Back In Action

Hello everybody.  Welcome back and happy new year.  Who knows what on earth we bloggers will find to talk about in 2025 but let’s hope it’s a bit of a magical mystery tour.  It’ll certainly be a mystery to me and is well-nigh guaranteed to be baffling to a lot of you.

For a start, I’m already a gibbering wreck and exhausted having suffered through my struggling, depleted Totspurs clinging on for a much-needed win away to Hoffenheim in the Europa League.  We’re everybody’s favourite opponent at the moment – perhaps just pipped by Manchester United, who are even worse – because as the opposition you’re pretty well guaranteed a goal or two at least.  Even shot-shy Everton scored three against us, so I had to fall back, yet again, on Dad’s mantra:  Every result makes somebody happy….Aaagh.  Gritted teeth out and fixed.

I have friends, eminently sensible people whom I envy immensely, who have no interest whatsoever in football.  They just can’t understand people’s obsession with a game that leaves them cold.  There’s no explaining why it sometimes lights up my life; often plunges me into deep gloom; makes me screech like an enraged banshee; and has me yakking for hours on end to fellow tragics.  I tell myself I don’t really care but the truth is that too often I do.  Ridiculous.

The best day of all, though, was when Spurs came to Tamworth – and I was there.  It was so exciting and as a fellow Spurs/Tamworth supporter said of the Tottenham big names within arm’s length of the fans as they trekked round the ground on the way to the Portakabin that barely passes muster as a dressing room:  “They all look like ordinary blokes when you see them here.”

The sainted Son Heung-Min, Sonny, pride of South Korea and N17, at the Lamb!!!!

They could have lost too but brought on some of the big guns in extra time, to wit Son and Kulusevski – the Tamworth players, tiring after an immense effort, had a laugh about that – and won 3-nil in the end.  It’s another local derby for me next, Aston Villa away, so we probably won’t be going any further in the FA Cup this year.

Thanks to Andy Farrington of Bradley Scott Windows for making good on his promise, made on Colin Murray’s show on  BBC 5 Live, to look after me and get me a ticket, £38 well spent.  His company, named after his sons, are big sponsors of Tamworth FC and the company name was proudly displayed on the front of the very smart shirts for millions of ITV viewers to see.

Bradley Scott Windows pre-match display.

That match was my third in eight days – Newcastle (2-1 to them), Liverpool (1-nil to us, miracle), then the mighty Lambs.         Last weekend I went to Tamworth again, when there was a respectable crowd of 1400-odd (there were about 4,000 at the Spurs game) and we (!) won 3-0 against the Pilgrims of Boston United.  COYL.  Come on you Lambs.

Stretching out my new Tamworth bobble hat – it’s a chilly gig watching football at this time of year.

My golf has been a little curtailed by a slightly dodgy left knee and my increasing dislike of manky, grey, damp, bone-chilling weather.  A few swift holes, then in for a hot cuppa, that’s my preference at this time of year.  A wee carry bag, six clubs and you can scuttle round almost without noticing the cold.  We’re playing a revised layout at the moment and it plays merry hell with filling in the scorecard.  Starting at the 6th is straightforward enough.  So you fill in 6, 7, 8, 9.  Then you play 13, 14, 12, 10, 11, 15 and 16 and on in – or if you have any sense you head in and avoid 17, a long, boring, undistinguished nothing of a hole.

The 17th green – and a welcome bit of blue sky adding an undeserved lustre.  I look forward to the day the hole becomes defunct!

There’s been an alert from Portstewart Golf Club that all three courses and the clubhouse will be closed tomorrow, quiz postponed and everybody advised to hunker down in the face of Storm Éowyn.  It’s expected to be one of the most dangerous storms on record in Ireland and the UK won’t be immune.  Keep safe everybody.  Might be a day for bridge in a low building built on solid foundations.

Mega bucks seem to be the order of the day at the top end of professional golf but lower down, at the grass roots, there’s been a wonderful fund-raising effort in aid of Ireland’s National Breast Cancer Research Institute.  The Play in Pink initiative is supported by clubs and societies running charity golf days to raise money for the NBCRI.  The players play in pink and I’m delighted to wear my buff, designed by Lucy Torrey and a pressie from Mary McKenna, at every opportunity.

Play in Pink raised an amazing 779,000 Euro in 2024.

In the general scheme of things, given the state of the world  – wars, floods, famines, storms, devastating forest fires – losing a trophy can’t rank that highly but a precious possession is just that.  Precious.  Mo Martin, who won the then Ricoh Women’s British Open at Royal Birkdale in 2014, her only big title, kept the trophy at her mum’s house in California and that family home, full of memories, was destroyed by the recent fires.  Fortunately, the people and pets made it to safety but everything else was reduced to rubble.  Sickening.  Devastating.  Hard to take in.  Rebuilding will be a long, slow process.

Mo Martin, champion, all smiles at Royal Birkdale [Tristan Jones/ LET]