulous style that football didn't really adopt until the forma

It has been suggested that like Aston villa's rampant lion the lion used by Millwall was because of their Scottish origins. However, their original nickname was 'the Dockers' and they didn't become the Lions until 1900. In this year they certainly were as fearsome as lions, as they reached the semi final of the FA Cup and won some notable victories on the way. They also reached the semi finals in 1903 and 1937 and reached the final in 2004. So the lion nickname came from the cup run of 1900, as they wanted to be seen as fearsome, and also because of the Boer War everything African was in vogue at the time. However, the badge wasn't added to the shirts of the team until 1936 Perhaps the most popular and well known interpretation of the rampant lion is the image shown at the top of this page. It first came into use in 1978. It wasn't until several years later when the club wanted to register the emblem as a trademark that it came out that the badge had originally

The Ely game was off yesterday, although to be honest I didn't think that they were at home anyway. Another attempt to play Shelford will go ahead on Tuesday, but I'm not holding my breath, at least I've lined up some tickets for the Boxing day clash between Cambridge United and Histon

Note on shirts from top to bottom: Top: The claret with blue side panels from 1983-4 The pyjama kit from 1987 -89 The Vila shirt with Acorns logo from this season

Aston Villa were formed by the local methodist cricket team of Villa Cross in 1874 under the watchful eye of a Scottish business man who had moved to the city called William McGregor. Mr. McGregor would also go on to come up with the idea of the football league where Villa became one of the powerhouses of the Victorian era. Villa's first kit was claret and blue hoops. It has been stated that Villa chose these colours in respect to the 2 biggest Scottish teams of the time Rangers and Hearts. However, I don't think that this story hold much weight as Hearts didn't settle on a dark red hue to their shirts until 2 years later. Another rumour is that the colours came from a local pub where the founders of the club used to meet, which seems highly unlikely for a group of wesleyan methodists. The rampant lion which first appeared in the late 1870s and remains on the crest of the club up until the present day is more clearly a nod to the club's Scottish forefathers. The first k