I’m old but I’m happy round 2

[TF10]

I can remember Ian Evans leg being broken by George Best, Seeing Kenny Sansom’s debut, monkey nuts form the old lady on the Holmesdale, having my scarf confiscated at school after promotion form the third division in nineteen seventy - seven, Burnley and the fifty-two thousand, cheese and onion rolls in the Glaziers club, the Flatterer, the team of the eighties, the dissolution of same, the wilderness years, the lifeline club, the hooligans, bricks at Brighton, not rock, the re-emergence in the late eighties, the late push into the play-offs in eighty-nine, the Blackburn game, that Pardew cross, Wright, Bright, the new era, the nine – nil, that semi final at Villa Park, seeing Nigel Martyn in the pub that same night celebrating with his wife, relegation, promotion, some highs, some lows, semi-finals, finals, kits, mirrors, mugs, scarves, knickers, I went away, I came back, I moved away, I returned, I introduced my son to the madness, even my daughter though not her thing, disillusionment with football, too much money, too much corruption, diving, too much anger, hatred, a brief sojourn to egg ball chasing, but I am back, and I am glad to be witnessing something very special, however brief, six games ago, the outlook was bleak, relegation was tangible, more wilderness years loomed, but now, now, we have something, and though I doff my virtual fedora to Roy, Oli G is the real deal…….. How to hang on, not just to the Ezes and Olises, but to persuade this entire squad to give us one more season to see what could happen. It may be a flash in the pan, but somehow, I do not think so, there’s a feeling, a cohesion, a burgeoning swagger. Yes, the lure of money and medals is great and undeniable, football careers are fleeting, but why sit on the bench at Moneybags United when, just possibly, you could be part of something very big, happening right here, right now in South London.

Facts and figures may be a little lost in the ‘Sands’ of time (see what I did there?), but you get the point.

Could we just be the team of the twenties, or at least twenty four/five?

 

[TF10]

My Dad wrote the above a while ago, and it got my creative juices flowing to write something that’s sat in the notes on my phone since toward the end of last season.
Last Saturday got me thinking about what it means to be palace:


When I was a young boy, my father said to me, listen here my son, you’re CPFC.
Except he didn’t, not for me.
However, despite letting me choose my own sporting path, there was only one team it was ever going to be, it runs in the family.

Growing up countless Saturdays and Tuesdays driving down to Selhurst via the two brewers, gave me memories to cherish. It wasn’t about the result or watching an AJ, Dougie or a Clinton Morrison masterclass (although this was amazing), but it was about time with my dad.
An under stirred hot chocolate didn’t combat the Selhurst chill, but his big coat certainly did, as well as getting in the car afterwards listening to the phone in.

We mainly watched the eagles in the second tier. but as a child we ventured into the premiership for but a year.
We couldn’t make the Cardiff play off final, as we were on a family holiday, but that didn’t stop a young me running around the resort, palace top on trying to find the score. The staff were unable to broadcast the game. Crystal who they said. In a very Scrooge way, a sunburned Brit said, ‘you boy, palace have won, Neil Shipperly’. We were up, maybe because of dad’s lucky shirt hung in the hotel room, who knows?

An incredible season as far as my memory serves me. Andy Johnson taking the league by storm was mesmerising as a boy who’d go home and try to recreate the goals in the garden, wearing my shorts low to look like Wayne Routledge.

And it would be quite poignant during that season that the last match day programme I collected of my Grandpa’s short life was a game against the recently crowned invincibles of Arsenal. In hindsight, quite ironic as it now highlights the fragility of life, when as a boy you look at your male role models as invincible.

Then a move toward rugby, and the south west of the country steered us away from the lights of Selhurst and the buzz of the Holmsdale road. I knew this wouldn’t be forever, it’s too addictive, but I remember the old man getting frustrated with how things had changed in the game I love to watch with him. It was different to how it was for him as a youngster, and I can understand that now. Maybe for the nostalgic reasons I talk about earlier.

I would get frustrated watching from a far, struggling to get back up to the dizzy heights of the prem, ‘don’t get angry at something you can change,’ he would wisely say.

So distance did cause a bit of a disconnect, and a lack of TV coverage and certainly didn’t help when you live so far away from our boyhood club, but there was always a love for the boys in red and blue that was like a once raging, now smouldering fire ready to have petrol poured all over it again.

And then came a rare TV fixture for the eagles, the incredible night at Old Trafford, or for us, The Swan, Wadebridge.

Zaha calmly into Ambrose, who sent a thunderbolt of a shot into the top bins. All two of us palace fans in a packed Cornish Pub couldn’t believe our eyes.

