Space Invaders!

I was just thinking last night as I made my way to Larne about the distinct lack of forethought by clubs in providing ‘basic’ amenities. Viewing facilities are to say the least pretty dismal, rarely is there a view of the entire pitch, or you are stuck at one end of the ground as when visiting clubs such as Solitude, Coleraine and until our board complained, Portadown. Glenavon have a great stand for visiting teams, but will only allow you to use half of it, as they keep the other half for their own supporters, just in case they want to use it. Then you have the really’crap’ grounds like Stangmore Park, which is still about 100 years behind the times. These grounds do nothing to encourage spectators to attend games, in fact I would say they drive a fair number of spectators away. Added to that is the fact that no-one appears to know that we’ve entered the age of the motor car, as they don’t provide anything close to adequate parking  spaces. Back in the so called ‘good old days’ of the eighties and nineties, this was okay, as cars were still a bit of a ‘luxury’ item for some people. We have now entered the age of 0 % finance and free insurance, not to mention large credit card bills, all of which has meant private cars are available for everybody. One just has to drive down a typical housing estate now to see the impact of the motor car, as there is hardly room to pass or park, while a fair sprinkling of households have two or more cars in their possession also. While visiting the Oval or Windsor Park you sometimes wonder if your car will be there when you return and wonder how long it will take you to get out of the ‘respective’ ghettos where these grounds are based. One of the clubs, who whether intentionally or accidentally, have provided fairly good car parking facilities, is Lisburn Distillery, but their viewing facilities are quite pathetic to put it mildly. The I.F.A. has given their consent to a new ground being built at the Maze near Lisburn and they are to be commended for this. Too long we have suffered the excessive charges levied by Linfield for the use of their ground, not only for Internationals, but for domestic finals as well. Now we have high hopes of eradicating that system once and for all and giving clubs a ‘level’ playing field. Surely it’s not too much to expect the organisers to provide adequate parking for the ‘private’ motorist, for this new stadium and surely they won’t charge us exorbitant prices either. Only time will tell I suppose, maybe by the time it’s built we’ll be ‘beaming’ into grounds and parking won’t be a problem, or as they say, ‘maybe pigs will fly’!

Marsh Manipulation!

Another of those wee ‘incidents’ that only seem to happen in the Irish league occurred last weekend. Ballymena Reserves were to play Newry City Reserves in Newry last Saturday. United manager Tommy Wright thought this would be a good game for Phil Charnock to prove his fitness and duly flew the Englishman over for the game. Newry’s first team meanwhile were involved in an Irish cup tie away to Coleraine. Bearing this in mind, they called a referee in on Friday morning at 9am, 30 hours before the match was due to take place and he declared the ground unplayable. The ground quite possibly was unplayable at that juncture, but in another 30 hours it could easily have been in excellent condition. So was the match postponed in order to leave Newry’s ground in good condition if their cup match with Coleraine ended in a draw, therefore necessitating a replay? In the end their match was drawn and a replay was necessary on Tuesday last. Thankfully though their subterfuge did them absolutely no good as they lost their cup game in a penalty shoot-out. So a kind of poetic justice was done, in my opinion and Newry gained nothing by their alleged underhand methods. Surely their must be some criteria laid down for the inspection of grounds and for the ‘earliest’ time they can be called off. It would also be nice if we could have a latest time, instead of making a fruitless journey to far away places like Dungannon (as United fans have done in the past), only to learn the match was called off 40 minutes before kick-off. No true fan wants to see their team being asked to perform in dangerous conditions, but there is no need to wrap players in ‘cotton wool’, after all it is a ‘mans’ game. Maybe in fact the referee who is down to officiate at the game should be asked to report an hour earlier than at present and then he can judge whether the match goes ahead or not. He should be more impartial than a local man who could be swayed, as in most cases he has close links to his local club. This is one of those little ‘niggly’ things which has to be dealt with, as the old saying goes, ‘look after the little things and the big things will take care of themselves’!

Cup Magic!

