As we all know, Bobby thinks it is currently the worst in the PL.

Apparently, we have been training there this week because our other facility was frozen.

Does anyone else occasionally despair?

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Answers

Atrocious Playing Surface.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Re-phrase that please, Dougal.

Does anyone occasionally not despair ?

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

I think we should be forced to play all our reserve games on it as well like in the good old days before mad king Keegan ruined everything: that'd really suit our passing game.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

So, any green fingered horticulturalists care to explain why season on season our little stretch of turf looks like a cow field at this time of year?

Best playing surface anyone? I think WHam's is pretty smart looking.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Ipswich, I think.

This season, we aren't helped by having started the season early and having to opt for a relay instead of reseeding etc.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Softie, the North East is full of fields that reserves can play football on. Surely you don't have to disband a team just because you don't want it to play at a specific venue? I'm not saying anything about Keegan, BTW, just about the general lack of imagination within the club in terms of finding a replacement venue.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

From Newcastle Stuff:

UNITED ARE IN DANGER of missing out on success due to the quality of the local grass, newcastle stuff can reveal. Growing conditions are far from perfect at St James’ Park, where the new stands are blocking out the sunlight.

Many players are looking confused on the sub-standard stuff, rather than reaching the exciting highs of recent years. But manager Bobby Robson needn't worry. A man in a pub told newcastle stuff he can soon have St. James’ blooming, bringing a smile back to the faces of the players and the fans.
Speaking from a seat by the tab machine in the Bonny Lad, the man - who does not want to be named - made his pitch:

“They've got the wrong bulbs in the floodlights. I had the same problem in me loft last season, but after a trip to Amsterdam things have been cushty,” says Herbie Bush, of Chillum Road, Heaton.
He recently bought a ‘special’ lighting system which can accelerate the growth of grass. Fitting these in the stadium would solve the sunlight problem, leaving players and fans looking tanned and relaxed.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

LOL.

There was a bloke in the Strawberry giving Softie and me chapter and verse on the pitch the other week, during which monologue, he farted and apologised for "pumping" as it had "just slipped out".

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Dougal, the rules of the reserve League in KK's time were that most home games had to be played at the club's ground, the alternatives were a) not play reserve games or b) screw the picth up.

It's different now as the idiots at the FA changed their rules. As for training on the pitch.... may as well get used to the surface!

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Seem to remember Derby winning the League one season while the Baseball Ground was doing a fair imitation of the Somme.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Thanks a million for that uplifting anecdote dougal - made my day.

They do say "sh*t happens"!

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Thanks, Geordie, I'd forgotten that but I am also fairly sure that they would have made waivers for us in the same way as they continually waive the Academy requirements for us.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Nope... the whole point was that the idiots wouldn't budge so we said "sod ya then"

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Oh come on! In this day of modern technology, surely there has to be a solution. Why don't they all just play Championship Manager 2001 instead of training?

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

good point screach... they could have had a sports psychology course... less chance of picking up an injury

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Surely that glass roof was supposerd to be one of the big selling points of the redevelopment.

They can't have overlooked the fact that the sun has to get above the walls before it can shine through the roof, and since we're just this side of the Arctic Circle, I'd have thought a factor like that would have featured quite prominently in the calculations.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

So presumably at the time everyone else was a hoof it and hope merchant and we were the only team with a passing game? Sorry, Geordie, I just don't buy it.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

LOL. Pit Bill re arctic circle. They used to have similar problems at OT. Maybe we should ask them what they did to sort it out.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Sorry Dougal, don't buy what? The facts?

We HAD to play our reserve games at SJP, pitch was suffering, FA said tough so we said no reserves. They are the facts.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

I'm not arguing with that, Geordie, I'm arguing with whether that was our rationale for getting rid of the reserves: 19 other clubs managed to have reserves teams. I think that KK couldn't be arsed with them. End of. Geordie : facts are things like we got beaten 3-1 by Man Utd and Shearer scored our goal. Things we can only really opine about are the club's reasons for doing things. KK himself gave more than one reason for dropping the reserves so, you see, despite the transparency of your "facts", it isn't quite as simple as you seem to think it is.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

PS. Just looking this up on Archives and apart from it being unbearably poignant with headlines like "Newcastle say that faith will win them the title", the state of the ground is given as one reason, but we see the value of the reserves at a more fundamental level being questioned (ie. Do the reserves teach the players anything?" kind of thing so it looks like there were a number of policy reasons for us ditching the reserves, of which the pitch was just one.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Sorry Dougal... lines crossed. I agree with you that we SHOULD NOT have binned the reserves... BUT the pitch was becoming unplayable so it would have made our 1st team games a lottery (may have been better!). IMO not playing our reserve games on that pitch was the correct decision but maybe we should have maintained a reserve team and played friendlies (there are PLENTY of teams who would have played us).

Over the next 10 yrs it will become increasingly difficult to maintain a squad of 30+ players. The time has come for "adopted" or "feeder" clubs(no doubt we'd pick a set of duffers!)

Rather than a reserve league we should have an under 21 league as that is where our next players should be coming from.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Amen Geordie - 100% agreement here. Too visionary unfortunately.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

That's precisely what we did do Geordie. KK said that if it was good enough for Serie A to have no reserve League but instead play the fringe players of your large squads in friendlies, it was good enough for us. The benefits of the reserve league were far outweighed by the damage it was causing the pitch. We pulled out of the reserve league we didn't sell all the players who had formally appeared in it. Huckerby was sold because he couldn't get in the first team, not because he couldn't play in the reserve league.

The fact that the "scrapping the reserves" argument has always been such a smoke-screen is perhaps most ably borne out by the fact that the FA backed down when it became apparent that the other top teams were going to pull out of it as well, hence the climbdown which saw everyone play at other venues the next season (except the mackems who don't have a passing game).

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

Softie, there is unquestionably an element of truth in that. However, none of the "reserves" players who were sold (with an exception or two) had had the run in the team to prove themselves that we currently advocate for Shola and Distin (among others). The only place they could have proved themselves to be anything was in the admittedly imperfect reserves system. You may argue that none of them went on to cover themselves in glory to suggest that Keegan's gut instinct was right but there have been many times in recent years when, without an embarrassment of riches, we could have used a Steve Guppy or a Darren Huckerby (whatever their limitations may be).

The pitch thing is certainly part of the reason we scrapped the reserves but Keegan himself said that there were other reasons including his own (possibly justified) scepticism about their value and a certain pressure to raise money.

I do agree that the reserves system is flawed and needs rethinking.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

The youth players we had coming through were of the standard you would expect for a struggling second division side. Don't foget that we had laid off almost the entire squad KK had inherited, kept a core group of the most talented youngsters and had to draft in a whole different class of player. It was a bit like the production line for Reliant Robins suddenly deciding to produce Rolls Royces half way through a run. None of the bits for the Robins were going to be used and had to be discarded. That's why the likes of Harper and Aaron Hughes who were drafted in at the time eventually saw the light of day in the first team but the youth players who had only been good enough to attract interest from a distinctly average second div side were never seen again.

Fortunately KD redressed the balance by immediately signing a whole batallion of crap players who hadn't attracted interest from anyone else so that we could return to our former glory with a second string capable of matching the second and third division reserves.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

"Speaking from a seat by the tab machine in the Bonny Lad, the man - who does not want to be named - made his PITCH:"

:-)

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002