Watford won by 3-1. The first goal was scored by a certain Marc Bola. Up the Boro!Wrexham having the wind taken out its sails a bit by the Hornets: Watford 2 Wrexham 0 at half-time...
NE running with the late returns from International duty for the Millwall game.
Looks as though McGree and Morris could have late second match Tuesday 31 games. Conway also has possibly two but the travelling not as bed.
How does FIFA continually get away with these games and continually hand advantage to other teams that do not lose players to International duty. I do not know if Strelec has been picked or Slovakia have games.
Many thanks Dormo for that wonderful epic feature-length preview that maintained your inimitable narrative voice from beginning to end - which is incredibly difficult to achieve while imparting so much information - well done excellent stuff!
I too hope Boro will feel the benefit of playing away and take all three points to avoid anyone's glass appearing fully empty. I think Boro would've won all those missed opportunity home games if they'd only taken their better chances - especially against Bristol City - so they should be winning more games.
Just for reference, I managed to read the whole piece without touching a drop of alcohol - though that was mainly because it was only 8am...
btw I edited out the superscripts in your opener as may have mentioned they don't work well on the Wordpress stylesheet - plus I reformatted your tables into a monospaced font using the 'PRE' html tag and adjusted the spaces accordingly. Also just altered your 1994-95 typo you mentioned too.
Slovakia have a World Cup qualifying playoff next week. McGree will be hard pushed to make it back for a 12:30 kick off on good Friday. Australia play on Tuesday night in Melbourne i.e mid morning UK time. If he is flying Qantas his earliest departure is 5pm the next day which gets to the UK early Thursday morning. Morris would be in the same boat from Atlanta with him arriving early morning although his flight would be 8 hours as opposed to McGree's 24 hrs+
@werdermouth - Thanks for that! Where would we be without you? Maybe next time I will write "May 8" or "21 March" or 21.03.26 to avoid the superscript. Mind you, I might still forget...
@lenmasterman - I love Kes, too! The school football scenes with Brian Glover channelling his inner Bobby Charlton, the indescribable cruelty of the brother killing the Kestrel...
The truth is that I rattled off that list and there are a few others I could also have have typed. "Secrets and Lies" is a cracker, for example. Great cast, great acting. Get Carter, too...
Also Sontje Hansen is in the same boat or plane as Riley Mcgree as Curacao are playing in Australia with games against Australia and Cameroon during this international break. Assuming both are picked.
Kes is astonishingly good. What happens to the titular bird at the hands of Billy’s brother - and Billy as a result - is wrenching.
I love both West Sides, but Spielberg’s gets the edge, one reason being for its greater emphasis on performative masculinity and class divisions. Something we football fans can all “get” as we pay our money and attention so that the performers can put on a show to make us happy while the managers seek to manage the possible divisions that can arise within due to culture and finances.
One good way to compare the films is the Riffs. Russ Tamblyn’s Riff was a bundle of charisma, a mixture of the sly, the superficially chummy and the potentially duplicitous, and Mike Faist’s Riff was a force - also charismatic, also a livewire, but eaten away at by beliefs sustained as a means of protection and projection.
Hope that made sense.
And from Kes, the English lesson, where Billy comes to life, the caning scene in the headmaster's study, the interview with the career's advisor, the scene in the changing room and showers, the outdoor sequences withe the bird, and many, many more, all of them taken directly from the novel.
Both the film and novel, British classics.
This is completely off-topic, so I hope you don't mind.
My brother has a large collection of old football programmes, mainly Boro, from years back. He now needs to get rid of them. He’s been keeping them in boxes in his wardrobe for years, but last week the shelf collapsed under the weight! His wife let him know - in the sweetest possible way, you understand (😉😉) - that he must now find another home for them.
Does anybody want them, or know anybody who might be interested? Bob doesn’t want to take them to the tip if anyone up Middlesbrough way can use them. Free to a good home!
I met somebody in the local High Street earlier today. I told him I still had faith (specifically meaning in Hellberg, Boro and promotion). He looked at me as if I were dressed in stars+stripes and wearing a MAGA hat on my way to pay a visit to the Iranian Embassy. He must have been reading Si's reviews because I think he said he "last felt that under Karanka until the match against Norwich". I guess that was the Play-Off final at Wembley when the team arrived late and only started after conceding two early goals. That was a LONG journey home.
Getting bots replaced bit by bit
OFB
There's nothing like a new set of bots. Great to hear that you're out and about.
Keep well and UTB
... and West Side StoryI'd want to add Kes to that list.
and.....GOODWILL HUNTING.
Southampton 1-0 Norwich. No prizes for guessing who had the most possession and shots. 😎
@selwynoz - I suppose it's always a problem. "Name ten good films.
Ok, I like that list apart from No 7, but what about X, Y and Z?