That era just after of a young Wilf, Yala, dominant Mile, Moxey, Delaney, Johnny Williams and co became heroes in my eyes, they did it, under a dancing Holloway at Wembley, got us back to the premier league, brushing aside Brighton along the way, despite their ‘shitty’ attempt at pre match distraction.

We were back, maybe just for a season like last time, but I’m sure to most of us, but certainly to me, that was enough. A young man living down in Cornwall, I was able to say, that’s my team, and I support them with my dad.

But it wasn’t just a season was it Dad?

These first few years in the top flight were probably still during his stubborn attempt to defy the potential pre Madonna nature of some of the big teams, and the big money business it had become.
But for me it was my uni years, living closer now to ‘home’ surrounded by other sports fans, it was a badge of honour to be a palace fan, defying the odds and pulling out shock results and staying up, year on year, and here we are in 2024, still here, about to finish another season on a high.

But this 23/24 season has been a special one for me.
We finish on a 6 game, maybe 7 game unbeaten run, twatting Man U 4-0, beating Liverpool as well as Newcastle, West Ham and Wolves, the football has been amazing. The players seem fitter, better and most importantly more passionate to play for our brilliant club. Watching Olise, Eze, Mateta, Mitchell, Anderson and the rest of the current crop make the premier league look effortless has been a sight to behold. If you ask the sky pundits, we are finally winning because we are brilliant, not because ‘the other team was poor.’

But for me the most important thing, that due to a spare season ticket going, this season, especially the latter part under Oli G, has given me my Palace loving dad back. He was always in there, but not like this one, who will chat to me for 10 mins after a game about the state of play, who will shout at the TV when Eze puts us one up against Liverpool.

I am eternally grateful for this, as although we have a lot in common it’s something I’ve always loved and I’m glad we are both there again.

So just to wrap up, as my wife is about to bring another Palace fan into the world, I’m so happy that hopefully one day, we get the chance to do something I never got to, which is go to Selhurst as 3 generations of Palace fans, and sing glad all over together.

Thank you dad for all the memories ❤️💙 COYP

 

[Sea Eagle]

My Dad wrote the above a while ago, and it got my creative juices flowing to write something that’s sat in the notes on my phone since toward the end of last season.
Last Saturday got me thinking about what it means to be palace:


When I was a young boy, my father said to me, listen here my son, you’re CPFC.
Except he didn’t, not for me.
However, despite letting me choose my own sporting path, there was only one team it was ever going to be, it runs in the family.

Growing up countless Saturdays and Tuesdays driving down to Selhurst via the two brewers, gave me memories to cherish. It wasn’t about the result or watching an AJ, Dougie or a Clinton Morrison masterclass (although this was amazing), but it was about time with my dad.
An under stirred hot chocolate didn’t combat the Selhurst chill, but his big coat certainly did, as well as getting in the car afterwards listening to the phone in.

We mainly watched the eagles in the second tier. but as a child we ventured into the premiership for but a year.
We couldn’t make the Cardiff play off final, as we were on a family holiday, but that didn’t stop a young me running around the resort, palace top on trying to find the score. The staff were unable to broadcast the game. Crystal who they said. In a very Scrooge way, a sunburned Brit said, ‘you boy, palace have won, Neil Shipperly’. We were up, maybe because of dad’s lucky shirt hung in the hotel room, who knows?

An incredible season as far as my memory serves me. Andy Johnson taking the league by storm was mesmerising as a boy who’d go home and try to recreate the goals in the garden, wearing my shorts low to look like Wayne Routledge.

And it would be quite poignant during that season that the last match day programme I collected of my Grandpa’s short life was a game against the recently crowned invincibles of Arsenal. In hindsight, quite ironic as it now highlights the fragility of life, when as a boy you look at your male role models as invincible.

Then a move toward rugby, and the south west of the country steered us away from the lights of Selhurst and the buzz of the Holmsdale road. I knew this wouldn’t be forever, it’s too addictive, but I remember the old man getting frustrated with how things had changed in the game I love to watch with him. It was different to how it was for him as a youngster, and I can understand that now. Maybe for the nostalgic reasons I talk about earlier.

I would get frustrated watching from a far, struggling to get back up to the dizzy heights of the prem, ‘don’t get angry at something you can change,’ he would wisely say.

So distance did cause a bit of a disconnect, and a lack of TV coverage and certainly didn’t help when you live so far away from our boyhood club, but there was always a love for the boys in red and blue that was like a once raging, now smouldering fire ready to have petrol poured all over it again.