Its magic time once more, the quest for the ‘holy grail’ of Irish league footballers, the Irish cup, begins this weekend. What will the next five games have in store we wonder? Will we even get a couple of games, as knowing Kilmore Rec, (as we do only too well), Saturday’s result is no easy thing to predict. Last season we had probably the easiest run that we’ve ever had in the competition and still ended up with noting. So having home draws and no hard games is no guarantee of success, as at the end of the day, you still need to score goals. Scoring goals has been our problem all season and we’ve also had a bad habit of letting in quite a few too. We have managed to tighten things up a bit defensively over the last few weeks, but scoring goals is as difficult as ever. We have tried various formations in an attempt to change this unenviable record, but still the goals refuse to flow. The United manager has gone on record as saying he still needs and seeks a striker, but has drawn a blank so far. Personally I think a goal scoring midfielder wouldn’t be a bad thing either, as we’re definitely missing out in that department. A lot of work (again) in my opinion, has to be done on free kicks, corner kicks and throw-ins, as there never seems to any tactics used by us in these situations. Oh for the days when wee Dessie Loughery was taking long throw-ins and we put opposition defences under real pressure. Or going back even farther when Brian Jess took corner kicks, or to go back really far, Norman Clarke’s free kicks! Will we ever see set pieces like these again I wonder? Probably not I think is the short answer, as these players had loads of talent and that’s something which is in rather short supply at present. Not only in our team I hasten to add, but in the Irish league in general. How many times have we witnessed visiting teams attempt to blast free kicks over our defensive wall this season? It must be averaging about two kicks a game and I can’t remember our keeper having a worthwhile save to make yet. But I believe this is a loophole which we have to unloop and maybe just maybe, if we can start scoring from set pieces we can start to improve our goals for ratio. Surely it’s worth a try, what have we got to lose? The old saying goes that it’s much better to ‘have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all’. Well I say much better to have worked on our set pieces than not have tried at all, at least then we’ll have given it our best shot!

Omar's moving finger writes.....

A couple of weeks ago I touched on one of my favourite ‘grumbles’, the decrepit opposition grounds we must visit and the toilet facilities or to be more precise, their lack of toilet facilities. Since then I’ve heard a jackanory (for any morons from the defunct Ballymena United official site who have just by accident looked at this article, ‘jackanory’ is rhyming slang for story), that Glentoran plan to provide toilet facilities and improve spectator facilities generally. What improving spectator facilities means I just don’t know, but hopefully it’ll mean the removal of the beams holding the roof of the ‘visitors’ stand up, so as spectators would have a clear view of the majority of the playing surface. At the moment one has to ‘skelly’ round beams or miss that bit of the action and as for the near touch line, forget about it. Since then we have visited Ballycastle Road and Inver Park and neither of these grounds have too much to crow about I can tell you. Take Coleraine for instance, true they did offer us half of their grandstand, but it’s a grandstand which faces the setting sun and the view is somewhat poor to say the least, otherwise it’s covered terracing behind the goals or uncovered terracing level with the last third of the pitch. From this uncovered terracing, you have a really ‘jaundiced view’ of the proceedings as looking to your left only a half of the pitch is visible from the halfway line. Then looking to the right, the last third of the penalty box was invisible, although the banners displayed by United fans didn’t help in this respect. The toilets were, to put it mildly, an utter disgrace, no bars on the doors of the cubicles, no hook to hang your coat on and at least one was blocked. The only plus in their favour was the supply of decent toilet paper, but it didn’t make up for their shortcomings. Larne’s facilities aren’t the best either, again they did gave us half of their grandstand and half of their terracing, but once again there was a restricted view of the touchline. Added to this the toilets, correction, the only toilets, were located within the home section of the ground. I cannot comment on the cleanliness of these toilets as I used the ‘makeshift’ ones, an adjacent fence. This state of affairs in this the 21st century, is ridiculous, to put it mildly. Okay 30 years ago we didn’t expect much else, but we have moved on since then, but Irish league grounds obviously haven’t. There’s no point in calling ourselves a Premier league, while retaining ‘amateur league’ facilities. It’s time for action, just think what a visitor from another country must think of us, as this reflects on everybody, let’s try to act civilised. I wonder what sort of homes these ‘club members’ come from? Hopefully these conditions aren’t a reflection on their own home life!