I'd not taken account of those. Let's give 20 films.
Ah, but there's been some great Ealing Comedies and we've ignored the blockbusters like Casablanca and Gone with the Wind... Or, a little more recently, The Sting in which you can often spot something you'd missed in earlier viewings?
OK. Let's make a list of 50 films...."
Or the never-ending debate about favourite/best players to wear the shirt as against those who should never have been allowed to put it on!
@forever-dormo. “as against those who should never have been allowed to put it on!”
I think we have all got a very long list of those! 😉😎
@selwynoz - I suppose it's always a problem. "Name ten good films.
Ok, I like that list apart from No 7, but what about X, Y and Z?
I'd not taken account of those. Let's give 20 films.
Ah, but there's been some great Ealing Comedies and we've ignored the blockbusters like Casablanca and Gone with the Wind... Or, a little more recently, The Sting in which you can often spot something you'd missed in earlier viewings?
OK. Let's make a list of 50 films...."
Or the never-ending debate about favourite/best players to wear the shirt as against those who should never have been allowed to put it on!
Kind Hearts and Coronets to name but one of my black and white favourites, but you are right. This could be a never ending task and really shows up the folly of the tabloid approach to reporting the "20 best songs/films/books/plays/musicals/etc". Why does it have to be a comparison. Different films (etc.) can all be good and appreciated in a multiplexity of different ways by different people and all have quality. Much depends on my mood to decide whether to watch any particular film that comes on the box and I can appreciate things that i might otherwise think are hopelessly bad if that is the way my mood takes me. I suppose it is a bit like my dad asking me why I was going to see the Boro when, as he observed, they don't come around and see you when you are bad. (He was originally from north Manchester though, so what would he know? 😉)
As with all statistics they can tell us the tale that we want to hear. I note the 57% possession that the BBC has recorded for Norwich, but what I don't see from the stats is anything about how the other team (Soton) was playing. Somehow I do not imagine Soton at home were playing a disciplined low-block, the like of which has become the default tactic for teams visiting the Riverside.Southampton 1-0 Norwich. No prizes for guessing who had the most possession and shots. 😎
I didn't see the game, nor have I read any reports, so I have no idea how that 57% of possession looked in reality, but I suppose the one thing the result tells me is that football is all about goals, regardless of possession and regardless of formation. Hoping for lots of possession allied with lots of goals on Saturday!
@powmillnaemore - So long as most of the goals end up in the Blackburn net.
Yet more Sky TV disruption. How on earth are Boro fans supposed to get to Ipswich - which is notoriously difficult for transport links - for 12.00 on a Sunday? Coaches will need to leave Middlesbrough at 6.00 am, or even earlier. This is just crass. It shows once again that the paying fans are worthless in Sky’s eyes.
I know televised clubs benefit enormously from the revenue they get - and Boro will have benefitted more than most this season as we seem to have been on live TV virtually every week recently - but it really is time that the EFL tells Sky it must take fans’ travelling arrangements into account when it plans its schedules. Meanwhile, clubs have to do what they’re told while the spineless governing body just lies down and says nowt. Infuriating in the extreme.
@clive-hurren - To clarlify: the Ipswich (A) game which had been listed for Saturday 18th is now to be played on Sunday 19th April at 12 noon, and that means the Sheff Wed (H) game has been put back a day and will now be played at 7.45pm on Weds 22nd April. Bad news if you had a ticket for Ipswich as getting there for 12 noon on a Sunday will be no easy task.
@clive-hurren I have tried searching the internet to see how much each gets for a televised game, but could not find the single game numbers.
Last season it was 100,000 for the home team and 10,000 for the way team when televised.
However I assume because of the increase in direct revenue per team, the televised game teams will probably get less this season especially as the are 358 I think in the Championship.
The other big gripe is FIFA (I assume) having an International Break that runs through to Easter Week. I do not know if the other top place clubs are effected as bad as MFC, but how can this be justified given the importance of all games at this part of the season. The EPL also.
It looks as though (injuries sustained apart) McGree, Morris could miss the game and Conway and Strelec could struggle to start, but will have to.
I also read a couple of days ago that Jones turned up at the Bristol game on crutches still.
Sharing with you all, my top ten films, in reverse order...
10. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021)
9. Planes, Trains & Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987)
8. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)
7. Lost In Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
6. Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (Nicholas Meyer, 1982)
5. The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985)
4. Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
3. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
2. Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
1. It's A Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)
@martin-bellamy It's a much loved classic, it's just not in my top ten. There are so many other worthy films that didn't make the cut.
Including, but definitely not limited, to: The Maltese Falcon, Back To The Future, Rear Window, Bonnie And Clyde, Jaws, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Rain Man, All The President's Men, The Conversation, The Godfather.