And then came a rare TV fixture for the eagles, the incredible night at Old Trafford, or for us, The Swan, Wadebridge.

Zaha calmly into Ambrose, who sent a thunderbolt of a shot into the top bins. All two of us palace fans in a packed Cornish Pub couldn’t believe our eyes.

That era just after of a young Wilf, Yala, dominant Mile, Moxey, Delaney, Johnny Williams and co became heroes in my eyes, they did it, under a dancing Holloway at Wembley, got us back to the premier league, brushing aside Brighton along the way, despite their ‘shitty’ attempt at pre match distraction.

We were back, maybe just for a season like last time, but I’m sure to most of us, but certainly to me, that was enough. A young man living down in Cornwall, I was able to say, that’s my team, and I support them with my dad.

But it wasn’t just a season was it Dad?

These first few years in the top flight were probably still during his stubborn attempt to defy the potential pre Madonna nature of some of the big teams, and the big money business it had become.
But for me it was my uni years, living closer now to ‘home’ surrounded by other sports fans, it was a badge of honour to be a palace fan, defying the odds and pulling out shock results and staying up, year on year, and here we are in 2024, still here, about to finish another season on a high.

But this 23/24 season has been a special one for me.
We finish on a 6 game, maybe 7 game unbeaten run, twatting Man U 4-0, beating Liverpool as well as Newcastle, West Ham and Wolves, the football has been amazing. The players seem fitter, better and most importantly more passionate to play for our brilliant club. Watching Olise, Eze, Mateta, Mitchell, Anderson and the rest of the current crop make the premier league look effortless has been a sight to behold. If you ask the sky pundits, we are finally winning because we are brilliant, not because ‘the other team was poor.’

But for me the most important thing, that due to a spare season ticket going, this season, especially the latter part under Oli G, has given me my Palace loving dad back. He was always in there, but not like this one, who will chat to me for 10 mins after a game about the state of play, who will shout at the TV when Eze puts us one up against Liverpool.

I am eternally grateful for this, as although we have a lot in common it’s something I’ve always loved and I’m glad we are both there again.

So just to wrap up, as my wife is about to bring another Palace fan into the world, I’m so happy that hopefully one day, we get the chance to do something I never got to, which is go to Selhurst as 3 generations of Palace fans, and sing glad all over together.

Thank you dad for all the memories ❤️💙 COYP

 

[Apollofuzz]

I can remember Ian Evans leg being broken by George Best, Seeing Kenny Sansom’s debut, monkey nuts form the old lady on the Holmesdale, having my scarf confiscated at school after promotion form the third division in nineteen seventy - seven, Burnley and the fifty-two thousand, cheese and onion rolls in the Glaziers club, the Flatterer, the team of the eighties, the dissolution of same, the wilderness years, the lifeline club, the hooligans, bricks at Brighton, not rock, the re-emergence in the late eighties, the late push into the play-offs in eighty-nine, the Blackburn game, that Pardew cross, Wright, Bright, the new era, the nine – nil, that semi final at Villa Park, seeing Nigel Martyn in the pub that same night celebrating with his wife, relegation, promotion, some highs, some lows, semi-finals, finals, kits, mirrors, mugs, scarves, knickers, I went away, I came back, I moved away, I returned, I introduced my son to the madness, even my daughter though not her thing, disillusionment with football, too much money, too much corruption, diving, too much anger, hatred, a brief sojourn to egg ball chasing, but I am back, and I am glad to be witnessing something very special, however brief, six games ago, the outlook was bleak, relegation was tangible, more wilderness years loomed, but now, now, we have something, and though I doff my virtual fedora to Roy, Oli G is the real deal…….. How to hang on, not just to the Ezes and Olises, but to persuade this entire squad to give us one more season to see what could happen. It may be a flash in the pan, but somehow, I do not think so, there’s a feeling, a cohesion, a burgeoning swagger. Yes, the lure of money and medals is great and undeniable, football careers are fleeting, but why sit on the bench at Moneybags United when, just possibly, you could be part of something very big, happening right here, right now in South London.

Facts and figures may be a little lost in the ‘Sands’ of time (see what I did there?), but you get the point.

Could we just be the team of the twenties, or at least twenty four/five?

"seeing Nigel Martyn in the pub that same night celebrating with his wife"

He knew how to treat his lady can't beat a slap up meal in a Beefeater 😆. I remember that night in the public bar of the Goodies very well. His signature above the Dartboard (McGoldrick adding his a few weeks later)