It occurs to me that this rather basic website doesn’t provide any background or context to the reports I have and will post up here, and since there are now quite a few people reading them who haven’t been on the htfc mailing list (see below) I think it is worth a bit of a summary.
I first became aware of this new Internet thing in about 1996. I’d read about it, of course, but also seen commercials on holiday in the US pointing people towards their http://www.com sites and the enormity of what was about to happen couldn’t be missed, even by a slow Yorkshireman.
When I got back home, buying my first computer became a priority and though I couldn’t tell you what type it was (other than bloody heavy), the dial up access to a brave new world now sat in the living room of my bachelor pad in Edgerton (which was handy for a Big Shop at the nearby Shell garage)
Football in general, and Town in particular, was the first priority. What would now be viewed as primitive football club fans’ message boards were of particular interest. Some of the relatively few participants would have impossibly glamorous jobs in far flung parts, and the quality of discourse was, let’s just say, a tad superior to today’s brutal social media zoo.
The other connection to like minded folk was via email groups and Town fans had been congregating in a few numbers for some years on a mailing list run from a server in a US university by a guy called Dyche who has since mysteriously disappeared (if you are reading this etc….) and I joined in, I think, 1997.
As a frustrated journalist (I thought seriously about it as I left school in 1978 but then found out the money they were on and opted for the excitement and thrills of insurance instead), here was a medium for writing polemic views and match reports to a limited audience who may not consider me a bit of a geek for doing so.
For going on 20 years, I’ve intermittently scribbled down my thoughts for either the entertainment of a limited and reasonably well known audience, or, perhaps, their bemusement. Whatever they actually thought – they have always been kind to me but you never know – I enjoyed doing them and must have written over 100 to date.
There is also an ex-pat Town mailing list and the reports were passed on to them before I was invited (it’s a much classier place than the domestic list!) to join it. I can’t tell you what opportunities and fun has come from that invitation – lets just say that I’ve profited enormously without ever earning a penny
Why have I exposed my ramblings to the wider world? Well mainly because it occurred to me that retrieving the ones I have already done is going to take a monumental effort (I’ve started but it’s laborious) so I wanted to save them in one place for posterity. And I’m an attention seeking whore these days.
So, just a few things about Town and the reports;
- I don’t take a notepad to games. That would be just odd
- Accuracy is an aspiration not an objective
- Town losing upsets me. But not for long
- Reports on defeats are generally easier to do than victories. Which is just as well
- I watch all home games from a box on the halfway line, courtesy of my brother who has had the facility since the stadium opened. So at least half of the reports are cheap opinion.
- I don’t go to all away games and nowadays I miss a couple of months in the winter as I escape the horrible British winter for a Colorado winter
- You may disagree with the report. I seriously don’t care and, in many ways, hope that you do
- in the end, does it really matter?
So, that’s me.
Hopefully, people will stick with it but if they think, “pretentious bastard who thinks he can write, but cant” that’s fair enough too.
Bolton report follows. If I can be arsed.
townreports 